Bob W <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >KW>> Like, whoever uses what they went to college for? > >> Although many people do not use their college knowledge actively, good >> college education should help them assess the world better, search for >> relevant information, and make better informed choices (and that >> includes politics and advertisement choices!). Just my opinion. > >Hear, hear! > >It is the sign of a civilized culture when the universities offer >'useless' degrees. This means that people can study a subject for its >own sake, not for vocational reasons and not as some form of cheap >training for the corporations.
Hear, hear again! Time was when higher learning was about, well, *learning*. Now hardly anyone is interested in learning anything unless it's guaranteed to make them money someday. Such people should be sent to plumbing school, as others have suggested. Euclid once had a student who asked him how his study of geometry might benefit him in "real life" and Euclid supposedly responded "give the man three obols, since he must profit from what he learns". On a related note: I once knew a woman with a PhD in mathematics who works in the field of artificial intelligence. Not being a programmer herself so she worked with a lot of programmers whose job it was to turn her research into actual code. She reported that all the best programmers she knew had been either music or art majors in college. -- Mark Roberts Photography and writing www.robertstech.com
