I too work in a field for which I went to college to study. The entire experience was disappointing at first, then infuriating, then I finally resigned to finish (after taking a 3-year break) to make my parents happy.
The disappointment came in the first year of material in classes that were 10th grade high school at best. I managed to skip algebra and go straight to calculus to the extreme surprise of my advisors who said, "everyone says they'll do that, but no-one actually does." The bookstore echoed this when I returned my algebra text I'd been forced to buy as a part of orientation. They claimed I was the first person in any staff's memory who had actually returned it. There was no set "way" to skip algebra, because it was so irregular, so they just gave me a Final with no changes. Three hours allocated to take a test that took me ~40 minutes and I scored a 98.
I am not saying all this to brag. I'm saying this to illustrate just how below my personal standards college was. I'd been training hard for 3 years in high school to "make it" and here I was, sleepwalking my way to victory. The bar wasn't low, it was below the ground.
To get money out of me, the school had 'administrative' courses with no educational value at all that were things like "how to survive your freshman year" and "learning, how do?" that I was required to take and waste time on. I attended one class each of these and took the F just to ignore them.
I managed to squeeze my way into a course that was actually in my major by leveraging the "skipped algebra" thing with faculty around the college and getting signatures to drop requirements for a junior course so I could get started. They wanted to make me wait 1.5 years before I saw the first topical classroom, but I would have actually left if they stuck to that.
Shortly, I figured out the game the school was playing. Freshman attrition was close to 60% in just the first semester and was easily 85% after the second. All of this nonsense was to get loans signed for hopeful dunces with no qualifications who would wash out immediately because they had no business being there. Technical fees, administrative fees, technology fees, 'temporary' fund to expand the football program facilities. Every charge was front-loaded on freshman with literally nothing of value given to them. Every course in the first year was bullshit taught by non-professors. The campus comfortably supported 16,000 students, and they were recruiting 12,000 freshman every year. That math don't straight. But they got their money up front. Loans were signed, payments made, kids with less than zero future were now indebted to the tune of 15-20k for that small bit of dalliance.
This post is getting crazy long so I'll stop, but, I'll simply say: I have utter distain for Universities and higher education. They should all be defunded. Their tax take keeps them in green when their service is beyond predatory. I'm glad attendance is down across the board. Kids today are catching on to the sham, I hope.
I actually did my first year at a community college and transferred to skip a lot of that Freshman BS. Even continued to take classes there occasionally and transfer them. The school did not like this, but the state had set out rules for transfer credit and since both were state public schools they couldn't do anything about it. Community college didn't care what I signed up for, if there was a requirement they would just waive it because I asked in an e-mail. I bought all my books on eBay mostly. After my first year I'd wait until two weeks in to buy a book at all to make sure they were going to use it. I worked full time the entire 6 years it took me to finish and paid as I went in cash (well, checks), and every dollar was mine to scrutinize.
Spent a lot of time fighting with them, but I knew the rules and abused them and since it was a small state school they didn't fight as much as a big name place. I had one professor tell me he'd never seen anyone play the "college game" like I did, and it was more in a way of respect as he was a pretty good guy.
Skipped Algebra too, I was always good at math anyway and I'd taken Calculus in high school. I wish I'd have tested out of English as well. That was a total joke class. I used to write my papers like midnight the night before, almost always got goot grades on them. I remember a few times they made us review each other's paper and I saw why. There was so much just technically (i.e. grammar) wrong with the paper I reviewed that just doing that was enough.
Honestly, I have disdain for most of the traditional education system in general. The core of that disdain isn't the woke-ness or CRT either. It's the way they teach and expect learning of things. It's even more confusing now it seems. I helped one of my cousins with their Algebra last year and I couldn't tell what the hell they were trying to get them to do. Some weird new method they keep making up to try to make math easy or whatever and it's convoluted. I was always the family math guru I guess and I get along really well with my cousins, so they get me to help. After like an hour I had her understanding it pretty well. Then I find out later she missed some points on a test for "doing it the wrong way." Good thing I don't live in town I might have wanted to go light that stupid math teacher up. We are talking about middle school Algebra. Simple stuff.
You can't teach math to low IQs, but you can mess up the teaching order and make the subject convoluted to reduce the understanding of the higher IQs. It's the only way equity will be reached, and it's the what they're going for.
I remember a study linked to reddit a couple of years back that bgragged about how their method is more equitable, and digging into the data it became obvious the stronger kids were doing worse.
One of my first red pills, it was around then I understood the ideology is evil, not just misguided.
As someone whose secondary and post-secondary schooling was all done in the 21st century, I can tell you the low bars and wasted freshman year wasn't status quo even 15 years ago (the fees were. University has always been a racket in that regard).
That it could change so much, so quickly should terrify everyone.
It is so terrible, I cannot even put it into words.
FWIW, “colleges” know this, and they don’t fucking care…
I even got to ask my vice chancellor, in a Zoom conference, about this, and she basically said “Too bad. If you don’t like it, perhaps you shouldn’t be here.”
And yet this is after two years of IN PERSON study, and being made to pay the exact same fees, despite it being “moved online”…
So yeah, trust me, if you thought it was bad before, it’s so much worse, since Covid…
You are absolutely correct in your comment regarding the loan/tuition scam and first-year attrition. I say this as a retired non-tenured college English teacher with 20 years experience.
On top of this, you have continually declining standards (as you also allude to) in order to accommodate . . . uh . . . less-than-bright "minority" students who mainly constitute the attrition/loan/tuition gravy train.
If I was really cynical I would argue that the dumbing-down of college curricula and the desperate attempt to have minorities enroll for the sake of "equity" is a ploy to attract more minority students who will flunk out and keep the $ pipeline flowing.
I too work in a field for which I went to college to study. The entire experience was disappointing at first, then infuriating, then I finally resigned to finish (after taking a 3-year break) to make my parents happy.
The disappointment came in the first year of material in classes that were 10th grade high school at best. I managed to skip algebra and go straight to calculus to the extreme surprise of my advisors who said, "everyone says they'll do that, but no-one actually does." The bookstore echoed this when I returned my algebra text I'd been forced to buy as a part of orientation. They claimed I was the first person in any staff's memory who had actually returned it. There was no set "way" to skip algebra, because it was so irregular, so they just gave me a Final with no changes. Three hours allocated to take a test that took me ~40 minutes and I scored a 98.
I am not saying all this to brag. I'm saying this to illustrate just how below my personal standards college was. I'd been training hard for 3 years in high school to "make it" and here I was, sleepwalking my way to victory. The bar wasn't low, it was below the ground.
To get money out of me, the school had 'administrative' courses with no educational value at all that were things like "how to survive your freshman year" and "learning, how do?" that I was required to take and waste time on. I attended one class each of these and took the F just to ignore them.
I managed to squeeze my way into a course that was actually in my major by leveraging the "skipped algebra" thing with faculty around the college and getting signatures to drop requirements for a junior course so I could get started. They wanted to make me wait 1.5 years before I saw the first topical classroom, but I would have actually left if they stuck to that.
Shortly, I figured out the game the school was playing. Freshman attrition was close to 60% in just the first semester and was easily 85% after the second. All of this nonsense was to get loans signed for hopeful dunces with no qualifications who would wash out immediately because they had no business being there. Technical fees, administrative fees, technology fees, 'temporary' fund to expand the football program facilities. Every charge was front-loaded on freshman with literally nothing of value given to them. Every course in the first year was bullshit taught by non-professors. The campus comfortably supported 16,000 students, and they were recruiting 12,000 freshman every year. That math don't straight. But they got their money up front. Loans were signed, payments made, kids with less than zero future were now indebted to the tune of 15-20k for that small bit of dalliance.
This post is getting crazy long so I'll stop, but, I'll simply say: I have utter distain for Universities and higher education. They should all be defunded. Their tax take keeps them in green when their service is beyond predatory. I'm glad attendance is down across the board. Kids today are catching on to the sham, I hope.
I could have completely skipped my chemistry 101 and 102 classes after taking "advanced" chemistry in high school.
Yet I still had to pay for those 8 credits.
I actually did my first year at a community college and transferred to skip a lot of that Freshman BS. Even continued to take classes there occasionally and transfer them. The school did not like this, but the state had set out rules for transfer credit and since both were state public schools they couldn't do anything about it. Community college didn't care what I signed up for, if there was a requirement they would just waive it because I asked in an e-mail. I bought all my books on eBay mostly. After my first year I'd wait until two weeks in to buy a book at all to make sure they were going to use it. I worked full time the entire 6 years it took me to finish and paid as I went in cash (well, checks), and every dollar was mine to scrutinize.
Spent a lot of time fighting with them, but I knew the rules and abused them and since it was a small state school they didn't fight as much as a big name place. I had one professor tell me he'd never seen anyone play the "college game" like I did, and it was more in a way of respect as he was a pretty good guy.
Skipped Algebra too, I was always good at math anyway and I'd taken Calculus in high school. I wish I'd have tested out of English as well. That was a total joke class. I used to write my papers like midnight the night before, almost always got goot grades on them. I remember a few times they made us review each other's paper and I saw why. There was so much just technically (i.e. grammar) wrong with the paper I reviewed that just doing that was enough.
Honestly, I have disdain for most of the traditional education system in general. The core of that disdain isn't the woke-ness or CRT either. It's the way they teach and expect learning of things. It's even more confusing now it seems. I helped one of my cousins with their Algebra last year and I couldn't tell what the hell they were trying to get them to do. Some weird new method they keep making up to try to make math easy or whatever and it's convoluted. I was always the family math guru I guess and I get along really well with my cousins, so they get me to help. After like an hour I had her understanding it pretty well. Then I find out later she missed some points on a test for "doing it the wrong way." Good thing I don't live in town I might have wanted to go light that stupid math teacher up. We are talking about middle school Algebra. Simple stuff.
You can't teach math to low IQs, but you can mess up the teaching order and make the subject convoluted to reduce the understanding of the higher IQs. It's the only way equity will be reached, and it's the what they're going for.
I remember a study linked to reddit a couple of years back that bgragged about how their method is more equitable, and digging into the data it became obvious the stronger kids were doing worse.
One of my first red pills, it was around then I understood the ideology is evil, not just misguided.
Yeah, very much comes off as that. I guess equity has really always meant drag everyone down to a lower level.
As someone whose secondary and post-secondary schooling was all done in the 21st century, I can tell you the low bars and wasted freshman year wasn't status quo even 15 years ago (the fees were. University has always been a racket in that regard).
That it could change so much, so quickly should terrify everyone.
Online study is the worst thing ever…
It is so terrible, I cannot even put it into words.
FWIW, “colleges” know this, and they don’t fucking care…
I even got to ask my vice chancellor, in a Zoom conference, about this, and she basically said “Too bad. If you don’t like it, perhaps you shouldn’t be here.”
And yet this is after two years of IN PERSON study, and being made to pay the exact same fees, despite it being “moved online”…
So yeah, trust me, if you thought it was bad before, it’s so much worse, since Covid…
To clarify, this is for STEM.
Doing STEM pracs online is the fucking worst…
You were just at a college that hadn't caught up yet.
A good, solid lesson to learn: get your money up-front. And your blowjobs.
You are absolutely correct in your comment regarding the loan/tuition scam and first-year attrition. I say this as a retired non-tenured college English teacher with 20 years experience.
On top of this, you have continually declining standards (as you also allude to) in order to accommodate . . . uh . . . less-than-bright "minority" students who mainly constitute the attrition/loan/tuition gravy train.
If I was really cynical I would argue that the dumbing-down of college curricula and the desperate attempt to have minorities enroll for the sake of "equity" is a ploy to attract more minority students who will flunk out and keep the $ pipeline flowing.