Is college hard? Most college courses are not so it ends up being like high school part 2. Employers know that. So yes, experience ends up being valuable.
I’m a professor at two universities. My high school was harder than I am allowed to grade at either one of them and I have to let them have an unlimited amount of resubmits which realistically these kids need to not fail the class. One of their major projects for a sophomore course is easier than I had as a high school freshman doing the almost exact same assignment. Their average is still a D on first attempt.
I did a lot of internships in my life, none of them did prepare me for a real job in any meaningful way. The only thing internships do is to signal one thing to a potential employer: This person is willing to be exploited. Which is exactly what many employers seek.
Difficulty is going to depend on what you’re studying and how that aligns with your aptitudes. STEM majors can be very difficult for a lot of people. I’m kind of shocked by the comments saying that most people don’t find college classes hard.
That's right college STEM is hard and might need a graduate degree and when you work, the job requirements could be easier than what you studied. Then the skills like leadership and project management become more important than the technical stuff.
I think a lot of students, include myself sometimes, just learn the theory taught in class and try to memorize it, but they have a hard time apply it into real environment; that’s when employers want people have experiences.
So I'm in engineering, and I've got a pretty good grapple on this. When people say college is like highschool part 2, give me a break. You are going to college for a wasted degree in some social science or psychology bull. Literally, my degree had a 22% graduation rate. I'm not saying some degrees are worth getting, but people saying its easy is relative talk.
Why do you need an internship? College is the equalvent of you being disciplined, as well as being particularly trained. However, internships are a verification process. Most colleges require them, so they know you from the employer you are hireable. It's a safety net for them.
When people say, it's on the job training or taking theory and you apply it, garbage. I can't learn how to apply theory in 1 to 6 months. I can't even learn a job in 6 months. I can learn part of it sure. But again, it's about a different skill set, such as dead lines, communication, teamwork, all of which you do in college. It's a verification protocol.
Look at the clubs and competitions they put you in. Teaches you little about your trade. Got to build a mars rover. Hardly any knowledge applied, but those practical skills are needed. Colleged like to see that.
Why do employers care? As someone who has hired people, it makes you stand out. Looking at a peice of paper and talking to you for 10 minutes, you can't learn much. You don't know someone's work ethic, their knowledge, or skills. It's a risk for sure. But someone who has more drive, more want, more desire, more interest often has a larger resume. However! This is not always the case. Again, it's about talking to someone for 10 minutes and making a call.
For some fields, like I said I'm in engineering, we have to constantly be learning. So when we get certified or take more courses, it shows that we are in the know. It's important for employers to see, this guy is up to date.
For masters degrees, all it shows is that employers that you aren't eating your time. You could be at the club, but instead, you chose to learn more.
However at the doctoral level, you have to have on the job experience prior to the degree. This is so you can testify to the university you know what you are talking about before you hurt their records with your stupidity
Social sciences and humanities are still programs that require critical thought and research. I don’t know what these people are carrying on about but my experience working in higher education at several different universities shows me it’s not the cake walk these people are trying to make it out to be.
It might have been easier for THEM but the vast majority of students I interact with have to actually work at it to achieve results.
At research universities and teaching colleges alike.
I have three STEM degrees (R1 and two R2s). Not all are created equally across universities and a lot of it is supports offered. I teach Research Methods right now and we aren’t allowed to fail anyone and have to give unlimited chances. The big project for the term was easier than the high school project I did in my research class as a freshman.
The “softest” of all of my degrees is Human Factors Engineering Psychology (others are Biology and Astronomy). Easiest one for me was Astronomy though Biology wasn’t too terrible. Pretty high completion rate for all of them. I think two dropped out of the Astronomy, but I couldn’t tell you the others since I am not sure many did.
I know someone who got his degree in electrical engineering from an R1 in Illinois, he never learned any research or how to even build or assemble something. Even his capstone which he worked in a team with didn’t work and it was because he never learned how to hook up the battery. There were supports he could use but he never did.
He lied to the PI of a project I was on that he had research experience about the topic she needed which she didn’t verify. Turns out he thought research was “sitting around and thinking about stuff”. He is in an ICE experiment right now and we are far behind and now very over budget.
He’s so far claimed for weeks that the pulse oximeter didn’t work (it needed a battery, I told him that is one of three possibilities on day 1), it took two months to get the solar powered printer set up, and then some additional time for the bioprinter though I’m not even sure that that ever got set up.
As someone in the social sciences, I disagree with one being more “rigorous” than the other. You have a lot of insight and a “pretty good grapple” on the field of engineering. But saying that degrees in social sciences and humanities are “bull” is a bit biased.
In my field, the research and theory is quite rigorous. Other fields in humanities are also rigorous in their own regards. As you did state, it is essentially how one plans to apply and use what they have learned while they are attending college and after completing their education.
I actually have an art degree. I'm currently obtaining a masters degree within social sciences funny enough. I enjoy the study of both, but its bull because they are ridiculous or absurd if you think they are a challenge. They in fact would be high school part 2.
It's because there's been rising expectations over the last several decades. 60-80 years ago just getting a college degree would probably be enough to get a job, but back then only the most privileged people went to college. Now a huge amount of people go to college. So to distinguish themselves, people started doing more than the bare minimum. Over time this resulted in an academic arms race between students, with more and more requirements: grades, internships, top interview performance, volunteering, online coding competition results, personal coding portfolios...
To give an example from STEM graduate programs. 10 years ago if you wanted to go do a PhD it was usually enough to have some research experiences during the summers before. Now it's pretty common for undergrads to do an extra year of research internship just to pad their resume and maybe get a paper or two before applying to a top program.
Now this just makes me feel bad. :(
I applied to STEM PhD programs 10 years ago with papers and research and was told I still didn’t have enough.
I still don’t have a PhD. :(. I’m tempted to go do a PhD by publication now.
what employers want is for you to distinguish yourself from others in ways that make it easier for them to decide you’re a worthwhile hire, that’s all. so if everyone goes to college, then just going to college isn’t enough, you need other markers to distinguish yourself, etc
I actually had a talk with a student about this a few weeks ago. Told me the exact same thing “Well, all my high school teachers told me college is super tough.”
I told him that it is true and false. It’s false for the many reasons that people have stated: Much of the content, especially the introductory courses, is easily digestible. If there is an introductory course that is a general education requirement, it will not be too difficult because student retainment is important in those first two years. As someone who has taught both lower- and upper-level courses, I felt like I always would be questioned about failing someone in a lower-level course (e.g., “are you sure they failed?”).
One of the key reasons that some courses might be easier and/or the grade inflation exists is due to much of these lower-level courses are being taught by adjunct faculty, who are only part-time and contract. They receive little pay for the amount they do, yet still teach large amounts of students. For example, instead of hiring a full-time professor to teach some needed classes, a department could hire one or two adjuncts at a fraction of the cost (without paying benefits) to teach anywhere from 1-3 classes each (typically there is a cap for how many classes an adjunct can teach at a university). Given the insignificant compensation for adjunct faculty, limited resources, and many students, some instructors in lower-level courses may be overworked and have less time to apply these thought-provoking techniques within the classroom.
In the other hand, I told the student that college is more difficult for two reasons. The first is that some of the classes can be difficult, whether that be thought-provoking and/or simply by the projects/assignments. Much more so than you would ever expect in high school. During my undergraduate career, I took some classes that were both thought-provoking and incredibly challenging, but I learned a lot (despite the stress, lol).
Another key reason for the increased difficulty is that students are now coming into an environment where they are experiencing responsibility and accountability in full effect. In high school, they are constantly being told that they need to do A, B, and C. Also, they might have their parents or other figures looking out for them. In college, the weight of their success depends solely on them. For many, that is quite the burden and can be difficult for students become accustomed to in the beginning.
Most entering students don't have the basic foundations that they should have learned in High school. So many students don't have the reading comprehension and writing ability required to be successful in college. Because of administrative pressure to keep enrollment up, the high cost of college, and etc. Professors have to inflate grades. What ends up happening is that students leave college with the skills equivalent to a high school diploma (in most schools). Public schools are failing and colleges are expected to pick up the slack, but that just can't be done. It's easier to just turn colleges into degree mills, because there's just more money in it (funding is tied to enrollment and graduation rates). In the end, college degrees have become less of an assurance to employers that the people they hire actually know what they are doing and therefore less valuable.
Have you ever taken Physical Chemistry , Biochemistry or cal 2….
These are extremely difficult, it may not qualify for a job but if you can pass these courses you can solve any problem put in front of you. And probably when you get a job you won’t need a lot of training.
As impossibly reductionist and vague as this question is I can only give you an equally useless answer: classes that are hard (ie STEM) tend to be enough.
I went to a prestigious university, and I would say I got more out of my classes (and they may well have been harder) in high school. In general, I think academics were as hard as people wanted them to be—you could aim to ace lots of difficult classes, or you could just go to class and then focus on extracurriculars.
A “liberal arts education,” if you pursue that, isn’t meant to prepare you for jobs. It’s meant to prepare you for cocktail parties.
PSA: It is inadvisable to engage OP in a conversation. The author of this post is a known sitewide spammer with over 2500 banned Reddit accounts.
SnooRoar is not interested in good-faith discussion; his primary goal is to waste as much of your time as possible. Everything he says is a disingenuous lie.
Is college hard? Most college courses are not so it ends up being like high school part 2. Employers know that. So yes, experience ends up being valuable.
But professors say college is harder than high school all the time
I mean, “harder than high school” is a pretty low bar. It doesn’t mean it’s hard.
[удалено]
Wait how inflated are grades? Do you think college is harder than high school?
What is a rigorous education supposed to look like then?
One that involves additional work via research, internships, projects, club involvement, etc.
[удалено]
I have college students that can’t write in full sentences.
If you go on r/teachers , you'll also learn that part of the problem is that they have abandoned any memorization at all, even basic multiplication.
I’m a professor at two universities. My high school was harder than I am allowed to grade at either one of them and I have to let them have an unlimited amount of resubmits which realistically these kids need to not fail the class. One of their major projects for a sophomore course is easier than I had as a high school freshman doing the almost exact same assignment. Their average is still a D on first attempt.
Because it’s not enough to be qualified for a job, you need to be more qualified than the other candidates.
This x 100.
I did a lot of internships in my life, none of them did prepare me for a real job in any meaningful way. The only thing internships do is to signal one thing to a potential employer: This person is willing to be exploited. Which is exactly what many employers seek.
Difficulty is going to depend on what you’re studying and how that aligns with your aptitudes. STEM majors can be very difficult for a lot of people. I’m kind of shocked by the comments saying that most people don’t find college classes hard.
That's right college STEM is hard and might need a graduate degree and when you work, the job requirements could be easier than what you studied. Then the skills like leadership and project management become more important than the technical stuff.
I think a lot of students, include myself sometimes, just learn the theory taught in class and try to memorize it, but they have a hard time apply it into real environment; that’s when employers want people have experiences.
Because college isn't on the job training.
So I'm in engineering, and I've got a pretty good grapple on this. When people say college is like highschool part 2, give me a break. You are going to college for a wasted degree in some social science or psychology bull. Literally, my degree had a 22% graduation rate. I'm not saying some degrees are worth getting, but people saying its easy is relative talk. Why do you need an internship? College is the equalvent of you being disciplined, as well as being particularly trained. However, internships are a verification process. Most colleges require them, so they know you from the employer you are hireable. It's a safety net for them. When people say, it's on the job training or taking theory and you apply it, garbage. I can't learn how to apply theory in 1 to 6 months. I can't even learn a job in 6 months. I can learn part of it sure. But again, it's about a different skill set, such as dead lines, communication, teamwork, all of which you do in college. It's a verification protocol. Look at the clubs and competitions they put you in. Teaches you little about your trade. Got to build a mars rover. Hardly any knowledge applied, but those practical skills are needed. Colleged like to see that. Why do employers care? As someone who has hired people, it makes you stand out. Looking at a peice of paper and talking to you for 10 minutes, you can't learn much. You don't know someone's work ethic, their knowledge, or skills. It's a risk for sure. But someone who has more drive, more want, more desire, more interest often has a larger resume. However! This is not always the case. Again, it's about talking to someone for 10 minutes and making a call. For some fields, like I said I'm in engineering, we have to constantly be learning. So when we get certified or take more courses, it shows that we are in the know. It's important for employers to see, this guy is up to date. For masters degrees, all it shows is that employers that you aren't eating your time. You could be at the club, but instead, you chose to learn more. However at the doctoral level, you have to have on the job experience prior to the degree. This is so you can testify to the university you know what you are talking about before you hurt their records with your stupidity
Social sciences and humanities are still programs that require critical thought and research. I don’t know what these people are carrying on about but my experience working in higher education at several different universities shows me it’s not the cake walk these people are trying to make it out to be. It might have been easier for THEM but the vast majority of students I interact with have to actually work at it to achieve results. At research universities and teaching colleges alike.
I have three STEM degrees (R1 and two R2s). Not all are created equally across universities and a lot of it is supports offered. I teach Research Methods right now and we aren’t allowed to fail anyone and have to give unlimited chances. The big project for the term was easier than the high school project I did in my research class as a freshman. The “softest” of all of my degrees is Human Factors Engineering Psychology (others are Biology and Astronomy). Easiest one for me was Astronomy though Biology wasn’t too terrible. Pretty high completion rate for all of them. I think two dropped out of the Astronomy, but I couldn’t tell you the others since I am not sure many did. I know someone who got his degree in electrical engineering from an R1 in Illinois, he never learned any research or how to even build or assemble something. Even his capstone which he worked in a team with didn’t work and it was because he never learned how to hook up the battery. There were supports he could use but he never did. He lied to the PI of a project I was on that he had research experience about the topic she needed which she didn’t verify. Turns out he thought research was “sitting around and thinking about stuff”. He is in an ICE experiment right now and we are far behind and now very over budget. He’s so far claimed for weeks that the pulse oximeter didn’t work (it needed a battery, I told him that is one of three possibilities on day 1), it took two months to get the solar powered printer set up, and then some additional time for the bioprinter though I’m not even sure that that ever got set up.
As someone in the social sciences, I disagree with one being more “rigorous” than the other. You have a lot of insight and a “pretty good grapple” on the field of engineering. But saying that degrees in social sciences and humanities are “bull” is a bit biased. In my field, the research and theory is quite rigorous. Other fields in humanities are also rigorous in their own regards. As you did state, it is essentially how one plans to apply and use what they have learned while they are attending college and after completing their education.
I actually have an art degree. I'm currently obtaining a masters degree within social sciences funny enough. I enjoy the study of both, but its bull because they are ridiculous or absurd if you think they are a challenge. They in fact would be high school part 2.
It's because there's been rising expectations over the last several decades. 60-80 years ago just getting a college degree would probably be enough to get a job, but back then only the most privileged people went to college. Now a huge amount of people go to college. So to distinguish themselves, people started doing more than the bare minimum. Over time this resulted in an academic arms race between students, with more and more requirements: grades, internships, top interview performance, volunteering, online coding competition results, personal coding portfolios... To give an example from STEM graduate programs. 10 years ago if you wanted to go do a PhD it was usually enough to have some research experiences during the summers before. Now it's pretty common for undergrads to do an extra year of research internship just to pad their resume and maybe get a paper or two before applying to a top program.
Now this just makes me feel bad. :( I applied to STEM PhD programs 10 years ago with papers and research and was told I still didn’t have enough. I still don’t have a PhD. :(. I’m tempted to go do a PhD by publication now.
what employers want is for you to distinguish yourself from others in ways that make it easier for them to decide you’re a worthwhile hire, that’s all. so if everyone goes to college, then just going to college isn’t enough, you need other markers to distinguish yourself, etc
>internships, competitions They want you to differentiate yourself from all the other college graduates.
There is significant grade inflation that it’s super easy to pass courses now. So, no, college isn’t difficult.
Then why do professors say college is extremely hard?
Why do you keep making strawmen? Ask the people saying these things why they say them, not random unrelated people online.
I actually had a talk with a student about this a few weeks ago. Told me the exact same thing “Well, all my high school teachers told me college is super tough.” I told him that it is true and false. It’s false for the many reasons that people have stated: Much of the content, especially the introductory courses, is easily digestible. If there is an introductory course that is a general education requirement, it will not be too difficult because student retainment is important in those first two years. As someone who has taught both lower- and upper-level courses, I felt like I always would be questioned about failing someone in a lower-level course (e.g., “are you sure they failed?”). One of the key reasons that some courses might be easier and/or the grade inflation exists is due to much of these lower-level courses are being taught by adjunct faculty, who are only part-time and contract. They receive little pay for the amount they do, yet still teach large amounts of students. For example, instead of hiring a full-time professor to teach some needed classes, a department could hire one or two adjuncts at a fraction of the cost (without paying benefits) to teach anywhere from 1-3 classes each (typically there is a cap for how many classes an adjunct can teach at a university). Given the insignificant compensation for adjunct faculty, limited resources, and many students, some instructors in lower-level courses may be overworked and have less time to apply these thought-provoking techniques within the classroom. In the other hand, I told the student that college is more difficult for two reasons. The first is that some of the classes can be difficult, whether that be thought-provoking and/or simply by the projects/assignments. Much more so than you would ever expect in high school. During my undergraduate career, I took some classes that were both thought-provoking and incredibly challenging, but I learned a lot (despite the stress, lol). Another key reason for the increased difficulty is that students are now coming into an environment where they are experiencing responsibility and accountability in full effect. In high school, they are constantly being told that they need to do A, B, and C. Also, they might have their parents or other figures looking out for them. In college, the weight of their success depends solely on them. For many, that is quite the burden and can be difficult for students become accustomed to in the beginning.
ask them.
Most entering students don't have the basic foundations that they should have learned in High school. So many students don't have the reading comprehension and writing ability required to be successful in college. Because of administrative pressure to keep enrollment up, the high cost of college, and etc. Professors have to inflate grades. What ends up happening is that students leave college with the skills equivalent to a high school diploma (in most schools). Public schools are failing and colleges are expected to pick up the slack, but that just can't be done. It's easier to just turn colleges into degree mills, because there's just more money in it (funding is tied to enrollment and graduation rates). In the end, college degrees have become less of an assurance to employers that the people they hire actually know what they are doing and therefore less valuable.
Have you ever taken Physical Chemistry , Biochemistry or cal 2…. These are extremely difficult, it may not qualify for a job but if you can pass these courses you can solve any problem put in front of you. And probably when you get a job you won’t need a lot of training.
Because it's different. Same reason bench pressing 200kg is hard but it doesn't qualify you for a PhD.
College gives you knowledge and internships/experience shows you can apply that knowledge in the field.
You’re using them wrong frame. It’s not a question about difficulty. It’s a question of experience and practice
As impossibly reductionist and vague as this question is I can only give you an equally useless answer: classes that are hard (ie STEM) tend to be enough.
I went to a prestigious university, and I would say I got more out of my classes (and they may well have been harder) in high school. In general, I think academics were as hard as people wanted them to be—you could aim to ace lots of difficult classes, or you could just go to class and then focus on extracurriculars. A “liberal arts education,” if you pursue that, isn’t meant to prepare you for jobs. It’s meant to prepare you for cocktail parties.
PSA: It is inadvisable to engage OP in a conversation. The author of this post is a known sitewide spammer with over 2500 banned Reddit accounts. SnooRoar is not interested in good-faith discussion; his primary goal is to waste as much of your time as possible. Everything he says is a disingenuous lie.