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A comment on For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time. Parent comment

Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by whacked_new on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @03:24PM (#275331)
I find the whole "college is..." or "college is not..." to be a problematic mindset in itself. For example, why not develop social skills in high school? Many of the student leaders I know from college started as high school student leaders.

Now we're talking about "HS is..." or "HS is not..." or "HS sucks." Why wait until HS? Now we're talking about MS... then lower school. Then it's just your entire life as an individual.

I like the idea of a loose education system where there aren't Nth-grade, Xth-year students, but simply students who have proved themselves in a particular set of studies. For those with the time to study, take one year. For those without, take ten years. Then there won't be any of these ideas of what college should or should not do.

It's my personal fantasy. Impractical perhaps?

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by Alex3917 on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @11:59PM (#275799)
"It's my personal fantasy. Impractical perhaps?"

There were actually three or four test schools operated this way during the 70s. The literature on them is really interesting.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&...

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by jmtulloss on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @05:55PM (#275556)
Many schools are moving towards this. You can take some HS courses in MS if you've demonstrated the motivation, and you can take college courses in HS as well.

Having just graduated college, I see it as the most valuable experience of my life. I've defined who I am and what I want to do in the past four years, and learned a ton about engineering on the side.

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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by Hexstream on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @05:27PM (#275519)
I'd definitely love more granular dependencies between courses. Why do you need "Language LV2" before you can tackle "Math LV3"?
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Re:For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time by stcredzero on Wednesday August 13, 2008 @03:39PM (#275366)
The problem with social skills, is that they're learned in a cultural/social context. For many, the desired quality and kind of context is only available in small doses (with a particular group) whose effect is diluted by the larger context which can only be corrected by moving somewhere else.
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