Quote:
Originally Posted by Sid Vicious
much of the information that is taught in class is based around academic research right? in addition your tuition funds academic research right?
assuming you developed your critical thinking skills, youll start to recognize that almost 75% of the information is purely bs or bogus, based on either
- poor research methods
- small sample sizes etc
- low reproducibility
- correlation but no causation
- plain ole bad science
- statistical modelling that is inappropriate for the subject matter
like i said before, most of the information relies on studies with low validity. for example, many marketing textbooks still contain maszlow's hierarchy of needs, which has been debunked years ago
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At least for someone like me from the social sciences, were forced to read a combination of textbooks and academic research. I think you just made a great point of why people should go to university as part of the process of learning is to be able to look at a piece of research and criticize it with exactly the kinds of points you listed. We might read a lot of stuff in university but you'll probably forget a lot of it but the skills in analyzing is something you get to keep. Finally, if you want to put it that way, Max Weber pointed out that science itself doesn't have much validity when it keeps changing.
I really don't think university is overrated but I do think some people would be better going into the trades or vocational training. But again, I don't know your situation and how well you did in school. If you were just mediocre and didn't get that dream job that you had built yourself to expect, I can understand why you're pissed. Like I said, crappy student in the sciences won't be using their degree in their field either. I do know that if you were a top student, a liberal arts degree is fantastic. My cousin used his econ degree (hons) from UBC to get a dream internship at the Bank of Canada and into Stanford Law (their ranked #2 with Harvard) and my other cousin with a BA in poli sci from an Ivy league university (she left to do her MBA now) worked as a financial analyst on wall street (hey, isn't that your field?) with one of the prestigious big banks. No, she didn't even apply the recruiters (JP Morgan, etc) came to find her in third year university on the recommendation of her professors with a 50k signing bonus and almost 200k/yr salary. My aunt is also a non-profit exec with a MA in psychology.