I feel that it's time for college to go through a major revision. First, I lean quite strongly toward the Mike Rowe worldview in that we need to quit telling our kids that they need a college education to make it in this world. Right now if you're in one of the blue collar trades you're far better off than a lot of the people who have ms or bs degrees. There will always be a demand for plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and so on.
On the college side, we need to adjust what we teach to provide for a condensed program where you cut out most (but not all) of the non-relevant programs. Yes, it's hard to learn certain trades without college, but a degree in computer science shouldn't need a lot of the liberal arts classes. Finally, we need to reform the student loan program so that we quit graduating students with degrees in underwater basketweaving with 6 figure loan balances. Right now, lenders are able to loan to anyone without risk and as such there is no incentive for lenders or schools to ensure that the students will be able to repay their loans from a typical job in the student's chosen degree program. This has led to ballooning tuition and overall school costs since there is no pressure to keep costs low. On Thu, Jul 4, 2024, 10:36 AM <ch...@go-mtc.com> wrote: > With the risk of starting something, I thought I would inject some > observations: > > I do watch Charley Kirk on YouTube for a quick fix of watching him > dissolve some of the woke ideology being spouted by young college kids. > For me it is like junk food for my worldview. Can only take so much of it, > like eating too many sweets. And he can get a bit too alt-right for me at > times. > > Yesterday he was preaching something that I think he was partially, > perhaps mostly wrong about. He is a college dropout and preaches that > college is a scam and you would be better off just learning to code and > find an internship that does not require a degree. > > I think he is only partially right. > By and large, most BA programs are probably not worth the money unless > they go onto grad school. A BA in art history doesn’t have much value when > searching Indeed for a job. It can however get you into law school. > > And we all know that if you start and successfully run a WISP you > absolutely must be an autodidact. An autodidact with ambition. Cannot > pick up either of those at a college. And do not need college to be a > superior ISP or WISP. It does however take a special type of person. > > But there are a couple of areas where I know, from personal experience, > that you really benefit from formal education: > > 1) Computer Science – the part where you learn hardware theory, > operating system design, compiler design, advanced data structures, OO > methods etc. Really hard to pick up this stuff by watching youtube > videos. And really hard to get any good at it unless you are forced to do > homework and labs. Understanding what happens with the hardware, the stack > and OS during a hardware interrupt is important and not so easy to learn on > your own. Try to write some DSP functions from scratch on your own... or > perhaps some machine code to hand optimize a MCU routine. Much easier if > you had a class on assembly. > > 2) RF and antennas. Reflection coefficients and the mastery of Smith > charts. EM simulation software and optimization. S11 and PCB stripline > and microstrip layout. Etc etc. Again, a good autodidact can teach > themselves anything. But I tried for years to master Smith charts and it > was not until college that I finally got to where I could use them. > Now-a-days the software does it all for you but you still need to know. > > 3) To understand some of this stuff, like DSP etc, you also need some > upper level math, calculus and trig. Hard to do on your own. > > I also imagine that if you want to get into medical school, classes on > chemistry, biology etc are essential. All PE programs will always need > degreed engineers. So yeah Charley, if you get a liberal arts degree, I > would tend to agree with you that your fathers money was probably wasted. > But many of the BS degrees are not a scam or waste. > > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >
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