<p>As technology improves, the cost of obtaining information should be lowering. That has not been the trend since the rising cost of tuition is greater than inflation. Universities raise tuition in order to increase their own salaries and the salaries of professors (in order to "remain competitive") and to pay for $100 million build projects such as the Commons.</p>
<p>Face it, if you pay full sticker price for Vanderbilt (at close to $60,000 a year), you are straight-up getting scammed. These kids are not learning anything that will prepare them for real careers, not are they learning anything that has anything to do with real life. Some of the smartest and most successful people in the world never even went to college.</p>
<p>By the way, those statistics that say that college graduates earn over a million dollars more than high school graduates over a lifetime are all lies. Correlation does not mean causation. People who go to college are usually self-motivated, and these people are more successful in general and would have made more money regardless of whether or not they went to college.</p>
<p>VisionsDivine, what’s up with those college-is-a-scam posts? Have you been watching that “Why College is a Scam” video on YouTube? Just curious.</p>
<p>You’re right. Many companies don’t care about your grades. Some do. So while a high GPA is neither necessary nor sufficient for occupational success, it does lead to more options. This is also true for those who are considering law, med, or business school.</p>
<p>GPA, especially an especially high or low one, might also be indicative of one’s work ethic.</p>
<p>I don’t know where grades came to be relevant. Regardless they’re so skewed toward the top end today, that they hardly reflect work ethic in many cases. Almost everything that one learns has some relation to real life, so I don’t know where that comes from. Try telling that to engineering students (or anyone for that matter). I’m sure many would be surprised how many ways even social science/humanities oriented thinking can be applied to real life. Also, there are things called internships, job opps, and research opps that are more easily facilitated through institutions such as Vandy. These provide valuable “real-life” experience and put the teachings of the classroom into practice. Who the heck you are to judge whether students are attaining “real life” skills, I don’t know. But get a grip is all I can say. In reality, if I weren’t in college, I could be attaining the “real life” experience of being on the streets and selling drugs or something. Provided that I survive that, when I try to get my first legit job, I should probably put it on my resume. Surely that is worth so much more than Vanderbilt or any college. </p>
<p>One has to realize that the sorts of positions/jobs of desire among students at these schools do indeed require a bachelors degree. And as far as I’m concerned, a place like Vandy provides a better experience than a for-profit type or an online college in providing a “real life” learning experience. It’s not Vandy’s fault if someone chooses not to take advantage of said oppurtunities. If you choose useless courses and no supplementary experiences, it’s on you. Colleges have all of this at your disposal, but it isn’t just going to fall in your hand via magic. Anyone who expects this is an idiot and should expect to waste 225-250k or h/e much. </p>
<p>I think the concern should be whether we are even learning and retaining most of the (basically, are we learning in general?) info taught, perhaps there one has an argument. However, at least 1/2 of this burden does lie on the shoulders of the student as already explained. The institution can’t make us take our studies seriously and see the “real-life” implications (though they could and often try). </p>
<p>Also, it isn’t a scam if it’s almost free! You know, as it is for me. </p>
<p>Anyway, just call ■■■■■ and end this. Trust me, we find ways to make it worthwhile. If they wanted to start this, it should have been in a general setting and not targeted specifically to Vandy.</p>
<p>A college education is more useful than not getting a college education, without a doubt. There is no contesting that. </p>
<p>The price of many schools is probably inflated and unnecessarily high, but schools like Vanderbilt also tend very generously to the financial needs to its students, so students don’t pay more than they can. </p>
<p>If you can afford a college degree, and from a prestigious school, it’s a good investment. Of course people can get rich without a college degree. But the fact is that the vast majority of rich people have a college degree, and even what they learned in college didn’t help get them there, getting a degree gave them opportunities they wouldn’t have had otherwise.</p>
<p>You can be the smartest kid around, but chances are you don’t have the skills to just jump into entrepreneurship right after high school, and even small chance you’ll actually be successful. Interview for a good-paying job and your age/lack of degree will put you at a huge disadvantage against those who have a degree, internships, and published research under their belt. Turns out, getting wealthy takes a little more than motivation.</p>
<p>There is some truth to this in a backwards logic kind of way. Actually it can be applied to formal education in general.</p>
<p>For example, it really doesn’t matter how you did in elementary school or middle school. The only reason high school grades matter is to get into college. And the only reason college grades matter is to get a good job and/or get into grad school (and even that varies case by case). As soon as you get a job do your grades really mean anything? 10 years from now will it be a big deal if you got a 3.8 or a 2.8? Chances are it probably won’t.</p>
<p>I had this explained to me by a school superintendent by the way.</p>
<p>All that being said, I think the college experience is invaluable. Anyone who skips out on college is missing a big part of life.</p>
<p>Bernie–I agree for the most part. And college GPAs are in fact often inflated, especially in the humanities. If the average GPA of a certain major is, say, 3.4, and someone has a 3.0 or 2.9, that probably wouldn’t mean much. But if the person has a 2.0, wouldn’t you be a bit wary?</p>
<p>dtotheustin–10 years from now, it won’t matter what GPA you had; nor will your school matter. I think that’s missing the point though. What we care about are not the numbers alone, but whether these numbers will make one’s life easier.</p>
<p>Well, yeah of course a person w/a flat 2.0-2.3 is kind of screwed given how rare C grades are now. Even in harder majors/classes, most grades start w/most people getting C+/B- at tougher grading (in the sciences at least) schools (particularly private schools as public schools will typically grade and/or curve lower). So in a major w/more lenient grading, there certainly aren’t many C grades at all. If you get a GPA that would be considered good in the 50-60s, it better be in the sciences, and you better not be applying to medical school w/it.</p>
<p>Sigmaseventeen, I was thinking “Hello, I’d like to apply for the neurosurgery position.No, I did not go to med school, but I have the skills. I have been practicing on neighborhood animals.”</p>
<p>“Hello, I want to work at your pharmaceutical company as a researcher, and while I know nothing about organic chemistry, I once had an overdose”</p>
<p>Actually, with the technology these days what you really have to look out for is fake college credentials. I read an article awhile back on a fake diploma ring that got busted. Thousands and thousands of people had used them to get authentic looking transcripts and diplomas. It’s scary to think how many doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, etc. got their positions in this way.</p>
<p>Oh you poor DivineVisions. I sincerely pit you. You are so angry about not getting accepted into Vanderbilt that you feel like you have to be a ■■■■■ and talk about how much of a “scam” college is, especially Vanderbilt. And if that’s not your problem, then I’m rather scared, because you’re either extremely jealous of everyone going to Vanderbilt this fall (including yours truly) or you have serious mental issues. In fact, you remind me of a guy that I work with at my part-time job. While I’m getting raises and getting promoted while preparing for my amazing new life at Vanderbilt, this fellow attempts to insult me and call me stupid because of the fact that he’s stuck at a loser job and is desperately trying to start back to school at the local community college so that people will finally give him the attention that he’s always been dying to get.</p>
<p>Look here. We all don’t win at everything. I applied to MIT and Princeton last fall, and I didn’t get accepted to either school. Does that mean that I should go ■■■■■■■■ on forums saying how much MIT and Princeton are a scam? Of course not. The best thing you can do now is try to save the little bit of integrity that you’ve got left by leaving this forum in peace and only returning when you’ve got something REAL to talk about.</p>
<p>And by the way, college degrees from places like Vanderbilt DO matter. Try to HONESTLY consider this: if you were hiring someone to work for a Fortune 500 company and three candidates applied for the same position with the same college GPA, who would you hire: a community college graduate, a state-run college graduate, or a Vandy graduate? You know the answer.</p>
<p>rightperspective, VisionsDivine does act like an angry, rejected applicant. Doesn’t really make sense if he is a Vandy kid, as he claims. However, if he is, well…huh?</p>
<p>Regardless, his pitiable summary of YouTube’s “Why College is a Scam: Proof college education is the largest scam in U.S. history!” tickles me…he he!</p>
You know, as it is for me. </p>