Dumb question about education...

fvaldes

fvaldes

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Why do you have to go through an institution in order to receive a degree?

Couldn't there be comprehensive, amazingly difficult and extensive tests on each field ( with a few exceptions that require hands on training ) that are open to anybody that wishes to take them? If you pass, you get your degree.

In other words, if you can show you dominate the material, you get your degree. Period.
 


i have no problem with universities making money off the people that need somebody to tell them what to do and when to do it. These people are the future 9to5ers.

BUT there should be the option for those that have the will and desire to go at it on their own, specially in this time and age when everything is available with a few mouse clicks.
 
can't you enroll into a program, and like.."CLEP" your courses? Meaning, isntead of taking the semester, you just take a course if you pass you get credits. Quoted from Collegeboard.com "Did you know that doing well on a CLEP exam can earn you the same amount of credit that you'd get if you took — and did well in — a semester- or year-long college course covering the same material? Read on to learn how to get credit for what you already know."

CLEP: Getting College Credit

If anybody knows more on this subject, please share - i myself would like to know more about this.
ty
 
1337hovie said:
can't you enroll into a program, and like.."CLEP" your courses? Meaning, isntead of taking the semester, you just take a course if you pass you get credits. Quoted from Collegeboard.com "Did you know that doing well on a CLEP exam can earn you the same amount of credit that you'd get if you took — and did well in — a semester- or year-long college course covering the same material? Read on to learn how to get credit for what you already know."

CLEP: Getting College Credit

If anybody knows more on this subject, please share - i myself would like to know more about this.
ty
Click to expand...


My experience with this is that you can CLEP out of certain general classes, but you still have to attend a majority of classes, especially upper division ones.
 
The problem is, there are too many bull shit degrees out there. Like - LIBERAL ARTS. Whoo.
 
fvaldes said:
In other words, if you can show you dominate the material, you get your degree. Period.
Click to expand...

Resume is where yo get to brag

Most compnaies worth working for don't give a flying fuck about education. Resume is where it's at. Marketing 101 :D
 
fvaldes said:
Why do you have to go through an institution in order to receive a degree?

Couldn't there be comprehensive, amazingly difficult and extensive tests on each field ( with a few exceptions that require hands on training ) that are open to anybody that wishes to take them? If you pass, you get your degree.

In other words, if you can show you dominate the material, you get your degree. Period.
Click to expand...

Depends on what kind of education we are talking about. If you want to be a medical doctor, there is no way you can get a good training without access to injured or dead people to perform your training on if you don't do it through organized institutions. If you want to be an architect, you will have very professional people looking over your shoulder during the course of few years to insure you are worth your degree.

For physics and mathematics, it is very easy to prove yourself without degree because what you can do is very visible. Lets take for example Albert Einstein and Srinivasa Ramanujan who had no formal college education. I think they had honorary doctorate. They definitely earned it.

If you think about business/economics degree of some sort, I think they are most shit anyway and you shouldn't be bothered with. That's where money talks.

One exam degrees would be prone to corruption. I definitely wouldn't trust my life to any doctor or engineer with such degree without any results behind them (as Garrett said: resume is where you get to brag). I wouldn't care about mathematicians or physicist degrees as long as people who do it can show concrete results.

tldr. Disregard degrees acquire money/knowledge
 
I guess one argument to that would be that going to school would make you more all rounded, whatever that means

say if you had a test for 'programming', people would then study for c/c++/php etc only ... where as those who go to school would have to take economics/english/biology/whatever to get that same degree
 
That's how it was years ago in the US , it was called apprenticeship. You would take a job under someone else ,they would teach you and eventually you'd know all you needed to about that job/industry.
 
Cause these universities fuckin BANKKKK ! off tuition ... and then when your done with that, they sucker you for Alumni donations.
 
cause unis would lose a major income source, and that could affect innovation. a lot of profs cant teach for shit, but there are some smart guys there doing some hardcore research. so they created this "system" where you gotta go through 4 years of skewl to make it in the world. think of it as the transfer of money from the lazy (who need an institution to learn) to people who can use it to innovate.

at least that's what i'd say if I owned a university.
 
fvaldes said:
i have no problem with universities making money off the people that need somebody to tell them what to do and when to do it. These people are the future 9to5ers.

BUT there should be the option for those that have the will and desire to go at it on their own, specially in this time and age when everything is available with a few mouse clicks.
Click to expand...

If you do a degree you don't have to go to the lectures if you already know it, just submit the work & attend the exams. Your paying for the degree in the end.
 
this type of thing would work for everything except the hands on part to engineering/science. Plus sometimes it takes an outsider to help find what you're doing wrong in your work.
 
Lolz. Nowhere is a lack of higher education more apparent than in some of these posts.

College isn't really about "teaching" you anything by rote- That's for elementary and high schools. Higher Ed is supposed to be about "leading" you, and providing a structured medium where you are taught how to find, evaluate, and expound on the things you discover. It's also about the free exchange of ideas among like-minded people that lead to bigger and better ideas, etc.

No matter how smart you are, if the only person you have to discuss your ideas with is yourself, no flaw will ever become apparent- you need to bounce your ideas off of others for that to happen.

As papajohn said- you need an outsider sometimes...at least a second-party opinion. Otherwise you will just get caught in a loop, and wind up with a flawed result. But the catch is, they need to be people with the same goals as you, and with superior knowledge and proven skills in their disciplines, kind of like, oh, a Professor? Not anonymous, faceless forum trolls spouting shit as if it were holy writ, lol.

PS - I challenge any of you to CLEP your way out of a 400 or 500 series Physics or organic chemistry final without at least a couple of years of classwork. Not saying it couldn't be done, but...

PPS - I have a BSEE, but I dearly wish I had aquired a BA in Liberal Arts instead- it would have been FAR more relevant and useful to my life as a whole ;)
 
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fvaldes said:
Why do you have to go through an institution in order to receive a degree?

Couldn't there be comprehensive, amazingly difficult and extensive tests on each field ( with a few exceptions that require hands on training ) that are open to anybody that wishes to take them? If you pass, you get your degree.

In other words, if you can show you dominate the material, you get your degree. Period.
Click to expand...

Not exactly a college degree, but if you want to take a test and get a nice piece of paper with your name on it, I'm sure there are some certifications out there you can earn. You can usually earn a lot more with a certification than a very general bachelors degree. Of course, some require years of work experience, too, but that's still not 'school' in the traditional sense.

1337hovie said:
can't you enroll into a program, and like.."CLEP" your courses? Meaning, isntead of taking the semester, you just take a course if you pass you get credits. Quoted from Collegeboard.com "Did you know that doing well on a CLEP exam can earn you the same amount of credit that you'd get if you took — and did well in — a semester- or year-long college course covering the same material? Read on to learn how to get credit for what you already know."

CLEP: Getting College Credit

If anybody knows more on this subject, please share - i myself would like to know more about this.
ty
Click to expand...

"Clepping" out of classes is easy. Read through the book or take the little prep class (where they tell you what's on the test), and then take the test. If you pass you get credit for the class - No grade, so there's not damage to any GPA if you barely pass. It's similar in a sense to the AP exams or in some cases a high score on the SAT/ACT.

Personally I recommend testing out of as much as you can and taking the more general courses at a community college. You can do this while still enrolled at the main university. Pay pennies for night school to knock out the basics and spend your real dollars on the courses where you're interacting with specialists in your field. Be mindful that there are specialists at community colleges, too, but they are a bit harder to come by. Be warned that doing duel enrollment and testing out of classes may cause early graduation. This may lead to reduced college expenses as well. :)

galacon said:
Lolz. Nowhere is a lack of higher education more apparent than in some of these posts.

College isn't really about "teaching" you anything by rote- That's for elementary and high schools. Higher Ed is supposed to be about "leading" you, and providing a structured medium where you are taught how to find, evaluate, and expound on the things you discover. It's also about the free exchange of ideas among like-minded people that lead to bigger and better ideas, etc.

No matter how smart you are, if the only person you have to discuss your ideas with is yourself, no flaw will ever become apparent- you need to bounce your ideas off of others for that to happen.

As papajohn said- you need an outsider sometimes...at least a second-party opinion. Otherwise you will just get caught in a loop, and wind up with a flawed result. But the catch is, they need to be people with the same goals as you, and with superior knowledge and proven skills in their disciplines, kind of like, oh, a Professor? Not anonymous, faceless forum trolls spouting shit as if it were holy writ, lol.

PS - I challenge any of you to CLEP your way out of a 400 or 500 series Physics or organic chemistry final without at least a couple of years of classwork. Not saying it couldn't be done, but...

PPS - I have a BSEE, but I dearly wish I had aquired a BA in Liberal Arts instead- it would have been FAR more relevant and useful to my life as a whole ;)
Click to expand...

Well said.
 
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