

8 Alternatives to College - I wish I had done these - jaltucher
http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-college/

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whiletruefork
Disagree. When did people lose faith in education? I learned significantly
during college in many aspects - sciences, math, politics, philosophy. This
occurred both in classes and outside - but usually within the college
environment (So I attribute that learning to college itself). Does going to
college preclude writing a book or travelling the world? Fuck no. In fact I
believe it encourages it. When smart people congregate great things happen.

Maybe the poor taste for college comes from the fact that some people don't
use the experience to it's fullest - but guess what? They wouldn't have done
that with any of those other techniques either.

~~~
xiaoma
> _Disagree. When did people lose faith in education?_

Seeing people use the single word "disagree" as sentence is nearly enough to
make anyone lose faith!

Seriously, though, the entire article is about education. It's a common
mistake to confuse schooling for education, but the two aren't as correlated
as some would like to assume. I don't say this as a bitter person who never
went. On the contrary, I went twice. First at a very young age, majoring in
mathematics, and then again at the normal age majoring in a foreign language.
Both times I was able to learn some, but neither were as productive as self
study had been outside of schooling.

I regularly meet people who have spent many years formally studying a foreign
language and yet struggle to understand television in that language. It's also
not that uncommon to find skilled programmers, artists or writers who have not
studied their field at a university.

Another common argument for schooling is that it makes well rounded people who
have a basic competence in all the most fundamental fields. Sadly, this isn't
true either. Most college grads are still pretty shaky on high school math.
The same is true for writing.

I'm not saying that schooling is useless. It _can_ be an excellent tool for
education, particularly in some fields. However, it isn't the _only_ way of
education.

