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Old 08.29.2011, 04:00 AM   #46
Glice
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Quote:
Originally Posted by knox
Right now, I would say to anyone thinking that going to university is the way to go to get a career and get a well paid job that they're getting themselves in debt for no reason with unrealistic expectations. If money is what they're after, they better invest in starting a business and stop dumbing down classes. Most of my friends who never finished university make the same or more than I do. Usually more, with no debt to pay off. Anyway, if you want to learn something or have some sort of specific career it's unavoidable. It is a lot of fun tho.

I don't know. I went to university with a boy who spent the entire time sniffing glue out of a sock and now he has a high paid job.

I imagine the situation is slightly different where you are, but just a little point on this: something that distresses me no end about uni is how narrowly its value is defined. Something like business studies is generally considered a directly vocational job which translates to a useful and economically viable knowledge/ skill set, but all the high-up business types I've worked with in the past preferred people to have experience. The other side (my side) - arts and humanities - are struggling to define themselves as useful in the economic world because you don't go directly from studying, say, medieval texts to working in the city. These things can be defined by economic values and skillsets (my philosophy degree was indispensable for my old career in IT) but the general value of uni is much more discrete, and often only really applies to the given individual.

Stewart Lee, around the time of the student protests, pointed out an old Thatcher thing where she said to someone studying historical Nordic (or similar) 'what a luxury' - and that's the reduction of uni that worries me. As if knowing some stuff about some stuff is somehow a vainglorious indulgence. Now - the big problem with that, as anyone who's been to uni will agree - is that there are a lot of people treating it like a free ride, a few years away from the 'real world'. So I tend to speak ideologically when I say it's a general good for people to go to uni and learn about stuff. I have minimal sympathy with the 'you can teach it yourself' - while on the one hand I've taught myself enough music theory to pass at about a masters level (I'd guess), on the other there are so many things in my other studies that I simply wouldn't have
come across were it not for the academic environment - and more importantly, coming across people who challenged and interrogated my ideas made for a broader understanding.

[/10 pence].
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