> If you just want to learn and grow, you should avoid the university system entirely.
I disagree with this. The university system is really good for exposure, assuming that people who are attending the system actually take advantage of the exposure. e.g. I was able to take dedicated lessons in multiple languages, artistic mediums, theories in various fields, by experts in each field. Many of these experts were presenting their work for free outside of lessons, and often times provided free food and drink to boot! Also, because my institution was larger, we often had scholars travel here to present their various works and even little get-togethers where multiple scholars from multiple fields collaborated and presented work. For free! With free food and drink!
I can't get a single dedicated language instructor for my life nowadays, it's bullshit apps or stuff oriented towards children only. Same if I wanted to learn the basics of, say, a performance art, or painting. The best system I have nowadays for learning is mostly hacker spaces and maker spaces, but they're specialized in what they can teach me and don't often have the kind of dedicated experts "office hours" or anything like that.
> I can't get a single dedicated language instructor for my life nowadays, it's bullshit apps or stuff oriented towards children only. Same if I wanted to learn the basics of, say, a performance art, or painting. The best system I have nowadays for learning is mostly hacker spaces and maker spaces, but they're specialized in what they can teach me and don't often have the kind of dedicated experts "office hours" or anything like that.
Exactly. I'm fairly knowledgeable about my STEM specialization but in university I had access to great language learning and exchange programs, top-notch political science and philosophy departments, architecture departments, etc. I remember bumming around in philosophy seminars not because I was a philosophy student (though I did take some philosophy classes) but because I found it so interesting. As long as I didn't increase the grading burden on any of the grad students/professors, everyone was happy and the quality of instruction I received was fantastic. In the real world the closest I have is books I read or MOOCs where a lot of people are in it to get a certification or a badge of completion rather than just marinate in ideas.
You may find it worthwhile to reach out to local community colleges, because once you're "in the group" you can find people doing various things, and they're often not advertising, but will be willing to take a bit of cash on the side.
I'm sorry for derailing this thread, but am curious. Have any of you used services (e.g. classes, study groups) at the local community college? How does it work out when you're a decade beyond your graduate program? I miss a lot of aspects of the university system but have a full-time job and a life now (sadly.) I've been thinking of taking classes and networking at some of our really well-rated community colleges but I'm not sure what the experience is like.
I'm sure it heavily depends on local circumstances, but for whatever it's worth, I badly fucked up my first attempt at going to four-year right out of high school due to mental health reasons and ended up doing two years at LA City College before going back. It may have been mostly the Biology and Chemistry departments, but the quality of student there was still the highest of any school I've ever taken classes at, and that includes Georgia Tech, which is typically regarded as a top 10 engineering school. The reasons were somewhat peculiar and specific, but the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 80s left a whole lot of immigrants from former Soviet Republics fleeing the collapse and most of them ended up in LA. We had a whole lot of former engineers, scientists, and medical doctors who came to the US only to find their foreign credentials were not honored by US institutions and they had to start completely over. They utterly destroyed our curves thanks to all of the knowledge, dedication, and discipline they already had compared to an average 19 year-old.
Heck, even my Bio 101 professor was abnormally brilliant. She'd been a researcher at Harvard Medical School who worked on highly experimental treatments in a ward full of terminal patients and just finally burned out from being around so much death all the time, so there she was in Los Feliz three blocks from Scientology world headquarters teaching at a community college, probably the hardest class I've ever had to take.
It really depends upon the community college and class.
You tend to have some younger screw-up, unmotivated students, especially at entry level classes; some younger students that are there for economic or other reasons; some older students going back to school for life reasons; and then some older students who are intellectually curious and doing it for enrichment.
What the make-up of a class, and the resultant culture is, is a crapshoot. But it can be outstanding.
As the other said, it really depends on the college. The one near me is more technical oriented and has a number of programs basically designed to train people for employment at local factories.
If you avoid the standard college classes, you get a pretty wide cross-section of the people in the community. Math 101 is mostly going to be college-age kids.
I do, but I would argue that local community colleges is still most certainly in the "university system", just another tier/flavor of it. I would consider participating in community college activities to be participating in academic institution style activities that also happen at universities.
Yah- I don't think they're disagreeing with you, but just suggesting that CCs and other adult education may be a practical way to scratch the itch that you described.
I don't know why you're being downvoted, every word of your comment is the truth.
The purpose of higher education in the US to create a market for student loan debt and generate revenue for states. The US is a capitalist society, and education is not a right, it's a privilege, and student loan debt is a billion dollar industry. We saw how the states nearly rioted over the possibility of being denied the revenue from student loan interest if it was forgiven. Believing education is about educating people is about as naive as believing hospitals are about healthcare, or houses about shelter. All of it is entirely about profit, debt and tax revenue.
So much of how the US works (or doesn't work) makes perfect sense when you realize this. Education, business, tech, government, the media, pop culture - it's all grift, top to bottom. It's all carnies and frauds and sociopaths working angles and trying to squeeze you just a little harder to wet their lips with one more drop of your lifeblood.
It is not the truth, it is largely opinion informed by deep cynicism that fails to reflect on the complexities of human behavior and motivation. That does not mean it is completely divorced from any truth, but it is not usefully informative by itself.
Whether a society is capitalist or not does not define whether education is a right or a privilege. Another mistake is defining a country as capitalist and then shutting down any remaining capacity to think about it. Most countries contain a mixture of economic principles at work, so a surface level knowledge of capitalism that seems stuck in the 1800s will only leave you appearing naive and outdated.
Which country is it again that created the internet and has helped expand education not only locally, but globally for all mankind to benefit? Which country is it that created the greatest video platform on Earth, populated with a vast wealth of university lectures and documentaries on top of allowing people casually sitting at home to speak their mind for anyone to see (within reason)?
The U.S. is not without its problems as any country, but we're familiar with many of the problems we have which were already solved once before within the last century. Young people trained on cynical ideologies are highly suggestible, almost encouraged to see certain events as validation for that cynicism. It becomes their organizing principle, no longer looking for what solutions are being produced by a system or what uncorrupt motivations someone might have for any given decision. Only the negatives.
If you're a hard-line right winger, the goal is actually to set undesirable groups back, but that's a pretty fringe position.
Based in recent history, most recently on spending cuts in the proposed house spending bill, this appears to be well within the mainstream of the Republican party.
I'm not supporting the GOP, but we are $33T in debt with interest rates rising dramatically. We're probably in a perilous position. We need to cut back and raise taxes.
FWIW, I'm well aware the GOP has also contributed greatly to that debt.
If you're a university, the goal is to fill up your university with satisfied customers and increase revenue.
If you're a student, the goal is to form social networks that you can later use to help in business.
If you're a politician, the goal is to increase college attendance rates.
If you're a hard-line right winger, the goal is actually to set undesirable groups back, but that's a pretty fringe position.
If you just want to learn and grow, you should avoid the university system entirely.