In a talk, Michael Perelman, a professor of economics at CSU Chico, said this:
Each semester, I tell my class that each of them has the potential to be the best in the world at something. The most important thing they can do in school [= college] is find out what that something is.
That is a sane view of college. At Berkeley, I told undergrads: “Take as few classes as possible and do as many internships as possible.”
Perelman’s talk, an intellectual autobiography, has all sorts of interesting details, such as “As the economy faltered, economists would express doubts about how the economy functioned but once the economy recovered, challenges to market fundamentalism would become rare.”
Why wouldn’t classes help people learn what they want to do?
Four or more of the best years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars seems pretty steep to find out what you’re suited for compared to good ol introspection and real world experience (at least it worked well in my case), especially if you’re also getting such saccharine pie-in-the-sky nonsense as ‘everyone has the potential to be the best in the world at something’ dumped into your head.
Education certainly has some value, and I expect it could have a lot more, but until it allows for a free market in hiring that value is very hard to determine, allowing the institution to become largely parasitic.
Perhaps I’m biased, but it seems to me the way the system currently works, college has little true value added, and the main purpose of college is to make money for the colleges and the staff by fleecing the students and public. Typical rent seeking elite behavior.
I’m being a little unfair because I feel strongly about how messed up education is. I still want back all the time and $70,000 dollars of public money wasted before I wised up that I was being played and promptly quit school in the tenth grade.
Jeff, why don’t classes help? Because at almost all colleges, including CSU Chico and UC Berkeley, only a tiny fraction of students want to be professors. A class tells you what it’s like to be a professor and how good you will be at it. If you don’t want to be a professor, it doesn’t help. Perhaps the first few college classes you take help you decide if you want to be a professor. The rest do not.
Caleb, I have written many posts agreeing with you — that colleges are run for the benefit of professors, not students. That they are exactly what you say — rent-seeking elite behavior. It’s not so much “making money for the colleges and the staff” as providing jobs for the professors. I believe it is becoming easier to skip college and more students, including the most talented, will do so. You don’t have to go to college to be an intern.
Regarding Caleb’s comment: Here is an excellent article from Forbes magazine (Feb. 2, 2009), called “The Great College Hoax”:
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0202/060.html
I don’t think that’s great advice to get students. You can take classes in three or four different areas in a semester but only have one internship. I didn’t think of college classes being about whether the students would be a good professor or not, but we can agree to disagree.
A class about econ is still going to teach the subject of econ, etc. Taking a variety of classes should allow a student to figure out which subjects are interesting to them.
Practice and a lot of time will make you very good. What you need to do is find something you can tolerate enough that you will find yourself willing to practice and do …