Stupid ass private education bullshit
It only costs money to get the little piece of paper that says you did the thing and are therefore smarter. 🙃
It doesn’t.
It takes time and effort to gain more knowledge. It has never been cheaper or more accessible to acquire knowledge than it is today.
To increase your intelligence, is another matter all together.
I would also add that damn near all of human information is free to be had on the internet for the low, low price of a monthly broadband bill. The real expense comes when you want a piece of paper that says you know all this that other people will take seriously.
Thats about certificated stuff from school. Knowledge has never been more accessible than today.
It is wild to me that tuition is SO expensive and quality educational content is SO ubiquitous now. It does take a lot of time, skill, and effort to provide quality educational experiences, but man is it weird that it is simultaneously free and ridiculously overpriced.
There are a lot more quality free learning resources than people realise.
Honestly, there isn’t hardly anything you couldn’t learn on your own. But what higher education provides is structure. It can be very difficult to actually follow through with the education if you do not have scheduled classes, exams you have to study for, deadlines for projects/exams, etc
One of the reasons some branches of learning are called “disciplines”
Where im from we have libraries and the internet. Now getting job skills. that is a tough one.
Private lessons don’t make you smarter. They just make you more well equipped with.
I am a lifetime student. I am not smarter. I am not a smarty pant
Essentially, because it takes labor to create educational material. Unless you own slaves labor isn’t free. And in fact with the modern library and Internet access I’d argue self educating is more accessible than ever in history.
Gatekeeping education.
Keep the rich rich and the poor poor.
The rich got theirs and it’s a ladder they can pull up to stay wealthy.
The library is free, my dude
*in the US. In Germany a semester at my university costs about 300 Euros and that includes cheaper lunch and a ticket to use all public transport in the whole of Germany.
You’re proud of giving students free ICE tickets? What is wrong with you???
What?
I guess the joke is that in Germany the high speed train is called “ICE” (named that way way before the US department)
Is this a bot? It makes no sense
I would argue that its rare for education to make you smarter, it mostly makes you more knowlegable.
Knowledge is mostly free though. You can get it from the internet, from the library etc. A lot of what you are paying for is the certification - some places let you just sit the exam I think.
Exactly. Smarter doesn’t equate well educated.
Or in some cases, like FOSS, the knowledge is freely available, but you pay for a detailed course or tutorial to receive that information in a simpler, more streamlined way.
A lot of the time I paid to have it taught to me so badly that I would have been better off with a textbook. 😢
They then call me up once every few years to ask for a donation! Fk off, I’m still paying off the loan!
Because billionaires have an interest in remaining billionaires, and if everyone was smart, there’d be more people tearing down the structures that consolidate wealth and maintain wealth inequality.
gatekeeping
It doesn’t.
You need to study to be smart and studying is free.
Check out this pedantic guy over here. Just to be clear, knowledge means shit, it’s the diploma that counts
I guarantee you, knowledge means something. You need the degree to get the job, but if you don’t know your ass for your elbow, that entry level job is as far as you are going to go. If you want a promotion and pay raise, you need to know your shit.
Yeah okay but OP is asking why it costs money to become smarter. The answer is: it doesn’t. But it does cost money to get help with getting smarter and to get a certificate that you did get smarter. And that does indeed cost more than it should in many places
… in america.
Everywhere. You can’t go to Europe and claim to be a doctor cause you read all the books for free
In healthcare, yes. An IT guy, a plumber, an analyst, no. Legal and healthcare are the only two fields I can think of right now that a person with enough knowledge couldn’t enter without a diploma.
But those two fields make up what, 1 percent?Also, I don’t need to go to europe, because I’m already there.
There are many other fields that require a degree. Engineering, architecture, chemistry, biology, etc. In some of those fields you can find some jobs which you can do without the degree, but the vast majority do require it.
I hire people and, to be fair, most people with a degree do not qualify as valid for certain jobs. But in that case is lack of knowledge. In my case I’d rather have someone without degree but with a deep knowledge; but those are very hard to find.
Ok, first off, I don’t give a shit who you are or what you do, that’s not what this is about and unless your job has to do with looking at such topics in a scientific and non subjective way, which I did not read from you, your opinion matters just as much as anyone elses, just like mine.
Coming back to nicer grounds, yes, for the fields you have mentioned, that’s absolutely true. Those fields are quite critical and in my opinion should be gated by a diploma. You don’t just get to call yourself and architect and draft a building that collapses. Same with a chemist and accidentally poisoning the groundwater or being a scientist in general and wasting a lot of time and money, and so on. Also, please notice how I said I couldn’t think of any more, just genuinely low effort, was not meaning to say there weren’t.
I think that generally any job that has no immediate severe repercussions and where your employer can reasonably give you a probabtion period, you can just go ahead and do with enough knowledge. Such include (I’m only listing exotic ones, since that’s what we’re seemingly focusing on in this thread):
Technical writer
Salesperson
Consultant
Data Analyst
Project ManagerAnd in europe there is literally no gate to entry to lower level jobs like technical support or warehouse. Keep in mind that the vast majority of workers are not in the position to be a lawyer or a scientist.
But even with all that considered, my point still stands: The jobs you can’t do without a diploma, that’s like 1% of jobs. (Likely incorrect percentage)
Aaaand on top of that, when you’re in europe, you don’t even really have to go to uni. Sure, there are lectures you need to technically be present for, but you can just go, say you’re there, then leave. Then you have to pay like in the lower end of a few thousand bucks, which the university will even just straight up give to you if you’re poor and you can just take your exams. I don’t see nothing wrong with the exams, they’re good in any way.
What’s the problem here is the privatization of job opportunities, which for all intents and purposes doesn’t exist on this side of the lake. This is a uniquely american problem we’re talking about here.
I hIrE pEoPlE
The discussion was about the importance of a degree into finding a job. I hire people to work in research to develop novel drugs. I generally do not care whether they have a degree or not, but the degree does generally come with a level of preparation on the subject and a level of reasoning skills which are not easy to develop without formal training/working in the field. I did some times favor people without a degree over people with a PhD because they felt better candidates to me. Sometimes this is not possible due to bureaucracy. If you prefer, I do not actually hire people; I select people that should be hired with grant money I obtained to conduct certain research jobs.
I don’t know how it works in the US, but to get a job in sales or as a project manager a degree is not required where I live. Candidates with a degree may be favoured by a company, but there is no law enforcing the requirement for a degree. And I do know many people working those jobs without a degree.
Regarding the fact that you don’t need to go to university in Europe. I’m not really sure if I understand, I guess you mean it is not compulsory to attend lectures. I studied in Italy, there this was the case: all lectures were absolutely discretionary and you could finish your degree without attending a single one. That is except experimental stuff, which indeed you’d need to attend. You could theoretically just study from the books and pass all the exams and get your degree. However, lectures are very good for understanding what you’re studying, most people were attending all lectures anyway. The fact that those are optional is useful if some days you can not attend for whatever reason, whether you’re working or busy in some other way. This, however, is not the case throughout Europe. I live in Spain now, where attendance of lectures is compulsory. You do not get a degree unless you attend a specified percentage of the lectures. Many other countries in Europe follow this system.
In some countries in Europe you do not pay to attend university. In others you do have to pay, it’s generally a few thousand euros per year. In most countries you can get scholarships and not have to pay such fees or even get a salary for studying.
I believe we’re just misunderstanding each other. I do agree, for many jobs a degree is not necessary. But for many other jobs it is, or at least some kind of technical training. I believe the amount of jobs who do require some kind of certificate, at least in Europe, is higher than 1%. An electrician will be required a certificate to handle home installations and to ensure he knows what the normative is. A lathe operator will require a certificate which ensures he will not harm himself. A nurse now requires a degree, it used to be just a specific formation. Many other jobs are available who do not require a degree.
I’m not really sure to what you refer to as privatisation of job opportunities.
Nah, but you can do that in America.
There’s literally an entire demographic of americans that are having trouble with getting a job because they don’t have certification and it’s a nationwide problem causing insane amounts of debt for the general population, so unless there’s some kind of joke about the american healthcare system in there, then I don’t get what you’re saying.
I’m just saying there’s been a lot of people pretending to be doctors throughout America’s history.
Got it.
Only when you are talking about earning money. The smartest people out there are the ditch diggers and factory folk.
And what exactly would those two very specific demographics qualify as being smart?
Libraries are free.
Many libraries and community centers offer free classes depending on the subject. Local clubs can offer classes. Lots of youtube classes are free, like Khan Academy.
What you’re paying for is the degree on top of the education. A checkmark in a box that employers use to weed out people that don’t play the game of jumping through the hoops.
Access to books is not the same as access to a structured course with experts explaining the topics. YouTube classes can be very good to learn something specific, but do not achieve the organization of a university program.
In my country, university classes are public a d anyone can attend for free. You pay for the degree only. If it is formation you want, you can attend classes.
