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Alternatives to higher ed
- Thread starter PRCD
- Start date
It is the highest initiation into the club. What you focused on is not important in the overall sense. You did your time, went into deep debt, kissed your advisor's asses, wrote your dissertation, and defended it in front of your betters.
It opens doors that are closed to those who don't have it. Institutions and companies who hire them want the prestige that goes with them.
That type of research has significant value for innovation and discoveries across feilds. It may not seem practical at all but when the next guy comes along and sees it is the missing piece in his puzzle he is the one who scores.
Yep. The graduate research in STEM is almost completely worthless. That's not totally true. Georgia Tech and some similar universities churn out some military research for devices and data processing methods. The problem is, we keep getting beat by poorly-armed 4th-generation insurgents with no air support. What the military really needs is to turn out someone like Vo Nguyen Giap, but he'd be immediately attacked by antibodies like Col. John Boyd was.
Companies in the private sector think that hiring a PhD from the right specialty will bring in free R&D. Not only are they low on soft skills that are gained by work experience, they don't have any practical skills. This is Scott Locklin's wheelhouse.
I don't think the problem at the University is the Post Modernist faculty and the SJWs. Though they can be annoying. It's the corporatist admins, whose mission now is to control labour costs, who use the far left to put the faculty on the defensive at contract negotiation time.
There used to be a balance of power between the faculty and the admins. That is gone. It's a tyrant/slave relationship now.
It was weird to see the admins make their move in the late 90s.
I've said this before but I can't help but think it when people wrongly attribute the fall of the University system to the radical left.
There used to be a balance of power between the faculty and the admins. That is gone. It's a tyrant/slave relationship now.
It was weird to see the admins make their move in the late 90s.
I've said this before but I can't help but think it when people wrongly attribute the fall of the University system to the radical left.
I agree, however I'm not sure how you would expect someone who does not work in a university system to know this. A lot of people still think that everyone who teaches at a university is a PhD tenured professor. I remember being surprised when I helped my freshman year writing teacher carry some things out to her car and she had a rusty shitkicker for a ride. I was like, WTF, I thought yal made mad scrilla?
The tenured professors are definitely part of the problem. First, they play the same, "Well, if you won't, an H1B will!" game the corporations play. Their Leftist ideological conformity is well-known. Even if - a big IF - they're not the most radical element at the university - doesn't mean they're innocent of its decline. At minimum, they've turned a blind eye to so many of these problems when action was required before things got this bad.
I've told this story before, but I had a friend who was a postdoc who graduated in physics from National Taiwan University, meaning he was a genius and he was good in the lab. He was still driving a beat-up Honda making $60k a year well into his 40s thinking his day would come to move up in academia. Who knows how long he'd been strung-along and lied-to. Another friend is on his second or third postdoc teaching at a medical school without tenure. He has no job security and low pay. He's had to move all over the country. I have another friend with a PhD in history: same story. Friends don't let friends PhD.
Raw research/higher academia = $ scams for liberal universities
same 'ol stupid anti intellectualism
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www.smithsonianmag.com
same 'ol stupid anti intellectualism
Ten Scientific Discoveries From 2020 That May Lead to New Inventions
From soaring snakes to surfing suckerfish, nature is an endless source of inspiration
www.smithsonianmag.com
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I see a lot of good work go on at my school.
I think it's too expensive and people should be discouraged from taking on too much debt to get a degree. (10-20 Gs at the most for a BA or BS.)
Despite management's desire to assert and a few SJWs making a power grab, the majority of the faculty is really trying hard to help the kids.
The kids know it too.
I think it's too expensive and people should be discouraged from taking on too much debt to get a degree. (10-20 Gs at the most for a BA or BS.)
Despite management's desire to assert and a few SJWs making a power grab, the majority of the faculty is really trying hard to help the kids.
The kids know it too.
Amen! It's really easy to demonize categories.
If I was 20...oh wait...make that 40 years younger, I'd like to go back to college and get a phd in naval architecture specializing in wind powered cargo transport...with a minor in America's Cup Class foil hydrodynamics. Or in forest management specializing in wildfire suppression and prevention with a minor in H20 retention strategies.
I liked Trout Fishing In America better.I'd bet money this is a more interesting read and says roughly the same.
Fiction for the win.
By the way, I know where in San Francisco Pirsig's son was murdered.
I think a good alternative to higher education is lower education. Like learning how to be a mechanic or a plumber or a toner salesman.
Do you need any education at all to sell toner? I think I could provide some anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
There used to be an alternative to higher ed as a gateway to tech: apprenticeship/starting on the production line and working your way up. Now you need the sheepskin, but how good will the sheepskin be if higher ed is hemorrhaging talent?
Marc Andreesen said pretty much the same thing about other areas of tech. If you're a person with ambition and talent, academia and government are not for you.
Marc Andreesen said pretty much the same thing about other areas of tech. If you're a person with ambition and talent, academia and government are not for you.