The bigger trap IMO is going into a field you aren’t passionate about.
I went to an art school for a degree in audio engineering and I encountered seniors in their final year who had no idea what the fuck they were doing because they didn’t seek out any opportunities outside of classes. I interned at a recording studio for about two years while I was in school and that prepared me better than any class I took. This is an industry where you need to be passionate about what you’re doing because work is rare in the beginning and the pay is pretty shit. There were several kids in my advanced practicums who didn’t even know how to properly wrap cables or mount microphones onto stands. I couldn’t help but think to myself “why the fuck are you even here”. You really have to go out of your way and fight for every opportunity you can get in this industry. I’m fortunate to be able to make a living in it but somehow some of the people I graduated with came out with less knowledge than what I learned in my freshman year.
It just baffles me that people get degrees in these highly competitive industries without any sort of drive to actually make a career. Interesting to hear that this happens in STEM fields as well.
Universities shouldn’t even be offering those degrees, imo. Perhaps at a higher level for those who have already worked the field and can have meta conversations about it, but the undergrad programs teach far too little over far too many years. It’s a waste for everyone but the administrators.
There are lots of useful things I learned in school but school is really what you make of it. I did my best to utilize the facilities that my college provided and got a lot of experience. Others just coasted and took courses, doing nothing outside of the coursework. Ultimately, the education helped me get to where I am. Especially in this industry where connections are everything, school can be a great tool to connect with professors and other students. It was also my gateway into the professional world because I was a good candidate for internships because of my background.
It’s a horribly inefficient way to structure networking and learning tradecrafts, though. Many of the most capable students will miss critical opportunities through no fault of their own - some people are taking care of parents who just happened to start dying during the short time they were enrolled, for example. Others have to work before and/or after classes.
Equally importantly it was built on top of a liberal arts foundation that was never supposed to produce engineers and the sort, and while it fails to enforce a liberal arts education on applied science majors, it also sacrifices its liberal arts programs to make it palatable for tradecraft. Liberal arts are certainly of benefit to tradespeople and everyone else, but it is no longer the reason people enroll - students often bemoan being forced to take even the most introductory courses. It is extremely beneficial for people who do want to pursue these studies and develop their systemic thinking, that they should be allowed to do so, for the benefit of any and every field. But a lit class or two during 4 years of career training and extracurriculars does not provide that.
I think the current system has found itself traveling down a dead-end path, and that it is now bound to be replaced as its haphazard construction will prevent it from overcoming its growing challenges.
I’m referring to the US system in particular here as I think that was the context. Even most of the top names have turned their undergrad programs in particular into exploitative diploma mills. I think the replication crisis is properly seen as a symptom of a fundamentally misbalanced system and that it won’t resolve itself by continuing business as usual.
I’m a very big fan of education and access to education. I think we’ve gone about this all wrong, and like I said, to all of our detriment except the administrators.
I went to an art school for a degree in audio engineering and I encountered seniors in their final year who had no idea what the fuck they were doing because they didn’t seek out any opportunities outside of classes. I interned at a recording studio for about two years while I was in school and that prepared me better than any class I took. This is an industry where you need to be passionate about what you’re doing because work is rare in the beginning and the pay is pretty shit. There were several kids in my advanced practicums who didn’t even know how to properly wrap cables or mount microphones onto stands. I couldn’t help but think to myself “why the fuck are you even here”. You really have to go out of your way and fight for every opportunity you can get in this industry. I’m fortunate to be able to make a living in it but somehow some of the people I graduated with came out with less knowledge than what I learned in my freshman year.
It just baffles me that people get degrees in these highly competitive industries without any sort of drive to actually make a career. Interesting to hear that this happens in STEM fields as well.
Universities shouldn’t even be offering those degrees, imo. Perhaps at a higher level for those who have already worked the field and can have meta conversations about it, but the undergrad programs teach far too little over far too many years. It’s a waste for everyone but the administrators.
Hard disagree. College filled in a lot of missing gaps in my education and gave me a good basis for continuing to learn when I started my career.
There are lots of useful things I learned in school but school is really what you make of it. I did my best to utilize the facilities that my college provided and got a lot of experience. Others just coasted and took courses, doing nothing outside of the coursework. Ultimately, the education helped me get to where I am. Especially in this industry where connections are everything, school can be a great tool to connect with professors and other students. It was also my gateway into the professional world because I was a good candidate for internships because of my background.
It’s a horribly inefficient way to structure networking and learning tradecrafts, though. Many of the most capable students will miss critical opportunities through no fault of their own - some people are taking care of parents who just happened to start dying during the short time they were enrolled, for example. Others have to work before and/or after classes.
Equally importantly it was built on top of a liberal arts foundation that was never supposed to produce engineers and the sort, and while it fails to enforce a liberal arts education on applied science majors, it also sacrifices its liberal arts programs to make it palatable for tradecraft. Liberal arts are certainly of benefit to tradespeople and everyone else, but it is no longer the reason people enroll - students often bemoan being forced to take even the most introductory courses. It is extremely beneficial for people who do want to pursue these studies and develop their systemic thinking, that they should be allowed to do so, for the benefit of any and every field. But a lit class or two during 4 years of career training and extracurriculars does not provide that.
I think the current system has found itself traveling down a dead-end path, and that it is now bound to be replaced as its haphazard construction will prevent it from overcoming its growing challenges.
I’m referring to the US system in particular here as I think that was the context. Even most of the top names have turned their undergrad programs in particular into exploitative diploma mills. I think the replication crisis is properly seen as a symptom of a fundamentally misbalanced system and that it won’t resolve itself by continuing business as usual.
I’m a very big fan of education and access to education. I think we’ve gone about this all wrong, and like I said, to all of our detriment except the administrators.