Yes, but school is there to teach you to use brain. Why go school if no use brain?

Because forced by society machine

Why pay astronomical tuition, room and board, textbooks, all of it, just to learn nothing and use chat got. The bottom of the article said a professor at Brown thought all but 2 of his students cheated. At Brown. We’re so fucked.

These selective colleges aren’t about education, they’re about getting you into a club with the other assholes that likely cheated their way through business school and got jobs the same way.

Same with private high schools in the us. They aren’t teaching kids to read, math or think, they’re teaching them that being born rich means you get to be in charge of the plebs (which includes the professors and instructors at these institutions).

Networking matters. I went to an academically rigorous private university, but not one the better-known ones. I graduated during a recession and had plenty of doors slammed in my face. But one of my professors who liked my work had an old friend from Harvard who was a hiring manager at an important nearby company. The letter of reference he wrote to his friend got me in the door. I rose fast in the company after that, because I’m a quick study and actually knew how to do things. But I probably wouldn’t have gotten in without that string having been pulled.

I’m on the other side of the spectrum. No relevant degree in my field, no certifications, just real world experience. I rose very quickly too.

I also haven’t really seen real world effects of networking with anyone I know. Lots of people join college clubs, go to networking events, etc. but when they need a job or a lawyer or something they get the same rates as everyone else. Maybe it’s just my friends though.

Networking is the only way I got hired at my company. Networking is the best way to move up in the company. Networking is the ONLY way to move past a certain level in the company. Networking is the way I ensure the people I hire onto my team are going to work out, as opposed to relying an hour long interview plus reading a resume.

Teenagers aren’t really known for making great decisions.

Source: was once a teenager, made bad decisions.

It’s much more fun making bad decisions when you’re a septuagenarian.

“You have to go to college to get a good job”

Goodhart’s law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Used to be that a college degree indicated people with time, money, and drive to put four years into study. It was a good measure of the “right” kind of person. Now it’s just another job requirement and doesn’t indicate anything.

My first job required a bachelor’s degree because AND I QUOTE “So we know you can read and write in English”

Hmm… I wonder how they’d feel about my Bachelor’s in Spanish Language and Culture.

It was a good measure of the “right” kind of person.

Long ago, a college education used to assure that you were white, male, Protestant, at least upper middle class, and at least semi-literate (assuming you managed to at least get Gentleman’s C’s, so the required “drive” was minimal if you were from the right family). Admission was much more of a sure thing for the offspring of alumni.

And that was what was necessary to join a business at that time: respectability and clubbability.

A minimum admission requirement regarding academic performance was made more prominent as other acceptance criteria were broadened, but most private universities will still give an easy ride to legacies and to the offspring of large donors.

Now it’s just another job requirement and doesn’t indicate anything.

Well, you’re generally expected not only to have a degree, but one in a relevant field of study, and to have gotten good grades. And most of the big-name high-tech firms won’t generally accept a degree from any but a few globally prominent universities. They go by brand as much as by objective criteria of performance. That’s the new clubbability filter. Someone who cut-and-pasted AI slop at Stanford has a much better shot at a job than someone who did real work at Podunk State.

It’s not that we’re solely dumb and incapable of intelligence, it’s that many, if not most, will seek the solution with the lowest energy required. In turn, AI is creating a spiraling of learning and knowledge acquisition.

Who knows where civilization lands in 20 years.