Graduates 'regret degree choice' A third of graduates believe they studied the wrong course at university, a survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development suggests. Most of these said, with hindsight, they would have taken a more scientific or technical course, a business-based or a professional qualification. Remainder of the article at:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/educ ... 183017.stm

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You have got to know why you study, for money or for fun. If you study for fun, be sure you can afford it.If you study for money be sure the university is worth it.

Ah yes, reading, riting and rithemetic are timeless.Doing a degree is fun, right?

All these articles about the plight of new college grads in the UK and US miss the underlying point: this was designed to happen.The phrase "liberal arts" (and, even at MIT or CMU, undergrad is based on the model of liberal education) has nothing to do with the political meaning of "liberal", but comes from liberalis, meaning "free person". It's an innately aristocratic sort of education, not intended for "the masses". The phrase stands in contrast to "servile arts", or trades, which hold less prestige. (See: Wikipedia: Liberal Arts ) College education doesn't exist to help people get jobs; it exists for those who don't need help because they already have assured sunny futures. Of course, this describes less than 0.5% of the population these days; the shape of society is such that there are very few such free people, especially compared to the number of college graduates. This incongruency could be described as horrible-- a lot of people take on debt for college education but can't repay their loans on any job available to them-- but both the Left and Right have a stake in perpetuating this system. The intention of the Left, in this, is to breed a generation of revolutionaries: people who are liberally educated, but do not find a place in society for which their education is appropriate, are to lead the charge to change the shape of society, and such a dramatic change cannot really come without an outright revolution. The Right (business, not religious) also supports widespread liberal education for different reasons: liberal concepts (mathematical sciences, philosophical texts) are hard and represent a better test of general intelligence than, say, a more practical trade education. Hence, although most people will land in employment inappropriate to their level of education (usu. less challenging and "interesting") they have been efficiently selected and sorted. The Right also doubts, fundamentally, the ability of education to alter the shape of society, but views the onset of a harsh reality post-graduation as a process that will teach "discipline" and foster conformity. So both sides genuinely support education for different reasons, but the underlying truth is: yes, there is a mismatch between liberal education and the shape of society, and it creates a rather nasty stormfront, in the form of our society's bitter mid- to late 20s malaise, but it's supposed to be there. It works as designed, so to speak. US culture since 1960 has been driven by the incongruency between widespread liberal education and a shut-down society and, oddly, both Left and Right have gotten their way, but only fleetingly. First the Left: the '60s were driven by college grads who realized they weren't all going to get great jobs and rebelled, but they failed at changing anything. The '80s "yuppie" conformist movement was the right-wing dream, and that imploded. The '90s tech boom was a generation's attempt to find an independent, decentralized solution to the problem. That didn't pan out for the most part, either. Finally, the pervasive and permanent malaise ca. 2006 can be traced to the fact that the past three "revolutions" all failed miserably and that nobody can think of another one that might actually work.

QuoteOriginally posted by: almosteverywhereThe phrase "liberal arts" (and, even at MIT or CMU, undergrad is based on the model of liberal education) has nothing to do with the political meaning of "liberal", but comes from liberalis, meaning "free person". It's an innately aristocratic sort of education, not intended for "the masses". At Harvard maybe. The liberal arts education at MIT is clearly intended for the "masses" (hence things like open courseware). I suspect the same is true at CMU and Cornell. The deep cultural roots of MIT is the premise that if you get machines to do the work, you don't need slaves, and if you don't have slaves, then you have free men that must learn to think for themselves. It's not a coincidence that MIT was founded in Boston, by a man that moved there from the South, at the start of the American Civil War, using money from land grants.QuoteCollege education doesn't exist to help people get jobs; it exists for those who don't need help because they already have assured sunny futures.A college education *should be* to train free men to think and to survive in a dynamic economic and political environment, and to resolve the great issues of the day. It's turned into an assembly line credentialing process. Do I really want a job? What's the point of getting a job? What is a job?QuoteFinally, the pervasive and permanent malaise ca. 2006 can be traced to the fact that the past three "revolutions" all failed miserably and that nobody can think of another one that might actually work.The fact that people aren't even *trying* to think of a solution is a sign that college education has failed. One of the purposes of a degree is to help you figure out the purpose of having a degree.Part of my personal experience, is that to actually get an education, you have to fight the system.

QuoteOriginally posted by: almosteverywhereThe Right (business, not religious) also supports widespread liberal education for different reasons: liberal concepts (mathematical sciences, philosophical texts) are hard and represent a better test of general intelligence than, say, a more practical trade education.It actually isn't. Programming C++ is an example of "trade education" and it's hardly easy. Also, I don't think that general intelligence is a particularly useful concept in day to day life.

I sometimes wonder if education is wasted on youth. I know that I was certainly clueless about what I wanted to do (despite having very strong opinions about what I thought I wanted to do). A large part of the problem is the vast gulf between how a person spends their time learning X and how a person spends their time earning money doing X (if that is even possible). This is exacerbated by a system in which many of those teaching X have never worked in the industry that uses the knowledge of X. The day-to-day in the classroom bears little resemblance to the day-to-day in the workplace. A person might love X, enjoy learning X, but fail to have the temperament, correlated skills, and practical knowledge to get/keep/enjoy a job doing X.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Traden4AlphaThe day-to-day in the classroom bears little resemblance to the day-to-day in the workplace. A person might love X, enjoy learning X, but fail to have the temperament, correlated skills, and practical knowledge to get/keep/enjoy a job doing X.That's why the very best students skip class and work independently on their own. The most brilliant students drop out. Only the misguided students come to class every day like sheep, ha ha.

This situation has evolved in a comparatively short period. The US saw college enrollments rise sharply after WWII as a result of the "GI Bill", which paid for most of the tuition at almost any college, including privates. I've known several older people who attended now highly expensive colleges for close to zero. However, those schools did have generally higher entrance standards, and back then people who knew they had to work for a living knew why they were at school. Then as now a lot of people did not have a strong notion of direction though, but the schools were happy to take the government's money to expand, especially the state universities, which exploded. Then came the Baby Boomers and school numbers accelerated. Somewhere along the line the idea of a "liberal education" was borrowed or stolen wholesale from the Ivy League colleges which, as mentioned below, did not educate people for work. Even being in school exempted one from conscripton before the lottery draft n the 1960's. Somewhere in this process college became a "right" and "expected". Nevermind that a relatively small proportion studied for professions: teaching, law, medicine, architecture, etc. It's a fact that in some American cities that the largest proportion of students now at the vocational "community colleges", two year (mostly) trade schools, are people with BA liberal arts degrees who have gone back to "actually learn something." State and government sponsored schools have lowered admissions requirements to the barest minimum, although some minimums do exist, and there are notable exceptions such as UCal, NCarolina, Michigan, UTAusin, etc. But for the most obvious of reasons, brand recognition and perceived "tiering" of school names and prestige has never been more prevalent. It has nothing to do with the educational opportunities offered there.I can't speak for the UK, but when I was in school there it seemed there were some clever people. There were also a lot of people I secretly hoped were clever because they certainly did not appear to be especially bright in class. No one had really a clue what they wanted to do though. Most people, however, did not want to get their hands dirty so the majority wanted to work for a bank......................................