Changing gears again... EPS 350 - Jan. 20, 2011

We are supposed to keep a reflective journal, so I figured why not a reflective blog? Ooh-rahh...

A friend of mine brought up the idea of being auto-didactic today. It's a funny concept to me, in the sense that right now auto-didactism is much more accessible than ever before. Like, the internet, libraries, etc. etc. etc. are accessible to pretty well anyone. However, even though information and education is way more accessible, there is absolutely no value in auto-didactism. Despite the fact that you can acquire any information you want, the only valuable information has to come from a formal institution. Taught yourself to be a mechanic? No good, you need this certificate or that training. Have an innate, or self-taught, sense of the business world? Have fun with that, we only take admin grads here. I don't know. I find modern-day university to be kind of strange, some four-year stopover on the road to real-life. Mind you, I'm in a professional program, so it's much less strange where I am. However, there are a lot of basically worthless degrees out there... I mean, I've seen jobs posted that require "A university degree." Not a specific university degree, just a degree. I find something like, profoundly strange about that. I mean, how is a degree in history relevant to any job other than like, "historian?" People tell me it shows dedication, and I suppose I can agree with that, but I feel like a lot of places may be closing their doors to a lot of potentially quality employees with this sort of thing. Someone else told me "A university degree is the new high school degree." That outright scares me... university is expensive, and for it to produce the equivalent of the last generation's high school degree is kind of garbage. Nevermind the fact that formal academia is NOT for everyone. I mean, the academic world and the workforce really are quite far removed from one another, so it just seems so strange to consider achievement in one relevant to the other.

Well, that's my first post... Kind of all over the map, and I think I've raised more academic issues than I've tackled. In the future, I plan on discussing it with my friends, and pouring the results out on here.