Why the us should cut useless courses from college degrees.

[Saiwania]

A lot of people in their 20's and 30's today have had no luck getting a job in the field they studied, and it's not just the people who majored in Medieval Mongolian Gender Studies. There are plenty of STEM students with master's degrees working at Starbucks too.

So it is all the more reason to not go to college, if a bad career outcome is inevitable with less work experience. No one graduates college with the expectation that they'll still only qualify for minimum wage. Its supposed to equip you with the knowledge for a certain career path, otherwise the money spent will have been for nothing.

If I ever reproduce and have a kid, they can forget about me helping to pay for their college or helping them to get in because chances are I just won't be able to. I'd warn them ahead of time that I went to college myself and it never helped me any in the ways that I care about. If anything, it set me back because too much time was wasted. I spent too much of my energies trying to make damned sure I got good grades.

If they want to go, they're going to have to take out a student loan if they're so sure of a path paying off. Unless they're going to college for something with very good job prospects such as Law or Medicine. In that case, I'll do everything possible to help them get in and succeed.

I'm not paying for them to go to some crackpot old fool of a teacher to learn radical Leftism/Feminist theory/or other such nonsense. I'd want to pay, to make sure that at the end of it, that they can more easily transition to a stable job that'll give them the material lifestyle and the protection from poverty that I never got to enjoy and probably never will, because I made the wrong decisions and got screwed over.

I wasn't even born poor, but went down to the bottom social class, and I'll be lucky if I ever climb back up after I have to go out there and build up from nothing.

People think this college stuff is a game, but the stakes are high- people need to understand that. This is people's financial future and career progression that's affected. The right move can set someone up for future success while the wrong move will only hurt someone later on, like it did for me.

[Salandriagado]

Who is 'they' and what do they 'want to hear'?

Kids. They may not be thrilled about a tax return class but they need to learn it,

Weird example, given that it's trivially easy to make it so that the overwhelming majority of people never need to fill in a tax return in their lives.

Sure, but then I'd also drastically raise the admissions standards for most colleges.

I'm not sure you can add anything to the long list of extracurricular activities you Americans need to do.

Doing so has no impact on admissions standards. To raise admissions standards you'd need proper qualifying exams. And probably to allow people to specialise earlier.

You have a philosophy centered around generating a massive and impossible societal regression because you think you know better than everybody else. Or are you just the exception to this rule, and you actually do have all the answers?

If my worldview is wrong, it is because its impossible for everyone to benefit from government policy. Any system by its very nature, is going to have winners and losers. What you see as societal progress I see as regression and vice versa. Because it is the case that we live in a fundamentally zero-sum world, the entire purpose of politics is to screw over or push aside any out groups or opposition and pursue whatever will benefit you and your in group.

Who ultimately wins and loses in the end, will be determined by the course of history.

Yeah, no. Government policy is not a zero-sum game.

The American school system isn't stolen from nineteenth-century Prussian military academies by accident. The purpose of schooling is to prepare children for jobs. It is meant to provide them with life skills and things they need to know. My taxpayer dollars should be teaching children to read, write, do arithmatic, balance a budget, and understand how their government works.

It is perhaps partially my fault in that I just didn't do enough with my life. But the US' K-12 system in my locale has objectively speaking, failed to prepare me for any job. The same is true for a state community college I went to and successfully got a 2 year degree from.

This is clearly not a failure of the system, given how many people do get prepared for, and obtain, jobs by such means.

Show me a machine that can do most if not all of the major STEM trades such as HVAC, Plumbing, Carpentry, Well drilling, etc? A computer can't do any of the physical work required. I'm pretty certain most of STEM is safe provided it requires knowledge/licensing not easily obtained.

Anyone who has gone to trade school can do that, they're not hard, you just need training. It's certainly not superior to other forms of education.

I mean things like engineers, chemists, and even physicists will soon be completely outdated by computers.

Also, machines exist or are being developed that can do all of those things.

I read this out in an office full of AI researchers, and they all started laughing, so it's safe to say that you're wrong. There is zero possibility of anything like this happening in any period of time that can reasonably be called "soon".

>social sciences
>humanities
I shiggy diggy

To elaborate on this, machines may be able to do work for people in the humanities such as gathering data, but they can only do what they're programmed to do. Repetitive tasks like mathematics are easy for a machine, critical thinking tasks like philosophy, interpreting historical events, or even modeling legal systems and international affairs, are much more difficult because they require a degree of imagination that machines are not capable of.

Your idea of what mathematics is bears no relationship whatsoever to reality.

You should read this post

Since when do they encompass so much? Because I could've sworn they didn't. Some of those I'm pretty sure fall under other categories as well.

And considering most of those are neither "Liberal" nor "Arts", why is it labelled as such? It's a misnomer.

It's from the Latin Liberalis Ars, with a literal meaning of roughly "free pursuits", which are the descendents of the seven classical arts worthy of a free person - grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The weird usage of the words "liberal" and "arts" in the US these days does not apply retroactively. Specifically, the liberal arts are those subjects that have been considered essential to have a basic grounding in for literal millennia.

ITT: A lot of people who really didn't like their required courses and don't know what "Expand your horizon" means.

The fundamental problem is that it costs extra money that people don't want to be spending. People sacrifice a lot to go to college to begin with. The courses might as well have some worth and not be wasting your time/efforts as a student wanting to get ahead.

The solution, then, is obvious, and it's not changing the courses required.

There's often a lot of talk about how to improve the education system in the US. Personally, there's one simple idea we can start with. Stop forcing classes on students that have nothing to do with their chosen field of study, or have little real world application like art or humanities. Not only would it save them time and money, but high schools could replace them with more useful subjects, such as teaching students how to file taxes. What say you NSG?

Ditto.

If I ever go back to school I’m picking a degree program that is centered solely around my choice of major and other closely related fields. I learned about humanities and the arts in high school. The purpose of college should be practical job training for one’s chosen career, not to cultivate a modern renaissance man.

Fuck that shit. Employers don't get to offload their training costs onto the university system. They can do their own damned training. We'll carry on with educating people.

ITT: A lot of people who really didn't like their required courses and don't know what "Expand your horizon" means.

Plenty of ways to expand your horizon without being forced to waste a not insignificant amount of time and money on stuff you have no interest in that will not impart job-specific skills dearly needed for the post-college transition to the work force.

I recommend traveling, or better yet participating in an exchange program.

If you can't make your courses sound impressive on your CV, you clearly should have taken more of these supposedly useless courses to learn how to do so.

And there’s also high schools with 100% literacy rates, and homeschooled kids who can’t read. Cherry-picking samples is not a fruitful exercise (heh pun about fruit accidentally I guess??)

Yes, but the people clamoring for school choice aren't the ones with the countries best schools. It's poor people who are stuck with the failing ones.

No, they're overwhelmingly the people who stand to make profits from it.

“I have never taken any course in this field or read anything about it besides extremist bloggers or propaganda networks saying it’s stupid and bad, and I therefore am in the enlightened elite who understand that it’s a waste of time and money, should be abolished, and is a totally worthless field devoid of intellectual value or any meaningful information”

Quick, am I a right winger talking abt gender studies majors or a leftie talking abt Econ majors

So what you're saying is the only people who can validly criticise something are those who expend significant time, labour, and money supporting the thing in question, and only after providing said financial support and patronage are they then allowed to legitimately criticise that thing? Yeap, okay, this sounds like a totally reasonable position to take.

It's more like "if you don't know what you're talking about, your criticism isn't worth shit". Which yes, is a pretty reasonable position to take.

Yes, it is a reasonable position to take that one should have knowledge of something they criticize.

And the only way to acquire sufficient knowledge to criticise a field of academia is actually taking the course?

You're specifically criticising the course, not the field. And yes, it's essentially impossible to gain knowledge of the details of a particular course without at least sitting in the fucking course.

I say that to myself every night around midnight U___U


and then I usually sleep at like 3 lol

But I might be getting sleep meds soon and that’s also not the topicccc


No I just want you to post an argument that has enough intellectual seriousness that it takes me more than two seconds to blast to atoms

How else will I deprive myself of sleep enough that I need my usual amount of coffee in the morning

Also you never know maybe there is a convincing argument out there for doing this and it’s just that no one has told me

You didn't blast anything to atoms. I call for the removal of those majors due to the field being saturated with leftist propaganda. I'm fine with replacing them with something more impartial, but the current degrees should be scrapped. No, this ain't me backtracking either, as I never said that gender and race don't matter in society, nor did I call for an end to all research into those topics.

If all of the experts in a field disagree with you, it isn't propaganda, it's you being wrong.

Yes, it is a reasonable position to take that one should have knowledge of something they criticize.

There's an inverse to that though, once a person has invested their time and money into something they become more likely to defend it because they won't want to admit that they made a bad investment.

That's only loosely to do with the topic.

If this were a significant effect, you'd expect significant differences between the US and countries with free education. Is there any evidence of such?

The problem, it seems to me, is not education itself, but a shit economic system that prioritizes itself to a cannibalistic degree over the ideal of an enlightened citizenry.

An enlightened citizenry doesn't do a country any good if there are no jobs for them. The EU in general is doing very poorly, which is why various European nations want to leave or end it to begin with. Europe is heading towards becoming a poorer continent, especially if they take in too many people from North Africa/Middle East.

Stop lying.

[Page]

The problem, it seems to me, is not education itself, but a shit economic system that prioritizes itself to a cannibalistic degree over the ideal of an enlightened citizenry.

An enlightened citizenry doesn't do a country any good if there are no jobs for them. The EU in general is doing very poorly, which is why various European nations want to leave or end it to begin with. Europe is heading towards becoming a poorer continent, especially if they take in too many people from North Africa/Middle East.

Taking in migrants helps Europe economically. Low birth rates make EU countries top heavy, too many retired elderly people to care for and not enough to fill jobs in a growing economy. Immigration fixes that.

[Saiwania]

Taking in migrants helps Europe economically. Low birth rates make EU countries top heavy, too many retired elderly people to care for and not enough to fill jobs in a growing economy. Immigration fixes that.

No it doesn't. It enables a population replacement if anything, and I'd rather Europe's economy decline and jobs to go unfilled than for European nations to become too multicultural as to lose any European identity and culture. Europe must remain majority European. The retired don't need to be taken care of, because presumably they'd of saved for retirement and if it isn't enough to last until death, they should get back into the work force practically speaking.

[Ifreann]

Taking in migrants helps Europe economically. Low birth rates make EU countries top heavy, too many retired elderly people to care for and not enough to fill jobs in a growing economy. Immigration fixes that.

No it doesn't. It enables a population replacement if anything, and I'd rather Europe's economy decline and jobs to go unfilled than for European nations to become too multicultural as to lose any European identity and culture. Europe must remain majority European. The retired don't need to be taken care of, because presumably they'd of saved for retirement and if it isn't enough to last until death, they should get back into the work force practically speaking.

Fortunately, no one cares what you want for Europe.

[The Two Jerseys]

Outside of chemistry lab, I've never written anything that remotely required anything resembling technical writing. A simple command of the English language is sufficient 99% of the time.

Writing also teaches people to organize their thoughts and express them. It also is an opportunity to engage in some creativity. That you don't write papers for your job doesn't mean that there aren't underlying skills that you can learn by writing.

Again: They had 12 years in elementary, middle, and high school to get that sorted out.

[Saiwania]

Fortunately, no one cares what you want for Europe.

Europe is moving in a more right wing direction than the US. In part because most European nations are familiar with the distinct disadvantages of giving away "free stuff" to citizens. They had decades of Liberal policies that they're growing tired and weary of.

The US is moving left conversely, because for the past 4 decades or more- the US has been a center-right country and thus has no experience with free college, free healthcare, and other entitlements perceived as good.

The grass is always greener on the other side, until you have to deal with the consequences later on.

[The Republic of Fore]

Don't be silly. Arts and humanities are useful and I shouldn't need to go into why. As for having a whole class devoted to teaching tax forms, what kid is going to listen to any of that, let alone an hour a week, every week of school?

What kid is going to listen to arts and humanities? Hell if we're going with the argument, why have any classes at all? Most kids just pretend to know the subject long enough to pass the test then forget it all. Don't believe me? Watch Jesse Watters ask Harvard students basic US history questions. And no, they're not useful. School should be about preparing you for a career. If you want to take classes like that, then they should be an optional side course.

[The Republic of Fore]

An engineer wrote this.

Medical student, close though.

[Diopolis]

The real question is why everyone and their grandma needs to go to college. Our skills deficit is in skilled trades, manufacturing, etc- mostly not fields that in any sane world require a college degree.

Maybe we could just put colleges and trade schools into gigantic universities as different schools within them? I dunno, that could go some way towards alleviating the weird prestige gap between college and trade school

When they did that with the community college system, a bunch of previously associate degree requiring jobs suddenly started needing a bachelors.

[The Republic of Fore]

I like the idea of people getting some experience with subjects outside their degree. Education, especially higher education, should be about understanding more about the world, not just about getting a piece of paper that qualifies you for a job.

And people who want to do that can take optional side courses. I like not wasting my money. Education shouldn't be about anything but what the student wants it to be.

[The Republic of Fore]

Then any incentive for taking something remotely useful (demanded by at least some employers) in college will be reduced. Many people would take advantage of free college to study useless courses, and exacerbate existing oversaturation of many fields - employable liberal arts fields are oversaturated, and even STEM is not safe from this as immigration of skilled labor is a thing.

Free college is expensive by itself. Taking care of the resulting underemployed, unemployed, and unemployable will be even more so.

Imagine people choosing to go to college to study something they're genuinely curious about and might even discover a passion for, rather than simple instrumental thinking.

Oh wait, that's already a thing in many countries and it's not a problem. Because having a generally more cultured and educated populace is inherently good even if they're not 100% stem majors.

The problem, it seems to me, is not education itself, but a shit economic system that prioritizes itself to a cannibalistic degree over the ideal of an enlightened citizenry.

If someone wants to do that then that's their problem not mine. My money shouldn't pay for someone to study useless shit like gender studies. I also don't get why people act so defensive when someone doesn't find a particular course useful. You can still have your precious humanities courses without everyone being forced to study them.

[Salandriagado]

Fortunately, no one cares what you want for Europe.

Europe is moving in a more right wing direction than the US. In part because most European nations are familiar with the distinct disadvantages of giving away "free stuff" to citizens. They had decades of Liberal policies that they're growing tired and weary of.

The US is moving left conversely, because for the past 4 decades or more- the US has been a center-right country and thus has no experience with free college, free healthcare, and other entitlements perceived as good.

The grass is always greener on the other side, until you have to deal with the consequences later on.

Literally no part of this is true.

[Salandriagado]

An engineer wrote this.

Medical student, close though.

Same thing: both groups fix things with generally abysmal error reporting.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Of course the government has the power to fund education, they already do that.

It's still wrong, to take the "lift people out of poverty" goal many if not most taxpayers had in mind when supporting education and channel it toward someone else's agenda.

[Salandriagado]

Imagine people choosing to go to college to study something they're genuinely curious about and might even discover a passion for, rather than simple instrumental thinking.

Oh wait, that's already a thing in many countries and it's not a problem. Because having a generally more cultured and educated populace is inherently good even if they're not 100% stem majors.

The problem, it seems to me, is not education itself, but a shit economic system that prioritizes itself to a cannibalistic degree over the ideal of an enlightened citizenry.

If someone wants to do that then that's their problem not mine. My money shouldn't pay for someone to study useless shit like gender studies. I also don't get why people act so defensive when someone doesn't find a particular course useful. You can still have your precious humanities courses without everyone being forced to study them.

It doesn't. Either their money does, the university's money does, or the government's money does. There's no possibility of your money being involved.

[The Republic of Fore]

If someone wants to do that then that's their problem not mine. My money shouldn't pay for someone to study useless shit like gender studies. I also don't get why people act so defensive when someone doesn't find a particular course useful. You can still have your precious humanities courses without everyone being forced to study them.

It doesn't. Either their money does, the university's money does, or the government's money does. There's no possibility of your money being involved.

There's no such thing as the governments money. The only money they have is what they took from me and other people who pay taxes. Or, who purchase debt bonds.

[Duvniask]

An enlightened citizenry doesn't do a country any good if there are no jobs for them. The EU in general is doing very poorly, which is why various European nations want to leave or end it to begin with. Europe is heading towards becoming a poorer continent, especially if they take in too many people from North Africa/Middle East.

Taking in migrants helps Europe economically. Low birth rates make EU countries top heavy, too many retired elderly people to care for and not enough to fill jobs in a growing economy. Immigration fixes that.

Immigration doesn't "fix" population aging. The idea of replacement migration (in terms of stalling population aging) is a myth.

Tbh I've considered doing a thread on this topic, because it's not very well understood by many people.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Taking in migrants helps Europe economically. Low birth rates make EU countries top heavy, too many retired elderly people to care for and not enough to fill jobs in a growing economy. Immigration fixes that.

Immigration doesn't "fix" population aging. The idea of replacement migration (in terms of stalling population aging) is a myth.

Tbh I've considered doing a thread on this topic, because it's not very well understood by many people.

I'd say go for it. I'd be happy to debate you on it over there.

[Duvniask]

Immigration doesn't "fix" population aging. The idea of replacement migration (in terms of stalling population aging) is a myth.

Tbh I've considered doing a thread on this topic, because it's not very well understood by many people.

I'd say go for it. I'd be happy to debate you on it over there.

I would if I had the time or energy to do it (and do it well), but I don't.

It will have to wait til the next time holidays come around, or even Summer.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

I'd say go for it. I'd be happy to debate you on it over there.

I would if I had the time or energy to do it (and do it well), but I don't.

It will have to wait til the next time holidays come around, or even Summer.

I take it you won't have any problem with me creating an OP on this today, then?

[Duvniask]

I would if I had the time or energy to do it (and do it well), but I don't.

It will have to wait til the next time holidays come around, or even Summer.

I take it you won't have any problem with me creating an OP on this today, then?

I mean, that would be taking my opportunity to flaunt some knowledge away, but it's not like I'm the master of who should be the one to say it.

My plan was to do some much more thorough reading of it first, anyhow, to make sure my own understanding was fully in order.

[Liriena]

Imagine people choosing to go to college to study something they're genuinely curious about and might even discover a passion for, rather than simple instrumental thinking.

Oh wait, that's already a thing in many countries and it's not a problem. Because having a generally more cultured and educated populace is inherently good even if they're not 100% stem majors.

The problem, it seems to me, is not education itself, but a shit economic system that prioritizes itself to a cannibalistic degree over the ideal of an enlightened citizenry.

If someone wants to do that then that's their problem not mine. My money shouldn't pay for someone to study useless shit like gender studies. I also don't get why people act so defensive when someone doesn't find a particular course useful. You can still have your precious humanities courses without everyone being forced to study them.

GENDER STUDIES BAD

Your money will pay for advancing humanity's collective understanding of itself and the universe. I don't particularly care whether you personally dislike a specific discipline for some stupid, purely ideological reason.

[The Republic of Fore]

If someone wants to do that then that's their problem not mine. My money shouldn't pay for someone to study useless shit like gender studies. I also don't get why people act so defensive when someone doesn't find a particular course useful. You can still have your precious humanities courses without everyone being forced to study them.

GENDER STUDIES BAD

Your money will pay for advancing humanity's collective understanding of itself and the universe. I don't particularly care whether you personally dislike a specific discipline for some stupid, purely ideological reason.

I don't care whether you want to advance humanities understanding of itself. You can waste your own money on such nonsense. You wanting to do something is not my problem, or my responsibility.

[Duvniask]

GENDER STUDIES BAD

Your money will pay for advancing humanity's collective understanding of itself and the universe. I don't particularly care whether you personally dislike a specific discipline for some stupid, purely ideological reason.

I don't care whether you want to advance humanities understanding of itself. You can waste your own money on such nonsense. You wanting to do something is not my problem, or my responsibility.

"Nonsense", lol.

Understanding humanity is important, not least because it allows us to perhaps change things for the better. Specifically in relation to gender studies, researching and learning about how gender roles might not be so deterministic (read: determined by hard biological fact) after all means the ability to change our way of relating to how we treat other people as a society. Wouldn't want that now, would we.