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| | Ask HN: Are college lectures pointless? | |
3 points by HoppedUpMenace on March 14, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
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| 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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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.