this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
59 points (100.0% liked)
U.S. News
2327 readers
8 users here now
News about and pertaining to the United States and its people.
Please read what's functionally the mission statement before posting for the first time. We have a narrower definition of news than you might be accustomed to.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Post the original source of information as the link.
- If there is any Nazi imagery in the linked story, mark your post NSFW.
- Advocating violence is not allowed on Beehaw in general.
- If there is a paywall, provide an archive link in the body.
- Post using the original headline; edits for clarity (as in providing crucial info a clickbait hed omits) are fine.
- Social media is not a news source.
For World News, see the News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think a big part of it is the mindset that college education should train you to do a job, rather than provide a knowledge based on which job-specific training can be built upon. I think this is dually precipitated by employers not investing in training/educating their employees anymore, and outsourcing that cost to the employee, but also the issue of students who throw a fit about taking class X because they're going for a degree in Y (I see this a lot with science/engineering majors when having to take classes in the humanities).
Yeah. That's really an ongoing issue that I've seen too. "Why do I have to take English Comp and some other art crap, when I'm studying CS?" Is something that I have heard a lot. And the reason is that context matters and humans are not rational actors so, it's important to learn about other ideas in order to both be able to effectively apply hard sciences in a world that doesn't always match up to what's on paper, understand why ethical standards exist, and know about the things that we humans do without clear material reason.
I blame the neoliberal idea that everything must relate to profit and anything that isn't directly related to profit is luxury as a cause of this problem. Hard sciences are about understanding the world around and, to some degree inside, us. Arts and humanities are about what gives us joy, purpose, and interesting ways to make the world a weirder place.
I'll be honest, I understand the college student's point of view because for the most part, the teachers in the geneds did not give two fucks about what they were teaching, and I had already learned enough that wasn't directly relevant to my interests when it was free. Like, seriously, I put up with over a decade of this palpable disinterest in K-12, now I'm paying for the privilege of taking more of it from adjuncts, because the college says I need to buy $20K worth of credits before I can talk to someone who's actually motivated?
I identify with your sentiment so much. Forced to spend the first quarter of my life absorbing questionable curriculum that ultimately didn't prepare me for adulthood, then agree to unforgivable debt, for what?
The current status of college in America is a scam. It's designed to uplift the upper class and ruin lives of the lower classes to discourage future generations from trying.
It's gatekeeping.