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--></style></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>I can attest to this. I am nearly through a physics degree. From my experience, university education has been rather a waste of money. The teaching quality (at least at my university) can be quite low or even pitiful at times. Online resources that offer much better explanations than the lecturers are easy to find. I frankly have taught myself 95% of what I know simply by reading what I find online. All the textbooks are available online for free is one knows where to look. A self-motivated individual can easily gain a university level education for free.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Of course some career paths require a degree such as engineering or medicine. I have a hard time imagining a company hiring someone who claims to be a self-taught engineer or doctor. An autodidact engineer can of course be superior to a university educated counterpart, but such a situation is difficult to prove. Degrees at least guarantee some baseline level of competence for hiring managers to consider. That said, I still wish I would have forgone university as it has not been very beneficial to me.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal style='border:none;padding:0in'><b>From: </b><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">spike jones via extropy-chat</a><br><b>Sent: </b>Monday, November 1, 2021 12:23 PM<br><b>To: </b><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">ExI chat list</a><br><b>Cc: </b><a href="mailto:spike@rainier66.com">spike@rainier66.com</a><br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [ExI] today's news</p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>...> On Behalf Of MB via extropy-chat</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>On Mon, November 1, 2021 11:15, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat</p><p class=MsoNormal>wrote:</p><p class=MsoNormal>>>... "Let's punish the winners."</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>(snips)</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>>>... The gifted and talented will succeed anyway in all probability...</p><p class=MsoNormal>><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>>...... unless the gifted and talented are so bored or turned off that they</p><p class=MsoNormal>go to bad behaviour or drugs. I saw that with one of my kids... even in a</p><p class=MsoNormal>select school, bored bored bored. Near the top of the class, scholarships</p><p class=MsoNormal>to college - bored bored bored. Dropped out, never finished school, doing</p><p class=MsoNormal>manual & non-technical work now age 40s. At least working & currently</p><p class=MsoNormal>self-supporting, for which I am exceedingly grateful.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Regards,</p><p class=MsoNormal>MB</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>_______________________________________________</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>BillW and MB, it appears we (as a society and as a planet) are struggling</p><p class=MsoNormal>with the notion that everyone is the same, that all differences can be</p><p class=MsoNormal>somehow educated away and classes will graduate all with comparable skills</p><p class=MsoNormal>and knowledge base. In reality, students are very different in ability, and</p><p class=MsoNormal>are diverging faster than ever, as some rely on the (failing) school system</p><p class=MsoNormal>to spoon feed them what they need to know, while others go online to find</p><p class=MsoNormal>the excellent educational opportunities available there free. Some students</p><p class=MsoNormal>find use the hell outta those resources (thank you a million times Sal Khan</p><p class=MsoNormal>(may you achieve whatever is the atheist version of sainthood while yet you</p><p class=MsoNormal>live (what is the atheist's version of sainthood?))) </p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I see actual engineering courses available online which is equivalent to, or</p><p class=MsoNormal>really I would say superior to the college education I paid good money for,</p><p class=MsoNormal>tragically many decades ago, and it is free as a bird. This is an example,</p><p class=MsoNormal>a particularly good one:</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm5mt-A4w61lknZ9lCsZtBw</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>...and this is a lecture from Steve's collection introducing classical</p><p class=MsoNormal>controls:</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi7l8mMjYVE</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>...but there are others like Steve, so if one is driven and focused, and if</p><p class=MsoNormal>one does Khan Academy (for instance) to gobble up the equivalent of a high</p><p class=MsoNormal>school diploma, one can take these free online courses and have a very</p><p class=MsoNormal>competent education for zero money invested, never leaving home, regardless</p><p class=MsoNormal>of one's ethnic background, nationality, political views, economic</p><p class=MsoNormal>situation, orientation or gender.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In our times, higher education went from being the domain of the privileged</p><p class=MsoNormal>to something anyone can have.</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>_______________________________________________</p><p class=MsoNormal>extropy-chat mailing list</p><p class=MsoNormal>extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</p><p class=MsoNormal>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat</p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>