> First off, I should have said MOST kids use college as a 4 year party on their parents money. My girlfriend is a college graduate from Uconn. I'm sure she's had her fair share of stupid parties. Actually I went to one, and it was one of the most idiotic things I ever witnessed.

Most people understand a university/college to be a center of Excellence in higher education through teaching and research. It is not a bunch of dorms erected to masquerade as an extended social event.

No one can judge the quality of an educational institution simply by visiting the parties it has on campus. This is like wanting to check out a Volvo S80 at the dealer's but, rather than popping open the hood to demonstrate the engine, the salesman decides flip on the stereo system instead. Then based purely on the *loudness* of the music, you have to figure out how fast the car goes, how well it handles on curves, etc. Any ideas you'd have of the Volvo's performance would be highly inconclusive.

The fact that the colleges you visited seemed more like boozers than bookworms is a reflection of *those* particular individuals you met at *those* parties. I think, in making the jump from high school to living at college, a lot of young people experience a mixture of homesickness vs. boundless personal freedom (i.e. from parental supervision), and easy access to alcohol, for the first time. A sort of frantic narcissism takes over and engulfs them against all better judgment.

This is one of the reasons why Quebec implemented a 4-tiered model of education -- where the "no-dorm" CEGEPs are intermediate between high school and college and cover the first year of university studies. CEGEPs have been successful in producing students ready to handle the rigours of "advanced education". :)


> Anyway, she has a degree in Journalism. What's she doing now? Claims for an insurance agency.

Why, have you asked her whether her degree bears "absolutely no relation" to her current job? I would think there is much in common. A journalist must know how to do research and where to start, how to write formal reports and verify references, how to interview reluctant witnesses and ascertain the truth. Is this completely unrelated to writing claims reports?

In fact, I originally started out in Biochemistry, went into Bio-organic Chemistry, then did graduate work in Neurosurgery. I'm now working in Metallography. So did I "waste" my degree training? No, I brought all the skills and habits of specimen preparation, microscopic work, SEM and proper statistical sampling from my previous training into my current line of work. It's interesting to note that the people in the metals lab had had complete high-school backgrounds, but no clue how to use the microscope or do the microphotography the company's clients demanded.


> I just have a weird way of thinking that makes me nitpick everything. EVERYONE i know who has attended college has at least skipped one day to hang out with me for no important reason. I've stayed and been to many colleges. I used to live a mile and a half away from SUNY. A few miles from Temple (Which is lke the most frightening structure i've been to) some other small college in philly named Beaver (very cool) and of course Uconn. Every college, it was the same story. No one could tell me what they were learning, jus about the pahrties and the good take out places. Since then, i've always had an idea of college as a big apartments for teenagers.

Well, look at it this way. Your friends might know you better than you imagine and, out of consideration for your sensibilities, simply decided to show you what YOU might have considered "fun" on campus. That would be the restos and infamous parties. If they thought you'd be wildly interested in visiting, for example, the musty basement of the Drama building where students put on Improv Comedy skits, or perhaps wouldn't mind going through the hassle of security doors to visit the Atomic Force Lasers in the Physics building, then I'm sure they'd have been happy to take you to such locales.


> Don't get me wrong, I believe kids actually do go to college to learn, but what can they learn that I can't by just going to libraries, watching public speakers, and basically just living?
>
> Wolfspirit said something in his post about going to college for the learning experience and not for a good job. Why can't I do that without going to college? Why is college so important?

Sure you can learn stuff on your own without college. Almost the majority of information I'd consider important to myself I learned outside of university. The point is, college is meant to provide rigourous training in a *structured* and disciplined fashion. It offers the amazing synergy of bright young people closely questioning the leading experts in their fields. In so doing, you learn how to concentrate and focus on what's essential. You learn how to compose your ideas on paper and meet deadlines. You learn teamwork with your lab partners or study group. These are virtues that will serve you well throughout life, not to mention in any career.

Let's face it, learning and acquiring totally new information is hard. The desire to slack off when the going gets tough is tremendous. If you never put yourself in the proper educational environment to learn the skills for learning in the first place, how can you expect to master any advanced subject with competency?

Now consider a common refrain I hear, such as (to take an extreme example): "Someone with only a Grade 8 schooling taught himself Molecular Genetics, and now he's a successful expert on 'Cancers from the Poisoned Foods You Eat Everyday'." Well, ok. It may be that he's a careful scientist with nothing but the utmost objectivity, though I'd check his data first. It's also perfectly possible for laymen to become the leading experts in their fields -- that's why colleges give out hundreds of honorary degrees to journalists, authors, educators and even armchair physicists every year. But in general, your average "self-taught" savant tends to have significant holes in his foundational expertise, ones that wouldn't have been there if he'd had formal training. Once, at a summer job I had at an engineering house, I had a boss who everyone said was a "genius" because he'd taught himself Pascal and C. But I had to go through his code and it was ill-defined and awkward to say the least. On the other hand, the B.Eng interns working there were writing beautiful, concise, crystal-clear code, understandable to even a beginner like me.


> Why is it, when someone has something negative to say about college they get yelled at?

Possibly because your teachers and parents and counselors... and all those who had been there and done that... were well aware of the importance of advanced education but couldn't quite put it into words you'd like to hear.
:(

Wolfspirit

"College and Parties, ack" (c) Donna W Fox, Montreal, 7/27/99. For discussion, kindly contact author.