College is for suckers.

Duh.

Myself included at the time.

I love it.

But the value of the signal has diminished as more people have gotten them relative to the slots demanding them.

I know some put rankings on credentials to base your salary.

Is an AAS in IT a waste of time?

Tons of schooling, but no formal degree, and I was a Sr Field Service Engineer for a large co and used to travel all over the US…killing that expense account was fun, but the travel did get old. Now I am in a completely unrelated career.

I mean any certification system like you would acquire on-the-job or in furtherance of it.

Experience isn’t worthless.

Write an essay about your life experiences? Or just certification tests?

I mean certification tests would work more than a few professions. In CA, you don’t have to go to law school, you can just pass the Bar. Of course, I’m not sure how well those lawyers do because again, you need some sort of signalling method and there’s no way to get a good signal from BAR tests.

And already, people complain about the BAR as being inadequate. I’m sure 75% of the people that would get boned by the bad signal would object to any test

I get where he’s coming from and I’ve kind of been struggling with that as well but I finally decided to bite the bullet and at least try to get something. I’m not paying for it so I’m not out any money. I’ve always done fairly blue collar jobs and I’m trying to make the transition into something else, in large part because I don’t really have a choice. I just don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time.

Solid.

from what I understand, they might as well because they probably have to get at least 2 of those years in some form of schooling. Probably closer to 3. What’s the difference if it’s 3 year trade school or college (which can be accomplished in 3 fairly easily)

You don’t have to graduate from undergrad to go to medical school. You just have to take the required courses and do well enough on the MCAT. I know people who got in who don’t have an undergraduate degree.

There’s a simply ridiculous number of high school graduates who ‘want to be doctors’. I can’t imagine having to sort it out from that level, like they would in the British system. College is a pretty effective means for narrowing the field (although there are quite a few ways that pre-med programs ‘massage’ their numbers).

Let me give you an example from Baylor. They take about 4,000 students for each freshman class. Out of those 4,000 students, while I was there, about 40% (1600) declared themselves are Pre-Med their first semester. This doesn’t include Pre-Dent or Pre-PT students. After the first year, almost half of the original Pre-Med students will have dropped it (down to 800-900). By the spring of their 3rd year, when most take their MCAT, the number will be down to 400. Between the MCAT, Pre-Med Committe interview/process to obtain Letter, and further courses, only 200-250 will actually apply to medical school. Depending on the year, somewhere around 40-60% will get accepted. That’s a pretty good rate as I think the overall Texas acceptance rate is something like 25%.

So you see, there’s other factors at play. It’s not just about what you need to learn, but about trying to find the people who have the work ethic to make it through this process and theoretically have the work ethic for the intense training process to come.

you need “x” amount of background hors in a specific feild. There are many people in med school that did not get an undergraduate degree. The problem is that if you fail out you are stuck with all that debt and nothing to show for it.

I’ll give you a couple of examples.
Going in to community college, I was inclined to get through everything as quickly and efficiently as possible, then go to law school. After a few classes which related somewhat (government, media law) and speaking to some professors I became absolutely convinced it would be disastrous for me. I don’t want to put in the time required for paperwork, maddening, tedious reading, etc.
But the media law class got me interested in radio. I transferred to UNT, began to work at the school radio station. I’ve fallen in love with broadcasting… now I work at KNTU, intern at CBS TV and am set to graduate next May with a radio, tv and film degree.
Much of what I do over the course of the next year will be redundant butt shit which does me little good. But there’s also going to be some really, really good crap in there.
To reference Emmit Smith there were some diamonds.
In the poopoo.
And you gots to dig in that poopoo and find the diamonds.

but the point is in order to get most top management positions in this country, you have to have ATLEAST an undergrad if not MS.. Fair or not, that is how this country is..

You’ve got about four good arguments going at once, but tying them all together like this doesn’t do any of them justice.

UNT students and law students abound

And I disagree with you.

Part of the reason I think I never finished college is financial.

I was accepted to every school I applied at. My parents made too much for me to get federal grants, so at the very last minute I applied to Angelo State, when it became obvious I couldn’t afford to go to my 1-4th choice schools. So, this was in…. late May. Or June. Really, really, late.

Had I gone to a school I wanted to go to, it might have been different.

but I’ve heard few say it was an easy process. There was a lot more luck involved and starting out at the bottom. Or, those people were extremely self motivated at a young age and because, of lack of resources, were forced to make a living for themselves.

On the other hand, you can literally be a dipshit who drinks all day, somehow pass your way through state school classes, and end up with a fairly good shot at some white collar job.

I’ll concede the point about school being a bad signalling mechanism (at least with these examples) but I think it’s a really really bold statement to say that not going to college is easier than going. I’d strongly disagree – even taking into consideration debt. There are still plenty of cheap colleges out there.