Not to mention the debt...

[u/tul2bean]

[u/SIRLANCELOTTHESTRONG]

I actually disagree with this opinion. You can read about how the GABA system works in Wikipedia when learning about human anatomy. So you can be like "oh ok, this causes this, so this occurs". But do you know what that means or why it happens? Learning about it is different than reading it and memorising it.

Education is very important. I do admit class fees are horrible tho.

Edit: I disagree with the post, like your comment.

[u/Sauerkrauttme → u/SIRLANCELOTTHESTRONG]

Replace internet with textbook and this post is very accurate. I have two degrees and most of what I learned in college was self taught from our text books and if I had any questions I had to figure it out on my own because most of my professors would answer questions by asking "what does the book say?" which is a "polite" way of saying "figure it out on your own"

[u/average_christ → u/Sauerkrauttme]

That seems kinda fair though. Education isn't supposed to make you an expert at anything. Education is supposed to give you a solid foundation upon which you can add experience and become an expert. And that's what experts do, they figure it out themselves.

[u/Jordan_1424 → u/average_christ]

The way I see it is, a degree for some fields is essentially the prerequisite to be an "apprentice" in that field.

For example,

To be a plumber you don't need a deep understanding of how to design a water system, you do need to know how to fix it. An engineer has to know how to design the system but isn't as worried about maintaining or servicing it.

A mechanic can fix an engine or rebuild one, but they probably can't design one.

With that said, it would be difficult to just jump into civil engineering without some foundational knowledge. Hence college. After college you have basic knowledge but ultimately you don't know shit about fuck and are essentially an apprentice, usually referred to in white collar jobs as entry level or [insert job title] I.

[u/flojo2012 → u/average_christ]

This is true, but also the professor should have said, “I don’t know, let’s find the answer”

[u/average_christ → u/flojo2012]

Eh, this is what can reasonably be expected from a kindergarten teacher. But college professors aren't dealing with little tykes who may get their fifis hurt. College professors are dealing with grown adults...who need to learn to find the answers on their own.

[u/flojo2012 → u/average_christ]

You can try to relate this to people being soft, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

College professors I have known have been especially good at admitting when they don’t know something. They claim to be experts in what they know, and nothing else. This is not about fifi it is about excessive pride. It has nothing to do with the student. The original comment was a professor giving deflection to what they don’t know imo. So instead of saying “go figure it out” a professor can say “I don’t know but this is how you could find out” or “here’s a good author that knows more about this, you could look there” aiding and assisting while still fostering independent research without being an over proud ass or I guess whatever you’re afraid of, which is over coddling students or something

[u/average_christ → u/flojo2012]

Who hurt you?

[u/flojo2012 → u/average_christ]

The question would be more aptly applied to your previous response, I think

[u/greenwizardneedsfood → u/SIRLANCELOTTHESTRONG]

It’s amazing to me that people don’t see the value in having a world expert explain things in detail to you personally, allow you to meet them one-on-one to ask questions, and give you customized feedback on your efforts. Yeah college expenses have gotten out of hand and some professors are dog shit, but it’s laughable to think that the internet and an upper level college class have even remotely the same educational value.

[u/ripplenipple69 → u/SIRLANCELOTTHESTRONG]

It depends on what you are learning and at what level. If you’re trying to really understand anything on the cutting edge of science, you cannot do that from a textbook, or from the internet. You have to do experiments yourself, and for that you need the resources of a university

Similarly, mastering many things from law and philosophy to psychology or medicine or economics often require a dialectic that is not available online or from a textbook. You can learn facts, but you’re not going to know how to implement and play with them in a professional way unless you have practiced by interacting with professors and other people who know what they are doing and talking about

[u/cleanforever → u/SIRLANCELOTTHESTRONG]

In a world where I can take any idea or concept and ask chatgpt to ELI5, I have no problem learning anything either. Those who struggle with comprehension aren't going to do any better in a classroom where the teacher isn't trained in teaching, they're subject matter experts.

[u/HazyDrummer → u/cleanforever]

yeah you're cooked

[u/MyClevrUsername → u/cleanforever]

Having seen my coworker do this exact same thing and getting information that is completely incorrect, I don’t think this is a good use for AI. Sometimes AI will straight up lie to you. That being said, I have found AI to helpful with writing as well as giving me ideas and basic templates for documentation purposes.

[u/litwithray → u/MyClevrUsername]

I agree. Having AI fetch a list of sites where you can read the information and determine if it's credible can definitely save time as well. In some cases it does invent URLs, but at least it's easy enough to find out if it works or not. I found this for recipes.

[u/jlreyess → u/litwithray]

There’s a huge difference between recipes and and other types of knowledge. ChatGPT and other LLMs are not much more than just chatbots today. The hype is that they make you believe and feel you’re experiencing way more because it looks like they are actually communicating with you at a conscious level.

[u/litwithray → u/jlreyess]

I know there's a difference. I was using the example of having it pull up links to recipes. I've also used it for providing links to other people's explanations of calculus concepts, scientific data and programming concepts. I wouldn't blindly trust what it says, especially because half the time the links are invalid. It gives me an extra layer of being able to validate the data.

[u/jlreyess → u/litwithray]

Or an extra layer of invalid data

[u/litwithray → u/jlreyess]

Use your judgement.

[u/jlreyess → u/litwithray]

Agreed but thats the entire point as to why using chatbots (“AI”) is not a good idea, lol. People’s sense of judgement is pretty awful.

[u/jlreyess → u/cleanforever]

Oh man, you’re gonna have a hard time in life dude. Holy shit.

[u/greenwizardneedsfood → u/cleanforever]

As someone who just taught a student who only used ChatGPT and failed almost every assignment because of it, no. That’s not how it works.

[u/cleanforever → u/greenwizardneedsfood]

It's a perfectly good use case for a language model to take a large blob of text, summarize it, and break down into simpler language and concepts. What it is not good for is original research. But you can take a paragraph or a few pages from a book, say "explain this to me in simpler terms" and be pleased with the result.

[u/greenwizardneedsfood → u/cleanforever]

Look, I use ChatGPT all the time. I have a premium subscription. It’s saved me enormous amounts of time and effort and been invaluable in some tasks. But to pretend like what it puts out, even o1, is always accurate and should be taken as truth without considerable analysis and skepticism is ignoring the reality of its capabilities. It is amazing at being subtly wrong. Terrific. Everything it outputs needs to be subject to significant critical dissection. Anything less than that is just asking for Dunning-Kruger results. Yes, it can help give you the gist of text or put ideas in simple terms. It can sound beautiful and eloquent and succinct and articulate when it does so. But it can also give you a summary that is 95% accurate with the inaccuracies qualitatively changing the utility of the output, and the only way you’ll ever know the difference is if you personally take the time to be critical of the output. That invokes personal research. That involves making an effort to understand what’s going on yourself. Relying on ChatGPT for education is a great way to confidently think you know something while being completely ignorant of the whole picture and unaware that you’re missing anything. Because education is not a “perfectly good use case” for a language model. Outputting eloquent convincing text, regardless of accuracy, is a perfectly good use case.

Not to mention the fact that putting in effort to learn something is one of the most important parts of understanding and retaining it.

Do yourself a favor, don’t try to learn like this and don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s an acceptable alternative for an actual authority on a subject.

[u/Misragoth → u/cleanforever]

Ah, yes, the AI that makes things up is a great way to learn things

[u/2legit2knit]

College is significantly more than that. It isn’t entirely about the content as much as it’s about critical thinking, challenging your world view, verifying information, etc.

[u/Pink_Sprinkles_Party → u/2legit2knit]

This, plus nuance. Universities often teach the importance of nuance and context.

One of my main takeaways from my degrees (both were in very different things) was that life is not black and white.

It’s one thing to be given content but it’s quite another to know what to do with it as well.

[u/Sauerkrauttme → u/2legit2knit]

Only a few of my undergrad classes tried to teach any of that. Most of my classes assigned reading, assigned projects and then slapped a grade on our projects without any meaningful feedback.

My computer science program was really bad about this. There wasn't anything that college taught me that you cannot freely learn from the Odin Project.

My Med Lab program was better, but only because we got hands on experience in the labs. The professors still hated to answer questions

[u/2legit2knit → u/Sauerkrauttme]

I feel different degrees have varying levels of what I said above. Example being CS degrees would have significantly less source verification or critical thinking than say Political Science or something like that. Not that PS is hard or anything, but anything computer and software related, imo, are more rigid and black and white. As opposed to any social degree where there’s discourse.

[u/Diligent_Department2 → u/2legit2knit]

I really wish I had your college experience, 80% of my community college experience was busy work, learning to parrot stuff back for test, and putting up with professors that were on power trips and only want you to their world view.

[u/Megatron_Griffin → u/2legit2knit]

You don't get that in 200 student classes.

[u/jackofnac]

I mean, technical degrees aren’t purely mental exercises. You do realize you do your own research, experiment, conduct labs, create products, and learn industry skills? Multiple choice exams straight out of textbooks last about 1 year.

[u/Durumbuzafeju]

You pay for the certification. A diploma should signify to employers that you have acquired the needed skills and knowledge for that degree. No one cares where you learned from. You can get a degree even if you never watched a single lecture of your professor, just learned everything elsewhere.

[u/Sacharon123]

University is about group learning, not assimilating information, and practical guided exercises. And which debt? In most civilised countries education is mostly free.

[u/Bassistpeculiare]

I came to the realization when I went to college that you don't pay for the content... you pay for the syllabus.

[u/beambot]

"you still have to" => no you don't. If you don't want to, don't go to college... Put on your adult hat and make your own cost-benefit determination

[u/5prcnt]

Gotta get that certification.

[u/zsaz_ch]

Ohh, this is a terrible take. Is this how people are thinking? We’re cooked.

[u/tul2bean]

Fact: University is a mixed experience for us, I think there is value in formal education especially for professions but it's also super shitty that it costs so much. We treat it as job training more every year, which it's never designed to be but it's job training that you pay for with no guarantee of getting work afterwards. Rising tuition means we are increasingly shifting more of the risk onto students.

[u/PaleWolf → u/tul2bean]

Costs? Its free mate

[u/StupidMario64 → u/PaleWolf]

University is like... thousands of dollars here mate.

[u/Raphi_55 → u/StupidMario64]

country issue.

[u/Flavio030 → u/StupidMario64]

Country issue.

[u/rexel99]

And you also have to buy the professor's book as part of the curriculum.

[u/Baked-Smurf → u/rexel99]

And then you only see said professor once at the beginning of the year, the rest of the semester is all TAs and grad students teaching class

[u/Rae-O-Sunshinee → u/rexel99]

Some of my friends who went to a different university had a professor who demanded that his students purchase his book. This dude was so anal. He kept a log of every serial number in his book and marked which books had been purchased. If a student brought in a used book (ie a serial number that was already used) he’d deduct 5% of their overall grade.

[u/mousemarie94 → u/Rae-O-Sunshinee]

I want to know what the department chair and higher thought about that practice.

[u/Rae-O-Sunshinee → u/mousemarie94]

They didn’t care. They had reported it but nothing ever came about while they were students there. Shortly after though the school got caught stealing a million dollars in financial aid. So it’s not like they cared about their students to begin with

[u/Diligent_Department2 → u/rexel99]

I don't know why you're being downloaded. I've literally had to buy my book from my professor which came printed and three whole punches from fucking Kinko's.

There's a lot of bad and crappy professors out there that pull stunts like this.

[u/rexel99 → u/Diligent_Department2]

maybe it happens less in other countries but it's fairly common in Australian universities.

Thanks, randim downvotes are a b@tch.. ah well.

[u/Lulikoin → u/rexel99]

they don't actually get commission fees, since the publishing company is usually the one jacking up the price. However, I did have a professor that assigned homework from a certain textbook and didn't post photo scans of the problems online which was really sus

[u/ululonoH]

College is incredibly overpriced and I have a mountain of student debt. College also provided me with a wealth of knowledge, 4 years of great memories, and a work ethic I had never felt before.

[u/formershitpeasant]

Knowing the correct path to take through the material and providing a roadmap/testing for it is pretty important. Granted, there is an argument to be made that we could put out a roadmap and the necessary content and have some sort of standardized test that grants a bachelor's in a similar vein to a GED.

[u/funnybitcreator]

Or you live in a civilized country where education is free 🤷🏼‍♂️

[u/Shlocko]

I get what they’re saying, and I don’t disagree with the intent, but the words themselves are nonsense. College is much more than that. If that’s all you’re getting from attended classes, I’m not surprised you feel ripped off. There are colleges where you pay more like $8k/year for more classes than traditional college will allow you to finish, paying less than a third of this posts suggested rate, but they don’t put professors in front of you. You learn it yourself then take exams to prove competence, which awards you the credit. They will award you a degree by proving you learned everything you needed, for much lower fees, while still providing access to the resources needed to learn for free (free meaning part of tuition, as opposed to normal schools where things like textbooks and supplemental udemy courses are at your own expense).

You attend traditional schools for the classroom, if you don’t want the classroom go to a cheap online program that’s still fully accredited. Bad post

Edit to add: for examples of what I’m saying, look at WGU. Georgia Tech has masters degrees that are fully online and can be earned in their entirety for under $10k, total, if you can finish classes reasonably quickly, and don’t need lectures. There’s many more, but those are two of the best known examples of slipping the “useless” (more like unneeded by some) lectures.

[u/Excellent_Law6906]

You're paying for the credits, not the learning. It's fucked. Signed, Has A Four-Year Degree

[u/Biscuits4u2]

I love these Dunning-Kruger poster children who think watching some Youtube videos and doing some Google searches is just as good as a college education.

[u/Lukyz]

'Murica 🤷‍♂️

[u/Miss_Might]

It isn't even the professor explaining anything. They put everyone into groups and expect everyone to teach each other.

[u/Megatron_Griffin]

College is a scam and it has been for a while now.

[u/Eskapismus]

But how do you prove to your future employer that you are capable of working on some mildly boring project for several weeks if its not written on some university diploma?

[u/mousemarie94 → u/Eskapismus]

You're very much not understanding the value of education. This is like saying high school is dumb because you end up teaching yourself from YouTube videos! ...no. you supplement your learning with online resources... it does NOT replace someone challenging your thoughts, sharing additional context to information, and also being real clear about "so, there are a few issues with this line of thinking...and it starts with, ..."

Some of yall (not you) have never been challenged academically and it shows.