DailyDirt: Hey Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone!
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
There have been a lot of discussions on the value of an education, recently. Some folks are trying to determine just what a “good education” actually means. Others are trying to justify whether higher education is really necessary for society to function adequately. Here are a few links on the topic of getting educated in the US.
- Professor X isn’t a leader of mutant superheroes — he’s an adjunct professor with lots of opinions on how college students should be taught. Perhaps a liberal arts education shouldn’t be a pre-requisite for certain high-paying professions anymore… [url]
- Peter Thiel’s foundation has picked twenty-four young adults (under 20 years old) to stop going to college. This program doesn’t prevent them from going back to school after its two-year fellowship, though. [url]
- Georgetown researchers have gathered up some stats on how much college graduates earn, over their expected careers, by major. Petroleum engineering, FTW! [url]
- Do test scores effectively evaluate the quality of a school? Are we teaching fourth-graders how to take tests? [url]
- To discover more interesting education-related content, check out what’s currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]
By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.
Filed Under: college, education, fellowship, graduates, peter thiel
Comments on “DailyDirt: Hey Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone!”
Glad I got that degree in geology!
completely off topic, but with the comments off on the relevant article ( http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110608/11014314617/rise-3d-better-worse.shtml ) i can’t comment on it there (obiviously).
no where on that page is anything about Sprint visible. (this may, of course, be regional or something for all i know)
Anyway, on a more on-topic note, the Professor X article was quite an interesting read. not that i can really do anything with that information, but it’s interesting to see the thinking.
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no where on that page is anything about Sprint visible. (this may, of course, be regional or something for all i know)
Bug… we’re working on it…
“Others are trying to justify whether higher education is really necessary for society to function adequately.”
Really? I can’t wait to see a high-tech computer world run with high school diplomas. America continues to slide into the ditch…
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you’d be surprised how much can be done by people who’s official qualifications are very low who have, none the less, actually been properly taught how to do the job for which they were hired.
most qualifications mean very little beyond that you were well suited to the environment required to gain them.
I’ve been seeing quite a few variations on this article recently, and they remind me of an Allstate insurance commercial that ran a year or so ago. In it, the black guy talks about how we’ve all come together, how we’ve all learned to make do with less, and about how we’ve all realizing what “really” matters.
Funny how a major insurance company, whose CEO’s and VP’s make millions, are essentially telling us little guys to settle for less.
Same here. An education? No… heaven forbid you actually learn something. That’s elitist! Besides, you can get a great job at Walmart without one! Work hard, and in 20 years you could even be an area manager!
Oh, and pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, the one pulling all of your levers…
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Hey, the money wasted on education can be better spent upon things like tax breaks for millionaires and invading other countries /s
over thinking
I have been lucky enough to work across the country. I have worked with people with credentials and education up the yang.
I have typically found the more educated the person the longer it takes them to actually make decisive choice. They often spend significant time analyzing things and over analyzing them. They make come up with a far better solution in the end but often the time it takes to get there is not really justified.
I also have to note that the more education the more they get paid but as my previous paragraph indicates they take longer at decision making. Not the always the best value for your money in a fast paced agile business environment.
I worked with several PhDs and after they spent a week analyzing the best solution I commented to do it a very simple way (not very efficient though). With my trusty math skills I showed the long term implement costs of mine over 20 years was equivalent to 6 hours of their billable time. There best solution (after taking into account their wages) would have a cost recovery of about 2000 years.
I have encounter many much such cases. Sometimes some people think they are just too smart. Sometimes it is more important to just get the job done.
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I don’t see the ad either. In fact, I don’t see ads on most web sites, specifically because I use a hosts file that blocks the vast majority of the domains the ads are served from. Considering that ads are one of the major annoyances on the web and one of the first things people block, asking for opinions in an ad may not be the best strategy.
I also find it interesting that you always disable the comments on these sponsored experiments. Is that to avoid the negative comments such things would inspire?
“There [Their] best solution (after taking into account their wages) would have a cost recovery of about 2000 years. I have encounter [encountered] many much [sic] such cases.”
Perhaps just a little more education might have been in order?
And perhaps there’s more to the decision than you realize? Regardless, this is little more than a repeat of the anti-elitist, anti-intellectual rhetoric I see every day on Fox.
“Be ignorant! Be free! Down with the elitist ivory tower snobs who want to tell you what to do! Elect us instead… so we can tell you what to do!!!”
Education today
Good for you! This needs to be examined.
When I was earning one of my undergraduate degrees (in EE), a Professor Raab taught for one year. His style was not what the university wanted, so only one year, but during that year, I learned more than in the other three years.
I feel so fortunate for having him for a professor during his brief stay at the university!
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It’s not about settling for less. It’s about vocational training for something called “skilled labor”.
We need welders. We needs plumbers, pipe fitters, and electrical linemen. Electricians, cable guys, people to fix gas pumps. These are COMPLETELY necessary to our way of life. They make good money (we have one electrician in my community. Do you know what he charges? Whatever he wants to.) They aren’t “careers” and you don’t get into them by going to a four year college.
I remember reading something recently about the state government of Georgia having to put building projects because they couldn’t find enough certified welders to get the work done in a reasonable amount of time.
Whether you believe it or not, civilization doesn’t revolve around a degree hanging over your keyboard, meetings over sushi lunch, and having a broadband connection on your phone so you can get hourly updates on your stocks. It does, however, require power, clean water, refined fossil fuels, safe buildings, and the people keeping all those things working. Most of these jobs don’t have a curriculum beyond hiring on at minimum wage to sweep the floors and be a gopher until you watch the guys actually working enough to know which end of a tool is the handle.
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I don’t see the ad either. In fact, I don’t see ads on most web sites, specifically because I use a hosts file that blocks the vast majority of the domains the ads are served from. Considering that ads are one of the major annoyances on the web and one of the first things people block, asking for opinions in an ad may not be the best strategy.
If you block the ads, that’s fine. But that’s why I tell you they’re there, so for people who are interested, they can unblock. If you’re not interested, don’t unblock.
I also find it interesting that you always disable the comments on these sponsored experiments. Is that to avoid the negative comments such things would inspire?
Not at all. As mentioned, we’ve done a few different such experiments, including one where we left the comments open, and in that one there was a lot of confusion as to whether or not it made more sense to comment in the ad or on the post. So since then we closed comments and it got more people to comment in the ad unit, which was the original intention. We’ll be running more experiments going forward, and one I’d like to try is where the comments reside on our site instead. We’re just learning.
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If you block the ads, that’s fine. But that’s why I tell you they’re there, so for people who are interested, they can unblock. If you’re not interested, don’t unblock.
It’s not as simple as just checking a box. If I wanted to unblock the ad, I would need to know exactly what server it’s hosted on, so that I could comment out that line from the hosts file. I suppose I have the option of simply renaming the hosts file temporarily, but then that let’s in all the other crap that I want blocked, like annoying Flash and Javascript ads. Plus either option requires a reboot to take effect.
I didn’t used to block ads because I figured that sites deserved to make whatever money they could, but then various sites started using animated ads that would open over the content, or that would redirect you to another site and make you wait 10-20 seconds before you could go back. At that point, I decided to start blocking all ads.
If Sprint wants to conduct a survey, why don’t they simply set up a site that you can link to? Why does it have to be in an ad?
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I know I would prefer to use the TechDirt comment system as opposed to the ads. I use AdBlock instead of a hosts file so turning off ads on a specific page isn’t that difficult for me. I’m just used to the TechDirt system and it makes more sense from my perspective to keep things consistent.