Topic: Tertiary/Higher Education - page 2. (Read 4864 times)

I believe this is our disconnect.  You're under the impression that most knowledge can only be attained through school; there seems to be no in-between for you.  You believe that, unless someone tells you, you can never know.  The man who discovered electricity had to have been told by God, I guess, before he could ever know about electricity, and how it could power certain things.  He wasn't born brilliant; he was born exactly like you, a drooling baby who had to learn literally everything from the ground up, per usual for all human beings.  Why, then, did he become such a "brilliant" inventor, and Joe Schmoe was just a farmer?  It's very easy to fall into the trap of, "He must've been born a genius!"  In reality, people are not.  All people are born with very like minds (excluding actual edit: mental disabilities,) and it is through their experiences that they reach a level no other people have ever reached before.  There is no such thing as a genius; this is a subjective impression.  The smart man can only be smart when everyone else isn't.

Now the question becomes: How does someone become brilliant?  And the answer is simple: they stop assuming everything Ms. Smith says is God-given fact, and pursue an unbiased, objective understanding of the world around them, which is achieved first through observation, otherwise known as an intake of information, then interpretation, which can be related to processing that information--then repeat.  You take info in, you put info out, until you form an understanding; I believe we can call this the thought process.  Put food in, chew, swallow.  Of course, there are many advanced subjects which this process does not work, where you'd either have to be the guy to discover said subject, or read about the findings of others (again, take info in, put info out.)  Unless you're making the point that only a school can supply the flow of quality information into a person, I believe it's clear that calling someone brilliant is just another way of calling someone an autodidact; they understand that schools aren't the only method to acquire information, and seek to educate themselves, even, in the case of Einstein, when schools have nothing more to teach.  Why, then, do you insist that only "normal" people can become educated through college?  I promise you, I've come a long way since the dark ages (a.k.a high school), but I owe very little of my general competence to my brief adventure as a now sophomore in college.  I can't legitimately claim myself to be brilliant, for I don't believe any "official" can define what makes someone brilliant or not, but I promise, college is in no way the sole method to achieve an education; rather, it can help, but in the end, you, the individual, are doing the heavy lifting, with or without college.

And lets not forget the dangers of trusting an institution with every bit of information you receive.  I've repeatedly caught my professors making blatantly opinionated statements passed along as fact, and sometimes unintentional lies on matters I happen to know more about, but I digress.  I wonder how many other people notice these things...  They're not exactly bad, but, a student is more easily shaped when he believes everything his professor says, even taking the biases into account for his own method of thinking.


I will admit, colleges do a good job at teaching people how to learn, but they shouldn't have to.  When a legal adult still does not know how to think on their own, following 13-14 years of supposed education, can we agree that we're facing an epidemic of stupidity?  On one end, I want to blame the individual, but when I consider the fact that all individuals in this country are forced into attending a school which refuses to teach people how to think for themselves, it's hard to set the blame on society, unless we can assume that society is in true control of their government, which I tend to believe they aren't.

I would argue that forced schooling contributes to a nationally lower average IQ, simply because people who do not want to go to school have to go, and make life a living hell for anyone who does want to go to school.  This sets a blanket over all students in public school systems who generally hate their experience (either because they didn't want to go or because they had to put up with the people who didn't want to go), which gets mistaken as a hatred for learning in general.  I recall clearly, in my high school days, that, if college was any experience like I had in high school, I did not want to go.  So I didn't, for a year or two, but got pressured into it by an ex-girlfriend who didn't want to date a dumb guy without an education  I generally liked my experience, but after a while, I felt I really was back in high school, learning the same subjects I didn't learn back then, the same subjects I didn't care about but was required of me.  I think most people have, by this point, given up on their individuality and simply go for the associates like good students, because, as they've been taught for 13-14 years, thinking for themselves couldn't fit into the public school's agenda of being thought for by their grade school teachers so they can pass state-defined scores, else the school faces a risk of being shut down.

So now we have a nation full of people ready to go to college who are failing accuplacers on material they freshly "learned", staring with blank faces at their professors, writing down anything said to study it later, afraid to answer when any professor asks a question, lest they get called on, where they'll refer to their notes, but very willing to talk to their neighbor about what was on TV last night, or that girl, remember her?  You remember that girl who used to always...  The problem cannot be colleges, then, who only operate as businesses (except for Phoenix and all the other highway colleges, whose owners are welcome to rot for their crimes against the American populace); the real problem of education is primary.  It's the difference between voluntary education and involuntary education, and I believe our American experiment has shown the results of one side of it: we cannot force someone to learn and expect the outcome to be a thinking individual.  Once this is changed, I believe we'll see colleges following suit, once, finally, people are no longer satisfied with being treated as children, and will, in turn, themselves, no longer act like adults, but be adults, thinking adults, the kinds that go to college because they really wanna know more, because they wanna create and work to supplement their desire for creation, and then we'll see a real shift in the world.

This gap is also due to society and employers current way of viewing potential employees. Currently if you don't have a degree, you're heavily discriminated against. People who have learnt information which is close to irrelevant and of which they've probably forgotten 90% of, are given the better jobs. It's just one big circular reference leading to a lot of people paying overly expensive education systems for useless knowledge.

With that being said, there are many exception I'm sure. There are many jobs where a college education in that specific area is vital, and that's fine. But what about all those degree's which are so extremely broad (Business degrees come to mind) and the bulk of the graduates end up getting into a career where what they learnt isn't even used due to the fact they've either completely forgotten it or are in a career that doesn't involve it what so ever? Those people would still have been prioritized over non-graduates. It's a some what unfair system whereby people with "useless" knowledge get better treatment, even if someone else was far more capable.

As always there's inconsistencies in all arguments like that. I'm more or less referring to how some courses offered are ONLY offering you a degree. The knowledge you take away is just a small "bonus" in that sense.

I agree with what your saying to some extent though, and I completely understand where your coming from. I'm just thinking out loud though. More or less just arguing how hard it is to accurately measure how useful a college degree truly is, there's so many social factors that completely basely affect all these 'statistics' which attempt to prove how amazing college is.

Please stop it with the bs claims that Einstein or some other brilliant person didn't go to college and they did OK. Einstein went to a university, graduated with a degree, and even taught there. And those brilliant people who dropped out aren't an example of "you can succeed even if you don't go to college," they are an example of "you can succeed if you are brilliant. Especially if you are so brilliant that you have surpassed college and don't need it any more." If you can legitimately claim that you are brilliant, and can see how college will be holding you back from an idea you already have right now, then by all means, drop out and pursue your idea. Otherwise...

There IS one very important skill that schools and universities teach that is hard to learn on your own, and which may even involve having to memorize useless facts: they teach you how to learn. Specifically, they force you to learn how to learn. As for the rest of the education, the "go to class to learn from professionals V.S. use a website to learn it all for free" is also really subject to the near-universal rule of "you get what you pay for." I agree, there are a ton of overprice and extremely low quality universities out there (Phoenix and Streyer come to mind), but if you research the "product" and pick something with the best value, you can get a log more bang for your buck by learning what you want/need from an experienced mentor than on your own (your time that you take to learn something is valuable, too, and it's worth it to have someone who can just answer your question and allow you to move on, than to spend hours researching that answer on your own).

As for degrees, GPAs, and jobs, employers simply want to have their candidates vetted by knowledgeable people and institutions they trust. That will never go away. And it's why a good state or ivy league resume gets looked at, while Phoenix and Streyer ones typically go right in the trash.

Our education system is a problem, no doubt, but I think it has way more to do with people not researching the market or thing they want to do, and the university they go in, before they go and pay for their degree. So we end up with a bunch of people with degrees in things no one wants, or degrees from institutions no one trusts. If universities were truly mentorship and apprentice programs (like many good ones are), and kids actually looked ahead to plan how they would survive with their chosen interest, we wouldn't have these problems.

Of course. We cannot factor social matters out here. That is why these statistics are BROAD.

I have stueid and would argue that 70-80% are only motivated to study because "they dont want to server burgers" rather than "I want to achieve something." A lot of my former classmates only went to study because "When you do the German Abitur, you are kind of supposed to study something, right?"


My main point with the whole statistics is working against the advice that "College is a waste of time."
It can be a waste of time, depending on the costs. Also, I want to work against the diea that "University graduates dont become billionaires, they will work for the supersmart guys that skipped college." No, just no.

These are pretty persistent. The problem, and I think this is a real one, is that there is a considerable gap between what some colleges and universities do in terms of theory and how they teach application in practice. Oftne, they really don't at all. Some people go to a business school class, learn accounting, learn math and learn some basic in and out concepts and are then thrown into the wild and supposed to function.

Well, of COURSE there will be learning, since most of the learning was concepts, not processes and procedures of how to get them working. The flip side is, that many people in "the real world" do not like academics anymore. And say "their stuff is useless" while academics don't give a shit anymore about people in business. We call this the researcher pracitioner gap. You find it in a lot of places.

The problem is that in many cases, research has the better answers. But since the answers cannot be applied quickly, the question is "how do we implement change to implement the better answers?" And this is where resistance happens and you will see big falling outs. I am also one of the types that is rather pissing of a CEO by telling him he does not know what he is talking about. I have had lots of training to not do that and only in private. And in a way where he thinks my idea was his idea.

People who learnt by "streetsmarts" usually pride them on these, but represent a special case in a special environment, whose learnings might become irrelevant pretty fast. Some dinosaurs in business have gone out after the internet came and failed horribly. Changes like these are typical when people get stuck in their ways and their learnings from the environment.

These are all things that ask for self awareness and a kind of scientific way of doing things. Not overly anal science, but a testing, always in the air kind of way of doing business, always testing if their is something better. Big companies even source that out...


So if we ask if education is useful, we have to ask the question, what for? In what situation? For what motivation? In what area? Because overall, graduates are still winners (And even in the "liberal arts" majors, you will find statistically more money earned versus. non graduates.)

Point taken. Good read as well, pretty interesting stuff not going to lie.

But when people go to university/college, they're looking to be some what successful in life (Yes, very broad statement). People who get a tertiary education aren't going to settle for a job at McDonald's, they're obviously expecting more. However people who don't gain a tertiary education, that's a different story. Plenty of them are more than content with that.

This is all on averages of course, but I hope you get where I'm coming from.

After being tormented with motivation psychology for years: Ignore the idea of "motivation" in general.

Money does not do anything for motivation actually. It is a small hygiene factor, where when you do not have enough, you feel annoyed, but for the overall motivation for work, it doesn't do much.

The keys to work motivation and satisfaction with work are different from money. We can't say absoultely sure what makes people motivated for work, but we have a pretty good idea that money is really only a small part of it.

I suggest this as a good read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction

Most of it covers textbook motivation psychology quite adequately. Other than that, Lathams textbook is probably the best thing out there on motivation in general.

Keep in mind, that's a fairly unfair average since people who don't give two fucks about being rich/successful don't go to college. If you looked at motivated people who went to college vs. motivated people who didn't go to college then maybe you could get a more accurate statistic when comparing the two.

I'd simply use statistics, to make that point.


Statistically, university graduates world wide earn $186.000 more in their entire lives in comparison, in the western world, this increases to over 300.000 in the western world.
At current time, more than 80% of all billionaires on the Forbes list hold college degrees. 80% of millionaires are correspondingly college graduates.
Around 80% of millionaires in America today are first generation millionaires whose kids will loose their money, so no "rich kid went to college because he should" excuse there.


But, I have another contention: Discussing science with a non graduate is absolutely annoying. Basically, being taught basic science (Okay most colleges fail at this also, or the graduates, im not sure which) should be done even earlier. Discussing science with people that claim their individual inductive experience is relevant for deductive nomological reasoning because "BUT FOR ME IT IS DIFFERENT" and therefore demonstrate statistics very well, are a pain in the ass. An 80% chance still means 20 in hundred will loose, damnit...


Is university or college NECESSARY? No. Absolutely not. My university time is spent learning by myself the stuff that colleges have as topics. I don't need the infrastructure, I need the pressure to learn and ask for things. But it depends. I will guarantee you, that in many countries, not having a degree will haunt you. It haunts you at the latest when you try to fund a startup with more money. It will haunt you when you deal with insurances (No degree, higher risk, pay more). It will haunt many people in social life.



What are the risks? In my country, Germany, the risks are minimal. The degree costs you next to nothing and even people like me, who studied in the UK, have only accrued somewhere around the debt of a small car. Going to a US institution is a different thing.
If the advantage is at 300.000 over your life, would you pay 400.000 for it? Only if this is your true calling.

Funny enough, in the US; community colleges tend to create slightly more wealthy graduates than university bachelor degree holders.
Here in Germany, there is a starting gap of 5-10k a year, leading to statistical mean accumulated increase in earnings of somewhere around 30% across ALL fields. Laywers, Consultants and so son are thrown in the same pot as social scientists and language majors here, so you might get the deal on lifetime earnings...

We need someone to come up with a new, cheap (Or close to cheap) way to offer the education needed in specific degree's online. This information is already all over the internet so that's not an issue; websites already offer similar things. What we need however is for this "online degree" (Lack of a better word) to be recognized by employee's as legitimate. All it'd need is a decent reputation to be seen as sufficient, and after all, the people who have taken this course will have had an identical education in terms of information learnt.

Obviously there are currently issues such as failing/passing students, which would require marking which would require a high cost. But surely the future will behold a way around that some way or another.

Edit: Yes I completely understand there's degree's like this already. But they are considered more or less a complete joke. That's what needs to change.

Edison dropped out of school after just 2 months of it, B. Franklin dropped out after 2 years, and Einstein was gone by the time he was 15  As it goes for college, I know Bill Gates and that one guy who used to run Apple dropped out of college early, but they knew what they were doing, and I probably would've done the same thing.  Anyway, I just find it sad that, even as adults, schools feel it necessary to discipline their students.  If I had such an interest in the courses I was taking, why should they feel the need to grade me on it?  If I had a real understanding of the subject matter I sought to understand, I should know, myself, what it is I know and what it is I still need help on.  The modern college has no time for this; they must keep the order, and they must record grades, for the student is not there to learn, but to listen, and memorize, and return to the lecturer what they have been lectured, and so there must be a system with which we can monitor whether the student can play Simon Sez as well as the next guy.  We can describe the average student by their GPA; I don't like this fact, but it's become a standard; if Sally has a 4.0 GPA, she's likely going to live a very good life, and if Joe has a 2.5 GPA, he's average.  But we know this isn't true all the time, it's a mere generalization, and a very serious generalization when it comes to the even higher education and then, the work force.  So we must submit to this generalization and realize that we are but numbers.  Most of us have a number pegged to our names; I know I do, but I can never remember it.  But the point I'd like to make, is that we're missing the point of education.  If a college, as a business, only has the intention to educate, why such intricate systems which have nothing to do with any given subject matter?  Who created these mandatory systems to peg the student at this level or that level?  Why do we subject ourselves to judgment?  It feels like all we're doing is trying to look good under someone else's eyes.  I wouldn't mind paying a guy to teach me about History if he'd just stop trying to test my understanding; I know what I know and what I don't know (though I do see how this can be a problem for people who can't figure out they don't know squat.)  I didn't take the History course for someone else (technically, in this case, sadly, I did, but for sake of example,) I took it so I could have a better understanding of American history.  That's the point: this education is for me.  That's why I bought it, right?  Nobody buys a TV for someone else, unless they plan on giving it away.  I bought lunch for me to eat, and I'm the only person that should care about that--well, maybe my partner would care.  Why, then, is my education treated as a public matter, even in a (state-adhering) private institution?  I suppose that's simply society today; we developed our American society, and so we bear the fruit.  We developed a working society, where math and science aren't quite as important as profitable skills, and now we're stuck with what we've sought: that being, employers expecting degrees from this school or not from that school, to weed out the riff-raff.  I can't say colleges are helping this matter along, merely sticking to the business plan, even when the quality of education goes downhill (cough UTA.)  When will McDonalds serve food that's good for me?  Not until enough people stop buying the food they're already putting out.

Good news is, I'm pretty sure I passed my History final.  I spent a few good hours reading the sparknotes version and developed an understanding I didn't get from my lecturer; mostly because I could pace myself, I suppose.  I now know more about the Civil War than I ever really wanted to know.  Lincoln was a dick.  I'm still trying to figure out whether or not I needed a professor to help me understand why Lincoln was a dick, but I won't know that until I attempt to take on a subject offered by college by myself.  It would be an interesting test, I think.

Also, sorry for the long posts.  They're not necessarily aimed at you, Rassah, mostly just me thinking out loud

You are undoubtedly right about why a lot of people go to college. Personally, I wasn't thinking about that much when I went, and only focused on what I wanted to get out of it. Admittedly, I was also lucky in that most of my professors in my master's program were professors part-time, and experts in their field working full-time. So not only did I learn about what there is to learn out there, and actually learned a lot of it, I also got some mentoring from pretty good mentors.
As got why rich kids go, typically it's because they need to start at high level management jobs in their family owned businesses, and it would take too long to start at the bottom.

By the way, I know there are a lot of examples of college dropouts who became very successful, but first, they typically dropped out after getting into a very prestigious university, and taking a few years there, and second, for every successful college dropout, there are probably 40 successful managers and CEOs. So, as long as you're going for a degree that's not stupid (not some liberal arts or humanities crap), I would stick to it.

I'm assuming it's because the state of Texas mandates specific classes to be taken, one of them being US History, while other states do it differently.  I don't know how it is in other states, but in mine, I'm required to take this course before I can even grab my associates degree.  But I'm with you, I shouldn't be taking a class I have no interest in, and yet, I'm between a rock and a hard place, because unless I'm taking these classes I have no interest in, I have no hopes of attaining a degree in anything.  Which is why I'm contemplating dropping out, or in the very least, ignoring my "core" classes to pursue classes I actually do have interest in, despite not getting a little piece of paper once I'm finished.  I'm not really interested in the job market either way; I can't imagine the suck involved in ass-kissing an employer, but I've only had to do that for jobs paying minimum wage thus far, so I wouldn't know how it is being in a position requiring a college degree.  I'd rather be an indie-something than be a cog in a machine.


I still disagree about the point of college.  As I've mentioned elsewhere (I think...), a university was originally meant to be a safe-haven for people to go and be educated, for no reason outside of a general want for knowledge.  Nobody goes to college anymore for knowledge; they only go because most every college nowadays has some logo saying "Get a better job today!  Apply now!", and there aren't a whole lot of Americans who feel they're perfectly happy with where they are in life--so I assume, from my time working in low-paying part-time jobs.  Once, I took a sociology class, and the professor asked everyone why they went to college; most said they wanted to get a better job.  I told him I was going because I was bored of working all the time, so I guess that fits the bill, too--although, my reason now is much different than back then, but I also haven't been working 50 hours a week lately, so I figure that has something to do with it.  Anyway, there's nothing I'm going to learn in college that's going to teach me how to swing a golf club perfectly on my first try so I'll get a hole in one.  Certainly, self-learning can never provide me everything I need to know for "what's out there", but that isn't solely solved by college; I can also go out there, and learn for myself what's out there (which I doubt wouldn't be lurking somewhere on the Internet anyway.)  Though you're right; you can't learn what you don't know about, I'm generally content with what I currently do know; I'm not a complex man, I don't believe, and I'm certainly not very compelled to learn too deep on other cultures, and I have no real penchant for science, though I do enjoy reading about it (not sci-fi, the real stuff )  Knowledge begets knowledge, and I don't believe it's accurate to say only a college can supply that hidden knowledge that apparently no other entity knows about, but for a good 4k a semester, they'll let you in on the secret.  If anything, the only thing I'd miss is the social interaction, which, as I've come to understand, is the key to getting that job you want, so I suppose I'll have to find that elsewhere if I do leave.

Besides, Ivy League colleges keep pumping out Presidents with a complete and utter disconnect from reality.  This is not normal.  I once met an Ivy Leaguer; he was a dick.  Felt he was above everyone else.  He couldn't be wrong about any subject, because if he was losing, he'd remind you that he was an Ivy Leaguer and you were welcome to suck his hoo-haw.  But I can't really speak for all of them, based on my shallow experiences.  Anyway, I don't believe the point is why is people go to college, but how colleges are trying to adapt to student desires, and the student desire generally revolves around the prospect of money, and thus, a higher social status.  But maybe I'm wrong; I base this all on the only colleges I could hope to afford, which appeal to the lower class, from where I stand.  So I'm not entirely sure why rich folks go to college.  I'll have to ask one some day.

About my friend: he still hates nursing.  I believe this is a valid point; he's planning on dropping the debt-bomb to learn to do something he doesn't like for the prospect of money.  I don't believe it's a good idea for him to pursue a career like that, especially considering there are plenty of people in the world with a genuine interest in helping other people.  He just wants to live "comfortably", as he puts it.

Why are you even taking History if it's something you have not much interest in? For my "social studies" requirement I just took government and politics. Figured they would be good to know for business.

As for what the higher education is supposed to be about, you and your friend are kinda wrong on it, or at least are taking the wrong things out of it. It's not to force you to memorize stuff and indoctrinate you. It's not to give you a degree to let you get a higher paying job. A university can do something that no amount of self-learning can provide, which is that it can teach you WHAT is actually out there that you can learn about. Sure, you can Google and find information about anything out there, but you can't begin to Google if you don't know the keywords or the concepts to begin searching for. That was pretty much my experience while getting my degrees: some of it was reviews and easy A's, some of it was tedious stuff I wasn't sure that I'd need, but figured it's good to know about, and A LOT of it was stuff that I hadn't even considered or didn't know existed, that I learned more about after researching on my own, but wouldn't have even bothered if no one told me about.

Also, regarding your friend, there are plenty of "other ways" to earn money as a male nurse than in the medical/caretaker field

(Honestly, though, as long as he can handle old people shit and piss, he's going into a field that will be in huge demand, now with baby boomers retiring)

I can understand the certificate/degree thing on one level.  Employers need a way to filter out people.  OTOH, too many times I've seen someone with a certificate get a job and turn out to be pretty much incompetent.  It's not the be all and end all.   

In my profession, IT, I only got a basic education in university really.  The real crash course came when I actually started work in the field.  And I wondered if a couple of those uni years had just been wasted.  Not to mention there's nothing entrepreneurial about, well, pretty much most of the education that is taught.  It mostly seems to be geared towards creating worker bees.  Which I think is probably a relic of how the whole system started out around the 19th century which was basically designed to churn out factory workers and soldiers.  Being a government monopoly, in my country at least, there has been virtually no incentive to innovate and so education has not moved with the times and it's largely stuck in the 19th century with all the regimentation, bells, etc...

Good point; if anything, a few years of basics (reading, writing, arithmetic) is all a child really needs as a foundation for everything else they can learn, and that can be taught by any functional adult.  I got into an argument the other day with a friend of mine who decided to go for a business degree in fashion.  She's currently in a load of debt, despite having government assistance from FAFSA.  Anyway, the argument was that people could learn just as well without a formal education, and often times become even more intelligent than usual.  Her main retort was that nobody can get a job without a college degree and that's the main reason why anyone should go, which I couldn't fault her for, as she was right; that's the only reason people go to college anymore.  It has nothing to do with wanting to learn, but those 13 years of mental beat-down teach people that they have to learn, or else they'll "never amount to anything."  I should note, my friend is Asian, and happens to have the typical Asian parents who push their kids so far, some commit suicide.  She still doesn't know why the hell she's in college or what good a business fashion degree will do her   She noted, however, that she doesn't like to argue, which leads me to believe she mostly just wants to do the "minimum" so she can live a good life, while also believing there's no hope she'll get a job doing fashion, which she admits she now hates and hoped for another major, but she's already graduating so it's too late.  It's kinda strange to watch someone be on two sides like that, but she's not the first.  My best friend also follows the "do what you hate so you can get money and then you can do what you love" ideology.  He wants to be a male nurse.  I've already explained the field is oversaturated, and the fact that he doesn't like bodily fluids will probably stop his career early, but it doesn't seem to stop him.


I know what you mean.  I've learned far more from YouTube and Wikipedia, of all things, than I've learned from mandatory education, and even more educational sites are cropping up; I've been using a website to learn how to code in python, at that.  Yet because I don't get a slip of paper to show for it, I suppose I'm always runner up to the guy who hocked however many thousands it took to get an "official" education.

Because then they give you a piece of paper that will nearly fully define your worth at most job interviews.


That's because it is. I've learned more from self-education than I ever have from public schooling or my current college.

Aside from college, k-12 is more for indoctrination and mental reliance than actual education.

If they were to do that, they wouldn't need 13 years of indoctrination.

I'm considering dropping out of college, myself.  Not that I don't love to learn, but I have a theory on the proper way to educate people, and it isn't by keeping track of every class they take, when they show up to that class, and telling them whether or not their understanding of a particular subject is good enough, or if that one point means they don't actually understand anything.

Needless to say, I'm probably going to fail my US History class   I picked up a lot of stuff from it, but I'm not doing so hot, on account of me not being able to remember who did what and when.  The "why", I get.  It's the rest that I neither care about, nor feel I should care about.  I aced my federal government class, anyway.

What I don't get is why I couldn't learn this stuff on my own; if I have to read the textbook before I show up to class each day, why shouldn't I just stay at home and simply read the textbook?  Why am I paying a professor to tell me to study, when I can study on my own, tell myself to study (or get a friend to do it,) and get the same experience?  Why this dependency on an outside force (which just happens to be under the thumb of a higher power) when every resource is there?  If I were taught how to teach myself in my first 13 years of mandatory education, I'd be in a much better spot right now.  Seems modern day college is nothing more than a debt trap.

comp sci, interactive simulation

physics engines, collision detection, graphics and whatnot

hoping to go indie eventually, but who knows

Yay! What are you learnin'?