Comment The University System and textbooks (Score 2, Interesting) 880
The point of college, ideally, is to learn. Yes, there are some people who do best on their own; such individuals are known as autodidactics. However, most do not have a diverse enough skill-base to teach themselves everything effectively. College provides instructors with specialized skills who can at the bare minimum introduce people to areas they'd never even thought of before they had to fulfill a requirement or went scrounging for a few last credits.
However, I will concede your point that a basic bachelor's degree has become a baseline for entry into most job markets, and not from necessity. I've seen a number of people who are not at college because they want to be, but because they wanted to be able to get a job. When you want to be there, college is geek heaven: all the knowledge you could want, there for the taking.
My student jobs taught me a lot, even though they paid horribly (generally enough for me to pay off my bookstore bill, which was typically about $400 a semester, and have something to pitch towards tuition and a small outing or two, though). My second one was in one of the best work environments I've ever had, which made up for a lot, and is much of the reason I've chosen to head for grad school and more debt.
My professors were, and are, awesome. They may not have been suited to be the top dogs in the corporate world, but they provide intellectual challege, excellent instruction, and ample office hours. Doesn't matter if you're looking at the very small, very education-oriented liberal arts school where I got my degree or the mid-to-large university that dominates my home city where I took a couple quarters' worth of courses, I had people who knew their stuff inside and out. That goes for the grad students, too, though they were either classmates or assisting the professors.
While I'm on this, I know my professors weren't getting paid astronomical sums. Probably 40-50K a year, with 40+ hours per week when classes were in session, and they often wound up taking work home. They got weekends off as frequently as their students did, which is to say not often. Additionally, I know they did what they could to find quality texts that didn't cost an arm and a leg. When that didn't happen, they'd use the expensive one as much as possible and cut back on other books they might have required us to buy. The publishers, on the other hand, can be stinkers: we had one text where they only shipped 1/2 the requested number. Naturally, this was the most expensive one, as well.
Sure, it'd help if we had a better K-12 educational system, and more apprenticeships available, but once you factor in the cost of maintaining the buildings, paying the faculty, providing the various services, etc., the costs aren't so bad. (I'm not touching the adminstration; I don't have sufficient observations to base anything on and I'm not entirely sure their salaries aren't inflated.) A waste of money to support college, though? I think not. It is one of the few places where people are encouraged to think about what they're told, rather than to believe without question, and I cannot imagine any skill with a greater need of honing than that of logical reasoning. How else are we to tackle publishing conglomerates?
However, I will concede your point that a basic bachelor's degree has become a baseline for entry into most job markets, and not from necessity. I've seen a number of people who are not at college because they want to be, but because they wanted to be able to get a job. When you want to be there, college is geek heaven: all the knowledge you could want, there for the taking.
My student jobs taught me a lot, even though they paid horribly (generally enough for me to pay off my bookstore bill, which was typically about $400 a semester, and have something to pitch towards tuition and a small outing or two, though). My second one was in one of the best work environments I've ever had, which made up for a lot, and is much of the reason I've chosen to head for grad school and more debt.
My professors were, and are, awesome. They may not have been suited to be the top dogs in the corporate world, but they provide intellectual challege, excellent instruction, and ample office hours. Doesn't matter if you're looking at the very small, very education-oriented liberal arts school where I got my degree or the mid-to-large university that dominates my home city where I took a couple quarters' worth of courses, I had people who knew their stuff inside and out. That goes for the grad students, too, though they were either classmates or assisting the professors.
While I'm on this, I know my professors weren't getting paid astronomical sums. Probably 40-50K a year, with 40+ hours per week when classes were in session, and they often wound up taking work home. They got weekends off as frequently as their students did, which is to say not often. Additionally, I know they did what they could to find quality texts that didn't cost an arm and a leg. When that didn't happen, they'd use the expensive one as much as possible and cut back on other books they might have required us to buy. The publishers, on the other hand, can be stinkers: we had one text where they only shipped 1/2 the requested number. Naturally, this was the most expensive one, as well.
Sure, it'd help if we had a better K-12 educational system, and more apprenticeships available, but once you factor in the cost of maintaining the buildings, paying the faculty, providing the various services, etc., the costs aren't so bad. (I'm not touching the adminstration; I don't have sufficient observations to base anything on and I'm not entirely sure their salaries aren't inflated.) A waste of money to support college, though? I think not. It is one of the few places where people are encouraged to think about what they're told, rather than to believe without question, and I cannot imagine any skill with a greater need of honing than that of logical reasoning. How else are we to tackle publishing conglomerates?
