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<p>[QUOTE="Plumbata, post: 3604199, member: 96864"]Meh, tertiary education in general has degenerated to a remarkable degree, as has the quality of educators and their standards. At least half of the college students out there are unfit for anything more than semi-skilled labor, but sheepskin mills are a lucrative scam so the performance bar has been lowered so far you'd need GPR to find it and nonsense interdisciplinary "(Insert wedge-issue interest group here) Studies" departments are cobbled together to fleece thousands from the parents of ignoramuses who will only ever make a living from their degree if they become professors themselves and metastasize the cancer of their pseudointellectualism to fresh victims.</p><p><br /></p><p> Academia is rife with fraud and insufferable dogmatic ideologues infecting impressionable minds with critical theory, dialectical/historical materialism and other hogwash instead of actually nurturing genuine critical thinking abilities and open minded inquiry. My wife is a university professor and I get to hear about all the alarming dataset fabrication fraud, research grant fraud, functional enslavement of graduate students, and normal garden-variety laziness, stupidity and ignorance that she has to endure from her colleagues every week. It's a disgusting state of affairs and she'd love nothing more than abandoning that soul-stifling freakshow in favor of starting a rare herb and heirloom seed farm to raise the kids on.</p><p><br /></p><p>I had a nonfiction and antique book collection totaling about 3,800 volumes by senior year of high school, acquired over the prior decade from countless flea markets, sales, auctions etc. and was very optimistic about the access I would have to the vast stores of information and expertise at university which would <i>surely</i> put my modest library and limited personal knowledge to shame.</p><p><br /></p><p>Unfortunately all but a few professors were mediocre educators of unremarkable intellect and generally lacked the depth of knowledge and experience I was seeking. My focus was Historical Archaeology, but I'd been energetically engaged in my own independent study of the realm since the age of 5 and learned very little of value at school, instead suffering consistent frustration with the oversights and elementary mistakes of my teachers and the authors of articles we were assigned to read. </p><p><br /></p><p>The creeping disillusionment came to a head when I showed a rare embossed and pontiled bottle from the 1840s I'd excavated to my specialist Historical Archaeology professor and she called the pontil scar on the base an Owens Suction scar; a feature on early 20th century machine-blown bottles multiple stages of technical evolution beyond the early hand-blown pontil scarred bottles. It wasn't an understandable mistake either as the visible difference between the two is so immediately obvious that anyone could be shown an example once and recognize the difference from across a room for the rest of their lives. I about had a stroke right there as bottles and other vessels are of paramount importance when dating and interpreting historic era sites. It became crystal clear that I was wasting my time there and decided to drop-out and start the business I'd researched and planned out back in Junior year of high school. There was no way I was going to pay tens of thousands more for the privilege of suffering years of that BS until finally getting a doctorate that would never be as remunerative as the business ideas I dream up for free and that would promise to keep me surrounded by people like her until I retired or died of frustration. It wasn't all bad though, I made some good friends and handily won the rare book and manuscript collecting contest 1,000.00 grand prize for one of my small subcollections just before leaving. I almost felt guilty, lol <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie8" alt=":D" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> </p><p><br /></p><p>University may be great for many people, especially those who prefer the comfort and predictability of being someone else's employee, but was essentially just a waste of time and money for me. All it did was put me in debt and delay the starting of my businesses for several years. It was probably the greatest mistake and disappointment of my life.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="Plumbata, post: 3604199, member: 96864"]Meh, tertiary education in general has degenerated to a remarkable degree, as has the quality of educators and their standards. At least half of the college students out there are unfit for anything more than semi-skilled labor, but sheepskin mills are a lucrative scam so the performance bar has been lowered so far you'd need GPR to find it and nonsense interdisciplinary "(Insert wedge-issue interest group here) Studies" departments are cobbled together to fleece thousands from the parents of ignoramuses who will only ever make a living from their degree if they become professors themselves and metastasize the cancer of their pseudointellectualism to fresh victims. Academia is rife with fraud and insufferable dogmatic ideologues infecting impressionable minds with critical theory, dialectical/historical materialism and other hogwash instead of actually nurturing genuine critical thinking abilities and open minded inquiry. My wife is a university professor and I get to hear about all the alarming dataset fabrication fraud, research grant fraud, functional enslavement of graduate students, and normal garden-variety laziness, stupidity and ignorance that she has to endure from her colleagues every week. It's a disgusting state of affairs and she'd love nothing more than abandoning that soul-stifling freakshow in favor of starting a rare herb and heirloom seed farm to raise the kids on. I had a nonfiction and antique book collection totaling about 3,800 volumes by senior year of high school, acquired over the prior decade from countless flea markets, sales, auctions etc. and was very optimistic about the access I would have to the vast stores of information and expertise at university which would [I]surely[/I] put my modest library and limited personal knowledge to shame. Unfortunately all but a few professors were mediocre educators of unremarkable intellect and generally lacked the depth of knowledge and experience I was seeking. My focus was Historical Archaeology, but I'd been energetically engaged in my own independent study of the realm since the age of 5 and learned very little of value at school, instead suffering consistent frustration with the oversights and elementary mistakes of my teachers and the authors of articles we were assigned to read. The creeping disillusionment came to a head when I showed a rare embossed and pontiled bottle from the 1840s I'd excavated to my specialist Historical Archaeology professor and she called the pontil scar on the base an Owens Suction scar; a feature on early 20th century machine-blown bottles multiple stages of technical evolution beyond the early hand-blown pontil scarred bottles. It wasn't an understandable mistake either as the visible difference between the two is so immediately obvious that anyone could be shown an example once and recognize the difference from across a room for the rest of their lives. I about had a stroke right there as bottles and other vessels are of paramount importance when dating and interpreting historic era sites. It became crystal clear that I was wasting my time there and decided to drop-out and start the business I'd researched and planned out back in Junior year of high school. There was no way I was going to pay tens of thousands more for the privilege of suffering years of that BS until finally getting a doctorate that would never be as remunerative as the business ideas I dream up for free and that would promise to keep me surrounded by people like her until I retired or died of frustration. It wasn't all bad though, I made some good friends and handily won the rare book and manuscript collecting contest 1,000.00 grand prize for one of my small subcollections just before leaving. I almost felt guilty, lol :D University may be great for many people, especially those who prefer the comfort and predictability of being someone else's employee, but was essentially just a waste of time and money for me. All it did was put me in debt and delay the starting of my businesses for several years. It was probably the greatest mistake and disappointment of my life.[/QUOTE]
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