Why go to College or University?

[okaywhy]

NBC's reality show, The Apprentice 3 - the battle between 'Book Smarts' and 'Street Smarts had led me to ponder these basic questions:

Why go to College or University?
What's the goal of education?
Is college degree essential?

The following are some of the answers i got, but i found that most of them don't really make sense:

1. college education increases one's earning potential.
many successful bussinessmen are just high school graduates.

2. bachelor's degree is essential for many jobs
but why plenty of graduates are jobless?

3. 'some' girls go to college to find a husband with an above-average earning potential.
save some energy, and read no.1 and 2, don't take offence

4. to become more mature
why don't you straight away go to work?

5. to be more knowledgable
why knowledgable?

6. to be more respectable
do you really respect those college geeks?

7. to identify and explore career options.
do you really need four years of undergraduate education to explore that?

I know there are many college/university students in the Recom and I bet you know what actually inspire you to attend college.

I hope you can share with some of us who are still desperately seeking for a good answer. I believe we as the high school students ought to know why because some of us just blindly go to college without knowing the reason.

[aftershox]

1. college education increases one's earning potential. (many successful bussinessmen are just high school graduates.)
> that may be the case a long time ago... not any more.. in the future there may be successful businessmen but not many... very few...

2. bachelor's degree is essential for many jobs (plenty of graduates are jobless)
>this is bcoz too many are with the same qualifications and some are choosy...

3. 'some' girls go to college to find a husband with an above-average earning potential. (save some energy, and read no.1 and 2, don't take offence Wink )
>no comment...

4. to become more mature (why don't you straight away go to work?)
>if you go straight to work you may miss some important experiences during college and uni.. you can still work maybe during summer holidays and so on or do internships to become more mature...

5. to be more knowledgable (why knowledgable?)
> do you want to look and feel stupid or less intelligent than others around you?? i think not so whether it be being street smart or book smart , you still need to have knowledge to be either one..

6. to be more respectable (huh? Question Anything worth us to respect? do you really respect those col>lege geeks?)
> in an intellectual sense i do respect those college geeks , bcoz though i may make fun of them , i acknowledge that in certain aspects they are indeed smarter than us...

So i feel it's essential to go to college or uni bcoz why take the risk and be a failure and unsuccessful person the rest of your life? when u can and are able to go to college or uni ... the odds of u being successful in life is higher then i think..

Just wat i think though..

[aquila]

Quite honestly I find No. 3 "Girls attending college to find husbands " condescending. Saying so, even if you add the qualifier "some" shows the assumption that in this age and time, women still have to "depend" on their husbands and that they work their butt off to attend college not for their own advancement but for the search of a better mate.

Being a woman and having many women friends, I think nothing can be further from the truth. Women who attend university are there because they think they are equal, if not better, than men. They desire career advancement, personal fulfilment and success. You will be hard pressed to find a woman who works hard only to better her chances of finding a rich husband.

Those women who rely on men would not be devoting their time to tertiary education. They would increase their chances of meeting their "ideal men" by making themselves pretty and meeting men. A college student does not have as much time for these pleasures, and God knows that men are intimidated by powerful women.

[weich]

I think the most important thing you can learn from the show is that marketing/selling skills are very important and also speaking up for yourself (to defend yourself from getting fired & also to convince your teammates that you're capable).

Anyway, college education may increase one's earning potential. Many successful bussinessmen are just high school graduates but how many of these are actually below 30 years old? We cannot compare our generation with the previous generation simply because they do not have the oppotunities that we have/vice versa.

However, I think the main reason is because as there's less opportunities for ppl without a college education to join companies as employees, they have to think of a way to make more money or become more successful. Still, the reason most of them are so succesful is because of knowledge. Without knowledge how do you exploit the market to your advantage & make your company profitable?

You can view college education as a shortcut for some but we all know that there are ppl out there who are really smart but are just lazy/unfocused while they are young. Basically, it's a way for the companies to recognise those that are good enough for the position they want to fill and these requirements can be met by your qualifications and everyone has a fair shot at it if they want to work for it.

I would also say a good Bachelor's degree is essential for jobs which require them. I have heard of many IT graduates being jobless but the main reason is because they chose the easier options while in college and thus, there's an oversupply of such graduates in the market. In fact, from what I've heard from my friend who's already working there's a great demand for good programmers for certain programming skills.

All in all, as long as you are focused, strong-willed, disciplined, know what you want 10/20 years down the road and have already gained enough knowledge of the market that interest you, go ahead and quit college & start your own business.

Success depends on yourself and not on others.

[balderdash]

This may sound very idealistic but tome, the point of going to uni is really to LEARN. The best experiences I've had these 3 years was sitting in a classroom, discussing theorists and critics and various other stuff. Then again, this is coming from an arts/social sciences perspective but I truly believe that many great minds gather together at the institution of universities.

[PiK]

heres a good reason: just for that damn piece of paper that'll cost me $100K

[okaywhy]

Originally Posted by balderdash

This may sound very idealistic but tome, the point of going to uni is really to LEARN. The best experiences I've had these 3 years was sitting in a classroom, discussing theorists and critics and various other stuff. Then again, this is coming from an arts/social sciences perspective but I truly believe that many great minds gather together at the institution of universities.

I'm interested to hear more from you. Your answer sounds intriguing. Can you elaborate more? Thank you.

[balderdash]

Originally Posted by okaywhy

I'm interested to hear more from you. Your answer sounds intriguing. Can you elaborate more? Thank you.

Errr I don't really know what and how to elaborate, just that i feel that tertirary education in this region has been somewhat reduced to a mere stepping stone to a *successful* career, big bucks and whatnot. I entered uni partly with that attitude, of course, but it was also because I badly wanted to learn. I've had the chances to take various classes in feminism, gender studies, sociolinguistics, literature(I'm a Lit major) and as such- I've learnt so much from reading, from TALKING to other people, the after-lunch/after-class discussions- as I am inching closer to graduation, I feel I know LESS and there is this desire to know MORE. I remember someone once told me that if this is what I feel after graduating, I've probably gone the right way.

Ah well

[balderdash]

argh. typo. TERTIARY.

blardy keyboard.

[misled_youth]

Uni thought me how to screw the government upside down.