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A comment on Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills. Parent comment

Re:Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills by wutbrodo on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @02:54AM (#14495293)
For what it's worth, the fact that I'm the only one in my circles who didn't figure this out put me in a wayyyyy better position than most. If you think that college is for learning instead of just being present until they give you a degree, you spend a hell of a lot more time and effort figuring out what you want to study, where you'll learn the most, etc etc. All of my friends who treated college as "probably the best opportunity for concentrated learning in your life" instead of "conveyor belt with degree at end" are the ones doing extremely well in their careers, financially and in terms of self-actualization.

I came from a not-great home environment and it was a blessing in disguise that I was at such a "disadvantage" when it came to understanding the college admissions, attendance, and graduation process. Everyone who was savvy to the way college "actually" works ended up with just a relatively worthless piece of paper.

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Re:Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills by andrewflnr on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @03:39AM (#14495452)
I think about it pretty much backwards from that. To me the value of realizing it's a diploma mill is that you know you need to do most of your real learning independent of class. Taking the the classes and tests seriously is a distraction from that. You might be more right than me, though, looking at the attitudes of other students.
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Re:Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills by wutbrodo on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @04:40PM (#14501109)
Hm, maybe it depends on where you attended college. I usually didn't attend lectures but between assignments, exams, and discussion sections, college was by a million miles the most productive learning environment of my life.

I orient my career around learning but there's always this little nagging "ultimately the needs of the employer are paramount when push comes to shove" that rears it head every once in a while and prioritizes work I'm already good at over stuff I'd be learning by doing.

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