Unless you want to do tech support, you need a university degree now (despite the fact that 95% of the work in the industry is appropriate for someone with a certificate... it mostly superficial bug correction on crap code... they don't actually want you to fix the code).

I don't really mind that part. I am an avid reader, a bit of a knowledge whore and I believe that many things you learn in university that are very worthwhile if you want to be a well versed autonomous professional.

My main problem is that they don't really talk to you about what you want or need. They just assume.

Despite the fact that I would have been a lot happier reading relevant books, doing exercises and then passing exams, they insisted on shoving the oral tradition down my throat despite the fact that I have a hard time continuously paying attention to someone talking technical jargon for more than 30 minutes.

They assume that you won't know where you are headed so that's why I had to spent 5 more years (after knowing what I want to do) of generic education without typing one line of code (don't get me wrong, I value generic education, but they could have compromised and geared some of it to what I wanted to do).

And I hate chemistry. I could have skipped chemistry entirely. Biology is ok, but why on Earth would I care about memorizing all the anatomical parts of a plant? I knew I didn't want to be a botanist.

Newtonian physics was sort of interesting and relativity was ok, but again, why on Earth would I care about the physics of electrons if I didn't want to be a theoretical physicist?

And loop unrolling? I hate assembly!

It just goes on and on.

They are like politicians. Completely out of touch.

It's a different system. In the US, most of the people bitching about that sort of thing are under the delusion that college is a job training program, it's not. College has breadth requirements to make sure that the graduates have some hope of being able to think.

The only thing you need to learn how to think are language classes (to master your mother language), philosophy and a bit of science (with heavy emphasis on mathematics).

For the rest, they can ask you about it.

I fail to see how giving you zero control over your learning process will make you a better independent thinker.

You think that once you graduate, you'll be provided with a curriculum telling you everything you should be learning at each stage of your life?

Let's say that 0.1 is the mean then ;).

That's sort of the point, most people aren't interested in exploring other points of view and that's what the breadth requirements are about. Making you get the tools necessary to think independently.

My views changed significantly as a result of my having to take those other courses. I now have a much broader range of tools available to me than I otherwise would have. What's more even for those that do have broad interests, it allows them the time to take those credits and possibly use scholarship money.

It doesn't work.

When I was a kid, I was sort of interested in science and read some books about the subject matter.

After having spent 2 years of science heavy curriculum while being denied what I most wanted (computer sciences), I experienced some psychological trauma in regard to science.

From the day I graduated college, I haven't opened a science book and I totally shut off when a science program plays on TV. They turned me off science completely.

When I did calculus, I read the entire book, save for the part that talked about applications in physics which I totally skipped over.

I'll follow stuff about ecology, but that's mostly because I really like animals.

Many people abandon their studies, because there is only so much of that crap that they can take.

I hanged on, because I'm stubborn and I like learning in general, but I'm still bitter about the experience.

I can't agree with that. People who give up because of that would never have been in college 30 or 40 years ago. It's only now viewed as a problem because people are going to college for reasons other than education.

I don't think that's inherently wrong, but blame really ought to be placed where blame is due. A combination of professors that aren't provided with adequate resources and students that are too lazy and stupid to make the most of the opportunity.

When I was in college, I went to a good school and even the off topic classes contributed significantly to my education. It's one of the reasons why I'm so well educated and quite frankly why I'm so frustrated with threads where it's pile on because he's American no matter how absurd the reasoning is.

But, I doubt we're going to agree on this.

Let me put it out to you another way.

The average lifespan of a human being is about 80 years.

During that time, he might have enough of his head to do something with it for 55 years.

We have accumulated literally thousands of years' worth of knowledge.

You won't cover it all. You'll have to be selective about it.

Now, I don't care about open minded you are, you'll have preferences concerning which branches on the vast tree of knowledge you'll follow and you'll get the most out of it if you follow those preferences.

Before a certain age, it's reasonable to assume that the student doesn't have enough knowledge of himself to know what to pursue, but after a certain age, it is arrogant to believe that you know better than him what branches of knowledge will best contribute to his long term happiness and success.

I think it is the school system that needs an overhaul.

I think that so long as the school system ignores the reality of human psychology and bases itself on very idealistic, but naive principles that dates back to the antiquity, it will fail a great number of students.

I think the school system shouldn't try to mold the student into a perfect know-it-all specimen, but rather take the student as far as he's willing to go into whichever discipline he wants to delve into.

A school is a place of learning. If a student shows an interest in learning something, the school should cultivate it, not stall the student's quest for knowledge with other topics the student has no interest in.

If the student manifests an interest for it later, great, otherwise at least the student will have learned what he sought to learn.

I'll agree with you to an extent.

I think that when you initially explore a new topic, you gain a lot from it.

However, the more deeply you delve into it, the more what you get out of it becomes specific to the point where if you won't apply it to something that you want to do, you'll get very little out of it.