> Students who need that kind of "stick" to do well on exams aren't college material in the first place

Well, that raises an interesting philosophical question. What sorts of learning patterns in a person make them "college material"?

Surely you agree that there are a wide variety of teaching styles present among all college professors. If a student's personal way of learning best is incompatible with their assigned professor, are they not college material? Why is this an issue with the student, and not the professor not being teaching material, or the university not being facilitator-of-education material for failing to match students and professors well?

I agree that people have been pushed into college as a default option due to it being overloaded as both place of learning but also printing salary-granting papers, but it's NOT clear to me that students who need the specific stick mentioned in some cases are broadly unsuited for higher learning.

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JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> What sorts of learning patterns in a person make them "college material"?

Any that are self motivated.

> If a student's personal way of learning best is incompatible with their assigned professor, are they not college material?

Honestly, no. It shows a lack of (a) institutional-navigational skills, e.g. change your professor, (b) flexibility to different learning "styles" (which are increasingly being shown to be a myth) and/or (c) ability to circumvent adversity, e.g. by reading the textbook, finding online videos or hunting down a study group. That doesn't mean they can't learn some of these skills. But if they don't have by them by the end of freshman year, college is a waste of time for them.

Modern college students are basically afforded the freedoms and privileges of a classical scholar with a wealthy patron. Their day-to-day needs are taken care of. They have access to massive libraries. They have access to lectures and professors at office hours. And they navigate all of it with a pre-selected cohort of similar students.

(To be clear, I think one can be tremendously successful and valuable without completing or even attending college. As in no ambitious path is actually closed off from you. Unless it's research.)

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margalabargala an hour ago | parent [-]

> That doesn't mean they can't learn some of these skills. But if they don't have by them by the end of freshman year, college is a waste of time for them.

I disagree, because muddling through one way or another grants the salary paper that makes it easier to have success in the rest of life.

> To be clear, I think one can be tremendously successful and valuable without completing or even attending college. As in no ambitious path is actually closed off from you. Unless it's research.

Again, I disagree.I mean, I agree on its face, in that a sufficiently motivated and capable person is capable of achieving success with or without a college degree.

But we're talking about people who aren't motivated and capable. The best path to something resembling success for people who lack the motivation and capability to be successful on their own, is to muddle through the university system and by whatever necessary means get the piece of paper.

College at large is not a waste of time for these people. Until the downstream society stops valuing a degree as it does, time spent getting the degree is not wasted, because it yielded the degree. If the paper is had, the time was well spent, regardless of how that time was actually spent or whether anything was learned.

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JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent [-]

> muddling through one way or another grants the salary paper that makes it easier to have success in the rest of life

True [1]. I'm not debating the individual incentives. (I wasn't clear about this.) I'm just not convinced a college graduate who muddled through is worth 75% more to an employer or society than a high school student who muddles.

> a sufficiently motivated and capable person is capable of achieving success with or without a college degree

For a binary measure of success, yes. A successful person empowered with a peaceful, rich society and challenging college experience will do better than one without.

[1] https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2025/what-happened-to...

	▲	margalabargala 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I agree with everything you said here :)

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nradov 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the real world, those on the bottom of the social hierarchy (such as undergrad students) need to adapt to the styles of those on the top (professors). Perhaps that's unfair but it's just the way the world operates. College can be a great environment to learn that essential life skill of adaptability. Find a way to succeed even when you're in a shitty environment surrounded by toxic people.

	▲	margalabargala an hour ago \| parent [-]
		If we're talking about "the way the world operates", then because of how society values college degrees, any path that gets you the piece of paper is a worthwhile and valuable one. Whether that path involves learning, complaining until given a passing grade, or forcing/convincing your professors to accommodate your preferred style of "learning". This is something that needs to be fixed downstream, by making the paper less valuable. Making the paper more difficult to get instead is just manufacturing misery because of people too stubborn to pull their heads out of the sand and admit that the function of undergrad is the salary paper, and self-motivated learning has been largely relegated to grad school.

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ACCount39 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not about "teaching style". It's about having intrinsic motivation vs having to be motivated with a stick and threat of failure.

	▲	margalabargala 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's about having to be externally motivated for that particular assignment. Or class of assignment, whatever. There are often a variety of tasks which are graded. Homework, exams, presentations, labs, etc. Every class and professor sets the mix of valuation of these differently, and has different quantities of each. That's teaching style. If you hate presentations and cannot be roused to make one except by threat of failure, but are great at learning the material and pass the exams with ease, then that's a teaching style incompatibility.