Exactly! The state is supposed to enable everyone to get a proper education, not just wealthy students. I don’t know if there is something similar anywhere in the USA but in Germany you can enroll at most public universities without paying a cent.

I don't think there is, but I wouldn't know. I had a lacking education and could certainly use the extra schooling. 90% of what I learned in childhood was self-taught, and fortunately back then I was very good at understanding things quickly and absorbing knowledge. I've pretty much reached the limit of what I can teach myself, I don't have any actual talents or skills, and these days I tend to re-read the same sentences over and over for hours and have very little focus. I'm still able to learn some things in minutes or hours in person that would take me months or years from self-teaching.

Is there a good place to learn things for free in north Phoenix? As it is, it costs $5.25 to ride the bus, buses usually come only once every 30-60 minutes and you often have to get at a stop, see the next bus you were going to take just leave, and have to wait the full hour, so biking distance would be great. >_>

That'd be great advice if I didn't practically live at the library. -_-;

I guess my post was too subtle, at least in your case.

To clarfiy: I have obvious learning disabilities and learn exponentially better in person in a teaching environment. Even the few college classes I took and subsequently failed are better than most of what I'm able to do on my own.

I'm actually not very well-read when if comes to fiction. My shelf at home has... well, it has a lot of non-fiction. I spend more time perusing them than eating, playing games, watching videos, or anything else aside from sleeping. It doesn't do much if I can't actually learn from them, though...

Alright.

I take it you haven't done any tutoring. The pay sucks and if the pay doesn't suck you're charging students a huge amount of money. It's unrealistic to work more than 3 hours a day, which means that in order to cover living expenses and pay the legally required taxes that you're having to charge a really hefty amount of money.

Private tutoring is fine if you're in school trying to come up with some pocket change, but it's not realistic to expect to make a living at it unless you can convince people to pay a huge sum of money for your time.
I'm not worried about my ability to teach, I'm worried about my ability to feed and clothe myself. I've put a pretty significant amount of time and money into getting my credentials and moves like this don't make it any easier to recoup that cost.

Teaching is teaching, I've taught a lot of people for free over the years, but that doesn't do anything for my ability to pay my bills. I disagree with that strongly the "breadth" requirements that you're bitching about are a significant part of what makes a college graduate worth hiring. Sure they could just have you take the courses which are required to know a particular field, but if you really want that they have that. The term is "Vocational Training" and it dispenses of the breadth requirements for expediency and the level of education suffers as a result.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but you should be aware that you're not getting a full degree experience out of it and that you're going to be much less knowledgeable about things outside of your specialty, but it does have its place. In fact some people are even better off going that route both financially as well as personally.

If you're going to learn a wide selection of things, or even a specific thing, simply for the sake of learning, then a degree should be the furthest thing from your mind in terms of getting anything out of what you're paying for. I'm against the degree structure, not against people going to college to learn as much and as varied fields as they care to.

This viewpoint is precisely why colleges have those requirements. Colleges are more than just job training, they're about turning out people who are capable of the rigors of learning to adapt to changing times and to have a broad base from which to work. And unfortunately, most people don't know how to learn in a balanced way on their own.

I can definitely understand the frustration, I remember having to take courses which I hated, and it wasn't until years later when I could comment intelligently on most matters that I came to recognize the value that those classes provided.

No, it's not, the fact that a lot of people treat it like that is a problem, but college is not about a piece of paper or networking. Most of the necessary networking goes on outside of school anyways, and people figure out that a graduate is full of it pretty quickly, paper or no paper.

For those of us that actually took it seriously, a college degree is far more meaningful and there are some employers that actually do check to make sure that a graduate actually knows something before hiring them.

Sure, but how much of the problem you present is caused because people are currently burdened with taxes and excessive tuition so that they can't afford to also pay a tutor? It's not the government's job to guarantee certain sectors x amount of jobs with taxpayer money. It's not the government's job to guarantee x amount of construction workers (for example). That's playing favoritism and protectionism.

Seriously, if you're yearly high temp was around 65 degrees F I'd have already emigrated there. As it is Norway might work better, it's a hair warmer:)

I love you Nordic folks (I know I'm lumping you together and that's not entirely accurate, but I mean it in the best of ways).
Indeed why should they? Is there something about having to pay for a degree that makes it inherently more valuable?

University doesn't actually make most of the folks in the US better workers, at least not at what they do. There used to be a time when universities were free and attended and taught only by those who loved learning. I can't say they were worse for it.

It isn't the government's job, however, I don't get paid to develop curriculum, and that's the bottom line. I get paid to teach some number of classes and I develop the curriculum on my own time. And that's part of the point, other industries aren't expected to do that much work for free in order to collect a pay check.

If the taxpayers want to start paying us to create our curriculum, then they can exert some degree of ownership over it, but as it stands we develop it on our own time, with our own effort and the truth of the matter is that making lesson plans and materials which are of use to other people involves a lot of extra work. Many instructors don't bother to create lesson plans that are complete because they don't need to, they know how it's likely to play out and with experience what modifications might be required.

This isn't so much about protectionism as it is about unfair competition. Other industries aren't expected to work for free and to provide the fruits of that free labor to others for free. Hence why I'm so surprised that folks here seem to think that they're entitled to those materials for free. Often times teachers choose to exchange materials for free or give them away, but it's completely up to us to decide what and when we're going to share them with the world.
I've worked with plenty of college graduates over the years, and I stand by what I posted.

You can't blame graduates for having to contend with incompetent HR jackwagons that are specifically looking to hire folks for the lowest possible wage and benefits.

I will agree that people shouldn't be forced to give away their work for free. If some do, more power to them. However, since people in general probably won't even have their resume looked at if a competing resume has a degree on it, I would like there to be a better way to get credit towards a degree for those who self-educate. Exams that go with OER's sounds like a good solution to me. And, like stonebro pointed out, profession studies will still be naturally protected.

If it hasn't already been linked, MIT has done something similar for years and years (for at least the past decade at least).

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

One of the original intents was for those who just wanted to learn a subject matter on their own, as opposed to how most of us end up worrying more about getting the degree than we do about actually learning anything useful.

As I went to a hippy dippy liberal arts college, I would supplement some of my coursework with a class or two a semester of self-study from the more right-brain subject matter you can find there.

I'll let you all get back to your internet shouting match now.

Havard uploads some of his classes which is cool, too.