And yet, how many people have actually *learned* much from college courses? The packed schedules and focus on grades lead most people’s academic experience to be one of superficial study, doing the minimum amount of work to get past each exam, forgetting it all right after the exam, and months of general brain-scramble.

I agree, there does seem to be a gap between the benefit college *can* serve, and how many students actually use it. An interesting question is how one could close that gap? Just to throw a thought out there, but this perhaps something that could be partially addressed in admission policies that could somehow (accurately) select for true intellectual curiosity. How one might going about doing that, well, that’s another question…

And yet, how many people have actually *learned* much from college courses? The packed schedules and focus on grades lead most people’s academic experience to be one of superficial study, doing the minimum amount of work to get past each exam, forgetting it all right after the exam, and months of general brain-scramble. It’s not a good environment for the mission of the Enlightenment. Probably a fair amount of the reason for that is the heavy use of college as de facto vocational school: “you need good grades to open the door to good employers”.

I believe there’s hard research that says focusing on grades or other extrinsic rewards (like money) actually makes people learn less, when creativity and in-depth knowledge are involved.

Focusing on grades is itself the problem, probably a big part of why Jon Morrow remembers so little of what he studied in college.

The idea that spending more time is the way to get higher grades is just factually not true.

However, these have generally been interesting places to work. I can’t say this first-hand, but I think dull places (like big corporations and the government) tend to give much higher weight to low-bandwidth proxy measures of a person’s competence, such as GPA or what school they went to. There’s a famous essay on how to get into grad school that says that the better the grad school, the less they pay attention to stuff like GRE score and GPA, and the more they pay attention to interesting projects you did of your own initiative, like cut class for a month to pull off a cool research project of your own.

Thanks for the insider insight. For reasons like these, I think Jay has to give his straight-A performance I lot more credit than he would like for the amazing crop of job interviews he scared up.

Science majors can be more time consuming. But I’ve worked with students at the most demanding majors at the most demanding schools in the world, and observed that with the right habits it is definitely possible to get great grades while working less than your average peer. (Though, of course, the hours of work of the average student at a school like MIT will be more than the work of an average student at the Sam Houston Institute of Technology. But relative differences seem to make more of an impact on quality of life than absolute differences.)

To your second point, let me clarify. In my reasoning, 22-year-old college graduate Jon is better equipped to face the world than 22-year-old “spent 4 years in a job that doesn’t require a college degree” Jon. But you’re right. It’s debatable. And certainly, the properly motivated young man can do better out in the real world as compared to the wayward youth who burns out in the frat basement for four years. But the type of personality that would do great in four years on his own would do even better if also given access to the intellectual resources of a college campus.

Same argument can be made against your 3rd argument, that 22 year old college Jon that worked hard is more equipped than 18 year old Jon that didn’t go to college. Of course he is! He’s four years older for god’s sake. Hopefully however, 18 year old non-college Jon also didn’t sit on his butt for four years. When he hits 22, he should have learned something in his own way. True, it’s unlikely that he’d been in the same environment as the college boy, but history has shown that people have done great things in those four years instead of college. This we see all the time… where little naive sheltered 22yr old college Jon knows a lot less about real life than 22yr old non-college Jon who made good use of his four years.

I think the key assumption here is that getting a 4.0 has to require working a lot more. I don’t doubt this was the case for you, and most people, based on their study habits. But, as we discuss on this blog, by changing study habits, it’s actually possible to get close to the big four-oh without a significant increase in time spent.

@Greg

I have to write these pretty quickly. But thanks for noting the error. I agree on placing the GPA on the resume. My understanding is this expected.

“Their is a value to learning things that you don’t have immediate practical use for.”

How about “There is a value…”

If your GPA is over 3.0 you should put it on your résumé instead of being asked what it is later.