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University has taught me one thing, what is the point in university?

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Reply 60

Original post by britishgoose01
If you wanna see the quality difference in universities sit through a lecture and tutorials then watch a oxford or MIT lecture on youtube and look at the difference,they are getting taught properly in away you get....


i have.

I've looked at CS50 lectures online.

Reply 61

Original post by jb9191
i have.

I've looked at CS50 lectures online.


not ever1 knows maths or finds it easy and as for their lectures i thought they were very good, then sat through mine,.....was a joke
complained and no help at all

Reply 62

Original post by jb9191

Original post by jb9191
Yes, thats how I truly feel. I thought I'd actually get taught stuff and be asked on a routine basis to practice and so forth on my subject. Instead I'm being spoon fed like a puppet in a play various pieces of information and its really not helping me evolve intellectually. Yes I could revise in my own time, however, I could do that without being at university and its made me think 'why the hell am I here?', 'why the hell does anyone go to university?'.

I really do not see the point in university anymore and I actually think I'm a fool in thinking it would provide me a platform to do well in life. It doesn't. It teaches you to do as you're told by an employer and to be spoon fed.

I mean, I sat there the other night and thought 'why did Steve Jobs drop out?', 'why did Zuckerberg drop out?' (not saying I'm anything like them, I'm not, I'm a completely different person, they were great people, however, more the reasoning why, it makes you think) and then i realised, probably because they realised it was a waste of time too. I don't want to be a paycheque slave in the sector. I want to innovate and learn new things but I can't do that. Im fed things I need to learn. I should be told 'go away and do xyz and meet the certain criteria set to get marks', thats research, thats making movements and making something of yourself and encouraging self development and innovation. I feel we are being led like sheep.

I see it as two ways

1) Be at university - get in loads of debt - be taught things on basis of the strict syllabus - get a degree that says I can do something but when i need to put that in practice I can't because i've been taught to regurgitate, not innovate.

2) Leave university - just pay living costs - teach myself something that I feel will land me a job - put together a portfolio - phone the company, tell them i dropped out as I thought uni was poor - keep going over stuff - then hopefully get a job - it has been done

I really don't understand why degrees are valued so much. They're pointless. We'd all be far better on job schemes where companies get investment rather than universities and you get taken on and taught by the company (apprenticeship type thing for more skilled people with higher graded a levels). So say you got straight A's at A level you would get backing from the government to be a trainee solicitor with an actual firm on the job.

Yeah, I've been looking for an answer and i don't think ill ever find one to be honest. I've actually learnt 1 thing on my course so far, the rest i've had to go back to my room and research and look up via books, something i could do at home anyway and save myself loads of money.

Anyone else feel like this? I feel so down. :frown:


There is more of a point to university than you think as there as many reasons why people apply to get in.

First off, because accomodation and school departments are mostly on the same campus it provides good opportunity to meet loads of new friends as opposed to meeting a few people in the same workplace (who you may not get on with), it provides facilities e.g. sports, clubs and other social activities and many people apply because they're interested to do a subject at a higher level and because they want to keep many potential doors open to career choices after they graduate - so of course there is a point to university.

The reason a degree is now valued so much more now and has become an industry requirement is because the world is now much more highly competitive - which would explain the lack of jobs and shall we say 'mess ups' in our global economy. Employers are looking for original individuals who are interesting and aspire to further develop themselves beyond the contemporary standards of average people - and though its only on a piece of paper, a degree qualification equates to all the effort put in over a long course of time.

its a reward - one that brings significant self-satisfaction on graduation day along with the potential to enter a whole new range of jobs for the ever-changing mind - this is the point of studying at university.

Reply 63

just stick it out and get the degree...once you have it you try doing something innovative...if you succeed, great. If you fail, you've got the degree to fall back on.

Reply 64

Original post by sukottomdeibisu
There is more of a point to university than you think as there as many reasons why people apply to get in.

First off, because accomodation and school departments are mostly on the same campus it provides good opportunity to meet loads of new friends as opposed to meeting a few people in the same workplace (who you may not get on with), it provides facilities e.g. sports, clubs and other social activities and many people apply because they're interested to do a subject at a higher level and because they want to keep many potential doors open to career choices after they graduate - so of course there is a point to university.

The reason a degree is now valued so much more now and has become an industry requirement is because the world is now much more highly competitive - which would explain the lack of jobs and shall we say 'mess ups' in our global economy. Employers are looking for original individuals who are interesting and aspire to further develop themselves beyond the contemporary standards of average people - and though its only on a piece of paper, a degree qualification equates to all the effort put in over a long course of time.

its a reward - one that brings significant self-satisfaction on graduation day along with the potential to enter a whole new range of jobs for the ever-changing mind - this is the point of studying at university.


How can I do that when my degree is forcing me to study the same as everyone else? I don't get it. It should be marked on the same criteria but be down to the person on the creation.

i.e. an art student per se.

The criteria may be - draw a landscape

They will then be creative and draw a landscape of their own image from their own head.

Now in programming

The criteria may be - create a program that contains a menu and user input

They should then be able to make any program of their own creation as long as it allows for a menu and user input.

Reply 65

In order to become innovative in a certain subject, you first need to know the basic rules. If you force every student to do the same thing, you are in effect, making them use a certain set of skills that will be required later on.

Creativity comes later on in MSc's , PhD's , and your own projects of course as someone else pointed out. If you already feel ready to start a revolutionary project, you can choose to drop out. It's your decision.
(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 66

Original post by moon4pie
In order to become innovative in a certain subject, you first need to know the basic rules. If you force every student to do the same thing, you are in effect, making them use a certain set of skills that will be required later on.

Creativity comes later on in MSc's , PhD's , and your own projects of course as someone else pointed out. If you already feel ready to start a revolutionary project, you can choose to drop out. It's your decision.


I was just about the type something like this.

Reply 67

Original post by jb9191
I have plenty of ideas and I came here hoping I'd be provided the platform to expand on them and learn the tools needed to take those ideas to the next level and put them into practice.

Instead I'm being told 'do this' and having my own creativity suppressed and its making me feel depressed.

1. Its harder to conform to other peoples ideas because you don't have the same logical thinking as them

2. Its better to be encouraged to come up with your own innovations as if you do well you can put them to market. Not only that but if you do something you want to and its your idea you're more likely to be enthusiastic about it.

Im not being provided the platform to expand on my ideas. I go to lecture and then come home and read a book for 2 hours straight to get the faintest idea. I could do that at home or anywhere in the world and save myself time by not going to lectures. I thought university would encourage research, self creativity, it doesn't. It encourages you to become a paycheque slave who follows orders.


Lol, that's a bit dumb then isn't it? University isn't supposed to nor should it provide a platform for creativity. There can only be so many leaders. You're average person is going to be a sheep for the rest of his life. Very few jobs actually require you to be creative. Also, again I think you might be thinking a bit too much of yourself. If you were as creative and innovative as you claim to be then university shouldn't hinder you. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Bill gates none of these three were hindered in anyway by formal education. Look at these kids. http://www.intel.com/about/corporateresponsibility/education/sts/index.htm they weren't taught to be innovative but when the time called they showed that they could be innovative. If you want to expand on your own ideas, go find other people who can help you with that. University is perfect for the average person. If you're not the average person, then university won't be perfect for you. And if you've got actual original ideas then go and pursue them. Also, as others have said there's masters and PHDs, these are qualifications which I guess can allow you be original.

Reply 68

I think it'll get better and more interesting in year 2 and 3 you should stay on, rather than drop out struggle to teach yourself the course and difficult to make ends meet and end up applying against to universities when your in your mid 20's(nothing wrong with it but OP case is he is still young i think).

Reply 69

i can understand why your annoyed, with art example you used, yeh they tell us to build say a gui to do something in a specific way...or there supposed to, the idea is you learn this crap and wehnyou get the basics you can go off on your own, building your own stuff, making your own portfolio bigger and bigger and better, me personally i feel ive been totally conned, and have planned ahead. I will get the degree.....hopefully and when i do, im planning on moving to new zealand and will carry on studying and building apps in my own time, then go full time. Ive lost 5 yrs to university and am not happy about it as i have learnt nothing from them,their advice as been a joke,

Reply 70

Original post by jb9191

Anyone else feel like this? I feel so down. :frown:


If I might put forward some middle ground:

The original post is how I used to think. But before that, and after that....

I went to a horrible state comprehensive, and back in the early 90s, when I went to VI Form, the attitude of the teachers was very strongly "University or bust", and bear in mind this was the year the polytechnics all became universities.

All the students ever heard was how great it would be to go to university (on a full grant no less) and how rubbish anything else other than A-levels would be. Personally, I had aspirations to read medicine, but I had no concept of anything else other than doing A-levels and then going to university. I had no clue what else I might do. I didn't even have a proper bank account.

Any way, the VI form was total rubbish, and had an absurd policy of keeping predicted grades secret from the students (so they wouldn't pressurise the teachers to change them). I don't know what they were, but I didn't get any offers. Completely demoralised, I stopped turning up to lessons and basically got the worst grades imaginable.

I joined the Army, had a laugh for some years, and then afterwards applied to read Economics at Brunel. They let me in as a mature student. I spent a year doing really well academically, but this is where I started to feel like the OP - that university was pointless. I had trade training from the Army in Electronics, and was working part-time, earning double or triple what any other student was earning in retail or catering. There was an "Industrial Society" that most of the Economics students joined, which was essentially a vehicle for the officers of the society to suck up to big accountancy firms and secure grad schemes early.

I didn't like all that, but I was even more disappointed when I figured out that if I took up a grad scheme, I'd be taking a drop in pay from what I was used to. Things were tough anyway, and I needed the money. Convinced that I wasn't going anywhere with graduate employers, I left university to work full-time and within a year I started my own business.

I'm not really sure that my time at university helped in the running of my own company at all. But after more than 10 years, I've come full circle and decided that University does have its uses.

I'm reading Law and looking to practice - there isn't a viable non-graduate route for me. The same barriers are there - I can't afford to do the graduate training unless it's with a very high-paying firm. But I'll have to manage somehow.

Anyway - my thoughts now are as follows:

No. University doesn't necessarily train you to do anything, and I don't think there is evidence that you "grow up" any more than if you didn't go.

A lot of it is self-fulfilling. The "top" people tend to go to university, so we don't know how they'd turn out if they didn't. There's no "control" group.

On the other hand, I know what it is to be an employer. It is very difficult to choose people to employ. Unless you are a very big company with huge resources, you can't generally afford to make mistakes - so you have to go with some kind of standard of education for your potential employees - and that standard is generally the Bachelor's degree.

I know there is the temptation for motivated and smart people to "go it alone" and see how they can do without a degree - and I say all power to them, I like to see people succeed. But for every success story, there must be dozens of people frustrated and trapped below the level they feel they are capable of. Organisations (with some justification) standardise procedures for promotion etc, and there are levels you can't easily get to without the requisite qualifications.

This isn't to say that you can't do well without a degree - of course you can. But if you are talking about skilled (rather than "professional") employment, eventually things level off and you reach a plateau, and it's very hard to kick on from there. You may be an amazing panel-beater, earning £50,000 for Landrover or something, but to move on to the next level is the challenge.

As with so many things, it's down to the individual. There are complete donkies with stacks of degrees that will probably never get anywhere, and there are superstar wheeler-dealers/entrepreneurs that will make things happen without any qualifications whatsoever.

But most people fall somewhere between those extremes, and it's a case of judging what you can achieve with what you have.

Reply 71

My friend, you seem to be a bright person but the main point of a degree is to prove you have the skills for a certain job, it already puts you in front of so many people looking for that job that don't have a degree, also, if you've chosen the right subject, just practising it should be interesting to you. I could do maths all day long as long as it's challenging. Uni isn't going to take skills away from you, it will give you an advantage in your field, you could use this time to come up with ideas and if you do think your ideas will take off then you can drop out but my advice is stay on for now.

Reply 72

Original post by moon4pie
Creativity comes later on in MSc's , PhD's ,


No it doesn't. Please trust me on this.
(edited 13 years ago)

Reply 73

No it doesn't. Please trust me on this.


It depends on the course you're doing...

Reply 74

If I might put forward some middle ground:

The original post is how I used to think. But before that, and after that....

I went to a horrible state comprehensive, and back in the early 90s, when I went to VI Form, the attitude of the teachers was very strongly "University or bust", and bear in mind this was the year the polytechnics all became universities.

All the students ever heard was how great it would be to go to university (on a full grant no less) and how rubbish anything else other than A-levels would be. Personally, I had aspirations to read medicine, but I had no concept of anything else other than doing A-levels and then going to university. I had no clue what else I might do. I didn't even have a proper bank account.

Any way, the VI form was total rubbish, and had an absurd policy of keeping predicted grades secret from the students (so they wouldn't pressurise the teachers to change them). I don't know what they were, but I didn't get any offers. Completely demoralised, I stopped turning up to lessons and basically got the worst grades imaginable.

I joined the Army, had a laugh for some years, and then afterwards applied to read Economics at Brunel. They let me in as a mature student. I spent a year doing really well academically, but this is where I started to feel like the OP - that university was pointless. I had trade training from the Army in Electronics, and was working part-time, earning double or triple what any other student was earning in retail or catering. There was an "Industrial Society" that most of the Economics students joined, which was essentially a vehicle for the officers of the society to suck up to big accountancy firms and secure grad schemes early.

I didn't like all that, but I was even more disappointed when I figured out that if I took up a grad scheme, I'd be taking a drop in pay from what I was used to. Things were tough anyway, and I needed the money. Convinced that I wasn't going anywhere with graduate employers, I left university to work full-time and within a year I started my own business.

I'm not really sure that my time at university helped in the running of my own company at all. But after more than 10 years, I've come full circle and decided that University does have its uses.

I'm reading Law and looking to practice - there isn't a viable non-graduate route for me. The same barriers are there - I can't afford to do the graduate training unless it's with a very high-paying firm. But I'll have to manage somehow.

Anyway - my thoughts now are as follows:

No. University doesn't necessarily train you to do anything, and I don't think there is evidence that you "grow up" any more than if you didn't go.

A lot of it is self-fulfilling. The "top" people tend to go to university, so we don't know how they'd turn out if they didn't. There's no "control" group.

On the other hand, I know what it is to be an employer. It is very difficult to choose people to employ. Unless you are a very big company with huge resources, you can't generally afford to make mistakes - so you have to go with some kind of standard of education for your potential employees - and that standard is generally the Bachelor's degree.

I know there is the temptation for motivated and smart people to "go it alone" and see how they can do without a degree - and I say all power to them, I like to see people succeed. But for every success story, there must be dozens of people frustrated and trapped below the level they feel they are capable of. Organisations (with some justification) standardise procedures for promotion etc, and there are levels you can't easily get to without the requisite qualifications.

This isn't to say that you can't do well without a degree - of course you can. But if you are talking about skilled (rather than "professional") employment, eventually things level off and you reach a plateau, and it's very hard to kick on from there. You may be an amazing panel-beater, earning £50,000 for Landrover or something, but to move on to the next level is the challenge.

As with so many things, it's down to the individual. There are complete donkies with stacks of degrees that will probably never get anywhere, and there are superstar wheeler-dealers/entrepreneurs that will make things happen without any qualifications whatsoever.

But most people fall somewhere between those extremes, and it's a case of judging what you can achieve with what you have.


wow, superb writing..x

Reply 75


As with so many things, it's down to the individual. There are complete donkies with stacks of degrees that will probably never get anywhere, and there are superstar wheeler-dealers/entrepreneurs that will make things happen without any qualifications whatsoever.

But most people fall somewhere between those extremes, and it's a case of judging what you can achieve with what you have.


you put that very well :smile: nicely done

Reply 76

Steve Jobs dropped out because he got hooked on LSD....

Reply 77

Original post by moon4pie
It depends on the course you're doing...


I'm afraid I disagree and most people I know will tell you the same thing. Each to their own, though.

Reply 78

Gah - depends on the subject area, what you want to be when you 'grow up' and how good you are at making **** happen - also, potentially how rich your folks are.

personally for me.. the maths worked out as:

girl from industrial south wales likes drama - in south wales this is silly thing to like - girl decides to take drama degree in town where this is less silly - girl gets good, challenging, exciting education (with, admittedly a **** time inbetween with various social/housing/financial crisis') - graduates three years later - earns money doing what she likes, has developed professionally and feels better for it.

If your math looks more like...

Boy good at computing, people said boy should go to uni, boy goes to uni, boy is bored.

Then maybe boy should drop out, if it's not advancing you as a person, or giving you opportunities you wouldn't otherwise get then there isn't an advantage - and actually most high paid computer people I know happen to have not gone to uni at all - to be fair most of them are Aspies who have a 'special interest' in computers so it's not that hard for them to be on top of their game... but generally computing seems to be the thing boys teach themselves in their bedrooms, and then get a random job with a tech company. Unless you want to build super computers, advance the field through radical research or investigate the philosophy of the subjects , it's not absolutely necessary to have a degree to be very successful in computing... (e.g. Aspie friend - we'll call him Joe, earns about 60 - 70K a year being head of computing for a regional branch of a construction company...didn't even finish college)

Reply 79

Original post by jb9191
Yes, thats how I truly feel. I thought I'd actually get taught stuff and be asked on a routine basis to practice and so forth on my subject. Instead I'm being spoon fed like a puppet in a play various pieces of information and its really not helping me evolve intellectually. Yes I could revise in my own time, however, I could do that without being at university and its made me think 'why the hell am I here?', 'why the hell does anyone go to university?'.

I really do not see the point in university anymore and I actually think I'm a fool in thinking it would provide me a platform to do well in life. It doesn't. It teaches you to do as you're told by an employer and to be spoon fed.

I mean, I sat there the other night and thought 'why did Steve Jobs drop out?', 'why did Zuckerberg drop out?' (not saying I'm anything like them, I'm not, I'm a completely different person, they were great people, however, more the reasoning why, it makes you think) and then i realised, probably because they realised it was a waste of time too. I don't want to be a paycheque slave in the sector. I want to innovate and learn new things but I can't do that. Im fed things I need to learn. I should be told 'go away and do xyz and meet the certain criteria set to get marks', thats research, thats making movements and making something of yourself and encouraging self development and innovation. I feel we are being led like sheep.

I see it as two ways

1) Be at university - get in loads of debt - be taught things on basis of the strict syllabus - get a degree that says I can do something but when i need to put that in practice I can't because i've been taught to regurgitate, not innovate.

2) Leave university - just pay living costs - teach myself something that I feel will land me a job - put together a portfolio - phone the company, tell them i dropped out as I thought uni was poor - keep going over stuff - then hopefully get a job - it has been done

I really don't understand why degrees are valued so much. They're pointless. We'd all be far better on job schemes where companies get investment rather than universities and you get taken on and taught by the company (apprenticeship type thing for more skilled people with higher graded a levels). So say you got straight A's at A level you would get backing from the government to be a trainee solicitor with an actual firm on the job.

Yeah, I've been looking for an answer and i don't think ill ever find one to be honest. I've actually learnt 1 thing on my course so far, the rest i've had to go back to my room and research and look up via books, something i could do at home anyway and save myself loads of money.

Anyone else feel like this? I feel so down. :frown:


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