this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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I swear I don't understand college students who work so hard not to learn.
It's like they want to get as little education for their money as possible.
The purpose of college today isn't to learn, it's to get a degree.
Also undergraduate content can often be found on the internet and self-studied for much cheaper than a degree, but it won't give you the resume credential and network for getting a job
College is also the time to network because as young adults realize, its not what you know but who you know.
Because being more intelligent than before isn't the point anymore. It's to get a $50k certificate that says you can do jobs unrelated to what you studied. It's shows that you are breakable and thus likely to be a good worker.
Ah, the good old days.
I mean you can probably still pull of a State University at $50k a year, right? I graduated highschool in 2010 so my data is definitely out of date but how much can a public school cost!?
According to US News & World Report, the national average cost of in-state tuition is $12,436 and the national average cost of out-of-state tuition is $29,815. So it sure is possible (on average), but just barely. I also randomly checked Florida State University and their tuition is $6,517 for in-state and $21,683 for out-of-state students so it's a relative bargain.
three's a VAST range in there and fsu is not a good school.
the real point of college is even less about the paper and more about the networking. that's what you pay for at a good school.
Because they're not going to college to learn, they're going to get a degree. The prevailing mentality is "I'm paying for this so that I can go through the motions and graduate so that I'll meet the minimum qualifications for an entry level position."
It's a result of the commodification of education: treating universities like a business rather than as centers of learning. Everything's transactory.
Professors are afraid to fail students because the administration wants the best retention ratings, and cause bad reviews might mean they lose their jobs.
Oh, and because expecting college students to actually learn something is elitist, apparently...
Don't get caught forming coherent thoughts in complete sentences with proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Someone might accuse you of being petite bourgeois and get your professor fired for playing favorites...
This doesn’t match with my experience at a state school at all, lol. I get whether I put a period before or after my citation picked apart. Is this how students at private schools get treated?
I don't know, I went to a community college. I don't know what grades other people got on their essays, but sometimes we did peer revisions and I saw the quality of other people's writing. They called me racist and elitist if I made too many grammar corrections, so I can only imagine what they said about the professor when they get a bad grade because I stopped correcting their grammar during proofreading.
There's also this thing that sometimes happens where the professor adjusts for privilege in grading. The effect is that I would get a B+ or an A- for having a couple typos, but someone who can barely spell or formulate a complete sentence might get the same grade as me or even better.
And if I get an A in the class or on a test I have to keep it a secret or all my classmates will hate me and claim it was because of white supremacy or some shit.
I’m going to a community college in California right now and that doesn’t match my experience at all. These were announced grading policies?
More like undercurrents in the student body that professors had to be aware to avoid being slandered on exit surveys and ratemyprofessor
Weird, do you feel like sharing generally where this is? I’ve corrected grammar in my English writing classes plenty of times as part of peer review, even (gently) corrected another student on how they were using a racially insensitive term, despite the fact I’m white and they weren’t without it being an issue (they were an international student and we had been reading some stuff from the 1800s that used outdated terms).
For other classes I’ve had a mix of whether or not the professors care about grammar, but those that do have always been upfront about how to get in contact with free tutors on campus to check your work.
RMP is a crapshoot anyway on how useful it is; one terrible prof at my school is constantly leaving really obvious 5 star reviews for himself to override the hordes of people going DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS CLASS!!, while a fantastic professor I have has close to the same middling rating because she does a class that qualifies for fulfilling a gen ed requirement, and people who are uninterested in it just don’t like the class.
Unless you’re in college for STEM, every degree is just a piece of paper with very little educational value behind it. You start learning after the degree, once you get the job that you need the degree to get.
Even then
Even STEM bachelor's degrees can be a little iffy. I finished my undergrad and felt like what I truly learned was how little I knew.
The thing about a college education is that you absorb a lot of information that you don't really think about.
I'm no smarter than I was in high school, but I know a fuckton more. I just can't itemize what it is I've learned.
College used to be optional. Most people didn't go, you went there because you wanted to learn, or you wanted to go into a particular field that required higher knowledge.
Now, college is just a paywall that gets in the way of having a normal job that can pay you an ok amount of money if you're lucky. This is especially true now for when it comes to the prerequisites. Kids aren't there for knowledge. It's so they can get a job. No one cares about those college level English courses being forced on them when they're going to end up as middle management at an insurance agency. Especially now, when their PC will tell them their grammar sucks before they send out that email.