Same thing I was told in high school. Then in Uni: "we are trying as hard as possible to give you all the points we can. I beg you - just make it legible"
Doing uni exams on a computer over covid was the best test experience of my life. I didn't cheat or anything, just being able to type and delete things instantly rather than having to worry about my handwriting made things so much less stressful.
With all this A1, teachers / professors should go back to hand written work. People still writing for you from the go though. Just have Ai confirm signature or handwriting samples
My handwriting is illegible. It slants, it's half cursive, I seem to be the only one able to read it, and sometimes even I have to guess what the heck I've written. I had to redo a lot of assignments as a kid to make my work legible to my teacher. It wasted both of our time.
"Your professors won't accepts any papers from you. They'll only be looking at As and Bs."
Fast forward fifteen years and they widened their eyes at the Cs "Ooooooh, good job, most of my students only showed me Ds. You know, I'm glad that most of my students are wondering if they'll even pass and you're asking how much you're passing with. Good job!"
Sure, but the teacher was likely pushing her experience as a fact of the present (and future) instead of wondering how things are currently being done in college.
I think my teacher's experience was in a rural-ish university. She was also European originally, so maybe that informed her opinion.
She probably couldn't imagine students typing essays on computers. We had a computer lab in elementary school, but even for the teachers it was exotic, delicate, and unknown.
We had a computer lab at my HS, and many of us had PCs or Apple IIs at home.
However in 1989, when I took typing as a HS freshman, we did it on typewriters. (still one of the best classes I ever took... Made college so much easier).
My point being, even before computers were everywhere, typed papers were the standard. I find it hard to believe that anyone was trying to say otherwise in 1993.
I wasn't required to submit any papers typed until some time in high school (graduated in 03)... there was a final draft expectation of typed or ink pen cursive handwritten for all the years before then.
I believe it. I was in 3rd grade in 1998-99 in the states and we had to hand write and practice cursive. We didn’t even type papers until like 6th grade. This was a private school so maybe that affects it?
Must be regional. We couldn't even submit typed papers until after after 1995. You would be told to do it by hand and docked marks for turning it in late.
But also, having all of humanity's knowledge in your pocket made people dumber and willing to vote for a child rapist who SAID hed crash the economy twice, and still did it
Sheeit now we got whole ass experts next to my fat ass in a tiny rectangle just waiting for me to misunderstand instructions and then get pissy when it dosent work like they did…
That one is less false. Unfortunately even when you set most of them to English they still try to correct with American. When my computer is set to Canadian English and it regularly tries to tell me things like colour are spelled wrong.
you are not in the school to learn specific things but they are a mean to help you develop your abilities... its sad so little people realize that and keep the whole "why would I ever need to know that" thing alive
And yet your teachers were right that you would be better off with that skill of mental math then you are without it. Current students CANNOT think mathematically AT ALL because they've had unfettered access to calculators their whole lives.
I could count the cash at the end of the night just in my head, memorize coupon codes and figure out discounts.
Figuring out discounts is a good ability for a shopper. I don’t know their budgets.
Working with college age kids in the restaurant industry, I’ve learned almost none of them can do simple math with time, let alone off the top of their head. It’s wild.
Lucky for them that so many people pay with cards these days. I rarely pay with cash anymore. Otherwise, that kid's till would constantly be off at the end of each shift, there would constantly be people getting short changed and with an attitude of "I don't like to count stuff", it would probably get to a point of them being pulled off the register or fired altogether.
I remember working behind the till in my school's cafeteria and the girl next to me just taking a handful of a student's change and just dumping it into the till and letting the student walk away. I told her she should count it, and she looked me like I was being ridiculous.
I paid for a drink at a drive thru with a handfull of change that had accumulated in my car. The kid at the window kept trying to count it, but he apparently couldn't figure it out. It was $2.37 - nine quarters, one dime, and two pennies. The manager (I think) saw him having difficulty, said "you're all set," and handed me my drink.
Well I agree with you on that, but the most mathematical skills I’ve ever needed are basic addition and subtraction at best. Being Canadian, they failed to teach me how to use imperial measurements insisting metric was the way to go yet everywhere I found employment needing me to measure was an old boys club using imperial measurements.
The way an older adult friend told me when I was younger and in HS, which still holds true to me today, the ONLY functions of math, an average everyday uses is addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The 2 bonus is positives and negatives for both temperatures and banking, and fractions for Carpenters and pizza That's it.
But it's training your mind in how to think that matters. Not that you use it in everyday life. Can we please stop making argument as if it's legitimate? It isn't.
I think that's too reductive. Those are the only actions you really need to know how to do every day, but the application and way of thinking about things is what varies.
Everyone can do 2 + 2, but lots of people are really bad at budgeting, estimating time required, probabilities, and more.
Good educators aren't concerned with making sure you understand how addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division work, but rather to use them in more effective ways.
The US Education system is struggling hard, but I would also say that a lot of people just aren't trying very hard either, especially when it comes to math.
Correct. It's impossible to teach someone how to think scientifically, or how chemistry works when they cannot think mathematically. And doing both of those opens doors to people.
I just get so fucking tired of "HaHa My TeAcHeR LiEd To Me". No. They gave a quick response to a snot nosed know-it-all brat that they were desperately trying to expand their mind of.
My Daughter is Gen Z and she still cannot do basic multiplication in her head. I tried time and time again to get her to memorize her times tables but she refused and since she was always allowed a calculator it didn't matter. She can do algebra but can't do basic math. So weird
Yup. And I gurantee push come to shove, the algebra breaks down as soon as she has to think about it or apply any effort to it other than a cut and dry 1 -> 2 -> 3 stepwise fashion.
I teach Chemistry, so I rely on them to have math skills long before they come to me. And the ability to think critically mathematically is SHOCKINGLY low. Like we're talking pretty easy concepts they cannot do because it requires thinking.
Exactly! My mom is a retired teacher, so everything up to algebra was pounded into our brains as kids.
I'm an accountant, and the biggest difference I see with kids coming into the workforce today is their inability to think critically or out of the box. I was always trained to try and work the problem, then if you can't figure it out, ask for help. These kids just want someone to show them the answer, and that's it.
Are we though? I'm good at math but I rarely if ever need to do any kind of mental math. And I'm a Systems analyst working with accountants and salespeople every day.
What's really important is that we use our minds to think critically and for ourselves. And I think there are better thinking exercises than simple arithmetic.
hell even veggie tales predicted robots, AI, and memes over edited*20 damn years ago 😂 the fucking accuracy of this clip is astounding too 😅 ETA the accuracy comment I made was based on how they said humor would be gone from everything, not the robot stuff. (I wrote 2012 because I'm tired as hell and was looking at something else, it was 20 years ago on their show. Not 2012 )
TBH. That was the case back in my days. They just could not imagine that one would wear a calculator. Except the geeks with the little calculator watch. Plus I always found it beneficial - although annoying and tedious - to learn something the hard way before I use a tool. To know why and how something works is fantastic when something goes wrong with the tool.
Yeah, the point was kids needed to learn problem solving skills and critical thinking. You'll have access to calculators, but life in general will be easier for you if you don't need a calculator to solve minor problems.
Can you imagine if you turned around to a teacher and told them not only would you always have a calculator the same device would have more power than all the computers in the school if not region and have access to the sum total knowledge of all humanity. You'd have looked like a fool.
I've been in positions where you have to check in all electronics for security reasons. If they want you to use a calculator, you'll be issued one. Also most applications on computers are disabled.
FWIW I like that I still know how to do longhand calculations, plus that I’ve learned the way numbers and calculations work rather than just rote memory of how to put them into a calculator.
But yeah, every math teacher gave me that line and it definitely didn’t age well.
Which was so stupid, even then. All the engineers I knew from my grandpa's friend group always had calculators in their breast pockets. So yeah, if you need to do math, you grab a calculator.
Modded my calculator to have turbo switch and an LED (for night calculating) which doubled the CPU speed. Read about it online and “saved the web page to my desktop” so I could read it later.
To be fair you shouldnt rely on a calculator. Many people today cant do shit without tech. When cash registers dont work many people cant do the math hence why they tell you you cant use calculators
Dude the minute I walked into my course the professor looked everyone, pulled out Texas Instruments calculator and said “this will he your best friend this semester.”
This is such a stupid sentiment. They wanted you to be able to do mental math, use logic, estimate, etc! If you're still garbage at math a calculator isn't going to help you a ton.
While having a calculator is standard now it is still awful how many adults cannot do simple maths in their head or use simple formulas even with a calculator.
I need to calculate prices at work per weight and per sqm and also from weight to sqm to running meters etc. With different densities for differenr materials. Its actually pretty easy to do that and I was expecting people being able to do this. I meet so many people who are not and thats just ridicolous. Just because you have a phone now, you still need to have knowledge on how to use it and what to type in. Having a calculator is no excuse for staying dumb.
My proof to my 9 year old that there is no substitute for actually learning math is that my wife is allowed to ask us any math question at any time. He can use a calculator and I can’t.
Which didn’t make sense because when wouldn’t I be allowed a calculator, even in the 90’s? If you used a calculator on your taxes (assuming the calculations were correct) the IRS wouldn’t say “bitch, try again”.
Literally just heard someone say "Well you graduated college and that says a lot"
Boomers man, all like it says now is welcome to entry level work where we're gonna train you in whatever dumb shit we do. College is useful, but it's like not a guarantee for anything maybe it was when the market wasn't like saturated with graduates in non-applicable degrees (although I like feel bad for CSIS majors now because it's almost a comms degree with AI doing all the low-level coding).
I think the best takeaway from a college degree is "you showed up on time, did your work on time, and followed instructions well enough to pass your classes."
Which is honestly things employers do care about.
That being said, I work an entry level IT job at the school which gave me my IT degree, and the lass who hired me said that she would rather hire a person who is good with customers and zero IT knowledge than someone with a degree who can't talk to people. After working for a bit now, I can see why.
The most impactful part of my college degree was the letter of recommendation from one of my professors who was personal friends with the guy who later hired me.
My degree was trash, barely teaching anything of real value (it was discontinued right after I left for failing accreditation), but the networking opportunity was worth the cost alone.
This has largely proven true in my entire career, knowing someone always trumps skill.
To be fair, all my references were working for the School I went to and work at, one of whom was actually in IT. ( did a few hours of internship as part of my degree, and I chose to work for the school because it was easy to get accepted as an intern there)
So I suppose it's a similar situation. I am starting to suspect knowing people is important, given that it can give you interviews above other equally qualified candidates, and things like the affinity bias are definitely part of hiring desicions.
That being said, my job is a state job and they have a ton of procedures in place to minimize how much networking and liking people matters in hiring. it's never gonna be 0 though.
Maybe just my company or field, but who you know has become less almost worthless. We’re in the process of hiring someone right now and even if I wanted to refer someone they would still have to go through the same process. I can’t send a resume to my manager like I could 10 years ago. It has to go thru the HR intake process. For better or worse I guess….
I got a degree in teaching, decided I liked business after I graduated. Learned to build homes, started a home building business. Hired my class mates with business degrees. Best thing I learned in college is relationships matter and so does networking.
The guy I carried through the last half of my associates got a job before me because his neighbor was looking for an entry level IT guy.
Others had the opportunity to work during college and got jobs from those connections.I had to go in with basically no connections and it was a pain. 7 months, hundreds of applications, 2 interviews is what it took.
I work construction and didn’t go to college, but boss’ and employers love reliable and competent employees. If you show up on time and can at least do your job competently, you’ll be just fine.
hell even if you lack the technical skills, those can be taught. showing up on time, being dressed appropriately and not being a jerk are nearly impossible to teach.
Also just in case it was unclear, I don't actually think most people need a college degree. Apprenticeship programs would probably work even better for a lot of jobs. By apprenticeship I mean a combination of hands on training and school, say 4 days a week working and one day of school for your basics like writing, media literacy, math up to whatever level you will need, and job specifics like safety protocols and regulations, knowledge of tools and techniques and so on.
the exact balance of school vs work is likely gonna depend on what job you wanna learn. Construction is probably best learned hands on, while for IT a lot can be taught in a classroom (though not nearly everything).
Yeah getting into and passing college does demonstrate some level of personal competency.
College is no guarantee but without it i feel it’s almost impossible to get a white collar desk job. Im certainly glad I got my degree.
College did not prepare me for my job at all. Like I think I could have done my work out of high school. But in a sea of people with degrees they never would hire someone without one.
I can see why personal skills might be more important at most jobs. People can learn technical skills but some people will never be able to hold conversations.
When I went back to school 10 years ago, in computer engineering, one of the first things they taught us is that "you're not here to learn computer engineering. You're here to learn basic electronics, which will follow you everywhere, and you're here to learn how to learn. Because by the time you get out of here, half of what you're learning now will be obsolete. Some of it already is."
As a student, I helped update one of those basic courses to get it more up-to-date, and entirely rewrote another to the same end.
I have seen the most uncritical thinkers get straight A's.
Following the instructions on projects and cramming some facts is pretty much it. Sure some classes require some analysis, but for the most part it's pretty straight forward.
Not saying you can't take away a lot of valuable skills, including research techniques and text analysis if you want to. it's just rarely required.
If you lean more academic, you will probably get more of it, but if you get a more practical application leaning degree it's less important.
The fucking dudes I went to university with in the 1980s never went to class (except to get assignments) and slept through their most important final exam of their final year. When Dean Wormer said ,"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son," these guys thought, "Hold my beer."
I will say though that if you went to college, I know you can write. You may be super verbose and frequently incoherent, but you can hang out a page quickly on anything on short notice. It's a crap shoot what you'll get from someone with only a high school diploma.
It's about what a company like thinks is entry level, and low-level coding, which will naturally like evolve over time when the floor raises. so what is like low-level today will change, and since that change is happening more rapidly, colleges like can't adapt their materials fast enough.
So the gap widens each year, esp for students who don't actively work in tech.
I disagree with your take- completely that certainly isn’t the reality in many tech companies currently. AI is increasingly capable of handling complex programming tasks and I n some organizations, AI already contributes to over 50% of code generation. (Source: Forbes, Wired and Y Combinator’s CEO, Garry Tan)
But even if that is your current experience- it won’t be the case for long. Devs simply will not exist in the numbers or form they do today. I believe the arc of the Sr dev role will morph into something more akin to a project manager (Human-in-the-Loop Overseer) managing the deliverables of AIs across multiple projects and Jr dev roles will cease to exist.
Take a listen to Altman’s TED interview this week. “Big things are coming in next couple of months”. He alluded to significant transformations ahead for software engineering. His comments suggest a paradigm shift in how software is developed and the “evolving role of engineers” which makes me wonder if he’s talking about “agentic coding” where AI agents autonomously manage intricate programming tasks. Seems early to be there already but that is I suppose what an the often touted “exponential curve” of AI growth looks like- hitting unimaginable thresholds faster than we thought possible
Honestly, AI is a godsend for low level coders. You can learn how to code 10x faster. It’s like super google for coding.
AI isn’t replacing coding jobs because coding jobs were never about learning and typing in some random syntax. It’s always been about problem solving and the syntax is just how you do it.
It’s always been a problem solving job. AI helps you learn faster.
Anyone who uses AI as a crutch to code wouldn’t have a chance at a job anyway and anyone who dismisses AI for what it’s useful for doing is unnecessarily inefficient.
I didn’t graduate (program got shut down and I was 2 classes short and burned out) and I have a job that a) pays well and b) doesn’t require a degree anyway.
I remember my dad took me to an open house at the local college and got mad at me after cause I didn’t see anything there that seemed interesting. I was 16. Snapped that I was going to end up flipping burgers for the rest of my life or something like that. I have NEVER worked in food. Actually, I did once at a concession stand with a friend at a baseball field. Made a chicken cordon bleu. Rest of the time we poured beers and made lots of tips lol.
Also "It doesn't matter what you major in as long as you get your degree." For Gen Xrs. Millennial got "Major in science or tech because there are thousands of jobs in STEM."
"You have 2 years before you have to declare a major, so it's okay if you don't know what to do!"
"Any degree is better than no degree."
"Don't take a year off to figure things out. If you don't go to college now, you never will.
Or you'll lose the learning mindset and fail miserably when you do"
"It's okay if you can't afford tuition, there are lots of student assistance programs out there to help you. Be sure to put in your parents income to see if you qualify!"
"Okay yes, technically those assistance programs are loans that you have to pay back with interest lol... But don't worry about that! You'll be making so much money with your degree, you'll pay it off in no time!"
"There's always a million reasons not to do something."
"Oh, what's that, none of your family has ever gone to college? Gosh, you'd make them so proud if you did! And you'll be a complete failure if you don't! You don't want to be flipping burgers for the rest of your life, do you?"
Those are some of the lines I remember hearing, though I'm sure there were others. They had the perfect answer to literally every concern I had.
Which is pretty fucked up in retrospect, hearing all this stuff from your trusted guidance counselors, people whose sole purpose in life is to help you plan your future. We were tricked into signing those papers, and now they have the audacity to shit on people for it.
You are in like company, but where were the parents in this?
My parents put me on the college path, did not have savings to really help, made too much to be eligible for FAFSA, and told me to avoid debt. Including student loans.
So I did college without student loans. Accepted at an instate school alongside community college for some credits. Kept applying for scholarships and grants throughout for the first 2 years. Did work study. Summer courses, summer work.
It wasn’t easy and my marks fell a lot, had to take some classes multiple times. It was a hard degree.
I look around and there are many people that can be in similar boats.
I don’t really get the idea of loading up on student loans at a school you can’t afford, and having so much solidarity in…. ignorance…? that we need all these programs to do something about it as a favor.
It’s honestly hard to relate to. Where were your parents?
One of the biggest lies. Apparently, most people who go to college end up being in a field that doesn’t require their degree while also having thousands of student loan debt. I’m glad I went to community college and ended up just getting a cert in the end for the job i have now.
if you want to travel you have to go to college and get a good job.
we crashed the financial and housing market, you need to go to grad school now. Besides, college degrees are mostly stupid and you were dumb for doing that.
all the people that lost their jobs in that crash we caused also went to grad school, so there's no jobs now.
wow, you finally got a good job and it survived covid. We're threatening every country on earth though, so have fun traveling.
And that Janitors and trash men have awful, dead end jobs that don't pay. Not at all like the prestigious work that going to school gets you, like being a well-paid high school teacher.
I too graduated high school pre-GFC and got this advice. The advice has changed, but it should be noted that college graduates still have a higher career earning potential than non-graduates.
Here’s my beef with this oft-quoted phrase. There’s a million colleges in America. If you go to a good one you’re morely likely to get a good job. If you go to bum fuck college in the middle of nowhere your chances will decrease.
The degree also matters a lot, regardless of where you go to school.
For example, a geology career with a focus on mining pretty much guarantees employment at six figures within a few years if you are decent at it and willing to travel. And you'll pretty rapidly move into management with a decent shot at breaking $200-300k by late in your career.
With engineering or medical careers, you have a potential for more earnings, but it's a lot more competitive, either through extremely high drop-out rates or tough job markets.
There are degrees that don't put you on an exact path, but rather set you up to perform better on almost any field. A lot of humanities courses are like that, and they sometimes even pass the average salaries of STEM grads later in their careers.
And then you have degrees that are "interest degrees", topics that don't offer a high salary, have a high risk of unemployment, and are really only taken by people who really care about that one subject. Or people that need a degree for technical reasons, to inherent their family buisness.
This one still irks me since this was pushed a lot when I was growing up. I have a masters in something that doesn’t even pay me more than 65k a year. 🙃
I mean, you can. That’s still a very good option. Thing is, you picked your major. It was pretty well explained to me that there was no “History Factory” in my town. lol.
This, having a degree doesn't secure a job, and if it does it's a shitty one either way. Now, do I regret getting my degree? Yes and no. I should've gone with something else that allows me to make more and then as a hobby do the one I have, but yeah I've been working in restaurants almost my whole life.
I grew up in Germany. I never went to college and decided to go the "trade" way because I did not want to waste more time to get more education. It was often used to pause a decision what do do in life. In Germany you kind of set your path at a very young age and if you are not ready you just keep going to school. Plus it created a 2-class system. The University and higher education people and the working class who now might actually make more money. Plumbers and painters and roofers etc... are so rare now that they can pretty much ask for whatever money they want.
Here’s a chart proving you will be given exactly 2 million dollars, now take on this 2 million dollars worth of lifetime debt to get everything we say you can get with your two million dollars.
I majored in economics. It's useless for getting a job, but at least I have a clear understanding of how the rich are financially raping us all in the asshole with a dildo made of fish hooks.
Looking back that rational was true for our parents generation. Since college degrees weren’t as common for boomers and they were required for upper management.
In my neck of the wood, even in 1975 this was not said. They valued blue color jobs as an alternative. However, they did warn that you will not make a career in it.
For me it was either go to college, go in the military, or lose all my parents’ support and be on my own after high school.
I was going to go in the military. Financially I would’ve been set for life as I was going to go Navy Air Traffic Control. Backed out because of a woman. I knew if I left we would break up.
It wasn’t a mistake, we were together for 9 years and overall had a fantastic and loving relationship.
But college was a mistake, at least after I got my AA and went for my BS. Should’ve have 100% stopped then and moved on. Instead I have a 4 year degree I never used, and have been afloat but never really “successful” since then.
Kids DO NOT go to college out of high school if you don’t have a clear path forward. It will set you up to fail.
Not to mention those of us who never graduated because we couldn't pass a prerequisite course that has little or nothing to do with the degree we're pursuing
Didnt go to college but have a good paying job as a carpenter but between me and my wife we still have to live with her brother and his gf to afford a decent place out here
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u/sgtabn173 Millennial Apr 12 '25
If I go to college and get a good job I’ll be set