What's the point of college?

I learned a shitload of academic stuff, but one of the coolest things was sitting in my fraternity’s meetings and marveling that this bunch of goobers could manage a budget of this size.

The only reason I go to college is that I have to get a certificate for a freaking job. No certificate, no job, that’s the rule here. I just hate the “fill all these requirements or graduate in your dream” part, it just drains all my interest in learning. I don’t mean I learn nothing in college, but they put too much emphasis on things that aren’t related to my job and pass the more important things. I find myself learning more outside college.

Having said that, I wish I had enough money for a fake certificate ~

There used to be a point, now for most it has become just another coming of age ritual.

@Mimishu1995 makes an important point that a college degree is often necessary for getting a good job. This brings up the question of whether the degree makes a person more qualified for having a job. Certainly a degree in engineering may help qualify someone to be an engineer, but what about degrees in the humanities? One somewhat cynical point of view is that getting a college degree is like running an obstacle course – having the discipline to complete a degree may be a general indicator of a person’s ability to perform in the workplace or, in the most cynical view, may just be an arbitrary way of weeding people out. Maybe a college degree indicates a person’s ability to fit into the business environment, which is largely an embodiment of bourgeois values.

I value the time I spent in college, partly because I enjoyed the social environment of a college campus, but also because I am an academic at heart. I enjoy learning and believe it is of value in and of itself apart from whether or not it increases job skills. Everyone should be given the opportunity to get a college degree or its equivalent. It is part of living a good life.

The college campus may be outdated. The cost of going to college has become exorbitant. There are online alternatives which are becoming increasingly sophisticated. The University of Arizona is currently entirely online and I think that more and more college courses are going to become partly or entirely online.

Why go?

To learn. To explore various subject matter to help decide what interests you. To have fun. To demonstrate you can see something through, even if it takes 4 years. To get the necessary qualifications in the career you are interested in.

It’s also a good place for young adults to be while their brains are still developing. Especially the part of the brain that deals with judgement and consequences. Most kids in college still are being supported somewhat by their parents. They live at home still or in a dorm. They don’t have to completely fend for themselves. As society gets more complicated it becomes more useful to extend adolescence.

I went to a college before the days of the Internet. Back then we learned about science, engineering, physics, electrical theory and how to figure things out. My course work consisted of classes like: “Properties of Pre-stressed concrete”, “Beam Theory”, “Machine Dynamics”, “Applied Optics”. I was required to take a couple of “humanities” courses but these were generally considered annoyances.

Graduating with a great cum from a difficult school theoretically meant I knew the materials and could very likely apply the skills I learned to my work environment. Recruiters from (at the time) prestige companies came to my campus to interview and make employment offers. Before I graduated.I was offered the choice of 3 good, well paying, companies and never needed to fill out a job application .

Studying at an engineering school gave me the opportunity to work with test equipment, tools, and large, expensive research equipment.
To study and diagnose a particular form of flow I used a film movie camera that had a shutter speed of 1/1,000,000 of a second and ran at 10,000 frames per second! This was decades before digital. It was film! I would never have even seen such a device if not for college.

To be honest I do wonder about some of the courses being taught today. “How to survive a Zombie attack”? Seriously?

Now get off my lawn! And take your newfangled lectrics with you!

Those are astute and pertinent questions, and I salute you on having the wisdom to dwell on them. That last one in particular is a fair indication that you aren’t the average sheep munching through the academic pasture. It’s my perception that a the currency of a college degree these days has been devalued to less than that of a high school diploma in my era. And that is tragic for so very many reasons.

All sorts of critters have a brain.
Only one, human beings, have a reasoning mind.
A brain is just there integrating sensory material.
A mind has to be developed.
Sort of like a body.
Everybody has one, but some people develop their bodies to Olympian standards of athletic performance.
College is a recognized way towards development of the mind. There are other ways of course, but a college curriculum helps keep you organized and directed toward the goal.
Anybody can be trained to do a job.But there is a difference between technical training and education.
If you don’t develop your mind, you are really no different than a trained dog.

What’s the ideal point of college? To gain knowledge in order to achieve a personal (career) goal.

Is college best described as an institution for the pursuit of knowledge or an institution to equip the future with jobs that enhance and progress our society? Both.

Is it more important that you learn or that you get a good GPA? It depends upon the desired field of entry, as well as the the college/university attended.

Are exams a necessary part of college, and does the information on exams need to be covered in a professor’s lecture? Exams can come in a variety of forms. As long as they are designed to answer, “How will I know that the student has mastered the information and/or skill set to meet the course objectives?”, then yes, they are necessary.

As for the second part of the question, it depends upon the course objectives and structure.

Is the collegiate environment best described as diversional studying or rigorous schooling? It depends upon the culture developed at each establishment, which can vary. It also varies greatly within each student.

Is the amount of information in college-level classes reasonable for the amount of time and explanation put into a course? From my experience, yes.

100 Level courses (this is in the US), can be challenging for freshmen as they adapt to college life vs. high school, where information is often spoon-fed and grades are occasionally manipulated for a variety of reasons.

Once a student reaches 200–400 Level courses, more responsibility is put on the students to work on their own or form study groups. It’s a formula that gradually aids in allowing them to develop their own thoughts and skills.

Should college be accessible to everyone in a society? Can you expand on what is meant?

Should college be an option everyone? That is, if an average citizen (no learning disorder, etc.) goes to college, should they be able to walk out with a diploma? You’ve lost me on this one. Yes, college should be an option for anyone who is interested. The person should be able to prove on the front end that they are worthy of consideration for a seat, be it through past school scores or work experience.

A student shouldn’t be able to walk out with a diploma unless they maintain the standards set by the establishment’s system.

Should college be required just as high school is for everyone in a society? No, and I’m not aware of any society that requires high school for everyone.

Should any amount of the outcome of your college degree be based on your peers? Could you clarify this?

Is college a place you go to to check of [sic] a list of requirements to obtain a piece of paper that gives you a better-paying job? It rarely hurts, but there are occasions when it doesn’t help either.

Is college a place you go to as a means to an end? Can you clarify this one as well?

Is it fair to label colleges as non-profit institutions when they constantly undergo “cutting-edge innovations” that give them more capital while juicing more and more money out of students (and paying the CEOs chancellors pretty pennies)? I have no idea.

Is college a place you go to so that other parties can profit off of you while you search a suffering job market with piles of loans? This sounds like a really tainted question.

Is college a place you go to to become a passive, functioning member of a broken society and therefore endorsing a corrupt system? This sounds even more tainted than the last one.
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The bottom line is that college/university isn’t the ideal next step for everyone. If you don’t know what you want to do, then find out first. Then you can decide whether additional education will help achieve your goal.

I see no real point, actually. Those that want to learn can learn outside of a classroom, so it’s not really about education. Much of my education has been self-study… which is why I was generally a couple of grades ahead of my classmates.

About the only thing it’s actually good for is certifying that you have been taught certain things… whether you actually learned them or not. And that certification will get you a job even if you don’t have the knowledge whereas there is no way to prove actually knowing, thus our reliance on unreliable pieces of paper.

@jerv I disagree. I am the only one in my family not to have a college degree. While it hasn’t stood in the way of my move up the proverbial ladder of success in the hospitality field, it would have for those that knew what they wanted to achieve in specific fields of becoming medical doctors, psychologists, technology engineers, educators, and possibly a few others.

I loved college. Loved the knowledge it gave me.

@Pied_Pfeffer Are you saying that it is humanly impossible to learn outside of a classroom environment?

@jerv Thank you for asking for clarification. Of course it is possible. It happens with all of us through experience, be it in a classroom environment, which sometimes includes hands-on experience, or outside of it.

The difference is that some societies require certification before giving an individual the green-light for being considered for a job in their desired field.

Outside of a few fields of study where you don’t want anyone learning by OJT or trial and error, college prepares you to enter a Just Over Broke (bka. a job) endeavor for most of the rest of your life. That sheepskin is more for the person you will enter into a wage slave situation than actually being smart. If you have it, your bosses will feel you can do the job for them, because they can’t do it all, and they compensate you what they feel is enough to keep your butt working but not really enough to life comfortably on.

@Mimishu1995 I totally feel that! I’m in school now and I feel the same way. I wonder if you feel it more where you are. It sheds on to the professors as well. Most seem so much more focused on grading people then actually on learning. I hate the overarching aura of judgment. I’ve become pretty judgmental myself. Here’s a paragraph of me making judgments and complaining about professors:
I’ve gone to a professor’s office hours asking about topics that go beyond what we learn, and it frustrates them because they have “more important things to do.” Actually, I just had one professor that didn’t even have office hours! Well, he did, but whenever I went there, he would not be there. I emailed him about it and asked him about it personally in class, and with persuasion, was able to get a 10 minute walk in the hallway.
But anyways yeah I totally wish I could go to class without the overhanging fear of being graded. I think the anxiety I get hinders my “performance”.

@rojo That’s another really good point! So many people are pressured into college that they’re inculcated, pressured into going after high school. In a wealthier environment, t would be out of their comfort zone to not go to college because that’s what everyone around them is stressing and that’s what all of their friends are doing. Just the thought of stopping my work towards a degree sounds strange to me, a person who went to a wealthy (private Catholic) high school. I’m trying to get out of this comfort zone because paradoxically, it’s both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time haha.
I used to tutor at a middle school that focused on preparing them for college! The teacher always used to start sentences with “When you go to college….”, “When you’re in college…”. Is this right? What do you think?

@LostInParadise I believe there are things that I am passionate about, and think I’m disciplined (gahh! what does this word even mean?!) and dedicated to those things. School does not bring that out in me. School seems forceful, and maybe I just don’t work under a pressured environment. I love the social aspect of campuses as well. I’ve met a lot of really awesome people here though loneliness can still take a hold of me. But won’t the push towards online classes end the social aspect? Online classes sound even more like a checklist-certificate way of doing things to me. I think going online would destroy the little amount of the positive aspects of college I think are left.

@JLeslie I love the way you look at it! I love the idea of extending adolescence, especially now that humans are living so much longer. Do you think that the descriptions in your first paragraph match the current environment of schools, or the environment you were in if/when you were in school?

@LuckyGuy Yes. There are so many opportunities in college as well. At the University of Arizona you can major in Party Planning! Your thought about the modern courses got me thinking about something else as well. I’ve seen ads for colleges that have classes on agriculture, automechanics, and similar trades. What do you think about introducing these classes? (I have a few thoughts on them myself but I’ll hear what you have to say.)

@stanleybmanly I’m glad you think that! What are your thoughts on them?

@josie Funny you talk about trained dogs and all. I feel like a lot of what I’ve gone through in college and other schooling has taught me to act like this! From my own personal experiences and from assessing others’ performances (from tutoring and beyond), I’ve realized that a lot of times a student can only solve a problem if it is worded the way they want to see it. That is, they cannot apply the information, they can only go through a specific function they were taught by being given all of the necessary input variables. I wish stuff was taught more conceptually. A problem I think with the lack of teaching conceptual understanding is the rate at which it is taught and the rate at which students are expected to understand it. They can ace a test but will they be able to use their knowledge to carry out a procedure, i.e. in a job?

@Pied_Pfeffer I applaud your diligence in answering each one of those questions! What are some of your idealistic answers?
I’m sorry for the unclear questions. Here’s some clarification:

Should college be accessible to everyone in a society? Should it be an available option for any graduating high schooler. That is, subsidies, grants, some means to aid a prospective student who may not have the means themselves to do it. Or, like with current presidential propositions, have college (or some college) be completely free to citizens.

Should college be an option everyone? That is, if an average citizen (no learning disorder, etc.) goes to college, should they be able to walk out with a diploma?
This was to initiate the thought that if any person who was competent enough to finish high school goes to college, should they be able to get a degree, or does college require a higher level of intellect or something that is not for the average population?
Should any amount of the outcome of your college degree be based on your peers?
Often times at schools, your outcome (your grade) is determined by the performance of your peers. For instance, a professor could determine grades by saying the highest 10 grades will be As, the next 30% are Bs, and so on. Should this be so?
Is college a place you go to as a means to an end?
Is college a place to go just so that you can get a higher pay or a place you go just for the diploma, or some other end reason, as if you wouldn’t be there if you weren’t getting one.

@jerv That’s a very interesting point of view. I love learning stuff on my own, too. I often times feel more interested when I’m studying without the environment of grades and GPA. I’ve spent hours on Wikipedia article after Wikipedia article looking up just one topic. I spent hours in a library a few weeks ago reading books on my city’s history. I wonder if you and others feel the same way. Excellent answer.

@Dutchess_III Cool. Care to answer the original question?

@HC I see that much too often. It’s like you’re not making big bucks unless you’re exploiting. And now it’s even worse with loans and the price of school. It seems like school is just another way to leech money out of you because you’d be in the same position (but at a fast food joint or something, with lesser pay) if you had never even gone to school in the first place!

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@ALL:
Thanks for the discussion all. I tried to hold my opinions and biases but I know after this post that that vase has broken. If you all don’t mind me asking more of you, I’d like to highlight something in the details that I’d like to ponder more: What is the ideal point of college? What should its purpose be in your “perfect society”? This is a question I’ve thought about too much and am still struggling to answer. Hopefully you smart Jellies have some ideas.

Since I am an engineer my answers will have a technical twist. While it is possible to learn science and technology outside of college, it is much easier and faster to learn while inside.
The college has laboratories and facilities unavailable to someone on the street.
Thermofluidics lab, magnetohydrodynamics lab, wind tunnel, laser energenics lab, MEMS fabrication lab, etc. ( Look at RIT or RPI’s websites for a complete list.)
the labs come with more than just equipment. It comes with expertise in the form of fellow students, professors and grad students.
You get way more bang for your brain buck if you have the chance to work with specialized equipment while you are learning.

Oh and here’s the best part! My son and his wife met while in college studying aerospace engineering!

I would not say college is not a good idea. Some of the best times of my life were during the four years I spent there, although looking back I can not think of a single incident that involved the classroom, but I met some good friends, had some good times, matured and became self-sufficient over that period.

But, did the classes I took prepare me for life in the real world in my chosen field? For the most part, no. There was the occasional titbit that I have used on rare occasion but otherwise, no. The classes I enjoyed the most and still remember were electives: Intro to Anthropology; English Literature; Oceanography; Abnormal Psychology. I wish I had taken more of them and fewer of the required course (Soil Mechanics, Workplace Ethics, etc.).
And perhaps this is what college aught to be about, rounding out ones education; absorbing as much esoteric knowledge as you can and not so much focusing on one particular field or endeavor. And not everyone wants or needs this. Focus should come afterward, in the Masters field and that only for those in the sciences and engineering programs. Combine this with a well rounded apprenticeship and trade school program for the vast majority of high school graduates and I think we would have a workable system again.

When I graduated I could not find a job in that profession, everyone wanted experience as well as schooling. I ended up with a position utilizing a skill I developed in high school, drafting. To be fair, I was able to use my skills to work my way up to Product Engineer within a couple of years. Five years after college I got a job in my chosen profession, not because of my knowledge but because I had a friend in the business who told me of a job opening and put in a good word for me.

And I am not the only one. I have a friend who was a psychology major who ended up in accounting; another who was recreation and parks who framed houses, a double engineering major (one was civil, can’t recall the second) who spent a career with the USDA making the whims of scientists actually work; an accounting major who was a career interpretive park ranger; a sociology major who went on to start his own exterminator company; one with an anthropology degree who did get a job on a dig in Mexico until the funds ran out and he came back to work odd jobs until another dig was funded, he alternated between the odd jobs and anthropology for about a decade before finally settling into a management position with a major department store.

All these people are smart people who either were not truly interested in the major they had chosen or were unable to get a position in their chosen field once they graduated. Many could have just gone straight from high school and in the same four year time frame held the same jobs the eventually ended up in.

@dxs Absolutely true in America for many areas of concentration and most universities. I mean the real, been around a long time, brick and mortar universities, not these let anyone attend colleges with most classes online things.

Most schools you have to take classes outside your specific area of concentration during the first two years before you formally enter your major. This gives time to discover new interests. Universities have majors you’ve never heard if, because unless you know a specific industry very well, there are all sorts of undiscovered careers. Even as an adult I learn about new majors I’ve never heard of before.

Some degrees teach specific skills that directly translate out in the real world. Accounting is accounting, and if you become a CPA the way to debit and credit an account will be just like you practiced in school. Although, real life will still teach additional accounting and work skills. Other degrees are more general and you get out of school and have knowledge from the education, but the real world is a little more tricky in how that education will help you.

Most people really enjoy living on campus and the friendships that are formed. Some people don’t like it, but I think that is the minority.

@dxs I’m quite surpised that things like that happen in the US. I thought they were just our problems. There is some kind of an obsession to grading students among schools here. Teachers tend to look at grades to judge who’s good and who’s bad. I even remember being brainwashed by a teacher at some point that: “Grades are like cash. You work hard, you get cash, or else!”. That obsession gives many students a false belief that grades are everything, leading to unhealthy competition and cheating. Some students even forget why they go to school in the first place.

If asked what should be an ideal college, I can sum up in one sentence: “Stop grading students please!”

As you can see from the answers thus far, addressing your list is (like the list itself) a matter of considerable dissertation. I would prefer to tackle it in stages. The first question is pretty much a summation of the rosy and lofty purposes supposedly justifying the college industry and all its machinations. As such, all the hype and hallowed sanctity should be regarded with the same level of credibility as the reverence one would bestow on an automobile ad. It’s really curious that a business grinding suckers through its factories by the millions manages to maintain a patina of mystical misty holiness in defiance of the truth.

@Mimishu1995 I can only speak for what I’ve heard about your area, and from what I’ve heard there’s a huge stress on academics. I’m willing to bet it’s worse where you are, but that doesn’t mean it’s fine here. There definitely is a stress on grading. As I said to someone else earlier, students are graded based on their performance compared to their peers! Does that happen in your schools? And yes, you won’t believe how much of a fetish some people have for grading.
@stanleybmanly No need to go through all the questions then. Those were just there to help you contemplate. Just the original question is fine: What’s the ideal point of college?
Your description of the how college is made to be views made me laugh. I might lose you here, but one thing I find absolutely hilarious is college advertising. I’ve called it its own genre. This is what it is: There’ll be an ad with some cheesy slogan and then a picture of some preppy-dressed person doing something completely ridiculous or irrelevant. Here’s an example. However, I feel like college would be a better place if it were more focused on learning and not on a degree. If people went there as it was a hobby and of course the economy wasn’t rearing its ugly heads in as well, then I think it’d be a better place and I’d totally join.

It’s the disturbing perception that you either play the game and attend a college or surrender to a life of destitution that is alarming. And you’re right. The pressure is on obtaining the sheepskin. I have a creeping suspicion that a degree in nearly any field outside the scientific realm has been diluted considerably by the hoardes of folks obtaining them. And here’s the thing that fascinates me most. With our college mills grinding out graduates in spectacular numbers, there’s not even a hint that the bumper crop has or is leading to a more enlightened population.

@stanleybmanly Now you know part of the reason I never got into the IT field. Back in the ‘80s, everyone was pushing me to use my brains to get into computers since they would be “a thing” by the time I was old enough to enter the workforce. I refused because I figured that tons of other people would draw the same conclusion, get their CompSci degrees, and oversaturate the job market for that field before I got out of high school.

Oddly enough, I know more about computers than a lot of people with degrees in the field. It’s amazing how those who only study something for a paycheck tend to know less than someone who studied something for the sake of knowledge (or just for fun).