2011-03-19, 10:29 PM
Regarding the issue with money. My University pays me to attend it. It is still not worth it. Only a minimal amount of information you learn from classes will be retained. Most of the time will be spent memorizing a textbook that has little to no actual real life value or relevance to the job market. College will teach you how to study a body of information for possible use, however the method of testing is rudimentary and mostly consists of regurgitation. The first year was exciting, the second year was workable, the third year was tiresome, and this year is skeptical. When you entire a high level course, you expect something different from an entry level course. Perhaps some higher level mental requirement of prowess, however I have not witnessed this within my own major and with most of the courses I have taken.
For example, in a graduate level course I am currently taking which involves bioreactors and using stoichiometry to predict / optimize reactants to products, the test consisted of problems straight from the homework or the problem set. In real life application, the problems presented in the textbook will not be copy-paste situations all the time. Colleges do not test for the realistic application of the courses which they concern, but rather stay isolated to the surrealistic textbook nature that has hard-found meaning when it comes to the day-to-day actions of a real life occupational worker in the respective industry.
Research opportunities should reveal that science performed at the level of graduation will constitute nothing more than being a low-pay pipette hand, a minimalist calculator, and a paper pusher. Very rarely will grand-scale hypothesis be designed by an undergraduate and very rarely will strong lab skills be developed as such a small amount of time is given to teach proper technique. The professors themselves usually isolate themselves from actual hands-on work with their research and as a result their abilities have degraded. Most of the work is relegated to paid technicians and graduate students who are being salaried to perform day to day operations & too busy juggling multiple projects to give the adequate amount of concern to developing the abilities of the undergraduate. Therefore most experiment, even in a self-pursued experiment will be fraught with problems and errors that would nullify the merit of the experiment and will instead most likely be chalked up to nothing more than an act of human self-improvement.
If you have some notion of realism, then you will realize that university bureaucracy is rather surreal. The deeper you go, the more you see professors squabbling over stolen research, competition to get grants from similar companies, and backstabbing that occurs over common funds. On a similar note, the more you try to genuinely learn as a student and try to recall information from memory about prior subjects, the more you realize you have forgotten on what you have invested many thousands of dollars on and it should be immensely frustrating as the University and other institutions do not care about how much knowledge you have retained upon leaving. Rather they are more invested in how much income you will be able to bring back. After all, professors in the field of science are often given tenure based on how much research funding they can fetch back for the University. Save for a few professors that may win notable awards and must be recognized for their intellectual prowess, lest the institution be scorned for short-changing the idealism of academics.
Tl;dr: I live close to my school, money is not a problem, I get decent grades, I have had a decent job and am doing research, I have socialized, All in all it was not worth it in my honest opinion. I graduate in two months. Oh and not to get it twisted. I love my school, I think it was the best school for me. The educational system is just screwed up and has been horrendously brutalized by social / economic expectations.
For example, in a graduate level course I am currently taking which involves bioreactors and using stoichiometry to predict / optimize reactants to products, the test consisted of problems straight from the homework or the problem set. In real life application, the problems presented in the textbook will not be copy-paste situations all the time. Colleges do not test for the realistic application of the courses which they concern, but rather stay isolated to the surrealistic textbook nature that has hard-found meaning when it comes to the day-to-day actions of a real life occupational worker in the respective industry.
Research opportunities should reveal that science performed at the level of graduation will constitute nothing more than being a low-pay pipette hand, a minimalist calculator, and a paper pusher. Very rarely will grand-scale hypothesis be designed by an undergraduate and very rarely will strong lab skills be developed as such a small amount of time is given to teach proper technique. The professors themselves usually isolate themselves from actual hands-on work with their research and as a result their abilities have degraded. Most of the work is relegated to paid technicians and graduate students who are being salaried to perform day to day operations & too busy juggling multiple projects to give the adequate amount of concern to developing the abilities of the undergraduate. Therefore most experiment, even in a self-pursued experiment will be fraught with problems and errors that would nullify the merit of the experiment and will instead most likely be chalked up to nothing more than an act of human self-improvement.
If you have some notion of realism, then you will realize that university bureaucracy is rather surreal. The deeper you go, the more you see professors squabbling over stolen research, competition to get grants from similar companies, and backstabbing that occurs over common funds. On a similar note, the more you try to genuinely learn as a student and try to recall information from memory about prior subjects, the more you realize you have forgotten on what you have invested many thousands of dollars on and it should be immensely frustrating as the University and other institutions do not care about how much knowledge you have retained upon leaving. Rather they are more invested in how much income you will be able to bring back. After all, professors in the field of science are often given tenure based on how much research funding they can fetch back for the University. Save for a few professors that may win notable awards and must be recognized for their intellectual prowess, lest the institution be scorned for short-changing the idealism of academics.
Tl;dr: I live close to my school, money is not a problem, I get decent grades, I have had a decent job and am doing research, I have socialized, All in all it was not worth it in my honest opinion. I graduate in two months. Oh and not to get it twisted. I love my school, I think it was the best school for me. The educational system is just screwed up and has been horrendously brutalized by social / economic expectations.