What's the point of college?

I know for a number of years there was this fantasy that a college degree - any college degree really - would lead to a well-paying career. It may be that in the last decade that's be disabused in the minds of the younger generation, but back in the 90s I know plenty of folks who had absolutely no clue what kind of real-world job opportunities were awaiting them after they graduated but were happy to pay $X and put in several of the best years of their lives anyways because that was just what was expected.

That essay is infuriating and, it seems to me, mostly on target. I would say it's not accurate if you are taking it as a reason to avoid the humanities as an undergraduate, which is how some people translate the issue of universities destroying their humanities departments in pursuit of wholly imaginary projections of business efficiency, but it's a useful caution for anyone who is thinking about higher level study and isn't willing to have teaching at diverse levels (ie high school-community college-other) in their back pocket.

Jeff, I really wish the US had the concept of a gap year, I think it'd help with that unfocused 18 year old thing.

The basic problem I have with undergrad humanities is 1) I'm highly sceptical of the value of these degree coming out of lower end state schools (although this is also my worry about generic "business" degrees; I tend to believe that technical degrees out of lower end schools tend to both me more valuable on graduation and also guarantee a certain minimum level of accomplishment that fuzzy degrees might not. I'm fine with humanities degrees out of higher quality institutions) ... But 2) I'm suspicious that those most successful coming out of them already have the social standing and financial support to parley that into a profitable post-graduate degree or career. Most if not all of the people I knew going Plan II undergrad at UT, for example (which was the beanbag Plato and Dante lit general liberal arts degree) were coming from such wealthy families that future success or the financial payback of their education wasn't a meaningful issue, and most of whom would inevitably be given a hand up the social ladder through marriage or business connections shortly after graduation anyway.

I really really disagree with this. Sure, undergraduates aren't likely to help you get a job right out of college (well, unless you are a tenured student, like I was...), but several years later, after they're established and you're perhaps looking to switch jobs? Definitely.

Absolutely agreed about your (snipped) point about getting out of college what you put into it.

I once had a student say in an evaluation that he thought I was so great he'd hire me no matter what kind of business he was starting, whether it was construction, information technology, or killing people for hire.

I love that evaluation.

1) For higher ranked schools, the quality of the networks you find as well as the coursework available is going to be better, on average, if you are able to take advantage of it. "Able" takes many forms, and that's a complicated conversation in and of itself. By the same token, "value" has a number of meanings, many of which are connected to expected salary on graduation but not all. There's also the relative benefit of going into debt at a better school versus paying as you go at a less famous one, which is the netherworld of decisionmaking in which many people with college prospects exist. So there are a lot of variables that have to be refined a bit before you can give someone advice tailored to their needs, which still only translates into a starting point for their education.

2) "parlay"

Careful there -- correcting someone over the proper spelling of Fancy French Words is a potential glove slapping, duel starting offense!

But why fight when you can pahr lei?

Ooh -- that's it. I demand satisfaction!

Would you be willing to expand on why college was a waste for you? People in my profession don't normally get to hear those stories. But they're important, because if there's something we could be doing better I'd like to know about it.

Can't get no

In my case, the majority of the options I had were things I already knew, and the rigid structure of well rounded pre-requisites were what I considered a giant waste of everyone's time.

I enjoyed my major's classes for the most part (Pascal in the 2000's as a programming prereq? Fuck you and I already took it in HS.). I left because of everything else I was being forced to take making the entire experience unpleasant. This is as a techie though, so it was "waste a bunch of time doing English homework or taking your random Psych requirement" versus "get a pretty well paying job that's being waved at you right now"

Part of my personal problem is that in HS I stopped doing homework at some point and became a B student, and that murdered my ability to get into colleges that I would actually find challenging and interesting. Thus it killed me desire to deal with college in general because the classes I was forced to take were easy and boring, and a waste of everyone's time and money.

I regret it slightly at times, but less for the degree (which wouldn't change my career track at this point in my life, it would simply have made the start of it easier), and more because the advanced comp sci classes would have been fascinating to take. I really don't care about the rest of my experiences there at all. I went to an awesome HS that already covered the first two years worth of shit the crap colleges I went to covered.

If you try to make me sit still in a room and listen to someone talk I'm liable to freak out and kill everyone. I need to be assigned projects. Lectures fucking killed me. They made me angry and bored and resentful and eventually I'd stop going to my lecture classes because I couldn't handle the god awful nightmare that was professorial bloviation. Also cleaning off drool every day four times a day wasn't my idea of a good time.

I learn by doing stuff and fucking with things and messing about. Reading too, but I need to watch a thing work and take it apart and put it back together to understand it. My best class was a 400 level game theory class where the professor assigned us projects, gave us notes in class and used actual class time to answer questions about the notes and the projects. I aced that class and got a ton out of it because it perfectly matched what I needed from a professor.

I went to a great college and I feel like it failed me utterly. I've learned more outside of it in a couple years by structuring my learning to my personal needs and foibles than I did on the inside.

Also I loathe assigned reading and busywork, despite the fact that I read like a goddamn all consuming monstrosity on my own time.

edit: HAHAHAHA I almost didn't graduate because of PE. I _really_ resented that requirement, in large part because I was spending time at the gym regularly on my own after classes. And then the class was basically that, except at inconvenient times.

When I would find a sleeping student I'd tell everyone to get out a piece of paper. There would be groans because this was probably some sort of quiz or weird assignment.

Then I'd tell them to ball up the paper and on the count of three, pelt the sleeping student.

They liked that, and even the sleeper would wake up, look around, and get a sheepish smile.

I don't do that anymore because apparently it could be considered "not showing proper respect" and I could get sued.

If there's anything I've learned from college teaching, it's that you shouldn't try to force the people who don't need to go to class to go to class.

I once failed a class with the professor ultimately telling me "It's obvious from your final exam that you know and understand the material well, however I just don't feel you put enough effort into the class." Needless to say that made me pretty cynical about the entire endeavor. Dean, you may know the guy, I can't remember his name but it was early 90s WPI Calc V, and the prof was notorious for failing 2/3rds of the class every quarter.

What? I expect that out of a high school teacher (happened to me), but a college Cal V class? That's fucking ridiculous. I've had chokepoint courses that would kill you with sheer workload, but none of those professors even made a pretense of giving a shit about if you showed up to class, or showed up and picked your nose the entire time.

I spent a LOT of time in college (almost 9 years, since I went all the way through to the Ph.D.) For me, the training was essential to what I wanted to do for a living. I agree with the poster who said that networking with your student peers becomes more important later in your life/career; it is amazing how many people I went to school with who are now in roles with which I interact today.

I think it is crazy that we take kids who have been living at home, their biggest decision who to ask to the prom, and tell them "Pick what you want to do for the rest of your life, because you have to choose a major and go to college." Who the hell knows at 17/18 what they will want to do every day for the rest of their life? They've had pretty much zero experience in life, and they are still developing and maturing as people. I wish we had a two year requirement that every high school graduate do two years of some type of public service, with a very wide range of options (from military to social services to whatever,) which then results in them getting something (e.g. the first two years of college paid) and THEN they decide on a major and career path. I know a lot of people who range from apathetic to miserable in their daily jobs because it is what they picked at 18 for whatever reason (their parents pushed them into it, they thought some TV show was cool - it is amazing how many universities I work with these days have put forensic science programs in place due to the kids who think they will be CSIs and chase criminals, interrogate them, run DNA samples in 30 seconds and then confront the killer, etc.) I really enjoy my job and career, and have been blessed enough to have done very well, but if I had it to do over I would have gone the path of psychology/psychiatry; I've taken enough grad level course to have a major in it now and it is a hobby.

You're totally making stuff up. WPI doesn't offer Calc V. We only go up to Calc IV.

Calc V is Diffy Q's.

I have no idea who you're talking about, but I'd bet, given class sizes for whichever calc, that he had no idea who you were so opened his spreadsheet and looked at the numbers. Then that sounds like boilerplate "You didn't pass the class because your grade wasn't high enough." You may have passed the final with flying colors, but you didn't hand in some assignments or your previous grades were so bad that even getting 100 on the final wasn't enough for you to pass the course.

So you failed the basic arithmetic that showed you shouldn't have even bothered showing up for the final, because by that time it was hopeless anyway.

But, hey, you learned some stuff, so it wasn't a total wash, right?

Sounds like some pretty harsh assumptions with a condescending attitude towards someone whose situation you know relatively little about.

Actually, I was trying to be flip. Guess I should have added more smileys.

Showing up and participating is a basic requirement for like 99% of things in life. I'm not sure why people expect university to be any different.

I'm pretty sure back then Calc V was different from DiffQs which I also took. And the conversation came while seeing if I could get any extra credit as I was right on the edge of passing arithmetically. Also someone I knew who was also right on the edge of passing who didn't do near as well on the final was allowed to do extra credit to pass, but he was very straight laced while I was rather punk, so I'm sure that played a part of it too. And thanks Dean for highlighting part of what I feel is the issue with college, I feel the professor's job is to teach the material and then to judge if the student has learned it. Clearly the prof felt I had.

But sure get all defensive of your school.

I don't know about Forge's specific example, but to defend his general point a colleague at a community college once told me she hated the students who never showed up to class but still got an A on every exam. I understood her position. It's really hard to spend massive amounts of time working on a project, and then have other people shit on it. In my first year of teaching, I had a lecture right before Spring Break that I decided to devote a little bit of my almost nonexistent free time to each week. I ended up putting roughly thirty hours of prep time into a fifty minute lecture. I wanted that one lecture to be a fantastic experience for everyone who heard it, and one-third of the students showed up, because it was the class right before Spring Break. So I get it, but I think part of our job is to determine if students understand the material, and maliciously adding course policies to stop non-attending A students from getting an A is fucked up.

I agree with you, but these people are outnumbered by people who think they don't need to go to class and actually do. This means I can improve overall student performance by using points to incentivize attendance, while screwing the rare student who just needs four exams and a weekend to study for each one. Or I can use exams and projects only to calculate the final grade, which leads to more students who fail the class without ever realizing what they did wrong. This is an insoluble problem; part of my purpose as a teacher is to accurately assess everyone's understanding, but the other part of my purpose is to make sure everyone in the class understands what I'm teaching. When it comes to this class policy I can't fulfill both purposes.

Or at least not particularly well. My current compromise is to lightly incentivize lecture attendance with graded quizzes and class activities, but not to the point where it would seriously impact most people's grades. I don't think it's working. Of the three classes I'm teaching this semester, the class with the lowest attendance incentives has the highest attendance, and the class with the least attendance is the one with moderate attendance incentives.

Unless your primary responsibility is babysitting rather than educating (ie high school), I can't think of a good reason why using negative incentives to enforce student attendance is justified. I'm fine with some forms of positive incentives, since I don't think they have much of an effect but provide an instruction with transition leverage to get students to give the class a fair shake.

It sucks, sometimes, when you feel underappreciated. But ultimately you are there to work on behalf of the students and do what you can to give them a leg up over the many largely unimportant hoops they have to jump through along the way. It's easy to lose sight of that in crushing workloads, but it's still the point of the whole enterprise.

If I noticed that draconian attendance policies improved the overall class average by 15% without increasing my drop or withdraw rate, would that be justified? My point is the same policy that screws 3% of the class may be really helping 50% of the class. In that case, it's not immediately clear to me that it's a bad policy.

When I graduated in 1986 there was no Calc V, and I checked the current catalog before posting that and there is currently no Calc V. Unless it was a fad in the early 90's that was eliminated (and that's possible), I'm going with the theory that it was a different number. I thought it was fair game to make a math joke about how you couldn't count how many calcs there were.

It was supposed to be funny, see?

Did he pass you? That would be the real indicator of whether or not he thought you had.

Most calc classes have an enrollment of 50, so judging whether or not you had a grasp of the material is what tests are for, mostly because profs don't have time to sit down and have soul searching conversations with every student in every class.

Heh. I've slagged my school more than most. It ain't about the school.

No, it would not. Also, there's a reason this is a hypothetical, and that's because people* are really eager to address the symptoms of bad schooling without considering the causes. Is your goal to teach your subject or to enforce attendance? They are not the same thing, and involuntary attendance doesn't make them so. It just seems to cover for shitty curriculum design, bad teaching, and other systemic problems that may exist in a category beyond the control of the teacher. If you can't find a way to keep students in seats other than forcing them to be there, then there are bigger issues with the class you are teaching that go far beyond disciplinary matters. They may not be your fault, as anyone held to teaching a useless curriculum (note: not the same as a subject per se) in useless ways can attest, but then it's your job to mitigate the damage that crappy situation does to your students' future. And even then there may be only so much you can do, but I'm not convinced that most people who enforce anything approaching draconian attendance policies are doing it out of concern for student welfare versus their own egos.

And my point is that even if you had the data to back that up, there's not a lot worth inheriting from the prison mentality of American public high schools. Obsessions with attendance should be the first to go if your goal is teaching people who will be functional human beings rather than domesticated livestock. As I said, I think there's plenty of room in positive incentives to persuade people to give it a shot, and that's ample transition space for people that need to be acclimatized to treating their education as adults after all of the terrible habits bad schooling ingrained in them.

*I mean people generally, and the education community specifically. Lots of different reasons for that, some of them good, some of them bad, but the end result is that we oten take the forms and content of teaching as given and focus on tweaking the structure around it.

I read it. I meant, "After this conversation, did he pass you despite your previous failure?" Sorry for not being clear.

I was trying to point out that possibly there were more grades involved than the final, and that Forge wasn't really telling us the whole story. He did well on the final exam, and knew the material on the final. Then why did he fail? I believe that profs who arbitrarily fail people find themselves in meetings with students and their department heads wanting to know why this student failed. If Forge had legitimately passed the class on his average, and the prof failed him anyway, he could have escalated to the department head, and from there, to the Dean of Students.

Apparently that didn't happen, and he asked for extra credit to make up for his lack of a passing grade. It appears he was denied that too, because, well, it's college and if you can't do the actual assignments why should a prof make up some bullshit extra credit assignment specifically for you so you can make more work for him when you couldn't do the original work?

So, as a prof, to soften that, "No," you say, "I just don't think you put in enough work to pass the course," which means maybe you should have passed the mid-term too.

Dean, keep in mind some of the context here, I'm not some student at school trying to talk his way out of failing a class or something, I'm almost 20 years removed now with a fairly successful career and it's an event I still distinctly remember strongly and negatively.

Forge: did you pass the midterm? What about other assignments?

I don't know how it was back when you were in college, but in all of the math classes I've taken thus far we've had some combination of exames (usually two or three), quizzes, and other assignments (usually some form of graded homework). How much each counts toward our final grade is spelled out in the syllabus, which we're given on day one. If I got myself into a situation where I was going to fail the class regardless of my final exam grade, I really don't see how that's anyone's fault but my own. I certainly don't see how the professor would owe me a passing grade just because I aced the final. If this was the situation you were in you deserved to fail.

That being said, getting screwed happens. I'd certainly be frustrated if an instructor decided to include a "class participation" component in the grade and used that to fail you when your quiz & exam average got you to a passing grade. That's just shitty.

I understand. Failing a class is traumatic. I failed a class I had taken a second time and I busted my hump trying to get a good enough grade on that final to pass the course. I didn't (I think I got a B and I needed an A to make up for the car wreck that was my mid-term). I still remember going up to the professor and saying, "I know this stuff, but I failed anyway. That can't be right."

He said, "Y'know, if this class hadn't been at 8am, you probably would have passed it."

He was right. He also didn't pass me. I don't hold it against him.

To clarify, we're talking about a 15% increase in overall performance here. The hypothetical student who previously earned a 75% in the class, which is a C, would now be earning a 90%, which is an A.

My goal is to increase student understanding, which I measure poorly by tests and assignments. I want to be clear that while my feelings may be hurt by lack of student attendance, it doesn't influence my class policies. If a memory-enhancing pill was placed on the market tomorrow, and all of my students spent the rest of the semester furiously beating off instead of coming to my class, followed by getting an A on every exam, I would consider that a good thing.

Ideally, I'd like my lectures to be so amazing that every student would finish with an A in the class, just by attending. That's about as likely to happen as the memory-enhancing pill. I try really hard to make that world, but I'm nowhere near there yet. And so I'm left with what I can work with. You're right that the mandatory lecture example is hypothetical; I've never had the balls to go all in with it. However, last semester I instituted weekly pre-quizzes that incentivized reading the book and taking notes before it, and my overall class average jumped by 10%. I don't know if that was because of the pre-quizzes, that the students were better, that I got better at teaching, that I gave them the previous semester's exams, or something I'm missing. I do know I'm measuring my success by student performance, and it's hard to dump policies that improve student performance, even if I disagree with them in principle.

My honours advisor's approach to class participation was to just evaluate the tutorials, not the lectures, which I don't think had any attendance mechanism. At tutorial he'd ask each student an actual, substantive question about the readings. You didn't get credit for participation unless you had some idea what you were talking about in your answer, and if you botched your turn it was incumbent on you to work some informed answer-equivalents into the general discussion that briefly followed some questions. I think he did this with every class I took with him, including first and second year ones where it meant he had to split up into a few tutorials for the group sizes to be small enough for the format.

I'm sure as a system it's fallible - you could get lucky with partial completion of the readings or something, and there were always 30 students in the hallways poring over the readings right before tutorial, which was sort of good and bad at the same time compared to the norm. More fundamentally one could object on the grounds of unfairness to students who'd be diffident/panicky with the format, especially if they botched their question had had to volunteer more participation to make up for it.

But I loved those classes. Good articles were thoroughly explored in class and there were none of those sad, disappointed "half the students didn't do the readings" experiences one could get with easygoing instructors.

What's the point of college?

Anal.