The fact that I've had the opportunity to learn about a broad range of domains in addition to my technical focus has allowed me to not only have a better understanding, appreciation, and direction in my interactions with the broader world, it lets me draw parallels between similar scenarios in distinct fields, learn from the experiences of others, see novel solutions to entirely distinct problems, and all in all have a more holistic view of <insert hand waving> Life.
I would not be the engineer I am today if I did not spend a portion of my time learning about "what native Americans lived in Virginia" (Would heavily recommend Ken Burns's "The West", speaking of similar topics, that man is a hero to the presentation of american history), and as such I'm a strong advocate for giving _everyone_ the opportunity to learn about things that may not have any direct benefit, not only because you don't know until you've tried (and benefits as I said can be very transitive) but also because learning in and of itself I see as very central to the human experience.
If you could cut a full year off the work needed for a professional degree by losing "which native Americans lived in Virginia", and thus spare millions of students the expense of a full year in college, you would be materially helping not only current college students but also people who are forced to debate whether or not to attend because of the expense.
I agree wholeheartedly that the opportunity cost of that learning should be taken into account, but my earlier point was made with the implicit assumption that there are methods that don't come with such an overhead. (e.g. choosing to take Latin during my CS degree would not have meaningfully changed my costs had I cut it out, and the benefits have become increasingly clear over the years. Most of this learning, however, I'd say has taken place outside of any institution that incurs a monetary cost, and the minor time-cost is largely what I was defending)
That all depends on how you measure better off.
Knowledge, understanding, wisdom are goods unto themselves. No doubt, we need to eat, but I'd rather know Latin, Norse mythology, Anselm's ontological proof, the Platonic solids, and the major players in the Glorious Revolution than not. And I'm better off for simply knowing them.
You can get the first two for free on a library.
You are making a mistake when you compare the knowledge, understanding and wisdom you would get in College against nothing and then decide that College is better than nothing. You should compare it against all the other things people could be doing with that time and money. The opportunity cost.
With respect to the original article, yes absolutely.
I was responding to the parent comment who described people 'no better off' for knowing versus not knowing.
Maybe they will acquire work experience, life experience, pragmatical knowledge about how real world works, that kind of thing. Why is knowledge about covalent bonds intrinsically more important than that?
Sure.
But expecting some body to pay you just because you know all of that is tad bit too much to ask.
The right question to ask here is after all that, how employable are you?
Because you need skills to be employed. The ridiculousness of the situation is such a plumber is probably spending their time more valuably than say who studied Norse Mythology. Note I'm talking more in economic terms only. Sure the person who studied Norse Mythology knows more than a plumber, but you need a plumber more often than you need some one who knows Norse Mythology.
>>Why can't you say just the same thing about, say, teaching people to read?
That sets the basic platform for other stuff. You build on top of it.
>>Fifth-grade literacy is probably enough to do many jobs, so maybe we should toss out high school too.
If I was spending $X00,000 on a degree and expect a job in return which some one with fifth-grade literacy can do. I'd be seriously worried about my choices and decision making skills in life.
Consider climate change. I believe climate change is happening and needs to be addressed. But I don't really understand the mechanics. Neither do the people who think it doesn't exist. Rather, I've been socialized to trust experts and scientists when they speak on their area of expertise and they have not.
People who dislike Trump don't do so because they know facts he doesn't. They dislike him because they have different values than he holds (or purports to hold).
I suspect that the majority of believers in all cargo cults don't independently come up with the same idea, someone will think of it and the rest will follow them. The followers were in a clientelist relationship with the leader and want that to continue and keep providing them with the cargo in future.
Maybe we need to look at the education of the kind of people who end up as our leaders.
Right. I believe in the Golden Rule and Trump thinks it's not a big deal.
Do STEM degrees yield more ROI? Perhaps, but if the article is attempting to help an individual student frame their thinking about what to major in, it is very bad advice.
People should follow their aptitudes. Study what compels them and what they're talented in, regardless of statistical ROI's that apply NOT to individuals but to a population of people.
I've seen it a lot, good students who force themselves into degree programs for subjects they have no interest in: going to pre-law or pre-med or finance or engineering, not because they love the subject matter but for status and for the hope of a "well-paid" career (often propelled by parents wishes).
We may very well need more STEM folks, but what we DON'T need is more STEM folks who are passionless, untalented duds who are in it for the money/status.
This is posed in too absolute terms. People should, among their aptitudes, pick some activity that has the prospect of a fulfilling professional life. Aptitude and personal preference represent one aspect of such fulfillment. Market fit is, however, most definitely relevant towards professional success.
The fact is people do just fine majoring in things such as studio arts and literature. It could very well mean that they don't end up working professionally in those fields, but that is OK. Some of these people end up working in the same companies as their peers, some end up in menial jobs after college, some become your boss (and some do all or none of these).
And I am not even mentioning the fact that at age 18, many many students have yet to find themselves and settle on a major, let alone a career path.
I can be the best plate-spinner in the world, but I still need to provide for the people that depend on me. People should start with the set of jobs that can support them and their (future! sometimes unexpected!) family and then pick the things they have aptitude at.
Only to an extent. I am, for example, a better skier than I am programmer. Yet it would be financial folly for me to follow that aptitude. Pretty good skier make on avg. $0 a year while pretty good programmers make a very comfortable living.
An investment in education should pay off in ways other than a financial return.
Edit for downvoters: In France, this was the high-school leaving exam (literary track) in history for 2015. Four hours to write an essay on each of the following two topics:
1. "South and East Asia: The challenges of population and growth."
2. "The paths of power: The United States and the world at the end of the 1960s."
(Source: [1])
And this is graded much harder than, say, the A.P. world history exam, which a small minority of students in the U.S. take. Subjects are taught by people who got the highest scores on extremely competitive exams covering their subject areas, often after a Master's degree in the subject.
History school-leaving exam in the U.S.: whatever easy, probably multiple-choice final your bored and undereducated teacher decided to give you in an hour-long class period.
[1]: http://www.lemonde.fr/bac-lycee/article/2015/06/18/bacs-s-es...
And I took a few AP classes that you dismiss as being simple multiple choice tests, which wasn't the case.
The parent was talking about intense focus on stem in college being something he's worried about for his kid, not high school.
That doesn't mean my high school classes were anywhere near the depth or intensity of my college classes. While high school provided me with a solid foundation in all the disciplines, it's not set up to go in depth on specific areas.
As a computer science major in college, I have had the opportunity to do in-depth, semester-long investigations of the Armenian genocide, the evolution of interactive media, laughter in theater, the 2008 financial crisis, Arab history in China, the philosophy of consciousness and dozens of other interesting subjects. These are not at all equivalent to what's offered at even the best high schools in the world and I wouldn't give it up to have a slightly cheaper or more efficient college career.
Also, I did IB too (got a 7/7 in HL History ;) ), and anecdotally I think it's dramatically easier than the French high school diploma. The History exam, at least, may not be multiple choice but it usually asks about very concrete things.
"1. With reference to one war before 1945 and one war after 1945, assess the significance of either air power or naval power in deciding its outcome."
This is basically a step up from regurgitating facts. I agree it is not as deep as what you will have to learn in a university course.
The questions I gave in my example were much more open-ended and require a lot of independent analysis and synthesis to approach, as well as knowing a lot of facts.
I went to New York University.
> Also, I did IB too, and anecdotally I think it's dramatically easier than the French high school diploma.
French exams are notorious for their grading. That doesn't mean the education actually includes greater depth. Anecdotally, my friends who went through the French education system have a keen appreciation for difficult exams but aren't any more knowledgeable than me.
I don't think you could convincingly argue that an IB-level of education isn't a "functioning" education system though.
After all, even in France you do in fact have higher education beyond high school.
That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about broad "liberal arts" curricula that touch on a variety of subjects. In France, it would be very unusual for a math student in university to take classes on philosophy, literature, etc. (ok, maybe some easy English classes for practical reasons, but that's it)
Yes I of course agree that high school doesn't teach you everything you need to know about your topic of specialization. But a good high school education in advanced European countries is basically comparable to undergrad liberal arts/distribution requirements at average American universities.
BTW, NYU is not typical; it's an elite school. You can't compare your experience there to typical colleges in the US.
I know. There's a reason that I chose to attend college at a US university rather than in Europe.
The point of the liberal arts curriculum isn't, in my view, necessarily to give you a basic grounding in different areas. As you point out, a good high school education is typically sufficient to gain such a grounding (for example, any chemistry I know is from high school). Instead, what a good liberal arts education allows you to do is to explore specific disciplines outside your core specialization. These explorations are not necessarily to give you a general understanding of the field, but instead expose you to interesting ideas in alternative fields far beyond what you'd learn in high school. For example, I still don't know much about theater—but my class on comedies has given me some interesting ideas for how to incorporate humor into a bot I'm developing.
Distribution requirements are not comparable to a "good high school education" in Europe. That's grossly overvaluing the quality of European education and undervaluing American universities.
> BTW, NYU is not typical; it's an elite school. You can't compare your experience there to typical colleges in the US.
I'm aware. But the typical college experience in the US doesn't really include the liberal arts.
I'm not sure how generalizable my experience is though. My AP classes were at a normal public high school while my IB classes were at an elite boarding school. I will say that the exams are definitely much better for the IB (they're much more detailed and require actual understanding rather than rote memorization).
these are complicated issues, and pretending one's free and the other's an outrageous ripoff is a ridiculous simplification.
The U.S. is an outlier.
[1] Source: http://www.oecd.org/edu/EAG2014-Indicator%20B1%20(eng).pdf
http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance/...
It's not like university admissions offices are filled with people saying "Are you sure you want to come here? Don't do it for any hope of having a job in the future, this is a $n year exercise in pure reason and research."
What I find truly disheartening is that if you judge colleges by their actions, they think of themselves as tax-advantaged businesses trying to extract the most dollars possible from financially naive kids, donors, and sports fans.
[1] http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-col...
It's not gone, obviously, and some places are better than others, but it seems to be getting scarcer. If your degree no longer offers a shot at the sublime beauty of understanding, I suppose it's time to start counting dollars.