<p>The military can help kids find their place in the world, and provide a steady stream of income. Do I think that the practices that recruiters use can be unethical and target lower income kids, yes. Does this change the fact that it is a good option to consider, no.</p>
<p>It obviously has disadvantages, and people can come out of it with all sorts of injuries and problems with PTSD, or even not come out at all, and it should be considered carefully, but the military is right for some people who do not know what they want to do with their life, because it teaches discipline, a job, and in many cases, a vocation that they can use after their service is up.</p>
<p>I was troubled by the suggestion of using the military to find oneself also. I do agree with Tony that the military will teach discipline and job skills. I don’t deny that it has been very beneficial to many.
I do feel the PRIMARY reason to join the military should be to offer service to your country and not find yourself. College might be an expensive transitional experience, but young people who enter the military might very well be in active combat with the potential loss of life or lifelong injury. It shouldn’t be the "go-to"option for those who can’t afford college or didn’t do well enough in high school.</p>
<p>It would be nice if we had a community service program for youth in place that would offer some of the combined benefits of military service and residential college life.
I do want to say I have great respect for the military. It just should be entered in with mindfullness of the potential sacrifice a young person may be called to make for our country.</p>
<p>Which begs the question - are they learning those essential life skills, whatever they may be? I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, learning how to chug double-digit beers in a row without passing out is not an essential life skill. But that is what many college students seem to spend inordinate amounts of time learning.</p>
<p>Again, I would like to make a point. There is a lower percentage of people in poverty today as compared to 1960. And compared to Europe, which some like for its system regarding college admissions, America typically has a lower unemployment rate. I don;t know if this proves that the “degree inflation” is actually a positive, or if they happened on the side, but I think it is important for people to note that.</p>
<p>Re: post 184 / sakky:
You keep dwelling on the students who are wasting time and partying their days away in college. As in all of life, there are those who goof off and don’t make the most of opportunities. There are plenty of college students who are having amazing four years at college learning in and outside the classroom and growing exponentially in many ways and making all sorts of contacts and starting upon a journey in life. Are there kids who spend a huge amount of time partying? Sure. There are many more who don’t, and who really are accomplishing things academically, extracurricularly, socially, and personally. I know my kids had fabulous and fruitful college experiences worth every dime and they are surely not alone in this regard.</p>
<p>Quite the interesting anecdote which seems to run counter to the general ethos of engineering education, which is to encourage cutthroat competitiveness amongst the students, particularly during the weeders. Sure, engineering students could benefit from each other’s knowledge and could carry you through adverse situations - but the fact is, they often times would not, because they know that doing so would hurt them on the curve. Weeder curves inflict forced failure such that somebody has to fail, and better that it be you rather than me. Sad but true. </p>
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<p>Nor was this anything even close to my experience, or the experience of the vast majority of engineers I know, for the simple matter is that you never completely understood the material in time for the exam. The mean score of engineering exams generally tended to hover around 50%, and sometimes as low as 20-30%, with a score of 60-70% being considered to be amongst the very best of the class. But what that means is that even the very best students failed to understand vast swaths of the exam material. Even the best students often times never failed to achieve a perfect score even once on any of their engineering exams within the entire major. </p>
<p>Given that you never can understand all of the material, studying then becomes a relative race to determine who can understand more material than the other students by the time the exam is run. Weeder curves then enforce attrition warfare amongst the students, where students don’t dare stop studying, for they know that if they do, other students won’t stop studying, thereby consigning them to a lower, possibly failing, position on the curve. </p>
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<p>It could, but it never really seems to. See below. </p>
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<p>Sure, if you completed all of that work. But the dirty secret of many HSS courses is that you don’t really need to do all, or even most, of the work, and still receive a passing grade. Granted, maybe it won’t be an A, but it will still be a passing grade. In contrast, you can complete all of the work in an engineering course… and still fail. </p>
<p>As I’ve said throughout this thread, the real problem is that HSS courses grade easier than engineering and natural science courses, to the point that it’s practically impossible to actually fail an HSS course. Such easier grading has been noted time and time again by numerous observers and has even been blamed for the loss of technical competitiveness of the US economy.</p>
<p>*“The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976,” stated Rine, "while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-, *</p>
<p>*College administrators all agree that average grades in the pure sciences are lower than average grades in the social sciences and humanities. *</p>
<p>Grades in humanities courses are notably higher than those in the social sciences, and both are higher than grades in the natural sciences. Yet would anyone say that Harvard’s best students are in the humanities and its worst in the natural sciences? In fact, science students regularly do better in nonscience courses than nonscience students do in science courses.</p>
<p>*A perennial complaint holds that grade inflation unfairly benefits students in certain academic fields.</p>
<p>I feel like grade inflation happens in the humanities. The grading feels like its literally impossible to get below a B, Zhenhuan Lei, SEAS 12, said. On the other hand, in science classes, I feel like theres no grade inflationtheres grade deflation. I think that if you did a lump sum of the percentage of As at Columbia, itd be quite high because of humanities classes,*</p>
<p>*“Because I’m a pre-med/math person I’d have to say that the workload in the humanities classes tends to be different,” said Katherine Carroll, A&S '06. “I know my friends who aren’t pre-med majors have higher GPAs than I do.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think that the humanities students have as much work as we do,” said Jessie Wolfe, A&S '06. “As a science major I have to go to four-hour labs twice a week and you don’t see an equivalent to that in the humanities departments.”</p>
<p>Many students who are majors in the humanities departments concede that their courses often require less work and time than the upper-level science and math classes.</p>
<p>“My communications classes have been easier,” said Keith Binder, a communication and math major, pre-law, and A&S '06. “I’ve been getting better grades and there is less work. My math classes are much more difficult and require more time.” *</p>
<p>The study also found that science departments today generally grade 0.4 points lower than humanities departments and 0.2 lower than the social sciences. Whether this is merely due to the different natures of the disciplines, one more subjective than the other, or an actual conscious difference, the authors of the study feel that it encourages American students to shun the sciences for the supposedly easier humanities, hurting American scientific development and forcing companies to rely on foreign-born talent.</p>
<p>sakky, you are SOOOOOOOOOOO focused on GRADES. Ya know, there are plenty of motivated learners, particularly in very selective colleges who care about learning and not the grades. </p>
<p>I’ll just speak from personal experience. I have two very driven kids who are highly motivated types who are achievers. It is not about the grades. Even if there were no grades, they would put in the same amount of effort. One of my kids went to Brown. She could have elected (though didn’t) to take her courses Pass/Fail. I believe that students who take classes Pass/Fail at Brown do not goof off but rather still work very hard. I know my daughter would work the same whether there was a grade or not in the class. My other D was in an undergraduate professional degree program, thus a terminal degree and so really, did her actual grades even matter? I mean she won’t be going to grad school. She is a professional in her field now with her undergrad degree. Still, this kid worked her butt off and got excellent grades. But the grades didn’t really matter. She would have done everything she did even if there were no grades. She wasn’t motivated by the grades. In the end, the grades don’t really matter. Both my kids tend to go beyond that which is required. They took on extra work and pursue endeavores because they WANT to. They are not unique. There are many highly motivated high achieving types NO MATTER the field of study. It’s not ALL about the grades or grading system.</p>
<p>I’m happy that your children evidently leveraged their college experiences to the full potential. </p>
<p>But the reason why I keep bringing up those students - who you must admit are plentiful - who are more interested in drinking and partying than in actually studying is to speak to the point made on this thread that many college students probably should not be there. The OP posed the question whether college is overrated. I agree that for many students, it is is overrated, particularly those who are not motivated to learn and may not even really know why they’re there at all, and are only attending college because of social expectation. These are precisely the students who wind up taking the easiest possible coursework which leaves them plenty of free time to party and drink.</p>
<p>Surely you would agree: college is not a game. Those who go to college should actually want to learn, not just because they want to enjoy a 4-year party and dating scene.</p>
<p>I have said all along that college is not the appropriate path for all teens. Some would do better to pursue another type of experience. </p>
<p>I agree that those in college should actually want to learn and not just go as “something to do.” If they are not into college, they are wasting time and money there. So, of course, there ARE kids like that. But you seem to paint a very broad brush stroke and I’m just saying there are plenty of kids who want to be in college for the right reasons. And I also think college is about more than academic learning, though surely that is a significant component. And your focus on engineering students (who, yes, have a very challenging curriculum) seems to put everyone else into “easy courses, party hardy” mode. And that is just not so.</p>
<p>I do think, however, that most kids would best be served by some type of post-secondary training, if not college. It may be a trade or something else. A high school diploma is just not adequate in this day and age and is limiting a young person’s potential. College may not be the appropriate path but other options to train for a career are needed.</p>
<p>And for students who truly desire a college education, I hope more and more are afforded such an opportunity.</p>
<p>I am focused on grades only because engineering coursework forces you to focus on grades, whether you want to or not. As I’ve explained, engineering students, particularly during the weeders, run the ever-present danger of not only flunking out, but doing so in a manner where they won’t even be able to transfer to another respectable school, not even into a non-engineering major. As I said before, no respectable school wants to admit a transfer student who flunked out of his previous school. </p>
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<p>Grades may not have mattered to them because they didn’t fail. But what if they had? Or, more to the point, what if it was actually possible for them to fail? {After all, do many students at your children’s schools actually fail? Somehow I doubt that many do.} When failure becomes a serious danger, that’s when you start caring about grades.</p>
<p>Anecdotes or arguments that use “seem,” “some of…”, and “you must admit” really prove nothing. What percentage of people party? How do people fare after dropping out of college? We must base our arguments off of this sort reasoning, rather than conjecture.</p>
<p>1) We both agree that many college students probably should not be there, hence validating the OP’s point.</p>
<p>2) We also both agree that many college students should be there. </p>
<p>3) We both agree that college is more than pure academic learning, although it is questionable to me whether college does indeed enable such extra-academic learning. Seems to me that many college students are learning neither the academic nor the extra-academic lessons that they should be learning. </p>
<p>4) We both agree that every discipline - whether engineering, humanities, or any other college major - can be a worthy course of study. However, see below.</p>
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<p>I wonder - if engineering needs to be such a difficult course of study - why can’t the HSS courses do the same? If engineering courses inject the perennial fear of failure within their students, why don’t the HSS’s? Have them also flunk out a large fraction of their students within excruciating and incomprehensible weeders. Just once, I would like to hear students say that they tried to major in, say, American Studies, but the coursework was too difficult, so they switched to chemical engineering instead. Just once.</p>
<p>sakky, look, we get it. Engineering is hard work. It is hard to get a good grade. You might fail. But majoring in engineering is a choice. </p>
<p>This thread is not about engineering. It is about going to college. Engineering students don’t have a lock on hard work or demanding classes. Yes, theirs is demanding. We GET IT. Plenty of other students in other majors also work their butts off and have challenging courses. </p>
<p>If an engineering student is not up to the task, he/she can change majors. Nobody is forced to study engineering. </p>
<p>Also, you keep mentioning failing. I already mentioned to you at my D’s arch grad school, if you receive two C+s in studio, even if you have a HIGH GPA and straight As in all the other courses, of which there are many, you will be asked to leave. I already mentioned that in some performing arts programs, if you don’t pass “juries/evaluations” at the end of a year, you will be asked to leave the program. I get your point…“it’s not an F”…I don’t care if it is an F or not, there are standards they have to meet or they are “OUT” and the standards are SUBJECTIVE and not correct answers on some test.</p>
<p>I cross posted with you sakky. All I can say is that yes, engineering IS demanding. But so are many other courses or fields of study and you don’t seem to acknowledge that. Ever meet an architecture student??? I already shared that in my kid’s performing arts degree program, the required time was all day and all evening and weekends and that was before putting in homework time. It is VERY intense. If you think some other majors are so easy…so be it. My kids had challenging college experiences and it was the opposite of being “gut”. They were busy all the time and the standards were high.</p>
<p>By the way, if you know anything about BFA degree programs in musical theater, you would know that many students do switch out because it is so intense and they did not realize what they were getting into.</p>
<p>The reason someone in a humanities major doesn’t switch into chemical engineering is NOT because the major is too difficult as you ascertain. It is because their INTEREST doesn’t lie in that area. I have a kid, for example, who excelled in math but chose performing arts, not because it is easier, but because it has been her lifelong passion. </p>
<p>You keep thinking people choose majors solely by the grading system or how hard the major is. Guess what? Many choose a major because of genuine passion for the field.</p>
<p>Well, I wish that were true. Sadly, if you flunk out because of poor engineering grades, you can’t major in anything else, because you already flunked out. </p>
<p>As I said before, what schools should do is simply cancel the engineering grades of those who leave the major. They aren’t going to major in engineering anyway, so who cares what their engineering grades were? But they won’t do it. </p>
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<p>And when that happens, those students can indeed switch to other majors. Like you said, those grades aren’t F’s. Hence, those students aren’t expelled from the schools. They may be expelled from the major, but they are still free to switch to another major.</p>
<p>But as I said, if you fail engineering, you may be expelled from the entire school. After all, schools generally don’t have different GPA thresholds for different majors to maintain academic eligibility. If you have a sub-2.0 GPA, you’re expelled. They won’t care that your subpar grades were due to difficult engineering coursework. All they’ll see is that you have a sub-2.0 GPA. </p>
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<p>And as I’ve been saying, the grading in engineering is also subjective, due to the nature of the curve.</p>
<p>Case in point: I score a 50% on an engineering exam. Is that good? Is that bad? You have no idea. That’s because it depends on what the other students scored. If the average score was a 25%, then you probably got an A. But if the average was a 75%, then you failed. That’s entirely subjective, for it doesn’t matter how much you know. It only matters how much you know relative to what others know.</p>
<p>I wonder if the system engineering schools implement actually produces good engineers? If everyone is graded against a curve, even people that would probably make good engineers may end up failing the program.</p>