"is college really just about seeing if you're stubborn enough and determined enough to slog through four years of idiocy?"

Yes, you got it, dude!

It used to be that a high-school degree was proof that a person had a certain degree of intelligence and ability. But they screwed that up. So the bar got moved to a Bachelor's degree. But they are now busy screwing _that_ up, too.

As someone who has a BS and a Master degree, I can say that I found my university years to be worthwhile. I was in the business school, and I suspect that things may be different in other colleges within the university. I'm not totally sure, though.

The things I found useful were as follows:
1. the contacts. The contacts you make in school, either professors or other students, can pay you dividends if you bother to keep those connections fresh after you graduate.
2. actual skills. My BS was in accounting. While it is entirely possible to teach an accountant everything they need to know skillwise in about 1 year, those are still actual skill sets that need to be practiced and developed.
3. learning to think. I was lucky enough to have professors at both levels of my educational experience that challenged me to look past the surface and think things through. Was this magazine article a valid source for my paper? Why did I think so? Stuff like that.

Yes, universities add a lot of general education classes that are, at best, of somewhat dubious value. But you can actually learn real stuff, depending on what classes you take. And get the professors with actual experience working in the fields they are teaching; that helps a lot.

I humbly offer the below link echoing the above sentiments:

Who needs Dr. J?

As for college being good for Contacts, I say save your money and your time and join a country club. Grab a few contacts and maybe a drink or two while you're at it. Or a tennis match. Or both.

Actual skills...I can see where you would get this for accounting...there's no getting around that. But for other more vague degrees, you don't learn anything you didn't already know or can't learn from picking up a good magazine or newspaper or two.

And as for thinking skills, you have that before you even get there. I don't need to pay someone to teach me how to think. I would pay someone, however, to teach me how to think CRITICALLY. That is the challenge. And, in my experience, it is difficult to find good colleges, good programs, and/or good professors that can actually do that. It seems hit-or-miss.

I think that the College Degree has become merely a piece of paper that says to potential employers that I Am Determined and I Am Teachable. Most train or re-train you when you get hired anyways.

I don't want to be confrontational, but, I always bristle when someone tells me "college teaches you how to think." Grrr. I am now two years into a four-year degree, and I can assure you that I have not "learned how to think." %-)

I have had two classes on critical thinking. I understood the concepts better than either of the teachers. I definitely understood the subject better than the one who gave me an A- because she didn't like me. She's one of the reasons I only have a 3.88 GPA, and everyone I talked to who was in her class agreed that she not only didn't understand critical thinking, but she was both arbitrary and stupid. Many of us pledged to not to step into her classroom again.

I'm very certain some people find college an exhilirating experience where they learn new ways of thinking. Yet I think it's wrong to assume that's the only way to learn that. I also think there's a certain hubris to people who work in higher education who say that--several teachers have said that to me, and I have to restrain the urge to spit whenever I hear it.

Some of the sharpest, clearest-thinking people I know never went to college, and some of the dullest I've ever met have Master's degrees. I have not learned "how to think" from any of my teachers. In fact, I hate to call most of them teachers because, aside from the math teacher, none of them have taught me a damned thing.

I know that some degree programs obviusly teach you something. I said that about the hard sciences, and I probably should have included accounting, and law--everything I've heard about law school is that it's exhilirating, and is about almost nothing but thinking hard and learning lots--and you either learn the material and learn how to think, or you probably wash out. Ditto medicine.

But damn, there are so many undergrad degrees where I just think, "there's nothing here you can't learn in High School, or on your own." Ditto for a ton of the classes.

I'm on Trinity's side on this. And Fred's. %-)

Frankly, I think I could do a better job teaching Math than your teacher did!

I agree mostly with Dean.

Especially, since I am witness to what he has learned from College...I daresay he's "taught" his instructors more than they taught him.

I, on the other hand, learned lots but I was the Frugal Anarchist. Since I was not paying, I bummed through college taking "only" what I wanted to learn and I rarely took the "required" crap.

I left my university of choice with a 4.0 GPA. I suspect if I went back and took the "required" classes that I'm short - I'd have a helluva degree.
[I double majored Biology & Chemistry with a double minor in Russian and Polish (languages).]

Dean's on my side on something? **looks out window**...I don't see any pigs flying out there. :P

When attending undergraduate school in Kalamazoo, MI the students I found with the most time on their hands were the journalism students working on the school paper. I barely had time to get everything done while covering the crime beat for the school paper. But those j students had the entire afternoons to goof off.

Some of them could write, either. My editor sometimes edited errors INTO my articles. Guess who was blamed for them? Surprise! ME! I tried to explain but just gave up since my editor obviously disliked what I said.

Rosemary, I invite you to come and teach math at Miami University. I would enjoy watching. grin We have a pretty healthy math program here.

Dean, I believe the mistake in your position is that you are implying there is some sort of generic defect or lack in college degrees. You are over-simplifying.

Things to take into account are the school, the division, the major, the instructor, and (God forbid!) the student. A highly intelligent student at a community college taking a course taught by a newbie right out of school in (say) English or Business will have a vastly different experience than a more typical (eg normal) student majoring in electronics at the University of Cincinnati or UK.

So, to say that "college is a waste" or "they can't teach me anything I can't learn on my own" generically is plain wrong.

Trinity, when people speak of "learning to think" in terms of college the word "critically" is subsumed, at least in my experience. Perhaps you have found an exception to the rule, but that's what it is: an exception. Dean is correct in pointing out that some majors are more demanding than others, but (again) to criticize colleges generically displays poor reasoning.

Dean: yes, they do learn a lot more than that. Some course descriptions from here at Miami for journalism: News Writing and Reporting I, Basic communication techniques with emphasis given to news values, reporting, and writing. News Writing and Reporting II, Theory and practice in gathering and writing news of public affairs. Copy Editing and Make-up, Basic course in editing with emphasis on newspaper copy editing and headline writing. Introduction to techniques of newspaper layout. Etc, etc. There's a lot more where that came from. So journalism (as opposed to say, post-modernist retextual analysis of deconstructionist feminist literature for left-handed neoconservatives) is a real discipline. I don't claim that all journalism majors are created equal, merely that generic conclusions are invalid.

Oh, and Dean: you forgot a very basic aspect of journalism: research. It takes a lot more than the ability to sling words around to write a good news story.

Casey: Why don't you read Page Minder's article? The one that started this discussion? She's a real working journalist and she came to the conclusion long ago that almost all the best journalists she's worked with did not major in journalism. She also relates how some of the most incompetent journalists she ever worked with had both undergrad and graduate degrees in journalism.

As for learning: generically speaking, there are very few subjects which I would not be able to learn better on my own than I would in a classroom. In fact, I have yet to come across one, although I'm sure it must exist somewhere.

How can I say that? Because there is not one subject--no, not a single one--that I've studied in my entire life so far (I'm 36), going all the way back to FIRST GRADE, in which I have not learned far more on my own than I did in the classroom. Period.

Maybe there are subjects where I must have the class--I just haven't run across one yet.

By the way, I'm not attending community college. I'm at a four-year university, thanks. ;-)

Regarding my wife's background: I'll let her answer you. But frankly, pal, she's probably better at math in general than you are. And yes, I know what you're majoring in. ;-)

I took two semesters of math, and I learned about 50% studying on my own, 35% from my wife, 10% from a math tutor, and about 5% from the jerk (and he was a jerk) who was teaching the class.

In fact, during the last few weeks of class I stopped even listening to the teacher. I just sat in back and read the book and did the homework. I'd ask my wife to help with anything I didn't understand, and occasionally talked to the volunteer tutors at school. My stress levels went way down, and I started learning a lot more, once I started ignoring the jerk teaching the class. (Who, by the way, had degrees in physics and astronomy.)

So, hell, 5% is much too generous. I learned maybe 1% from the classroom experience. It was far more of a distraction than anything else.

As I say, though, I have no doubt college is a wonderful experience for some people.

"Rosemary, I invite you to come and teach math at Miami University. I would enjoy watching. grin We have a pretty healthy math program here."

I would enjoy doing that, you'd definitely learn something. I honestly like doing that kind of thing. In my college days, I tutored Engineering students in Calculus for beer. ;-)

Wayne State University in MI, also, has a VERY healthy Math program. But, shitty teachers exist everywhere - if you haven't come across one - count your blessings...it will happen eventually.

"Oh, and Dean: you forgot a very basic aspect of journalism: research. It takes a lot more than the ability to sling words around to write a good news story."

Have you read a paper or news magazine, lately?

Is research something NEW they've started teaching journalism students???

I definitely agree with those that believe that, in general, the less objective subjects (journalism, anthropology, etc.) are oftentimes less difficult than the more objective ones (my C programming class from last semester, for example). Partially because the subjective subjects depend a lot on the student's opinion, and it's rather hard to judge the value of an opinion (and you wouldn't want to hurt the student's feelings by putting down his beliefs anyway), whereas other fields require facts; I also think a lot of it has to do with the far, far, FAR left leaning of a lot of the liberal arts professors. I'm double-majoring in history and English, and there's a definite difference in the standards expected in my history classes (dates and evidence) and English one (everyone's getting really good at BSing their way out of book reports on books they haven't read).

I'm majoring in English, not because I've learned anything from the teachers (I haven't) but because I'm a lot more likely to actually practice writing if I have someone set a deadline for me than if I just work on a story when I feel like it. I really need the practice, and being graded on timely submissions of assignments helps me stop procrastinating. If you want an example of the average English professor, here's my Advanced Exposition teacher, who is a really sweet and interesting person, but really has no business teaching anything about literature:

http://texfiles.blogspot.com/

Notice the sloppy writing and the way her standards of defining "good poetry" differ quite a bit from those of anyone who hasn't had good, ol' fashioned common sense beaten out of them by a decade of a modern education.

My history classes tend to vary a lot more in quality. For example, my favorite professor is Dr. Palmer, who expects us to write six- or seven-page in-class papers, all chock-full of hard facts and dates and names and places, and he has a wonderful sense of humor to boot.

On the other end of the spectrum is Dr. Morris, who's a Canadian teaching U.S. History, despite the fact that he seems to utterly despise all things American. First he had us read "The Monkey-Wrench Gang", which advocates *eco-terrorism* -- ECO-TERRORISM! -- then he spent about three days ranting and raving about how eeeeeevil Bush was when the Iraq war first broke out. Needless to say, I didn't learn much American history. Also needless to say, my parents are rather upset that they're paying for me to be indocrinated into far-left ideology.