College, or Self-Education?

Off-Topic
#21

High-school Junior here and still have yet to know what the hell I’m doing (and going to do).

I have a feeling that there’s two types of people who go to college: one of them fall into the category of people who are actually pursuing the STEM fields, and the rest of them are people who doesn’t exactly know what they’re doing and are just going with the flow. For me, I’m not really sure… Growing up in a family whose parents were both teachers at one point in their life, going to college not only feels like the norm but may be the only acceptable option here. I don’t know, maybe I’ll get lucky and accomplish something before senior year and actually opens up a path where I can just actively be involved in a job instead of being in college… Like getting @NotKyon to support me on Patreon

I’m not too keen on the whole college, debts, and money thing in general, but it’s definitely something to watch out for, especially when it comes to gauging your own ability to follow through with the program instead of quitting half-way through and getting screwed over by loans… Of course, a degree, in this day and age, is unfortunately quite valuable in a business environment. Whatever cultural heritage that we took out of the good ol’ days where a person who holds a degree is regarded in a higher class still holds truth today, even when they are the norm now, just by having a degree when applying for a job puts you at an obvious advantage to those that don’t, giving college degrees a lot of credits when it come to career paths.

On the topic of self-education vs school education, like many people here have said, it is really dependent on the field that you are interested in. As someone who is sort of half-assedly pursuing art (the half-assedly is a result of the belief that it’s an impossible dream), 100% of what I’ve learned so far and will probably learn more is a result of me just deciding to sit in my room all day and draw shit.

Art is a good example of a field where a lot of your experience will come from just you drawing on your own, it’s something that’s accessible at home and doesn’t need an education facility of some sort to provide you with the learning material for it. Of course, there’s also certain field where you will definitely and utmost needs formal education to accomplish them… something that involves the scientific field will definitely require you to either get access to equipment worth an incredible amount of currency, or even a filming career will probably leave you at a position where you’ll have to get college education just to be exposed to the kind of equipment that are necessary to learn.

Onto your dilemma itself, you’re very much correct. The problem with self-education that a lot of people have experienced is to find the motivation to continue on doing it, with something like a formal education, it’s much easier to do because you’re sitting in a class doing work and getting them assigned… like you have been for most of your life up to this point.

That’s weird though, college forcing you to take classes that aren’t directly related to the one that you specifically pursues for… Shouldn’t it be something like “hey, at this point in your life, you probably know what you’re doing if you’re here, so how about we just focus on said subject instead of hammering you with pointless classes that you probably won’t ever use in your life”

Actually, you know what? Screw school subjects that I probably won’t ever use in my life, math, for example, is a good contributor to that list. Why the hell am I learning Algebra 2 if I know I will never get into the STEM field? There’s 8760 hours in a year and around 1,170 hours of school in a year for American students, assuming you’re a healthy individual, sleep (THIS IS WHY WE SHOULD ALL HAVE POLYPHASIC SLEEP) takes up 1/3 of your day, turning that into 5840 hours a year that you are actively functioning, 1170 of which is taken up by school, which is around 1/5. What if someone know that they are guaranteed their dream job as something like a master pianist if they are good enough for it? What if they just drop out of formal education to get 1170 hours more into practicing whatever skill they want to pursue? THAT’S A LOT OF TIME TO IMPROVE SOMETHING AND SCHOOL IS TAKING IT AWAY, IT’S TAKING AWAY FREEDOM, AND BECAUSE OF THAT I DEMAND THAT SCHOOL NEEDS TO BE REFORMED, THAT EDUCATION NEEDS A COMPLETE MAKEOVER.

Although… isn’t a big part of school is opening up pathway for you, and especially so for people who aren’t quite sure which road they should be going down? So naturally if you know you already going to have a good job without needing some sort of college degree, it should be without saying that you should just drop out, because school is pointless at that point.

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#22

Having me support you on patreon is actually pretty viable. Effectively that’s the sugar daddy path, which you can only do while you’re young or clever. In any case it’s a frowned upon option in modern society and I’ve no choice but to say it’s not recommended if you value acceptance among your peers and potential peers.

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#23

I’d argue that arts, especially creative fields, are highly reliant on peer evaluation. While anyone can evaluate whether a craft is good or bad, professionals of particular creative fields have better grasps of what makes it good or bad. That sort of evaluation comes from learning perhaps about art history, various techniques, and frameworks to which art is evaluated on.

If you’re like me who have no plans of pursuing, say Fine Arts, professionally, sometimes being acquainted with experienced artists is enough. But if you want to be a professional artist, you seriously need to have art professors look after your progress.

#24

My main argument against that is, well, how do you know that you will never get into the STEM field? Things change, people change, and maybe somewhere down the line you might just end up there and you will be thankful you learned algebra 2.

Or maybe you won’t and it will be a complete waste. But my point is, you really won’t be sure until the time comes and IMO that time only really comes once you’ve graduated from high school, so until then I think that it is an adequate general preparation for more advanced fields that may or may not come.

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#25

Fair enough point, I don’t think I’m dumb enough (or anyone really is) to not be able to pursue the STEM field, so there’s always the possibility that happens, no matter how unlikely it may be.

Although my point still stands that there should be an option of some sort to choose to not take those subjects. To be completely honest, I don’t know anyone, or if I ever will, a person who is so set on their future career that they will consider education that doesn’t pertain to that subject to be completely worthless; but looking at it from the point of view where you can be spending the time doing something else that’s much more (subjectively?) involving with the dream in question, taking a core class that you know you won’t ever use is kind of aimless.

Then again, can we really decide the future just by setting our mind on it? What if something happens along the way that’s out of our control? What if a huge factor of being successful in your dream involves luck playing a big role? What if it’s just as important to keep as many doors as opened while still pursuing your dreams…

damn it pepe why are you right

no you know what society needs a reform
this world needs a reform

why can’t i just pick a class role that i want and farm all the way to end game

#26

I wish I had known enough to ask myself how practical college was for me. I kind of went along with the flow (mom literally told me as long as I went to college I could stay at home, teachers assumed my good grades meant college was a good step for me, etc), but ended up with a degree I don’t like much and haven’t used. And debt, yay.
I think community college is fair enough to start out with for most people, especially if you’re wondering if college is a good fit but you’re not too sure what you want to study. Also college is very much about making connections in your chosen field (both faculty and other students), so if you’re going to be a recluse and not network you’re not getting as much out of it as you could be.

I’d be asking questions like if the college you’re thinking of has a good field of study, any scholarships, study abroad opportunities, do they help you get language certifications, etc.

#27

At first sight, it looks like that, but let me present the complete opposite to your situation. What if there’s person who is committed to go to college and study a STEM field, would subjects like art, music or philosophy be useless for them. No. Those subjects may seem aimless, but even if they aren’t practically used, studying them helps structure your brain and thought process. Knowing philosophy helps you maintain healthy discussions, and art and music aid with having more imagination, which can actually be really useful if you’re an engineer looking for a solution to a problem.

The same goes for STEM subjects that may not directly have anything to do with art subjects: math, for instance, increases your abstraction capacity, which enables you to deal with daily problems in a more objective and efficient way.

After all, school isn’t a place where you go to acquire knowledge to pursue a career. That’s what college is. School is, rather, a place that teaches you general subjects to give you a standard knowledge that has been agreed upon, which allows you to get by on a daily basis and train your brain to work more efficiently.

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#28

When I was looking at colleges I was looking primarily at 2 colleges. One was a public university that had those other class requirements that you dislike, while the other was a smaller private college that had a hyper focused curriculum geared for the career I was interested in. I wound up going with the public university because I didn’t want to give up my higher level math studies, but I had that other option.

If you know what you are looking for you can probably find that focused curriculum that you want, but first you have to know what you want to do. Otherwise your search for such a curriculum will be much less effective.

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#29

I can’t quite rack my brain to see how specifically a math subject that’s above anything Algebra to have application in real life, could you provide some examples? Is there an article somewhere that I can read about how math in particular can structure the thought process outside of understanding math itself better? I mean I guess STEM can be justified…? Science relies on observations after all rather than formulaic structures. I know that the STEM field is made out to be the grandiose of the academic world and gets romanticized and all, but seriously, will the math that I learn right now every be applicable to life? Math like dividing and multiplying, practical math, is so much useful and something that I would rather learn because I know I’ll be doing tax at one point in my life, paying off debts at one point in my life, and budgeting my money, that’s the kind of math that we should learn but it’s not even a part of the core classes.

Moreover on financials… Debts. What about the complete opposite of being successful thanks to college? What if you screw yourself over somehow by not being able to find a job in whatever topic that you have a major in (cause you know, they’re not guaranteed for some reason HAHA) and ends up doing something else that, yes, lets you scrape by, but with a load of debt on your back from college to top it off? I don’t know, maybe this is too much of a case by case basis that it’s hard to pin down an answer, considering all the possibilities.

Taking away from high school, in my last post I agreed that it is better for the general masses to take coursework that is designed to be as useful as possible for finding out your pathway, but what about college? According to Apasher, aren’t you still forced to take core classes that doesn’t necessarily pertain to your career? To refer to school and college as two different things by separating them by the kind of things they’re supposed to teach make sense, but feels a little weird in this context, especially when there’s little to no difference if you’re still forced to take those subjects in either system, and especially so at the point in college where you have to pay money for courses, money towards something which, if you have the mindset that it’s not useful towards your specialized career, feels… wasteful? What is college and higher former education are trying to do here? Ascending you to a significant point in human intelligence and knowledge or are they trying to prepare you for a specific career path?

@BlackHayate02

Fair enough point, college professors are always a good source to help you, but is that really the only option here? If you were to consider the financial cost of going to college, is it really such an appealing offer? There’s very many fields of professional art with different industry work that involves them so I can’t really go in too much detail… In the first place does professional help counts as a professor sort of thing? I mean, if apprenticeship in this kind of creative field is a prevalent thing in America, then that’s also another option, though I have no idea how that works… Just that it might exist.

A degree from a college would look great on my name and all, but the case for art is a little different, where most of the time your ability will be judged on your portfolio, rather than a degree (or maybe that’s just a misconception). Sure, college does offer a good deal of social networking especially for artists who, like you said, needs evaluation and such, that’s something that I can agree on that you’ll definitely miss out if you’re not in college.

I also do believe that having a degree is definitely very useful, since there is a lot of jobs that you can miss out on if you don’t have a degree, simply because they require one. A degree is kind of like wearing nice and appropriate clothes to an interview, while not having one is comparable to that of being naked, except maybe you’re buff as shit because you’re actually very knowledgeable and have a lot of experience with the job, but even so you may not get hired simply because you’re not wearing clothes, which, of course, is messed up, but that’s just how things are.

It’s a funny idea though, self-motivation and all…

If you have the self-motivation to get through college, won’t you also have the self-motivation to also focus on self-education to whichever subject you’re passionate about?

#30

Combinatorics, probability, and by extension statistics are all higher level math subjects that can be useful to understand even if you won’t necessarily be using them yourself. Combinatorics or as I like to call it “Fancy Counting” is all about answering how many of something are there. e.g. How many ways can you arrange a group of objects? You’ve probably (see what I did there) heard of the other 2 fields. Probability answers questions such as “How likely is something to occur?” Statistics meanwhile answers questions like “We have some random stuff. Does it match what we expect it to look like?” Combinatorics can help you understand probability, which is crucial for understanding statistics.

When people on the news discuss the results of research, often times having some understanding of probability and statistics will help you understand what it means. An understanding of statistics can also help you detect lies made with stats.

I could also go on and on about how various bits of math beyond algebra are just cool, but that’s better left to a different topic.

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#31

While what @CandorVelexion said is true, I wasn’t especifically referring to math subjects being useful by themselves. My point was that math structures your way of thinking so that you’ll become much better at problem-solving and areas that require logic and sequential thinking. When you solve a mathematics problem, you are reading, understanding and selecting useful information. You then evaluate different paths that may lead you to a solution. You carry them out and obtain a solution, which you compare to its context to see if it makes sense. Problem-solving in any subject is very similar to that.

So apparently you want to become a professional artist. You’ll still have problems that require sequential logic to solve in you daily life. Even deciding whether to go to the supermarket at a certain time of the day is worth your time implies sequential logic.

More in detail about brain usage, exact math (that related to arithmetic operations) shares a part of the brain with verbal language. However, more complex math problems that involve estimations, probability, counting…, use both the mentioned area and other areas in the other brain hemisphere. Due to the poor connections between brain hemispheres, humans are bad at solving these mathematical problems. However, with practice, they can get better, and this translates to better body coordination and faster complex thought processes that use both hemispheres of the brain. In addition, the part of the brain that deals with basic math like counting and approximation is known to be related to spatial awareness, which, if you ask me, would be pretty useful in your case, since art requires imagining a space and mastering perspective.

There are tons of articles about this, so I’ll just drop two of them that illustrate some of the claims I made.

http://news.mit.edu/1999/math-0512

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#32

Granted, balancing out your hours in a day for different priorities and activities requires logic, but does it completely relates to sequential logic when it’s just a simple matter of adding and subtracting the time that it takes for x activity compared to your backlog?.. At least that’s how I see it, I don’t think daily problems like that really require an advanced knowledge of mathematics at all to even be solved, mainly because managing deadlines and time for yourself is something that feels like a very basic ability of human intellectual. Or who knows, maybe math helped me in doing those things but I don’t realize it, but I’m just trying my best to look back into retrospective here…

I get your point that math in general, not as specific subjects, but in general, can help you with tasks like approximation and estimation, and I agree with it, but isn’t the argument here about advanced mathematics and how school forces you to take it as a core class? Yes, being able to quickly multiply numbers is a result of me having learned the multiplication table by heart when I was young. Yes, being able to quickly figure out and compare cost between a bigger bottle of drink and a pack of them is thanks to having learned adding and subtracting and practicing them over and over again. Yes, I’m very much able to estimate the length an Ethernet cord required for the distance between my room and the living room. Those skills are useful, they add to your daily life, but the kind of math that’s related to those very actions were taught in middle schools, elementary even. What I’m talking about here is the advanced mathematics that we’re forced to take, which makes me feel like a lot of it is just the systematic idea that you have to be this super intellectual human being just because you’re in school, that’s cool and all, but the problem is that some people just don’t care about certain subjects, and yet, they’re still forced to pay to take that class, just because it’s a part of this curriculum formed by an idea hundred of years ago and still have yet to see any change in the modern world.

also sorry that maeba vs the world has gotten really long and i’m just going in loops here but i wanted to get it out… somewhere

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#33

I would say that getting college education is a must in today’s society. It doesn’t open a lot of doors since more people have them now than ever before, but it keeps your options open.

What you could do is search for a good university with a good Japanese major department. I don’t know about the USA, but its a thing in Asia where they would study “Chinese”, “Japanese”, “insert language here” as a major. They would teach you the language, the culture, history, and maybe even international experiences.

Another option is to study a different major to supplement or be a backup plan for your dream career. Maybe study writing or history or Asian Studies as a major and have Japanese be a minor. Or Study business with a Japanese minor. It will make you more flexible and workable.

If I misunderstand you, and you are asking whether you should formally study Japanese or self study, formal study would be easy to get the basics, but if you know people willing to work and train with you on your Japanese, self-study could be viable. It would be especially important to use the language naturally so watching Japanese news, talking to Japanese people, going to Japan and using only Japanese would be useful tools to not only study it, but also to master it.

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#34

While it’s not answering the core question of this topic, it’s still closely related to education and choosing one’s path in life, so here goes:

Make absolutely sure you know exactly what you want to do and which proffession you want to aim for before you commit to a path. You can’t just do whatever and approach it half-assedly, because that was the story of my failure. University stuff has a ridiculusly high difficulty and requires you to learn more stuff faster than ever before. Entering the working world, even by training, is an incredible shift in your environment that also comes with a lot of stress. Whatever your first commitment is when life gets serious, you must be sure that you really want to do whatever it is you’re doing at that point, or you won’t last. You need something to keep you going even when the pressure is high, when you’re struggling and you feel like shit.

If you realize you don’t like it, you’re expected to either jump ship really fast or finish what you’ve started and then get it right on your next attempt. Companies frown upon people who have failed at things, assuming that whatever stopped you back then might come back and make you reconsider or fail again while you’re working for them. You’re also expected to always be doing SOMETHING that contributes to the skills that are required for your job. You can’t have gaps in your resume where you were doing nothing for several months, since you’ve been basically spending that time losing whatever qualifications you had.

So before you commit to a path, find out what makes you tick, what you like doing and which skills you bring to the table. Go out and have an actual taste of what you’re getting into, for example by talking to (a lot of) people in that field or by getting an internship (of several months).

@MAEBATAME: as others have already said, compulsory education exists in order to give you basic knowledge and skills you need in order to be able to get started (or restarted) on any path, and also so that you’ll learn how to learn stuff efficiently. You will have to keep learning stuff for the rest of your life or the world, which is constantly changing, will leave you behind.

And if you need another reason, let me offer you a pessimist’s opinion:
You’ll always be forced to do stuff you are unwilling to or find pointless, be it within your field of interest or life in general, so it’s a useful thing to find out sooner rather than later. Simply hating it will only make you miserable, so you could try to either deal with it, or find a way around it.

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#35

That is the reason i dropped out of college. College has the structure (subjects, schedules of classes) to guide people looking to learn through the process of acquiring the knowledge they desire, however if you know the specific topics you want to learn plenty of things can be found in the internet nowadays if you know where to search. Obviously that does not mean that anyone should just go in the internet to learn whatever job they wanna do for a living as a college degree is basically a written certification that you know how to do said job.

In my personal experience unrelated classes have been really hard to put up with, however i somewhat regret i won’t have an informatics engineering degree, the “college or figure it out on my own” dilemma tormented me for quite a long time.
In the end the i belive my best advice is to do what works best for you.

#36

Like what many people have written in this topic before, the decision to choose between self-education and studying for a degree depends strongly on your own ideals, motivation and how you wish to fill in your future.

As the advantages and disadvantages of self-studying and college have been mentioned already. I would still suggest going to college if you are given the opportunity to do so.

Besides whether the job market has enough demand for your specified profession, one should always consider a backup plan. Modern life requires fast decision making and not everyone is perfect at doing so, you will make mistakes in your decisions, like we all have at one point. And should in any case you wish to reconsider your choice of profession, having a formal degree in this case is almost obligatory, due to the harsh reality of society.

Right now, in the Netherlands for instance, employee recruiters are ordered by directors to strongly depend their selection process based on the combination of the grade of education and past employment experience of a potential employee.

So imagine you have been translating Japanese text for over 20 years at a medium sized company, when suddenly a severe recession hits (like in 2008). And it is just your luck that your company goes bankrupt and fires all of its dear employees. What will you do with the assets and options that you have? Your near only option of employment is either a similar kind of job like you’ve been doing for a long time at that bankrupt company or otherwise becoming a street-sweeper or a construction worker. Forget that Japanese/English schools are going to hire you, for that you will need to have a degree for all other kinds of jobs.

So unless you are absolutely sure about your decision in becoming a translator or some kind and wish to work in this type of business branch for the rest of your entire life, I would not consider college. However, you don’t know what fun you will be missing in your life. Meeting interesting people (perhaps your future love~) obtaining valuable contacts, making a lot of friends and enjoy youth etc. etc.

At this point I realize that I have been somewhat pessimistic; this is not to say that self-study cannot be done on its own. However, you must realize that modern society is harsh and should you not be able to live up to certain requirements it will not show much mercy. At such times only luck and the Lord will safe you from depression.

Best of luck with your decision

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#37

I haven’t kept that close an eye on this topic so forgive me if this has been said, but I’d just like to also point out that even if you don’t want to take gen ed’s that aren’t related to your field, you can still go to college. At pretty much any college there is nothing stopping you from just taking the courses you want (administration might nag at you but most schools don’t have any rules against it). You won’t get a degree, but, for example, I could have chosen to only taken Computer Science courses. I could have taken every CS course required for a CS major up thrugh Senior Project. If I don’t take Science, Arts, Engineering, etc. the University doesn’t have to give me a degree, but I can still list that I took those classes and got a certain grade from such and such university on my resume.

This might be a bit expensive so it probably isn’t a great option, but, like, I could drop out next week and probably find a job programming job within a couple months despite not having my degree completed. I won’t make as much and I’m this close so its worth it to just finish the degree program, but I do have that option.

#38

There are two other points to bring up about this topic. I’ve been debating whether to add this or not for a while and decided to so. I cannot seem to use spoilers, but please note that this is about money and it can be a very sensitive topic for multiple reasons. PLEASE think about whether you would want to read this post first.

[spoiler]It is very true that many jobs will not hire you if you do not have a college degree, and it is much harder to have stable job security if you do not have a college degree. It is also much harder to negotiate your starting salary during your first job and possibly any subsequent jobs without a college degree since everything in your resume can be used for and against you.

You will almost certainly be asked to start at a lower wage, but you may also be more likely to start out a job that doesn’t have retirement options or health insurance. The lack of health insurance may not be that important now, but in the US having and being able to utilize a retirement vehicle is extremely important. US social security and Medicare (for those who do not know, it’s a federal health insurance program for older people and disabled younger people) will not pay anywhere near half of your retirement bills, and while I don’t know how that works in other countries enough to give you advice, the extra salary is more valuable than you may know. It is very hard to pay bills, but it is much harder to pay bills when are older or handle emergencies if you always have to crimp on savings throughout your lifetime.

It is true that the US college system leaves students with far too much debt than it should. This said, almost everyone with a college degree ends up making more money in their lifetime than someone who does not have a degree and tries to (assuming they can at all) work in the same field.

There are plenty of people and occupations that the college structure and way of teaching simply may not work for at all. While this is true, it is important to consider ALL factors before making such a decision.[/spoiler]

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