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2012-04-04 16:21:17
Pochsy
Artifice of Eternity
+702|5762|Toronto

Uzique wrote:

It's kinda like saying you should give all tenants the opportunity of living in their own place without any guarantee in place that they can pay 12 months' rent.
Yeah, except it's not, because universities are not giving everyone the chance to attend, they're giving the most promising students the chance to attend, regardless of their finances. We trade the guarantee of completion for the opportunity to graduate the best students. And no, there is not a top 5% that is all equal and should all be subject to an extra level of selection criteria.
The shape of an eye in front of the ocean, digging for stones and throwing them against its window pane. Take it down dreamer, take it down deep. - Other Families
2012-04-04 16:49:23
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689
Well as I said, the funding situation here is dire so that obviously means, for whatever reason and for whatever blame, that most students that are intending to self-finance will have to provide some proof of it. It'll be a waste of everyone's time and resources if a student with no prospects or hopes of self-financing attempts to accept a place. It's an expensive, long, hard slog to get a PhD so they obviously want to try and guarantee the chances of completion and minimize the drop-out rate. Also, of course, they want their fucking college and tuition fees to be paid on time. Supervisor needs his cash-money, yo. It's unfair and I can't defend it... hell, I'm at the receiving end of the shit-deal.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
2012-04-04 18:14:35
nukchebi0
Пушкин, наше всё
+387|6542|New Haven, CT

Ilocano wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

Ilocano wrote:


No, this is the problem.  A society of entitlement, made through loans to those who should never have gone to college.
Society of entitlement old man spiel okay.

I think you may have misunderstood what I meant. I think our education system should be designed in a way that people of lower socioeconomic standing have an opportunity for genuine advancement through higher education. As I have posted, that is not the case now.
What are you talking about?  Be smart, household income less than $100K, free ride at Harvard.  There are kids going into my son's private high school with mediocre grades getting half their tuition paid for via financial aid.

It is entitlement when smart kids from families who can afford to pay for the best education get shafted by mediocre students with parents who just got by.
You aren't getting a free ride anywhere unless you make less than 60,000, and that is only if you have assets consistent with your income level and get into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford. Very few kids can bank on such generous financial aid.
2012-04-04 18:16:50
Pochsy
Artifice of Eternity
+702|5762|Toronto
Nuk, I'm curious, how much do you actually pay for a year at Yale?
The shape of an eye in front of the ocean, digging for stones and throwing them against its window pane. Take it down dreamer, take it down deep. - Other Families
2012-04-05 02:30:13
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6324|eXtreme to the maX

Cheeky_Ninja06 wrote:

Didnt realise it was apportioned to the top x% with the costs and quality maintained by the government though. I was not aware that people from rich backgrounds were refused entry because they weren't in the top %.
IIRC...

~5-10%, of the school-leaving population went on to University, places and fees were effectively capped by the govt. and both were kept low, there were no superstar academics back then, or at least not on superstar wages.
Fees were paid by govt, living expenses by local govt - with some clawback if your parents earned above a certain amount. Living expenses were enough to live on, barely, forget running a car or taking taxis for example.

Sending someone to university cost the govt barely more than paying them dole and housing benefit, if at all. Thats how low the costs were.

Maybe another 5-10% who wanted further study but didn't have good enough grades went on to Polytechnics to do more business-focused study.
Also funded by the govt but at a lower rate and usually a two year course.

Bear in mind that at that time only ~20-30% of people even went as far as A-Level, A-Levels were harder back then, the remainder went straight into work or worked and continued to study part time.

Now A levels are too easy, degrees are too easy, everyone thinks they're going to get a degree and be a manager.
And Universities are profit centres for god knows what.

I don't think the govt should pay for high-falutin 'academia' just because, but if an advanced education can be provided at a low cost, and it can, then it should be given to a reasonable proportion of the top students who want to do it.
Some high-level education and research is nationally and socially useful, some isn't - those people can go to a private college and pay if thats what they want to do.
Most nations don't need an elite who have studied classics, the country shouldn't be paying for it.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2012-04-05 03:06:43)

Fuck Israel
2012-04-05 05:55:21
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689

Dilbert_X wrote:

Now A levels are too easy, degrees are too easy, everyone thinks they're going to get a degree and be a manager.
And Universities are profit centres for god knows what.

I don't think the govt should pay for high-falutin 'academia' just because, but if an advanced education can be provided at a low cost, and it can, then it should be given to a reasonable proportion of the top students who want to do it.
Some high-level education and research is nationally and socially useful, some isn't - those people can go to a private college and pay if thats what they want to do.
Most nations don't need an elite who have studied classics, the country shouldn't be paying for it.
I disagree with your point about having knowledge and culture, but there you go: you're an inveterate empiricist and scientist, I'm a high-falutin' classics-type that thinks having knowledge of such things refines your character (and refines the national character, too). It's good to be familiar with tradition and I think culture is what divides the money-earning bourgeoisie engineers from the people of actual taste and wealth that run the country. It's a subtle division but it's a social division nonetheless and has been for as long as liberal democracy has been around. I know you'll never agree with the inherent elitism and snobbism in such a thing - but then again how could you, you're on the butt-end of it. More so than this little statement-of-fact about class stratification in education (viz. the toffs do the subjects the layman hates), I'm big on the humanistic ideal of education. I think if everyone had received a well-delivered humanist education (i.e. in the classics, literature, philosophy, as well as in basic maths and science, as well as good grammar and rhetoric) then the world would be a lot more civilized a place. I think it improves someone's character an immense amount to be exposed to the great font of knowledge that the Western tradition has to offer. It sounds very idealistic, and it is... but this sort of willing optimism has had great results in the past: just look at the grammar school system (now gutted) in the UK: it offered working class people the chance to enter a school that would give them a classical education. The result? Many well-educated working class people, rising swiftly through the social and class ranks: entering government, becoming well-esteemed Professors themselves, becoming leaders of industry, etc. It does work, whether or not you like your Dickens, Dilbert.

I also disagree to some extent with the blanket statement that "A-Levels are too easy, degrees are too easy". What has happened since the 1980's, instead, is that New Labour has taken control of higher-education and made absolutely everything quantized and performance based. Every school has had strict 'targets' put in place, everything has been mapped to an arbitrary and capricious (not to say publicly available and socially damaging) league table, and now everyone is working towards some sort of measured, statistical 'improvement' in education. The result? "Gaming the system". A-Levels aren't easier - schools have just had two decades of practicising at getting good at them. And at the expense of everything else. The kids getting A-Levels today aren't inherently more dumb than you were 20 years ago (though I'm sure that's a comfortable fiction for you to have), it's just that their school courses literally focus on how to pass the exam with top grades for 2 years, nonstop. A-Level courses now are basically delivered as revision for the exams, from day one, for two whole years. You learn what the exam requires of you and you spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on mastering exam technique. Normal, well-rounded education fails. The result? The vast majority of kids that get sterling A-Level results (i.e. those at the expensive private schools most well-equipped at delivering Oxbridge-entry level A-Level results, like some sort of conveyor belt of excellence-- and yes, that is an oxymoron) fail miserably at University. Like my earlier quote about Ivy-league graduates attending Oxbridge, it's mostly "sink or swim" and a vast number, sadly, sink. They just haven't been equipped with the skills or good general knowledge that they should have: focussing solely on 2 exam texts for 2 years will do this to a person (in the case of my English class, I'd say a third of the private-school kids failed miserably and were visibly distraught about this; something mama and pater could not pay to fix). Perversely, now in 2012 you have the current minister, Gove, saying he wants to give the Universities themselves the job of setting A-Level curricula... because Universities are now vocally complaining that most students with the requisite AAA A-level results are still pretty dim. No surprises there. People have been paying £20k/year for private schools to inculcate their kids with good A-Level results for 2 decades. So it's not that they are 'too easy', per se, it's that they have become the sole and only focus of education, at the expense of all the other meat and sustenance.

It's the same story with universities... well, a certain portion of them. The ex-polytechnics and the middle-to-lower tier universities. They are also trying to "game the system" with their league-table statistics, e.g. student drop-out rate (= retain shitty students), graduate pass-rate (= pass shitty students), proportion of students who gain a 2:1 degree (= endemic grade inflation), and so on. You get the idea. It's all down to the evil of publicly drafted and disseminated league tables and the like, coupled with a consumer ethos that has developed under neoliberalism and expensive marketized education (yes that's a big gambit for a sentence, take some time to soak it in). People being charged a lot, simply, want value for money. The result is that the middle-to-lower rank universities simply cannot compete with the same 30 or so 'top' universities that have dominated the system for time immemorial (well, since pre-1900). There are a few modern universities that have risen to star-status and are now part of the elite, but unfortunately most of the converted-polytechnics are still better considered as glamorous vocational-training centres with degree-granting powers. It undermines the value of the degree qualification and it leads to statements such as "degrees are far too easy". On the contrary, a 2:1 or a 1:1 from a top university still means as much as it did in your day Dilbert, just as much as it did pre-WW2. Cambridge haven't changed their Tripos. The statistics do not lie: the top universities are not grade-inflating or graduating any more people with top-class degrees than they were 25, 50, or 100 years ago. The statement "degrees are too easy" only applies to the lower-half of universities... because they are too easy to get into, and most of their courses are worthless. However I do feel this little inconsistency in the quality of degrees is ironed out by a very discriminating and elitist graduate job market.

Last edited by Uzique (2012-04-05 06:03:42)

libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
2012-04-05 06:06:44
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6324|eXtreme to the maX
If the 'knowledge and 'culture' ' is in any way useful then fine.

I see no use for classics, most history and so on, Oxbridge snobbery is feeble and holding the country back.

If you're complaining about tick-the-box pointless education towards A level grades without any 'meat and sustenence' then look right there - a pointless and useless degree which only has value because it lets you into an elite club is as stupid as the chinless wonders who sail into govt because daddy bought them a place and they went to the right drinking clubs.

The kids getting A-Levels today aren't inherently more dumb than you were 20 years ago
Didn't say they were, they have been through a less challenging education system though.
Fuck Israel
2012-04-05 06:17:21
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689
Dilbert I think you have a very superficial and facile grasp of what a Classics education entails, and what skills it gives a person. It's not just all reading Homer in Ancient Greek and looking at bits of archaeological debris from a field outside Norwich. It teaches you analytical skills, powerful rhetoric, excellent writing and technique, touches upon civics and public philosophy, etc. The same for History, really. I'm not defending these courses or saying they should get all the jobs, but what I am saying is that the way you continuously talk about them as if they're worthless, easy degrees taken only by pedants that like memorizing historical dates is just, simply, wrong. Again, it's one of those convenient warm-blanket fictions that science types like to wrap themselves in so they can self-validate and feel like they're doing something so much more demanding than of those nimby dimwits. The reason a Classics education has historically been an entry-point into public service here in the UK is because it's considered intellectually rigorous, very demanding, and instils a person with a sense of civic history and 'tradition' that is obviously much sought-after in the dark wooden corridors of the Foreign Office and such like. Do I think it is "holding the country back" as you say? Not really. What do you propose? Kids that graduated from ex-polytechnics with 'vocational' degrees in "Politics" that required BBC at A-Level should be running the country? Whether or not you agree with the elite's chosen subject, the fact is that they're still taking them at extremely demanding Universities and are still proving their intelligence.

At the end of the day they are difficult degrees: to pass them (from an elite institution) is difficult, too. Seeing as for most people and their career the degree is only a statement about capability and potential and so on and so forth, I don't know why out of all the courses in the world you're taking such objection to Classics, History, etc. Mostly all academic degrees involve 3/4 years of esoteric, academic learning that will never find practical application. However they graduate bright students (and exceptionally bright ones, too) that can seemingly turn their hand to any career in business/politics. I think the bit about "daddy getting them a job" is a hangover and a bit of a class-bias you have from the 1980's or something. I don't think that's really the way it is nowadays.

Last edited by Uzique (2012-04-05 06:20:35)

libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
2012-04-05 06:22:33
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689
Anyway Dilbert this line of discussion and mini-rant by you is very old fashioned and out of date now... all the people being fast-tracked into positions of power and wealth do PPE at Oxford, which really is more of a mickey-mouse degree deserving derision. Classics is now mostly just an academic interest for academic types, it has very low graduate employment rates. PPE is the new establishment passport, and it has none of the rigour or serious deep scholarship that Classics or History at least does. So I think your class and education bias is a little misdirected.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
2012-04-05 06:26:57
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6324|eXtreme to the maX
Most degrees teach analytical skills, how to write, dur, and they do it while teaching something useful, not entirely irrelevant to the modern world.
Thesis writing in any field is held to exactly the same standards as in the artsy-fartsy degrees, you don't need to study dead languages to learn how to write a speech or frame an argument, almost any subject will do.

The Foreign Office is the epitome of the tick-the-box Oxbridge educated nitwits with their self-serving snobbery maintaining a cosy club in the upper reaches of govt. Well done.

The parallel is the US Ivy League, you'll be suggesting next that it is important that the American govt should do most of their recruiting from there because the degrees are just so much better
Fuck Israel
2012-04-05 06:29:17
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5577|London, England

Robert Moses wrote:

My conclusions on this difficult question of democracy versus education in the civil service are these:

In a sense it is a cruel thing to set up class distincitions -- even if they only be intellectual...

But where does our sympathy lead us? Can the state repair the defects of heredity or of early education? Can it endow the average individual with the intelligence, acuteness and cultivation which economic exigencies have denied him?...

There should be no social bar to promotion from the lowest to the highest place -- but let us not fool ourselves. When we have made every possible provision for the encouragement of early promise, when we have prepared every child as fr as possible for its suitable vocation, the subordinate employees of the government... who are fit to rise above the ranks will be few and far between.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Broker- … 0394720245

That's what the two of you sound like. Are either of you descended from aristocracy? No? Ok then. Uzi, for all your pretension, if you had lived when that was written you would've lived and died as a low level clerk. Please stop with the fucking snobbery. It's boorish and boring.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
2012-04-05 06:38:35
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689
Haha Jay how do you know anything about my family history? Low-level clerks? Funny and completely irrelevant. Though I suppose even those descended from low-level clerks have it better than those from deadbeat alcoholics, right? And the world keeps on turning...

The fact is that 'the establishment' will always have elite schools and will always have a social code and requirements for entry. They will always go to exclusive schools and will take subjects that most people don't see the point of - they are interested in a different sort of education and culture to the man that wants something 'useful' to 'make a living' from. Making a living is hardly their prime interest, is it? Complaining about it is pointless, because that entire establishment isn't going to vanish overnight. We're not going to have a Reign of Terror in 2012 to kill off everyone with a trace of blue blood in them. And Dilbert, what you're doing really is running with that class prejudice and dismissing an entire academic discipline. The study of Classics and History pre-dates the British landed gentry using them as passports to good civil service jobs. It's incredibly silly to dismiss them as 'pointless' or 'easy' degrees because a certain sub-section of society encourage their kids to go and do them as some sort of socio-cultural rite of passage. What about all the kids from working-class backgrounds doing Classics/History at somewhere like Oxford? Are they incredibly dim, as well? Perhaps they just have an interest in a hardcore academic subject?

Last edited by Uzique (2012-04-05 06:41:05)

libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
2012-04-05 06:44:31
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689
Jay your class angst is really ridiculous. Do you want me to PM you a family tree or something? Will that make you feel better or worse? your incessant need to try and deny people a class-status or heritage higher than your own is tiring. Neither me or Dilbert are implicating ourselves or our personal backgrounds in this discussion. Then you dive in with some "you are both peasants! stfu!" talk. Misguided.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
2012-04-05 06:45:44
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5577|London, England
I wasn't trying to be insulting, simply stating facts.

You've worked hard in school yes? You're proud of it. Good. You earned it. You earned your place in grad school. From there you can go on to do whatever you want really. Go become a solicitor and/or a politician.

My entire point is that a persons father is and should be irrelevant. You've earned what you have (with help from said father), don't fall into the trap of the snob that needs to create artificial distinctions in order to justify and maintain his place in society. Dilbert is bitching because your country has become more democratic. You are the living embodyment of that democratization in action. Be proud of it. Don't try to outsnob him. He's a loner ex-pat that gets off on annoying people.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
2012-04-05 06:47:37
Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5577|London, England

Uzique wrote:

Jay your class angst is really ridiculous. Do you want me to PM you a family tree or something? Will that make you feel better or worse? your incessant need to try and deny people a class-status or heritage higher than your own is tiring. Neither me or Dilbert are implicating ourselves or our personal backgrounds in this discussion. Then you dive in with some "you are both peasants! stfu!" talk. Misguided.
The aristocratic snobbery is just about the most off-putting personality possible for Americans. It really has nothing to do with class angst.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
2012-04-05 06:57:03
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689
Actually my position is a little more complicated than that. Whilst I have earned my own position in society and won my own scholarships and whatnot, I had a privileged education. I went to one of the most selective, snobby institutions in the world for perpetuating existing class barriers - an English public school. I had a decent start in life and my family are far from 'low-level clerks' (low level clerks were the start of the lower-middle suburban class in the 1900's... my family are not suburban accountants). I've talked above about people that have a good start in private school and then drop-out at University level because they had a free-ride up to that point and couldn't cut it anymore. It was part of my overarching point about degrees not "being any easier". Elite universities remain and their degree-awarding powers are still as discerning. I'm defending the subjects he 'hates' as worthy and difficult because I've taken one of them, and I know it's difficult. I've taken one of them alongside a class of people boasting the unenviable statistic of having one of the highest % of privately-educated students of any UK university. I've witnessed many of my peers drop-out or get a very average-to-mediocre degree.

I'm defending universities and academia here, not the class system. I know there's a certain amount of inevitability in class distinction. As Macbeth pointed out in the OP of this thread, you in America quite fittingly have one based on income-gaps. Over here we have a class of people with voices much different from any other class that learn Ancient Latin and Greek at school instead of French and German and then go to read subjects at university that nobody else could as-easily read because of this prior education (e.g. Classics). They exist in their own sphere. Trying to discredit the entire academic pursuit of Classics as a result of class-angst is silly and, again, misguided. The most snobbish universities still only have about 35-40% privately educated peoples, total. That's a majority of state educated people... people descended from "low-level clerks", no doubt. You can't really say an entire subject is shit because trends point towards class-x going for subject-y more than others. That's like saying all sciences are for proles because Science and Math are traditionally seen as ways for working class people to better themselves and get a good, practical job working with numbers (i.e. low-level clerks) or science (i.e. industry). It's an unwieldy statement and it's best to try and divorce feelings of class from an academic pursuit that has existed for much much much longer than any extant class-system.

I can't defend the class system or basic education system in the UK without being hypocritical; however I can defend the university system as something that still has difficulty, merit, and still separates the wheat from the chaff (whether it's a state educated or privately educated wheat, the university system does not care).

Last edited by Uzique (2012-04-05 07:10:59)

libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
2012-04-05 07:48:18
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6324|eXtreme to the maX

Jay wrote:

Dilbert is bitching because your country has become more democratic.
Its become less democratic, duh.
He's a loner ex-pat that gets off on annoying people
I'm a citizen, not an ex-pat, enough with your class snobbery. Nor am I fat.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2012-04-05 07:49:57)

Fuck Israel
2012-04-05 07:58:08
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6324|eXtreme to the maX

Uzique wrote:

Trying to discredit the entire academic pursuit of Classics as a result of class-angst is silly and, again, misguided.
Just saying that but for the class system pretty well no-one would be studying those, and other, subjects which have no practical application.
Its a moronic and self-perpetuating system, just as it would be if the study of ancient agricultural processes were the fast track to a cushy job in the civil service.

Why not do your PhD on the efficiency of medieval plows? I'm sure you could find enough academic rigour there to keep you occupied for a good decade.
Fuck Israel
2012-04-05 08:00:39
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689
Silly anti-academic Dilbert. I've been gone 4 months and you still haven't got yourself a new argument? Poor show, fella.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
2012-04-05 09:22:48
Cheeky_Ninja06
Member
+52|6951|Cambridge, England

Uzique wrote:

I also disagree to some extent with the blanket statement that "A-Levels are too easy, degrees are too easy". What has happened since the 1980's, instead, is that New Labour has taken control of higher-education and made absolutely everything quantized and performance based. Every school has had strict 'targets' put in place, everything has been mapped to an arbitrary and capricious (not to say publicly available and socially damaging) league table, and now everyone is working towards some sort of measured, statistical 'improvement' in education. The result? "Gaming the system". A-Levels aren't easier - schools have just had two decades of practicising at getting good at them. And at the expense of everything else. The kids getting A-Levels today aren't inherently more dumb than you were 20 years ago (though I'm sure that's a comfortable fiction for you to have), it's just that their school courses literally focus on how to pass the exam with top grades for 2 years, nonstop. A-Level courses now are basically delivered as revision for the exams, from day one, for two whole years. You learn what the exam requires of you and you spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on mastering exam technique. Normal, well-rounded education fails. The result? The vast majority of kids that get sterling A-Level results (i.e. those at the expensive private schools most well-equipped at delivering Oxbridge-entry level A-Level results, like some sort of conveyor belt of excellence-- and yes, that is an oxymoron) fail miserably at University. Like my earlier quote about Ivy-league graduates attending Oxbridge, it's mostly "sink or swim" and a vast number, sadly, sink. They just haven't been equipped with the skills or good general knowledge that they should have: focussing solely on 2 exam texts for 2 years will do this to a person (in the case of my English class, I'd say a third of the private-school kids failed miserably and were visibly distraught about this; something mama and pater could not pay to fix). Perversely, now in 2012 you have the current minister, Gove, saying he wants to give the Universities themselves the job of setting A-Level curricula... because Universities are now vocally complaining that most students with the requisite AAA A-level results are still pretty dim. No surprises there. People have been paying £20k/year for private schools to inculcate their kids with good A-Level results for 2 decades. So it's not that they are 'too easy', per se, it's that they have become the sole and only focus of education, at the expense of all the other meat and sustenance.
This is spot on. Having gone to highest achieving state funded college (in terms of successful oxbridge applicants) I feel I have some knowledge of the problem :p

My 2nd history lesson in my 1st year of A levels was "lets look at an exam question, tomorrow I want you to bring in a draft answer for this question" fast forward 2 years and I got 100% in more than half of my A level exams.

I wouldn't say it was easy but I had over 2 years of practice and feedback on how to write an essay for an exam question. The subject matter was there as something to expand your answer with, not to give you an indepth understanding of the events. I have expressed that poorly but you get the idea. I used to fall out with my class because I wanted to debate matters that did not even come up in the exam with the lecturer. There is definitely the attitude of its not in the exam then why are we spending time on it?

In comparison my degree is an absolute joke. I am essentially spending 5 years in a university full of people that were too thick to do a full time degree. It is mind numbingly depressing but I have no debt, I have a good job and I have really pretty good career prospects.

I could have got into one of the top universities and continued my "education" but tbh I was completely sick of the taught to pass exams approach of the subjects and besides I would have had a whole heap of debt and very little to show for it at the end of my 3 years.

You can have a hell of a lot of drunken parties for £30k.

Last edited by Cheeky_Ninja06 (2012-04-05 09:24:33)

2012-04-05 09:28:56
eleven bravo
Member
+1,399|5478|foggy bottom
i noticed professors who got their phd's at shitty schools tend to make their course work harder than profs who went to better schools
Tu Stultus Es
2012-04-05 09:46:49
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689
You must have gone to a shitty school then eleven b. The hardest markers (and also the best guides) here at my school are the majority that got their PhD's and cut their teeth at Oxbridge. You can tell which ones didn't. They're far more relaxed and their lessons aren't as good.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/
2012-04-05 15:06:58
Ilocano
buuuurrrrrrppppp.......
+341|6886

Uzique wrote:

I disagree with your point about having knowledge and culture, but there you go: you're an inveterate empiricist and scientist, I'm a high-falutin' classics-type that thinks having knowledge of such things refines your character (and refines the national character, too). It's good to be familiar with tradition and I think culture is what divides the money-earning bourgeoisie engineers from the people of actual taste and wealth that run the country. It's a subtle division but it's a social division nonetheless and has been for as long as liberal democracy has been around. I know you'll never agree with the inherent elitism and snobbism in such a thing - but then again how could you, you're on the butt-end of it. More so than this little statement-of-fact about class stratification in education (viz. the toffs do the subjects the layman hates), I'm big on the humanistic ideal of education. I think if everyone had received a well-delivered humanist education (i.e. in the classics, literature, philosophy, as well as in basic maths and science, as well as good grammar and rhetoric) then the world would be a lot more civilized a place. I think it improves someone's character an immense amount to be exposed to the great font of knowledge that the Western tradition has to offer. It sounds very idealistic, and it is... but this sort of willing optimism has had great results in the past: just look at the grammar school system (now gutted) in the UK: it offered working class people the chance to enter a school that would give them a classical education. The result? Many well-educated working class people, rising swiftly through the social and class ranks: entering government, becoming well-esteemed Professors themselves, becoming leaders of industry, etc. It does work, whether or not you like your Dickens, Dilbert.
And yet, of all the major philanthropists, what field have most derived their wealth from?
2012-04-05 15:11:35
Ilocano
buuuurrrrrrppppp.......
+341|6886

Uzique wrote:

You must have gone to a shitty school then eleven b. The hardest markers (and also the best guides) here at my school are the majority that got their PhD's and cut their teeth at Oxbridge. You can tell which ones didn't. They're far more relaxed and their lessons aren't as good.
Depends on the field of study.  I'll take technology extension courses from an active infield Project Manager with only a BS than from some Emeritus PhD Theorist with no current tech hard experience.
2012-04-05 17:08:37
Uzique
dasein.
+2,865|6689

Ilocano wrote:

Uzique wrote:

I disagree with your point about having knowledge and culture, but there you go: you're an inveterate empiricist and scientist, I'm a high-falutin' classics-type that thinks having knowledge of such things refines your character (and refines the national character, too). It's good to be familiar with tradition and I think culture is what divides the money-earning bourgeoisie engineers from the people of actual taste and wealth that run the country. It's a subtle division but it's a social division nonetheless and has been for as long as liberal democracy has been around. I know you'll never agree with the inherent elitism and snobbism in such a thing - but then again how could you, you're on the butt-end of it. More so than this little statement-of-fact about class stratification in education (viz. the toffs do the subjects the layman hates), I'm big on the humanistic ideal of education. I think if everyone had received a well-delivered humanist education (i.e. in the classics, literature, philosophy, as well as in basic maths and science, as well as good grammar and rhetoric) then the world would be a lot more civilized a place. I think it improves someone's character an immense amount to be exposed to the great font of knowledge that the Western tradition has to offer. It sounds very idealistic, and it is... but this sort of willing optimism has had great results in the past: just look at the grammar school system (now gutted) in the UK: it offered working class people the chance to enter a school that would give them a classical education. The result? Many well-educated working class people, rising swiftly through the social and class ranks: entering government, becoming well-esteemed Professors themselves, becoming leaders of industry, etc. It does work, whether or not you like your Dickens, Dilbert.
And yet, of all the major philanthropists, what field have most derived their wealth from?
Why does this sort of fact give you pleasure? OK so some people get rich and have more money than they know what to do with. Are they winning at life because of that? Some people die uneducated but filthy rich and bequeath money to learning institutions. It's funny. My entire university was built by a guy that made millions selling quack medicine to Victorians. What a guy! Surely a better pursuit in life than knowledge!!! Ilo you seem to suck off the Asian work ethic and take some perverse pride in the fact that your kids are gonna be yet another example of the generic Asian business/engi student 101. Well, good for you I guess. I really don't see what philanthropy has to do with anything. Most major philanthropists made their money playing the markets, i.e. by doing fuck-all, or in IT. Big surprise that computing has generated a vast sum of wealth in the last 20 years! Must mean they're surely doing something better than everyone else... not.
libertarian benefit collector - anti-academic super-intellectual. http://mixlr.com/the-little-phrase/

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