How important is a Tertiary Education?

[the_bob_delusion]

Go.

[poddster]

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@i-need-a-martini wrote:

Anything is better than having a petty mind poddster. 

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Yes let's leave that to the Lefties and the Unionists 🙂

[pct001wine]

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@poddster wrote:

Tertiary education may qualify a person to be a Matriarch of the eBay Community Spirit Forum if they don't have a Union Card or are not a fully paid up member of the Leftie Party. They can then amaze all the lesser denizens of this venue by putting on display their hard earned vocabulary, critical thinking and analytical skills. Not to mention their grasp of the syntax of grammatical vocalization, correct spelling and the ability to distort any topic to their convoluted viewpoint, proving that they are a class unto themselves and must be revered

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Lol the Master of Convolution & Obfuscation has spoken

[rabbitearbandicoot]

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@i-need-a-martini wrote:

I think a tertiary education is fundamental to human growth and society intelligence. Education doesn't make you more intelligent - it might make you more knowledgable but not more intelligent.

Only a tertiary education (and I am talking university here) gives you another dimension of critical thinking that can't be learned through experience.

But I appreciate that not everyone can go to university and not all university students "get" why they are there. I agree with that. A lot of them are there because mummy or daddy said they should. They do learn a bit about drugs, and how to organise a demonstration though. Are they the ones from the other thread? The ones that never pay back their hecs debt?

For those people, tertiary qualifications at some stage through other means is still important. 

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[chameleon54]

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@i-need-a-martini wrote:

I think a tertiary education is fundamental to human growth and society intelligence.

Only a tertiary education (and I am talking university here) gives you another dimension of critical thinking that can't be learned through experience.

But I appreciate that not everyone can go to university and not all university students "get" why they are there.

For those people, tertiary qualifications at some stage through other means is still important.

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I don't have a tertiary education but have worked in the education department for many years. A large number of the people I worked with had a high level of theoretical intelligence but where next to useless when faced with practical day to day planning and implementation of complex ( or often simple ) tasks. It seemed they had spent so long locked in the cloistered, safe environment of tertiary institutions that they had missed out on gaining practical life skills. My practical life skills where valued to the extent that I was one of three people in the organisation promoted to the selection panel, charged with employing these tertiary educated staff.

I,m not knocking tertiary education. It has an important role in society for training specialists for specific roles such as research, technology, medicine, the arts and yes the various educational vocations. Other than these and similar specialist fields it has little to offer society as a whole and is over rated by many people ( usually those who attended these institutions ) .  Many young people would be much better served, finishing year twelve and getting out into the workforce, earning money and gaining valuable life skills, before they become too institutionalised. 

You only have to look at the poor life skills most of our tertiary educated and heavily institutionalised politicians have, which is reflected in their faulty decision making processes and poor implementation of basic social policy. Put simply, they may have educational intelligence but lack basic common sense. Society needs a mix of people with both skills ( tertiary educated thinking and basic common sense ) to function effectively.

[rabbitearbandicoot]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

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@i-need-a-martini wrote:

I think a tertiary education is fundamental to human growth and society intelligence.

Only a tertiary education (and I am talking university here) gives you another dimension of critical thinking that can't be learned through experience.

But I appreciate that not everyone can go to university and not all university students "get" why they are there.

For those people, tertiary qualifications at some stage through other means is still important.

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I don't have a tertiary education but have worked in the education department for many years. A large number of the people I worked with had a high level of theoretical intelligence but where next to useless when faced with practical day to day planning and implementation of complex ( or often simple ) tasks. It seemed they had spent so long locked in the cloistered, safe environment of tertiary institutions that they had missed out on gaining practical life skills. My practical life skills where valued to the extent that I was one of three people in the organisation promoted to the selection panel, charged with employing these tertiary educated staff.

I,m not knocking tertiary education. It has an important role in society for training specialists for specific roles such as research, technology, medicine, the arts and yes the various educational vocations. Other than these and similar specialist fields it has little to offer society as a whole and is over rated by many people ( usually those who attended these institutions ) .  Many young people would be much better served, finishing year twelve and getting out into the workforce, earning money and gaining valuable life skills, before they become too institutionalised. 

You only have to look at the poor life skills most of our tertiary educated and heavily institutionalised politicians have, which is reflected in their faulty decision making processes and poor implementation of basic social policy. Put simply, they may have educational intelligence but lack basic common sense. Society needs a mix of people with both skills ( tertiary educated thinking and basic common sense ) to function effectively.

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Yes, me too. I have hired and then had to fire 'tertary qualified' people (IT)  because they had no idea of how things really work in a hands-on envronment. Give me a person with a bit of nouce every time.

[curmu-curmu]

How important is a Tertiary Education?

Don't know, don't care. I find I'm still integ ingell inteleligant - clever without one!

[i-need-a-martini]

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@rabbitearbandicoot wrote:

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Yes, me too. I have hired and then had to fire 'tertary qualified' people (IT)  because they had no idea of how things really work in a hands-on envronment. Give me a person with a bit of nouce every time.

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But "hands on skills" are not the role of a university. "Hands on" is what vocatinal tertiary education is for. Even doctors and lawyers don't learn the ins and outs of their profession at university. The "hands on" is done only once they commence an internship.

Doctors and lawyers (and anyone else at university) should be there to learn to use their minds and to think beyond the realms of what a textbook says. And that is where I disagree with you rabbit - universities do make you more intelligent because they make you think differently, deeper, wider than the average person. To imagine other possibilities, question research, cultivate creativity. As I said, these are principles that 99% of people could only learn at university.

And on saying that, many university students scrape by with rote learning and never grasp any of that. That's a waste of an education. And many university courses today are dumbed down to get students in and out as quickly as possible.

[chameleon54]

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@i-need-a-martini wrote:

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@rabbitearbandicoot wrote:

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Yes, me too. I have hired and then had to fire 'tertary qualified' people (IT)  because they had no idea of how things really work in a hands-on envronment. Give me a person with a bit of nouce every time.

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But "hands on skills" are not the role of a university. "Hands on" is what vocational tertiary education is for. Even doctors and lawyers don't learn the ins and outs of their profession at university. The "hands on" is done only once they commence an internship.

Doctors and lawyers (and anyone else at university) should be there to learn to use their minds and to think beyond the realms of what a textbook says. And that is where I disagree with you rabbit - universities do make you more intelligent because they make you think differently, deeper, wider than the average person. To imagine other possibilities, question research, cultivate creativity. As I said, these are principles that 99% of people could only learn at university.

And on saying that, many university students scrape by with rote learning and never grasp any of that. That's a waste of an education. And many university courses today are dumbed down to get students in and out as quickly as possible.

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To suggest that 99% of the population could not learn these skills without attending university is clearly a patronising nonsense. I think the learning of these skills is more related to personal intelligence than educational opportunities.  Using your theory many of the worlds most celebrated minds pre 1850,s could not have developed an enquiring mind, imagining possibilities and researching medical and technological projects as university education was not readily available in this period.  

One of the most intelligent people I know left school at age 14 and took over the running of his fathers farm on his dads untimely death. He has gone on to develop a profound knowledge and understanding of mechanical and engineering principles. He designs and builds huge farm machines, does all of his own mechanical and electrical work including servicing the modern computer systems used to operate farm machines.

In his spare time in the farm workshop, he has taken an old Holden 1970,s station wagon body and mounted it on a Toyota Landcruiser chassis equiped with a 350 Chev V8 motor to make a four wheel drive 1970 Holden. His engineering and workmanship was of such a high standard that his state registration and roadworthy authority allowed immediate registration. This may not excite some of the tertiary educated members on the forums, but anyone who has dealt with these authorities will understand the scale of this achievement.

To suggest that an enquiring and creative mind is strictly limited to those who have attended university shows a level of arrogance and  disappointing lack of understanding of the possabilities for those who have not had the opportunity, or who chose not to attend university.

[zanadoo_56]

If the job you want requires one I'd assume it would be very important.

I have a tertiary (TAFE) qualification and for the first 18 years that's the job I did.  I liked it but eventually I was facing redundancy so I retrained for something else.  That's the job I now do but surprisingly, a lot of my original training has proved useful.

I can't go back to my original occupation, it has moved on technologically from my time and jobs still don't come up very often.  Sometimes I miss it though, but I'm now too old to want to go back to TAFE.

[i-need-a-martini]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

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To suggest that 99% of the population could not learn these skills without attending university is clearly a patronising nonsense. I think the learning of these skills is more related to personal intelligence than educational opportunities.  Using your theory many of the worlds most celebrated minds pre 1850,s could not have developed an enquiring mind, imagining possibilities and researching medical and technological projects as university education was not readily available in this period.  

One of the most intelligent people I know left school at age 14 and took over the running of his fathers farm on his dads untimely death. He has gone on to develop a profound knowledge and understanding of mechanical and engineering principles. He designs and builds huge farm machines, does all of his own mechanical and electrical work including servicing the modern computer systems used to operate farm machines.

In his spare time in the farm workshop, he has taken an old Holden 1970,s station wagon body and mounted it on a Toyota Landcruiser chassis equiped with a 350 Chev V8 motor to make a four wheel drive 1970 Holden. His engineering and workmanship was of such a high standard that his state registration and roadworthy authority allowed immediate registration. This may not excite some of the tertiary educated members on the forums, but anyone who has dealt with these authorities will understand the scale of this achievement.

To suggest that an enquiring and creative mind is strictly limited to those who have attended university shows a level of arrogance and  disappointing lack of understanding of the possabilities for those who have not had the opportunity, or who chose not to attend university.

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I am not talking about skills. Neither did I say that enquiring or creative minds are strictly limited to those that attend university.  All 5 year olds have enquiring and creative minds and they haven't attended uni yet.

Your example shows you miss the meaning of what I am saying and your example illustrates perfectly what I am saying.

Your intelligent person (and I never said only people that go to university are intelligent BTW), clearly understands the process of machines from life on a farm and, as you say, has developed a profound knowledge which is enough to create and build his own machines and build a machine capable of being roadworthy. He has learnt through experience and has an outstanding set of skills because of this.

That isn't something he would ever learn at university. It's not what universities are about.

And I think you will find that most of the celebrated minds pre 1850's were cultivated in some way or other. Some had money. Others (like Thomas Edison or Frank Lloyd Wright) had mothers that cultivated what they needed. For others (particularly true for industrial, mechanical, structural engineers like James Watt) an apprenticeship served as their "university".  And others invented based on need or knowledge or simply because they were born at a moment in history when great change was occurring such as the industrial revolution.