
Ask HN: Are college lectures pointless? - HoppedUpMenace
Why should anyone pay $44k a year in costs to listen to someone speak for nearly 2 hours at length about material mostly irrelevant to assignments and exams (unless its Math related or some course teaching a problem solving technique). Add to the fact that its nearly impossible to pay full attention to anyone beyond 20 minutes, so many times a day, and jot down notes of questionable relevancy and as quickly as the professor speaks or scribbles on the board.
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mattbgates
College is and will always be a business. Period. However, college provides
the environment and atmosphere for education and learning. It is also a great
place to meet like-minded people.

I remember sitting in a lecture for one professor who was never there. He had
the TA constantly teaching the class. So he was making a fortune not teaching.
Crazy that he could do it and get away with it. Out of a 15 week course, I'd
say he was there for 5 weeks, mostly to just give the tests. I guess his TA
could do anything he could do, but it was awkward to not have an actual
professor there, hardly ever, and I thought the same exact thing you are
thinking now.

As for what you learn in college: Honestly, anyone can hop on the Internet and
learn whatever they want. The can even do it for free. There are tons of
websites popping up all over the place that offer "cheap courses" ($20 or so)
to learn what an entire semester of a class would teach you in economics,
mathematics, web design, programming, etc. The issue with this is: Are people
who purchase these courses disciplined enough to learn them and take them as
serious as they would if they were in college?

These courses will give you all the skills and training you need to actually
do what you need to do, go out there, and utilize those skills to make money.
The same as you would learn in college. College lectures probably teach you
how to sit there in a meeting in the real world, which will be just as
exciting as some of those lectures in the class. But it is all up to the
person: Having an official institution on your resume tends to get you more
noticed than not having one on there, and more importantly, it teaches you how
to sit through lectures, no matter who is giving them, or how boring or
exciting it is. Guess you could easily do the same with a TED talk.

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smt88
That's not most of what you pay for when you go to college.

Also some lectures are fantastic.

