University is Wrong

I disagree with the whole way tertiary education works... at least at the moment in Australia.

I have attended university, done great in some subjects, bombed abysmally in others. In both cases, there are subjects where I didn't deserve the grades I got, and others where I did. I have had good teachers, bad teachers, indifferent and evil teachers. I have battled with uni bureaucracy and the drunken uni student mindset.

I did my best and failed abysmally.

But the fault is not all mine.

Step back a bit and look at the whole system. In primary and secondary schools, teachers are trained to teach. They get fired or hired into the public school system (mostly) if they suck at teaching. Education is compulsory, with the result that most people leave school knowing how to read. Class sizes are kept down, and you learn useful things.

Contrast this with a typical university.

Funding for universities bleeds away constantly, drained by a government that would rather get a pay rise than invest in the future of the nation. Class sizes are huge, or else their subjects get scrapped. You almost never get to talk to your teach...erm, that is, lecturer, because all they ever do is blare at you (and 600 other people). You are expected to write down _everything_ in that subject - flawlessly - and later study your notes successfully, despite the fact that half of your lecturers have English as a second or third language and/or speak at 200 words per minute. Courses are inflexible, you cannot learn what you need to... and every university invents it's own, mutually contradictory course curriculum, course materials and subjects covered. Your lecturers are (sometimes) experts in their field, but by no means can the majority teach to save themselves... they walk in, draw crap on the OHP, dribble about their subject and leave without ever once thinking 'how can I TEACH my students this or that concept?'.

Or so it seems.

IMHO, the university system is better than nothing, but there must be a better way to teach than this, surely? We live in the future, and the whole uni concept is outdated and wrong.

Thank you for listening, ladies and gentlemen. (And some Everything noders.)

I like University, well, some of it anyway: The learning, going to class, thinking abstractly to comprehend this both natural and constructed world.

But the administrators who tell me I can't take certain courses that are challenging and exciting can go to hell without dying. I also hate the measurement. Don't get me started on the measurement...

I could stand on my soapbox and talk forever about how idiotic University is but there is an idea that pushes the brake pedal on my accelerating sense of indignity. I take control of myself by thinking of the factory workers, the janitors, the chicken pluckers and the people rolling bodies around in the morg. It is impossible to ignore the fact that education is the best predictor of future quality of life. The people in the highest income brackets average a Master's degree.

Why should University be fair and pure, when so many others are working so hard in often unfair conditions? Why should students get a free ride? They shouldn't. Yes, University is wrong but so many other things are unequal, unfair and 'wrong' too.

University is wrong when you spend eight months of researching and doing a project that has never been done before, approached problem-solving in a unique way, and having done more than anyone has ever done, and in the end they tell you that you didn't graduate the week of the graduation ceremonies, even though the project was shown in the Graduation Exhibition.

Those heartless bastards!

University gets even more wrong when they tell you another eight months must be wasted on another project.

The Industial Design program at Carleton University has the worst kind of faculty - one that is obsolete. Only now have they finally realized to include Pro Engineer into the cirriculum. Where was it when students needed it? Some of the professors are too old and have no skills such that they should retire and let fresh minds into the school.

One professor in particular, destroyed my soul when he gave me a mark I clearly did not deserve. My revenge on him was to surpass with flying colours on the following year, my project dealing with the UAV, and then to get a job that is more exciting and fulfilling than his. Working with the engineers guaranteed my future and allowed me to laugh in the face of his cold, heartless nature. This, however, is when university is right.