<story><title>Modern universities are an exercise in insanity (2018)</title><url>http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/01/modern-universities-are-exercise-in.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zamalek</author><text>The reason college is a requirement is because everyone who is in charge went to one, and believes it is necessary.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a double-edged statement. On one hand, college is correlated with success (but that may be because college peddles networking). On the other hand, they are senselessly perpetuating a perceived important of college - which may not exist (at least for disciplines outside of medicine and so forth). There is no justification for the cost, it&amp;#x27;s a very expensive printing press.&lt;p&gt;While I can understand both points of view, after my complete and utter cash grab &amp;quot;degree&amp;quot; where I learned nothing beyond what I already knew, I perceive it as a scam.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>KingOfCoders</author><text>I have studied computer science as master in Germany (Diplom) with the best possible final exam score (1,0) in databases, distributed systems, etc. That didn&amp;#x27;t help me very much with my career. I&amp;#x27;ve worked on the side in startups. That experience helped me found my first VC funded startup and helped my career later on as CTO in several companies. I&amp;#x27;m now working as a CTO coach and looking back, my university days didn&amp;#x27;t have much impact, if any at all.&lt;p&gt;Have I&amp;#x27;ve learned anything useful? Yes. Was the outcome worth 6 years? No. I would have learned the same things watching excellent Youtube (Standford, MIT, ...) videos for one year.&lt;p&gt;EY [1] has shown several years ago that university had no impact on the career of their employees and dropped that requirement.&lt;p&gt;As someone who hired and managed many people I never looked at university degrees. And I never saw a difference.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;books&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;jan&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;penguin-ditches-the-need-for-job-seekers-to-have-university-degrees&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;books&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;jan&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;penguin-ditche...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Modern universities are an exercise in insanity (2018)</title><url>http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/01/modern-universities-are-exercise-in.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zamalek</author><text>The reason college is a requirement is because everyone who is in charge went to one, and believes it is necessary.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a double-edged statement. On one hand, college is correlated with success (but that may be because college peddles networking). On the other hand, they are senselessly perpetuating a perceived important of college - which may not exist (at least for disciplines outside of medicine and so forth). There is no justification for the cost, it&amp;#x27;s a very expensive printing press.&lt;p&gt;While I can understand both points of view, after my complete and utter cash grab &amp;quot;degree&amp;quot; where I learned nothing beyond what I already knew, I perceive it as a scam.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sandworm101</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; after my complete and utter cash grab &amp;quot;degree&amp;quot; where I learned nothing beyond what I already knew, I perceive it as a scam.&lt;p&gt;Then you either didn&amp;#x27;t go to a proper school, or you didn&amp;#x27;t properly take advantage of the time.  I went to an oldschool university (in canada) followed by a US law school.  I could have slacked off an not learned much, just enough to pass, but I leveraged the resources and learned a huge amount.  I used this knowledge every day, and in fields totally unrelated to my degrees.  I had to recently read up on some radio frequency stuff for work.  I was channeling my astronomy 202 lectures.  That class was an outside elective taught by a PHD in a huge classroom, what some people would call a waste of my time.  But 20+ years later I still have the knowledge and it makes me a better employee today.</text></comment>