Stupid ass private education bullshit

  • DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    11 minutes ago

    Honestly you can’t even buy an education outside of some technical fields needed in the economy. The only way to really become educated is to be a life long enjoyer of knowledge across many domains. There is almost no educated people left anymore since all of that has gone to the way side to make room for authoritarianism and orwellianism. Economics is a great example. Go to the most prestigious schools in the U.S and you will not learn even the most basic principles and facts of economics. Law is the same. You will not learn law as it actually is, but this totalitarian mindrot version of law.

  • mathemachristian [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    54 minutes ago

    Hello, if you would please refer to “Wage labour and capital”:

    We have just seen how the fluctuation of supply and demand always bring the price of a commodity back to its cost of production. The actual price of a commodity, indeed, stands always above or below the cost of production; but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each other, so that, within a certain period of time, if the ebbs and flows of the industry are reckoned up together, the commodities will be exchanged for one another in accordance with their cost of production. Their price is thus determined by their cost of production.

    What, then, is the cost of production of labour-power?

    It is the cost required for the maintenance of the labourer as a labourer, and for his education and training as a labourer.

    Thus, the cost of production of simple labour-power amounts to the cost of the existence and propagation of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and propagation constitutes wages. The wages thus determined are called the minimum of wages. This minimum wage, like the determination of the price of commodities in general by cost of production, does not hold good for the single individual, but only for the race. Individual workers, indeed, millions of workers, do not receive enough to be able to exist and to propagate themselves; but the wages of the whole working class adjust themselves, within the limits of their fluctuations, to this minimum.

    The price of education can only fall once the supply of laborer requiring said education falls below the demand of such laborers and, consequently, the price of their labor power rises above the cost of creating this labor power. The (even more) bad news is:

    But the productive forces of labour is increased above all by a greater division of labour and by a more general introduction and constant improvement of machinery. The larger the army of workers among whom the labour is subdivided, the more gigantic the scale upon which machinery is introduced, the more in proportion does the cost of production decrease, the more fruitful is the labour.

    Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    It is not about getting smarter. It is about transferring knowledge. For that, the teaching person must a) have the knowledge, and b) the skills to actually transfer it. Both do not come easy and cheap.

    You simply pay a professional person money for professional work. And sometimes it is really, really worth it. I learned one programming language in an expensive three day course - from the person who wrote the actual tools. This was intense. The amount of knowledge and insight gained was marvelous. And well worth the money.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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    7 hours ago

    It doesn’t if you know how to read. I don’t think of college as paying to learn; it’s paying to prove to others that you possibly have learned something. You can just learn things outside of school on your own. You just won’t have a degree proving it.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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    6 hours ago

    because rich people dont want competition, so some fields are gatekept. like professorships, medical doctors, research scientists, probably admins that arnt acquired through nepotism. if have been a job forum alot of positions are taken by nepotism in general. research heavily gatekpt, by placing a arbitrary amount x years of experience in job listings even at the entry level. Also the top prestigious schools often breed elitist ass students too, they think they are entitled to certain jobs, or if they become professor, they think the way its taught should be higher than it would for that college.

    some people are saying degrees are useless, they are if you are getting one without doing research on it before applying, thats on you. trades is not as easy to get in as you think, even if doesnt require it.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    7 hours ago

    It doesn’t cost money to get smarter.

    It costs money to get a piece of paper from old, decrepit, incompetent assholes who once got pieces of paper from older, decrepiter, incompetenter assholes.

    Take it from a man who dropped out of three colleges after a collective ten semesters: A college degree in most majors is a certificate of bullshit satthroughedness, not a mark of intelligence. Take it from a man who made a 97% on the FAA’s Fundamentals of Instruction test and whose flight students have NEVER ONCE failed a test he’s endorsed them for: Most of the college professors I’ve met couldn’t teach a cat to meow. A rare few of them could teach a fish to bark. And “tenure” is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard of outside of the Republican National Convention.

    In the words of Samuel Clemens, “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

    Go to the library and read. Read books, read scientific journals, don’t read white papers, they’re journalism-shaped marketing. And above all: Try shit.

    • halfeatenpotato@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      It costs money to get a piece of paper from old, decrepit, incompetent assholes who once got pieces of paper from older, decrepiter, incompetenter assholes.

      There’s a motivational-poster-level quote in here somewhere.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        One of my flight students had a Ph.D. in computer analysis of french literature. He would tell the story of a tenured professor who was THE world’s expert in 19th century German poetry, but who was bathtub-full-of-artichokes insane. He would put on a funny hat and take his umbrella and march up and down the quad like he was commanding ze kaizer’s own marching band.

        It was my job to teach this man “A TOMATO FLAMES.” The world has never made sense and neither should you.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        Asshole on the internet is good, asshole on the internet is wise.

        But seriously, go to the library and read a book, even people who deserve to be alive will tell you that.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    It doesn’t.

    It costs money to get a piece of paper that proves you got smarter.

    You can go to any public library and get access to nearly published material to learn from for free.

    All you’re missing now is academia. So go bum around a public university library and ask some college student if they canl check something out for you. Admittedly there’s a money piece here, there’s way around it, not all of them legal, but that’d be your easiest path.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I understand that most universities and classes allow anyone to “audit” them. You can go to the lectures but you earn no credits.

    • MangoCats@feddit.it
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      13 hours ago

      The piece of paper is a barrier to entry, an entrenchment of academia in the global economy.

      Read some Ivan Illich on the topic (Deschooling Society), he’s pretty lucid and still very relevant 50+ years later.

    • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
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      21 hours ago

      It’s one of the things I’m most grateful about living in Sweden. I wouldn’t be able to pursue higher education otherwise.

    • Komodo Rodeo@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Social infrastructure FTW, a far more respectable way to run the ship. I’ll keep with the boat analogy to use another idiom; “a rising tide lifts all boats” society shows wisdom in encouraging the kinds of conditions where their citizens can succeed without significant barriers, and improve the whole of it afterward (instead of the banking institutions which extend predatory high-interest loans) with their success. Hats off to Sweden.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      Here in Sweden education is free

      Free at point of service. But it’s 7% of Swedish GDP, with all of that coming from public coffers.

      Compare it to the US, which spends only 5.5% of GDP on education, with the majority on the heavily privatized university level.

      The math gets worse when you look at student/teacher ratios, administration overhead, building construction, and spending on extracurriculars like sports.

      Americans spend less overall than their swedish counterparts, but far more on amenities that have nothing to do with the actual mechanics of education.

      According to my American economics education, this proves the American system is actually more efficient. Swedes would do better to adopt our model, if they want to be A#1 Liberty Whiskey Sexy, like we are.

    • Goretantath@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      I got beat for refusing to work in a mall hanging clothing while the “school” took my pay for my education at sped ed. Sweden should think about running things here instead…

    • 1984@lemmy.today
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      15 hours ago

      And we still have 700.000 people in poverty, because they dont want to study and learn anything even when its free.

      Of course the majority are immigrants living on wellfare but the news cant say that.

      • vatlark@lemmy.worldM
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        1 hour ago

        I am a mod here and this comment was reported for Nazi rhetoric.

        While I’m certainly sorry to see anti-immigration sentiment I would rather show a realistic perspective of immigration. It’s easy to see that immigration is a positive for the host county and for the world, especially for refugees.

        Thankfully Sweden seems to have a generally healthy perspective on welfare and immigration.

        Here is an interesting meta study on research into the Swedish immigration debate.

        In the most direct measurement, the immigrant populations that take the longest time make net positive tax contribution are refugees.

        The low employment rate among refugees in their first years in the host country means that average incomes were low in these years. Although incomes grew steadily as the years passed, it took almost 20 years for the average refugee in Sweden to make a positive annual net contribution to public finances. The simple explanation for this is that a larger proportion of migrants have been active in sectors that are socially necessary but low paid, in service occupations such as healthcare, transport, restaurants, and so on (Frödin & Kjellberg, Citation2018).

        I hope Swedish people feel pride in the refugees they are able to host. It’s impressive that despite refugees working a lot of jobs that are needed for society to function (letting other high tax payers have nice lives) but are low pay, they are still able to become net contributors to public finances in 20 years.

        The paper points out how integrating immigrants into the workforce quickly is important but that can be challenging because refugees often come in influxes.

        And education is a big part of finding work:

        And in conclusion it says:

        With this as a central point of departure, an aging population is considered by far the most important motivation for increasing immigration. From this perspective, migration can be justified both from a short-term perspective, as its net contribution to the public finances can be crucial for the financing of welfare, and from a long-term perspective, as it can have clearly positive effects on the supply of labour. This is mainly for demographic reasons as the vast majority of migrants are of young working age. Among migrant groups, two categories are clearly favourable to government finances: highly educated migrants and labour migrants. Objections are often raised to the third category – refugee immigrants – who are argued to have high introduction costs, mainly in the initial years of residence.

        A one-sided focus on the average cost burden of refugee migrants that only compares their costs during the years of stay in Sweden with the costs of the native population during the same period is highly misleading. Such a comparison ignores the extensive costs to which comprehensive welfare systems are exposed. For the Swedish welfare system, with its generous benefits and welfare services, life cycle welfare expenditure includes a social safety net during childhood and adolescence. This provides a more comparable picture of migrants’ actual burden on welfare programmes in relation to citizens covered by social protection from ‘the cradle to the grave’. The significant number of refugees who migrate as adults imposes no costs at all on the public finances of the host country during these years. Thus, if their costs to the welfare system are related to their age, the average total cost burden on the welfare system will be significantly lower than that of the native population.

        In sum, and as Scocco and Andersson (Citation2015) and Ruist (Citation2019) note, the effects of immigration on the economy are exaggerated in the political debate. The growing opposition to immigration can be explained by the failure of the political establishment to implement the rapid inclusion of newly arrived migrants into the labour market. The literature on the impacts of migration does not find any trends that could seriously threaten the sustainability of welfare states. Modern welfare states do not experience any dramatic economic problems due to immigration. In economic terms, immigration can affect central government finances by a few percentage points, plus or minus, depending on the success of the employment policy and whether the labour market succeeds in quickly absorbing new migrants, but can by no means be considered a threat to financial stability.

        • 1984@lemmy.today
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          45 minutes ago

          Thank you for sharing the official information from the government, very valuable to know that immigration is actually amazing for sweden. We should celebrate!

          I for one is very happy that the government always makes positive decisions for our country. We are lucky that they are so wise. I think most of the issues we have are misunderstandings. I mean, gangs obviously are a bit clumsy when they throw grenades into apartments and the government should educate them how to handle explosives to not harm eachother. Perhaps they can play a game of chess to manage their differences instead. I will suggest this to our government. Thank you for your wise comment.

          Also, who is to say what is correct when it comes to treatment of women. Perhaps its very good that they wear burkas in Sweden, so men are not tempted by their appearence? Whats the harm in that right?

          Also, who is to say that building mosques instead of churches isnt an amazing development for our country? It could be super wise. It will make new Swedish citizens feel super welcome here.

          I have learned a lot. Thank you!

      • MangoCats@feddit.it
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        13 hours ago

        Learning isn’t a guarantee of a higher income. It might help temporarily, but when all the poor are educated they will still be on the bottom of the economic pyramid, and possibly less complacent about their situation having been educated…

        • 1984@lemmy.today
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          5 hours ago

          All the poor are obviously not educating themselves, which is the point i made above. Even when its free. In general, an education in a field that needs people will lead to decent income. Not if you choose to be reading energies from emeralds.

          Some people just dont want to study because its hard and requires struggling for years.

          Your theory is not realistic until either learning becomes so easy that you can click a button, or genetic manipulation makes everyone have a super easy time to learn things.

          Then yes, you would have everyone educated. That will not happen in a long time. Humanity has never been educated as a whole. The class system has always existed.

          • vatlark@lemmy.worldM
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            1 hour ago

            Above I provided some research into this debate. It didn’t have any information on people “obviously not educating themselves”. Would you be able to cite some research?

  • Maeve@kbin.earth
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    21 hours ago

    It doesn’t benefit the ruling class if too many of the wrong people access education; they may get ideas.

  • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Free education would empower ‘those’ people. And the right desperately needs an other to denigrate.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      11 hours ago

      desperately need another to denigrate

      Whoa whoa whoa we can’t use that word man. Say “white wash” or “Jim Crow” or something.

  • PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
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    21 hours ago

    A man I respect quite a lot used to say that college should pay a full-time wage to the students. It should be challenging, it should be a real education (which a lot of modern college is not), and in exchange for that, if you are improving your understanding of the world and your ability to contribute to society, that should be something that society pays you a pretty decent wage for, because it’s a fucking valuable activity.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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      21 hours ago

      It really should be a challenge. The saying at my kids college/university was “A ‘C’ gets a degree”. And while “haha that’s funny” there were many in that group that took that literally and put in the least effort possible.

      For work, my team and I work with engineer types, and its been a 10 years span of helping them. The newer graduates are a mixed bag: some are bright and innovative, and some are coasters.

      We’ve had young guys asking for help on a problem, and as you help they start replying to text messages on social media, missing the entire “help” session you provide.

      We’ve had grads struggle with simple counting / talling.

      We have done step by step troubleshooting documentation. Then field a call from somebody saying the steps don’t work. OK let’s see your system and go through the steps. Let’s check Step 1.
      Them: oh I didn’t do step one, because it said I didn’t have system permission. So I just did step 2 onward.

      I could go on, but I should end this rant LOL.

      • XiELEd@piefed.social
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        1 hour ago

        When people say that higher grades don’t make you successful, many don’t realize that that probably means students who sacrificed their performance on school assessments to challenge themselves, work on personal projects and gain experience rather than trying to get a perfect assessment score in school. A portfolio is more important than grades when it comes to applying for jobs.

      • PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
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        21 hours ago

        Yeah. I was really blessed in terms of my upbringing that my family deeply valued education and taught me what was education and what was a stupid waste of time (which, some but not all of the public school US education I got was) and why the education was a vital human sacred thing. And so when I got to college I really wanted the real education part. It really alarmed me when people would be happy about the easy bullshit classes or upset about the difficult classes. Like bro… why the fuck are you even here? Learn HVAC instead, you’ll save some money on loans and you can probably make more than you would as a data analyst or whatever the fuck.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        The saying at my kids college/university was “A ‘C’ gets a degree”. And while “haha that’s funny” there were many in that group that took that literally and put in the least effort possible.

        I’ve been in classes when I could ace the class in my sleep and classes where I busted ass to pass.

        Grades tend to be highly subjective, not just by subject or material but by the course instructor and the school’s attitude towards GPA. Sort of a joke that getting an “A” in colleges like Harvard and Yale is easier than Boston College or Ruetgers. You’re de facto assumed smart if you’re in the Ivy League. But you have to prove yourself against the field in these more accessible schools.

        • PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
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          17 hours ago

          Sort of a joke that getting an “A” in colleges like Harvard and Yale is easier than Boston College or Ruetgers.

          I’ve taken classes at a few different schools including Harvard. This is absolutely not true. You don’t really have to be smart to do well at Harvard, although it helps, but you absolutely do have to bust your ass (in a way you do not at other top-tier schools as long you have some familiarity with the subject going into it.)

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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      17 hours ago

      Which also means there should be rigorous standards to continue; similar accountability to any other job.

      You shouldn’t be able to collect a hefty check and be like my college friend. He who failed out of our college 4 times because he was just there to go to bars do his own thing (which was not going to class or doing homework or really anything else).

      • SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works
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        16 hours ago

        I taught 3rd year humanities students in a communication related course who could not string words together into a coherent sentence. All their writing was education gore and I could only get through it by briefly pretending it was avant garde. We collectively let them get that far with core incompetencies. Shame.

    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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      21 hours ago

      There would have to be limitations on how many people could get paid for some degree types. It doesn’t do society much good to foot the bill for degrees that don’t have actual related job opportunities. It could maybe work where just heavily needed jobs get wages paid, while other degrees are only offered under the current system.

      Another thing here is that this would be another form of taxes used to directly benefit businesses. If taxes pay to educate a lot more employees for a job market, the companies in that market would directly benefit by being able to pay lower wages. I wonder if we could do a different system where companies could offer sponsorships for specific degrees in exchange for employment, similar to how ROTC works.

      • PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
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        20 hours ago

        I’m not talking just about “heavily needed jobs.” I am saying that having an educated populace, one that can tell up from down as far as making sense of the factual world and world events, is incalculably valuable. They can be truck drivers for all I care, but if they can watch Fox News and realize they’re being lied to, the whole country will be in a better place.

        It’ll also be nice if you have people skilled at engineering and things, the “job qualification” part is also important, but the Germany in the 1930s had plenty of people super-skilled at chemistry and engineering, and look where it got them.

      • snooggums@piefed.world
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        19 hours ago

        A quality education teaches how yo learn which applies to absolutely every single job that exists. Yes, even the simple ones like basic labor.

  • db2@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    It was free until some time in the 1960s when black people started getting involved in higher education, then the republicans got big mad about that and changed the rules because they’re racist pieces of shit. They would rather make everyone suffer if it hurts one person who isn’t a white christian republican.

    There’s more detail but that’s the short version.

    • Fleur_@aussie.zoneOP
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      21 hours ago

      Here in Aus it was free up until the 90’s. When one of my coworkers told me that I actually nearly started the revolution then and there lmao. All this talk about how hecs is a good system from all these privileged ass old people when they didn’t have to pay a dollar >:(

      • CameronDev@programming.dev
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        20 hours ago

        For what its worth, you can sit in on most if not all lectures, without paying. Tutorials, exams and the fancy robe and paper cost, but to sit and listen to the lectures is free at all unis. Some caveats apply regarding crowding, but generally you can acquire knowledge for free.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      It was free until some time in the 1960s when black people started getting involved

      Black students, Jewish students, East Asian students… Anyone who wasn’t a WASP with wealthy parents.

      George Bush Jr famously had to make Yale his safety school because he couldn’t qualify for UTexas.

    • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      21 hours ago

      So that’s why the USA is the primary source of monetised knowledge. Fwiw I fully support pirating educational media, because if many countries of the world can access a significant amount of education for free, everyone should have the same chance, regardless of how the government of the locale wants to rule and restrict it.

      I support fair wages for those who deliver publicly available services at material cost only or lower, so I support taxation that finances it and minimum wage regulation. Even though I believe the current minimum wage in the West isn’t sufficiently regulated. It needs to triple in order to catch up to the ‘inflation’, or the perceived monetary value of everything.

    • PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
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      21 hours ago

      Can you elaborate? I’ve never heard this before, and for most of the 1960s it was the Democrats who were the racist pieces of shit (to the extent it was even partisan).

      Not saying you’re wrong; I have a vague notion that Reagan mostly was the one who ruined higher education but I don’t actually know that much about it. Is there something I can read about this though?