November 28, 2007
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I posted this back in July 12, 2006, but it’s still true, anyway.
Because It
Never Ends
Every year,
students breathe a sigh of relief when they finish taking the SAT
(mostly on the Coasts) or the ACT (mostly in the Midwest and the
South). I get people asking me, “Do you think my score will
help me get into so-and-so
college?”And every year, I think, “Do they really
want to go to so-and-so
college?”Very few college majors are useful in real
life (i.e. outside academia). When I went home from
University for the summer, my Uncle Danny asked me, “So! What
do you learn in chemistry? Do you know how to make
glass?”Despite 4 years of college level chemistry
and biochemistry, and learning to make salts, plastic polymers, and
plasmids encoding recombinant proteins, not once did anyone teach me
something as useful as making glass. So
how did I learn to make glass? I read a
book that I found in a library — without paying $6000/12
months for tuition.I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again.
College is a very expensive place to want to “search for oneself”
unless one plans on hemorrhaging money, and then paying out the wazoo
for the standardized tests (GME, MCAT, LSAT, USMLE Step 1, USMLE Step
2, USMLE Step 3, Bar Exams, Board Exams) that “prove” that you learned
something.And then, once you enter a career based on
something for which you went to school, they continue to make you pay
for exams to “recertify” that you know what you know. Not to
mention the “Continuing Education” credits (read: “Continuing
Extortion” credits) for which you also must pay. Where does
this money go?Probably to pay for software for the
computerized tests — on a PC with an operating system, developed by
someone who didn’t finish
college.
