Students, professors to protest education cutbacks
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 6, 2024 14:05
VIEWED: 9750
PAGE 6 of 8
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
The "things" you need to teach people are trivial in relation to the required time and skills (people).
Then I guess they do not really need the cash those in the first post were complaining about
Much to do about nothing
problem solved Signy
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Just a quick reply and then gone - but all those THINGS you point to as an example of resources - electricity and light bulbs, buildings and clean halls, computers and chalk, and invention - are a result of - somebody's effort. Iron is just a rock in the ground until somebody mines it, somebody transports it, somebody smelts it, somebody designs it, somebody machines it ... Those 'things' don't grow on trees ready to be plucked. They aren't found in nature. They are the crystallized work of many people. It still comes back to the 'resource' of people.
***************************************************************
Silence is consent.
and that effort is rewarded with cash
without it, cho wouldn't get no effort for long lady...
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:WHAT limited resources?
With limited resources why train people in skill sets that statistical studies would reveal to be not in demand ?
Sure we're short of food, water, trees, wildlands, clean air and clean ocean. But we're not short of people. People train people. People learn from people. THAT we have plenty of!
Tax money to pay said people....
or will they work for free
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And where does that shortage of money come from, Gino? Is there an absolute lack of money??? Not enough dollar bills floating around?
Why do we have jobs that need to be done - like teaching- AND unemployment?????
There are more than enough people to do everything that needs to be done, and more. The only thing that is keeping us from being able to do that is those who control the money control US.
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Gino: I really enjoy many things you have to say, but you've lost me here. Rant to ensue, sorry for the rantiness. I mean no disrespect.
My understanding: communist china worries quite a bit about how many people are doing the important jobs. Over there, according to much I've read and heard from Chinese friends, you train for and do what the govt tells you to do. Myself, I'd prefer to major in the wrong thing and change my field later, even if my mistake costs me some misery along the way (as it did).
As for what it costs the students: the high price of education in general is to blame, not a few particular majors you happen to dislike.
As for what these "wasted" degrees cost the economy: I imagine that if everyone studying those "useless" subjects quit, the universities would go belly up. The institutions need that tuition money, even if most of it comes through loans. Go after the loans and costs, not the majors.
As for the unimportance of knowledge: no one is God, and no one knows what education will serve a person later in life, even if it was gotten through a major they moved away from. Primarily, it may serve them through happiness, which I put a higher value on than income. You seem to dismiss the importance of "happiness" without a second throught. What's wrong with someone having a damned good time obtaining knowledge they love? It's not something you have an opportunity to do later in life, might as well when you're 20. Sure, puts you in debt. Again, blame the costs, not the knowledge.
As for combining majors: I can't speak for the other pairings you mentioned, but combining physics and engineering is ridiculous. Sure, for one you need some of the other, but to build a useful level of expertise you have to focus not just on one topic, but on a narrow part of it, exclusively. Either that or stay in school for 20+ years. I took 11 years for me to learn my general topic and specialty, and that barely scratched the surface.
Finally, the whole idea of removing the possibility of failure from anything creeps the hell out of it. The basis of the American Dream (not real one, not this corporate/advertising/lawsuit bullshit that's taken over) is that you make your own choices, even if they're bad ones. That's freedom, and that's a free market. If enough people want to study basket weaving, the market will be there to train them and that's as it should be. These students can fulfill their dreams, find out that their dreams were idiotic, than go off older and wiser and better able to find something useful to do.
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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
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Well said, Mal. Wasn't Russia like that, too, at least at one time? I'm not knowledgeable on the subject, but I seem to have seen that in movies. I found it really scary. Creating automatons for the work force, irregardless of the PERSON inside.
And I love how you explained it:Quote:
What I'd LIKE to say, if I had the communication skills you showed.
As for the unimportance of knowledge: no one is God, and no one knows what education will serve a person later in life, even if it was gotten through a major they moved away from. Primarily, it may serve them through happiness, which I put a higher value on than income. You seem to dismiss the importance of "happiness" without a second throught. What's wrong with someone having a damned good time obtaining knowledge they love? It's not something you have an opportunity to do later in life, might as well when you're 20. Sure, puts you in debt. Again, blame the costs, not the knowledge.
Human beings are more than fodder for the work force, they are complex creatures with talents and imagination. I wish we would foster that rather than only let them study what's useful to the rest of human society.
"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10
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I just had a long discussion with my husband. Always starts out with me saying how amazed I am by this place, the variety of positions and beliefs, how much more knowledgeable people are here than I and how much I learn from both them and from looking up arguments I want to make or believe in, ending up spending hours on the internet and learning from that as well.
We got into education, and the debate between liberal arts being valuable versus just taking classes in a major.
He got his degree from San Jose state, and explained about the best course he ever took. The professor had them do nothing but read: Anything they wanted to read, as long as they could justify it. They then wrote a report on what they read, and gave him a 3x5 card with information about the book to add to his library.
Jim was a business major, and ended up Vice President of the Round Table Franchise...he never went anywhere outside business. But he states flatly that he is a big proponent of liberal arts for many reasons, among them the widening of horizons, the chance to explore, and the possibility of stumbling across something that intrigues the student and makes them change their direction.
Now that professor would well be considered a kook and not worth his salary to many who advocate not having anything but "useful" classes available. His experience and beliefs make the case a number of us are making, in my view.
"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10
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Quote:
Originally posted by mal4prez:
Gino: I really enjoy many things you have to say, but you've lost me here. Rant to ensue, sorry for the rantiness. I mean no disrespect.
My understanding: communist china worries quite a bit about how many people are doing the important jobs. Over there, according to much I've read and heard from Chinese friends, you train for and do what the govt tells you to do. Myself, I'd prefer to major in the wrong thing and change my field later, even if my mistake costs me some misery along the way (as it did).
As for what it costs the students: the high price of education in general is to blame, not a few particular majors you happen to dislike.
As for what these "wasted" degrees cost the economy: I imagine that if everyone studying those "useless" subjects quit, the universities would go belly up. The institutions need that tuition money, even if most of it comes through loans. Go after the loans and costs, not the majors.
As for the unimportance of knowledge: no one is God, and no one knows what education will serve a person later in life, even if it was gotten through a major they moved away from. Primarily, it may serve them through happiness, which I put a higher value on than income. You seem to dismiss the importance of "happiness" without a second throught. What's wrong with someone having a damned good time obtaining knowledge they love? It's not something you have an opportunity to do later in life, might as well when you're 20. Sure, puts you in debt. Again, blame the costs, not the knowledge.
As for combining majors: I can't speak for the other pairings you mentioned, but combining physics and engineering is ridiculous. Sure, for one you need some of the other, but to build a useful level of expertise you have to focus not just on one topic, but on a narrow part of it, exclusively. Either that or stay in school for 20+ years. I took 11 years for me to learn my general topic and specialty, and that barely scratched the surface.
Finally, the whole idea of removing the possibility of failure from anything creeps the hell out of it. The basis of the American Dream (not real one, not this corporate/advertising/lawsuit bullshit that's taken over) is that you make your own choices, even if they're bad ones. That's freedom, and that's a free market. If enough people want to study basket weaving, the market will be there to train them and that's as it should be. These students can fulfill their dreams, find out that their dreams were idiotic, than go off older and wiser and better able to find something useful to do.
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hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left
I wasn't suggesting combining majors or any crap like that, we were talking about taking non related classes
People can be free to fulfill idiotic dreams, that is well and good...
but does government have a role in helping people fulfill idiotic dreams is my point...
If enough people want to study basket weaving, they can have at it... just not supported by tax revenues
As for " universities would go belly up "
there is a waiting list a mile long, kids who can't get into programs that lead to something down the road... why not expand enrollment for them ? Make those programs more available ?
Go ahead, make bad choices... you are still free to do so. Why should I have to help pay for that ?
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Just an example of you never know what you'll get when you select a major. The CEO of the bank where I work is an Agricultural Sciences major from NC State.
Yet he has successfully guided a small eastern NC bank for the past 25 years, through expansions to most of the eastern part of the state from one branch in a very small town and now through the minefield of the banking crisis that we're now in. All the while staring at Bank of America, Wachovia (now bought by Wells Fargo) and other big mega banks right across the road.
I've also heard him say that he doesn't care what you majored in, just the fact you graduated proved to him that you could LEARN. And most of the original employees (many are still with the bank and have corporate level jobs) have a generalized business degree or in one or two cases just a high school diploma.
And yes, on Thursday he left early (around 4:45-he usually works way beyond every one else) to go home to plant his spring broccoli.
http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/
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It seems to me that a government- particularly a democratic government- has an interest in a generally well educated population. And in my view, knowledge is never wasted.
Nobody knows what knowledge will do someone good. Maybe they learn about themselves or their family. Maybe they learn how to make pretty things. Maybe they learn about history. In my hubby's case, he's a polymath. His degree is in philosophy. But what that degree did was teach him how to think, and from that he became an expert in both analog and digital electronics and machine-level programming, and has spent the past 30 years designing advanced research instrumentation for research chemists who need to measure things that have never been measured before.
I supervise 12 people (soon to be 13) and I encourage them all to get as much information as possible, even if it's not directly job-related. And from that my peeps have gotten involved in programming, policy, economics... makes them much more effective.
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