<p>Actually, I’d rather government subsidize more of education–there’s no reason why HKU, the elite uni in Hong Kong has students pay something like $5500 a year while in the US we have exorbitant prices even at state unis that are at the least close to double of that. With that said, if we’re going to subsidize, we can only subsidize the best of the best; we can’t afford academically unready students at the unis. They waste their own time, resources and the education of their more prepared fellow students. </p>
<p>Yes, they need to have a way to get back on an academic track if they work at it, but by no means should they be subsidized by taxpayers UNTIL they prove they are ready to do high level work at whatever discipline and make effective contributions to whatever fields thereby enriching our technological and scientific prowess, or if they are more humanistically or artistically inclined, contribute positively to the US’s cultural capital. </p>
<p>Everyone else who can’t hack it, should be subsidized to get job and vocational training, where they can productively contribute to society, instead of majoring in subjects that while can be challenging at the elite level, are all too often dumbed down at the lower ends–including the humanities and social sciences and thereby given perfectly legitimate subjects a bad name.</p>
For everyone not familiar with the German school system I would like to point out that tracking in Germany is practically done by social class rather than by academic performance. </p>
<p>I am one of the few students who got to attend both a Hauptschule (lower-track vocational school) and a Gymnasium (the highest academic track providing a traditional liberal arts education). In my class of ~80 at the Hauptschule, not a single student had college-educated parents. On the other hand, all but 7 of the 66 seniors at the Gymnasium came from college-educated families.</p>
<p>Tracking students half-way through 4th grades has so many problems! For example, the academic performance of an elementary student depends largely on the support the student gets outside of school. (Did I mention that elementary school students in Germany spend only 3 hours a day in school?) A kid whose parents teach him/her how to read and write at home has HUGE advantage over the student whose parents don’t. </p>
<p>Families with money and social class will pay for private tutoring if necessary so that their children can pass the admission tests to the higher-level schools. Working class families, on the other hand, often choose to send their bright children to a vocational school on purpose for fear that the students would not fit in at the more intellectual schools.</p>
<p>I like the US school system so much better than the German one! For one, social class plays less of a role when you choose which classes to take. Secondly, you can mix and match classes. You could take honors-level English but non-honors college prep math. In Germany it’s all or nothing - either you manage to take a full course load of honors courses, or you drop down to vocational schools.</p>
<p>And that’s why you make exceptions for those “who can’t be pigeonholed so young.” It would be a shame for someone from the upper social class to somehow get tracked into the vocational training. “Practically” isn’t good enough. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Many times, people go to college to learn things for their own sake, and to learn how to learn, if some of you can fathom that.</p>
<p>Bigeastbeast - you shouldn’t extrapolate your own unfortunate learning preferences - and disliking your major - to everyone else. Your idea that you can replace someone’s college experience with a library card and some overdue fines is laughable. Why should anyone on this thread be taking life and career advice from someone seemingly so unhappy with their life and career? Maybe your own poisonous thoughts and negativity are your problem. Stop trying to infect others.</p>
<p>Anyways, to the other smug liberal arts-bashing people on this thread, let me tell you that I have 10 times the respect for someone who majored in theater, and 10x the respect for someone who majored in women & gender studies, than someone who majored in engineering. How did you pick which engineering subfield to study? Google which division had the highest starting salaries?</p>
<p>In high school I won all sorts of national mathematics competitions. But in college I had other interests - but never engineering. You know why? To me, engineers always seemed like glorified mechanics — glorified plumbers. That’s what they are — but with larger scale problems that require more money to be thrown at. Dilbert is a prime example of a sad sack engineer.</p>
<p>So yeah, enjoy your comfortable middle class lifestyle, your fugly wife, your stiff job, and go die in 50 years having tested the load-bearance and structural integrity of the beep-bop widget at BloodSucking Inc that nobody uses in order to reduce their costs of production.</p>
<p>That’s really not a fair assessment of what engineers do. Sure, there are plenty who do grunt work and plenty of CS code monkeys around who are probably miserable, but there are plenty of engineers, or people working with a tech background who are doing really cool things from designing the hydraulic platform used in theatres, synthesizers that are found in music studios, testing the structural integrity of bridges and roads we take for granted, to designing new implants/nanotech bots for people with heart disease etc. </p>
<p>They do a lot, and many enter the field because they genuinely are interested in biotech or processors. Don’t paint with such a broad brush. I do harbor an intense disdain however, for many of the engineers who end up doing financial industry work. What a waste of an education in EE or mechE…ugg. </p>
<p>Likewise, the liberal arts are not all created equal. Some fields are genuinely more intellectually vigorous than others…I don’t disdain liberal arts majors. I just hope that potential students of English or History take into account what sort of investment they’re making, in light of the outrageously high costs and tuition at many schools. It’s a problem that needs to be fixed, and it’s not fair, but in the meantime, be wary of taking out 100k of debt for a anthro degree, esp if you have no further use for that anthro degree…</p>
<p>something to consider. Colleges are becoming more and more like businesses- it’s not necessarily LA vs technical. </p>
<p>I think college used to be about the individual- learning for learning’s sake- the experience of independence and freedom, gaining a different perspective, challenging instead of accepting.</p>
<p>Now it’s kind of like, give us your money and you’ll get a good job after graduating, Colleges are getting rich off of the stereotype that everyone needs to go to college. And students are being exploited because of it.</p>
<p>Bigeastbeast - you shouldn’t extrapolate your own unfortunate learning preferences - and disliking your major - to everyone else. Your idea that you can replace someone’s college experience with a library card and some overdue fines is laughable. Why should anyone on this thread be taking life and career advice from someone seemingly so unhappy with their life and career? Maybe your own poisonous thoughts and negativity are your problem. Stop trying to infect others. ~ Peter parker</p>
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<p>Where did I ever say I was unhappy with my career or my life? I’ve actually said multiple times that I’m pretty luck and can’t complain at all. In fact, I even said that overall Poli Sci was best for my needs, so what the heck are you talking about?</p>
<p>seems like someone has a complex against those who were more successful and happier than he. Are you 12 years old or are you so immature that you believe that the most negative generalization of an engineer is true for everyone? Shut your god damn trap if you don’t know what you’re talking about. </p>
<p>And don’t say that you have a “well-paying job and a nice house and are not insecure” because your obviously horseshi tting us. Regular middle class folks do not have insecurity problems because other middle class folks are just like them.</p>
<p>So yeah, enjoy your comfortable middle class lifestyle, your fugly wife, your stiff job, and go die in 50 years having tested the load-bearance and structural integrity of the beep-bop widget at BloodSucking Inc that nobody uses in order to reduce their costs of production. ~ Peter Parker</p>
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<p>And exact what do you intend to do that is so much better? I take it your LA major is a ticket to upper class, with a hot wife and a super exciting job?</p>
<p>I think there is a ring of truth to that post, however bitter. A lot of people go to college and study engineering to get a piece of paper they can use to get a job that pays a lot. I’m not saying everybody in technical majors is like this - I like to think I am not - but universities are happy to play the game because it makes them more money that way.</p>
<p>As I’ve said before, I don’t have any regrets… I feel like mine was among the best of a selection of suboptimal situations. Still, I think there is a lot of improvement that can be made in higher education, and I think a lot of that improvement will come from liberalizing technical programs or from separating the technical from the liberal.</p>
<p>By the way, I apologize if my terminology is sloppy. I don’t necessarily think math or the physical/natural sciences are technical, or that CS or even engineering have to be. I do think all of these programs are, to varying degrees, currently technical or ate in danger of becoming so.</p>
<p>I also think it’s a little sad that you people have something against plumbers. Sure, they didn’t go the academic road, and they probably aren’t so sophisticated, but I’m surprised so many people who say that you learn and become cultured ‘by experience’ woul consider a plumber so low. I don’t… Different strokes. Still doesn’t mean plumbing should be taught in a university.</p>
<p>His post is wishful thinking, straight up. He even says a few things that are outright wrong. How is any other line of work so much more fulfilling, other than that it seems to be so because it gets romanticized more in the media?</p>
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<p>ha did you flag my posts in the other thread hahaha</p>
<p>I’ll tell you what I told the moderators… References to ‘tang’ (whatever that is, kids) don’t bother me, but think of the children. God, the children.</p>