Cracked.com 5 Infuriating Things Nobody Tells You About College
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Bully_Pulpit
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#5. Most of Your Teachers Aren't Qualified to Teach
#4. Colleges Are Selling Out More Than You Think
#1. Schools Cover Up Crime in the Name of PR
http://www.cracked.com/article_19849_5-infuriating-things-nobody-tells-you-about-college_p2.html
I wound up having to leave the less significant parts out because of the character limit, and of course there will be some know it all that will say they knew it already but its still a good well written article with little bits of info that I didnt know and links to back it up
For those of you who've been to college, your first shock was probably your teachers. Where are the scholarly gray-haired guys with elbow patches on their jackets, full of worldly wisdom? Why do all of your teachers look like they're about 23 years old and read their lessons straight off of a PowerPoint presentation?
Unfortunately, the notion of college professors as scholarly experts who inspire learning is as outdated as the idea of getting a job after graduating from college. Fewer than 30 percent of all professors are full-time faculty. The other 70 percent are the underpaid, unwashed masses doing most of the teaching, and, in many cases, doing it poorly.
About 32 percent of all courses are taught by grad students attempting to stave off unemployment. What makes them qualified to do a job previously performed by tenured Ph.D.s? Nothing! Only half of teaching assistants get any sort of meaningful instruction on how to teach, where "meaningful" can mean a five-hour, completely optional seminar. The rest walk in on the first day of class and reflexively stumble toward the back row before realizing, "? . I need to be up here now."
Armed with less training than a kindergarten teacher, almost no access to class materials and sometimes a limited command of English, the grad students bravely soldier forth to try not to ? up the educations of impressionable freshmen. Over the coming years, a small percentage level up to tenured faculty who often still don't know how to write a syllabus or generate coherent content.
And then there are the people who wind up teaching college courses as "mid-career changes." That is a euphemism for being so specialized or so old that they have no other choice but teaching after leaving their old careers. Yes, teaching college part-time is now viewed as a sexy alternative to being unemployed. These adjunct teachers, as you've guessed, get less training than grad students and may have no aptitude for teaching whatsoever. Not that they'd have a bunch of time for extra training anyway -- about 65 percent of part-time professors have another job they have to run to once class is over.
A cynical person could say that this means the journalists and MBAs of tomorrow are being trained by people too incompetent to retain their dream jobs. The truth is probably somewhere between that and Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting.
#4. Colleges Are Selling Out More Than You Think
It's not an earth-shattering revelation that every business, club and institution on the planet is looking for ways to make some extra cash on the side. By the time you get to college, you're jaded enough to not be surprised by, say, overpriced sweatshirts or jacked-up parking fees on campus. But you have no idea how hard your school banks on you winding up hopelessly, disastrously in debt when you graduate.
For instance, some colleges essentially sell their students' information to credit card companies for a piece of the action. At the University of Michigan, an agreement with Bank of America stuffs $25.5 million into the alumni association's pants in return for the "names and addresses of students, alumni, faculty, staff, donors and holders of season tickets to athletic events" -- i.e., everyone who has set foot on the damned campus, ever.
OK, but just encouraging you to sign up for a card isn't actually encouraging you to be irresponsible with it. It's not like they get a bonus for kids racking up more debt than they can pay -- oh, wait. Michigan State University actually does receive royalties from Bank of America based on student spending and, yes, the school can make even more money if the student carries a balance. So the school profits when its students fumble toward financial insolvency. Have we mentioned that the average senior graduates with a ball-busting $4,100 in credit card debt, a figure so staggering that Congress actually passed a ? law to restrict credit card access for those under 21?
Not that it's just credit card companies diving at students' wallets. At the University of North Carolina, during move-in the school lets Target bus students to a nearby store, where they shop and party with (no ? ) the Target mascot, a live DJ ... and the school's vice chancellor. (Wait, Target has a mascot? How would you wear that costume without fear of getting shot at?)
Maybe you're sitting there thinking, "Yeah, schools should do it the old-fashioned way and get all of their money from donations! You know, like how rich people donate in exchange for having a building named after them!" Ah, but that money comes with filthy strings attached, too. Case in point: The BB&T Charitable Foundation donates money with the requirement that the school create a course on capitalism and teach Ayn Rand's bible on human selfishness, Atlas Shrugged. And yes, one of the requirements is that everyone read all 1,200 pages.
#1. Schools Cover Up Crime in the Name of PR
Wait, if there is some horrible crime committed on campus, why would the administration have motivation to cover it up?
Because crime might make prospective students and their parents nervous, that's why. And they might take their tuition money elsewhere. So, for instance, at Eastern Michigan University, a student named Laura Dickinson was found dead, at which point the college reassured everyone that the campus was safe and that there was no foul play. This was a ? -out lie -- Laura had been found in a grisly scene that very much looked like foul play, i.e., she was the victim of a ? -murder. Yet for the next 10 weeks, both the police and the college neglected to tell the students -- and the girl's own family -- the real circumstances of her death. For almost three months, no one knew there was a murdering ? prowling around.
When did the news finally come out? Only when the perp, a fellow student, was finally arrested.
And it's not like this is some recent trend; back in 1986, Lehigh University student Jeanne Clery was murdered, at which point the victim's parents discovered that there had been 38 violent crimes on campus that no one told the students about. The result was the Clery Act, a law that requires schools to report crime statistics on a yearly basis so students have some sense of whether or not their college is a depraved murder festival. And, more importantly, the law requires the school to let students know if there is an at-large perpetrator posing an ongoing threat.
That's right; colleges are so afraid of the bad PR for the school that they had to have a law forcing them to notify students that a murderer was in the vicinity.
Welcome to the real world, kids!
http://www.cracked.com/article_19849_5-infuriating-things-nobody-tells-you-about-college_p2.html
I wound up having to leave the less significant parts out because of the character limit, and of course there will be some know it all that will say they knew it already but its still a good well written article with little bits of info that I didnt know and links to back it up
Comments
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Yeah I read this ? over there yesterday. Crazy.
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dallas' 4 eva wrote: »Yeah I read this ? over there yesterday. Crazy.
yeah, not really that crazy considering the world we live in but interesting nonetheless -
ScumbagSwag wrote: »dallas' 4 eva wrote: »Yeah I read this ? over there yesterday. Crazy.
yeah, not really that crazy considering the world we live in but interesting nonetheless
True that. College overall is a big ass scam is the realest thing I've learned in my adult life. I'm especially seeing that now that I can see all the people I graduated high school with finish college. -
What were #3 and #2?
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Not surprising
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click lank breh, copying and pasting from that site is annoying as ? and on top of that I had them there originally but i went beyond the character limitWhat were #3 and #2?
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dallas' 4 eva wrote: »ScumbagSwag wrote: »dallas' 4 eva wrote: »Yeah I read this ? over there yesterday. Crazy.
yeah, not really that crazy considering the world we live in but interesting nonetheless
True that. College overall is a big ass scam is the realest thing I've learned in my adult life. I'm especially seeing that now that I can see all the people I graduated high school with finish college.
No the biggest scam are certificates.
A degree and certificates are only needed to reassure someone that you can be taught to do something. Ultimately, networking gets you jobs.
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dallas' 4 eva wrote: »ScumbagSwag wrote: »dallas' 4 eva wrote: »Yeah I read this ? over there yesterday. Crazy.
yeah, not really that crazy considering the world we live in but interesting nonetheless
True that. College overall is a big ass scam is the realest thing I've learned in my adult life. I'm especially seeing that now that I can see all the people I graduated high school with finish college.
No the biggest scam are certificates.
A degree and certificates are only needed to reassure someone that you can be taught to do something. Ultimately, networking gets you jobs.
C/S this post, I am learning that first hand
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dallas' 4 eva wrote: »ScumbagSwag wrote: »dallas' 4 eva wrote: »Yeah I read this ? over there yesterday. Crazy.
yeah, not really that crazy considering the world we live in but interesting nonetheless
True that. College overall is a big ass scam is the realest thing I've learned in my adult life. I'm especially seeing that now that I can see all the people I graduated high school with finish college.
No the biggest scam are certificates.
A degree and certificates are only needed to reassure someone that you can be taught to do something. Ultimately, networking gets you jobs.
Yup. The people I know who make the most money never went to college. They either started their own business, started working straight out of high school until they moved up in the world, or went to trade school surprisingly enough. The people I meet now graduating college are getting NO JOBS, and if they do it has nothing to do with what they went to school for. I just ask them "So you paid $30,000-50,000 for a degree you never needed in the first place?" -
dallas' 4 eva wrote: »dallas' 4 eva wrote: »ScumbagSwag wrote: »dallas' 4 eva wrote: »Yeah I read this ? over there yesterday. Crazy.
yeah, not really that crazy considering the world we live in but interesting nonetheless
True that. College overall is a big ass scam is the realest thing I've learned in my adult life. I'm especially seeing that now that I can see all the people I graduated high school with finish college.
No the biggest scam are certificates.
A degree and certificates are only needed to reassure someone that you can be taught to do something. Ultimately, networking gets you jobs.
Yup. The people I know who make the most money never went to college. They either started their own business, started working straight out of high school until they moved up in the world, or went to trade school surprisingly enough. The people I meet now graduating college are getting NO JOBS, and if they do it has nothing to do with what they went to school for. I just ask them "So you paid $30,000-50,000 for a degree you never needed in the first place?"
Specialty degrees are where it is at and those degrees usually have certificates and/or hard to find skills that come with it.
I got a Bachelors in Business Management. Useless! Now if I would have gotten one with a specialization in Information Technology or engineering. Then that would ahve came with some kind of specialized training like programming or civil engineering. Good thing my ? was paid for though. -
I knew before I graduated networking was the way to go but I still wanted to reach the goal of getting my degree. Now they making it so hard to get somewhere without knowing somebody on the inside especially if you didn't go to a big prestige type of college
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I said once and I'll say it again. This country is turning into whatthey call a "third world country".
If you look around, you'll notice wha they have planned for your Future.
WALGREENS, WALMART,CVS, BURGER KING, WENDYS, MCDONALDS, GAS STATIONS.
Go up an down your roads and thats all you will see, repeatedly.
There ain't a road in the U.S that ain't got more than 5 of them in a 8 mile radius.
Thats where the majority of the people who have jobs will work.
Their kids will grow to do the same.
The most you will dream is to own one.
Thats what they have planned for the American people. If you look, you can see it.
Drive up a road and count how many CVS's and Walgreens there are. Who the ? you think is supposd to work there.
YOUR ASS!
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edwardnigma wrote: »I said once and I'll say it again. This country is turning into whatthey call a "third world country".
If you look around, you'll notice wha they have planned for your Future.
WALGREENS, WALMART,CVS, BURGER KING, WENDYS, MCDONALDS, GAS STATIONS.
Go up an down your roads and thats all you will see, repeatedly.
There ain't a road in the U.S that ain't got more than 5 of them in a 8 mile radius.
Thats where the majority of the people who have jobs will work.
Their kids will grow to do the same.
The most you will dream is to own one.
Thats what they have planned for the American people. If you look, you can see it.
Drive up a road and count how many CVS's and Walgreens there are. Who the ? you think is supposd to work there.
YOUR ASS!
Third world countries dont have CVS's bruh!
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Im doing better than some of my potnas/homegurls who got dergrees.
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edwardnigma wrote: »I said once and I'll say it again. This country is turning into whatthey call a "third world country".
If you look around, you'll notice wha they have planned for your Future.
WALGREENS, WALMART,CVS, BURGER KING, WENDYS, MCDONALDS, GAS STATIONS.
Go up an down your roads and thats all you will see, repeatedly.
There ain't a road in the U.S that ain't got more than 5 of them in a 8 mile radius.
Thats where the majority of the people who have jobs will work.
Their kids will grow to do the same.
The most you will dream is to own one.
Thats what they have planned for the American people. If you look, you can see it.
Drive up a road and count how many CVS's and Walgreens there are. Who the ? you think is supposd to work there.
YOUR ASS!
hmmm....i dont live in an environment like that. must depend on where you live -
Lol My job is like 150 feet from a cvs
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Its wild in FLorida alot of people w/ degrees outside of the medical field, arent getting jobs in the field they went to school for.
They end up working at one of those places, atleast til they finally get what they're going for.
I imagine thatshit is frustrating as hell.
I tell people younger then me all the time, if theirs anything I could tell you to help you out.
It's save your money,start saving. If you can save money, you'll be alright.
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I run into too much anti-college rhetoric...
number five is funny... if u r in my class rest assured that stopitfive is on point... -
Wack list.
Neither infuriating nor unknown/surprising. -
not really suprised honestly. as many kids, ? kids, kids with mental issues they never ironed out from high school... females, teasing females (whether they mean to or not), so many drugs, alcohol, parties.. most those kids are out on their own for the 1st time in their life so they roam wildly.. college campus' aint always the best place to be.
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#4. Colleges Are Selling Out More Than You Think
Regarding the bolded, Wells Fargo and Us Bank set up shop around the ASU campus many times throughout my last semester. They asked if I was a member, and I told them yes and subsequently kept it moving. -
the number one thing that shoulda been on the list is that for most of teh majors in college u will never make enough to pay off you loans.... certain degrees the ceiling may be 40-50 k and u done went to a private or black school owing 100k in student loans = debt forever.
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Bump. Make sure your degree gives you a high paying job.
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Lol at number one. One of my professors was 25 and looked about 17. I kept confusing her with students in the hallway till I got used to her face. And her teaching was mediocre.
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i always knew there was something fishy about college/the educational system...
i never really liked the educational system, i've always questioned it, especially since
everybody seems to be "praising" it heavily, like there's no way a system is always this beneficial... without
some sort of catch or hidden scam behind it...
