Skip college, make money

[thrasherpix]

It just made me laugh to realize that out of the Scoobies (not counting Giles), the ones who got it together were those who knew college wasn't for them: Anya and Xander. Financially speaking, they were more well off than those going to college, and no college loans to pay off!

And once Buffy gives up on ever getting back into college, her financial problems work themselves out and she even gets a part time job as a school counselor.

I don't think this was intentional (I get the impression that the writers are barely aware of good paying jobs that don't require a huge college loan to pay off beyond construction), but it just struck me as funny as I think on it. It almost makes me wish Snyder could've lived (but not as principal) just so it could be rubbed in his face (especially Buffy as a counselor).

 

[Stake fodder]

True! Though I would point out that Anya is 1000 years old, and I think it's true that the older you get, the less college weighs in the balance vs. life experience. She's got tons of the latter.

I also thought it was interesting that Xander had to work at a number of low-wage starter jobs, and that was treated as just what someone without a college degree had to do. Yet when Buffy had to do the same, it was considered beneath her.

Lastly, I should point out that Buffy's financial problems got "worked out" mostly because the writers got bored with the issue. And she only got a counselor's job because Robin Wood wanted to keep her close, not because she was technically qualified (albeit she did a pretty good job!).

Still, I appreciated that the show did show characters succeeding without college. It's not a viewpoint we get that often. It counterbalanced what I felt was a measure of scorn for fast-food workers. It's no one's dream job, but anything that pays the bills is worthy work and not deserving of mockery, in my opinion.

 

[thrasherpix]

Lots of inventors, creators, and successful business people were school dropouts. Even today teens can create apps that normally require someone with a degree to be hired to make.

That is, college degrees are overhyped, and a lot (not all) that proves their necessity is simply the prejudicial road blocks put up against those who don't have them.

That's even more true of high school. Many would learn and acquire skills faster (and not come to hate learning) were it not for school. Many would mature faster as well.


But that aside, yeah, the writers did what they've always done (and more often than they used to) by sweeping away plot arcs when they were tired of them. And speaking from beyond the fourth wall, I get the impression they weren't trying to make such a statement, just that their lazy writing created it by accident, bypassing their own innate snobbery.

And within the story it would really grind Snyder's beans that not only did Xander have his crap together at such a young age, but that Buffy was the counselor at the rebuilt school instead of selling corn dogs, a thought that made me laugh as I thought of it (and thus too bad he was eaten...if only someone managed to cut him out after the Mayor blew up).

 

[TheMaster666]

Remember kids, real life is always like you see on television, and you can trust the writers' room for knowledge on all the facts of life!

In all seriousness, I got to agree, I'm not a fan of formal education. I think "education" is a major misnomer in the first place, since people don't go to college to learn things they mostly won't need to ever know for a short period of time, regurgitate them on exams, and then move on with life. They get degrees to signal to employers that they were stupid and hard-working enough to waste a shitload of money and hours doing meaningless work just for their approval. Employers like hiring great workers with the emptied out souls of automatons.

Nowadays, I don't even know how accurate that "signaling" mechanism even is. UC's for example no longer even look at standardized testing, even though that was strongly correlated with future success, and degrees today are so crowded that you don't really get any leg up from having them; you just are a leg down without 'em. Cheating and plagiarism is worse than ever too in the internet age. Anyone anywhere can just pay some random dude or dudette online to forge original essays for you. How the hell is the instructor going to know the difference? It's an original work and properly cited, which is exactly what you want from the student. True, this is nothing new, but before it was underground and you probably had to know people. Now it's a growing industry in the online economy.

Am I being unfair? Sure. We learn lots of important, useful things at school. I just question how efficient it is to spend so much time and resources (17-21 years of your life, even more if you do grad school, is a LONG time just to get educated) when we live in an age of streaming.

If I were God or a dictator, and I could reshape the education landscape with a wave of my hand, I'd try implementing a massive online database of verified, proven curriculum, taught by the world's greatest instructors. Access, if not outright free, would be a hell of a lot cheaper than what a college course currently charges per semester, and you wouldn't miss out on this top-class education no matter what your high school GPA was, or if you couldn't afford tuition. Anybody with a device and internet connection could access course materials from the top instructors of the world. The only catch is that is all recorded lectures. Then you could hire a lot of people to simply be administrators--people who keep track of enrollment and grading. We don't need a thousand universities, just one central website. Of course, if you prefer traditional schooling, that's your prerogative. But why should we force people to spend so much money to get a degree? It's wasteful, and not everybody can afford it.

The other advantage of such a system, is that you are no longer bound by time constraints. Students who wish to advance earlier are free to do so, so they fill in gaps in their knowledge as they see fit. Students who are behind can take the time to properly understand the foundations before moving on. Completing school is more closely tied to academic achievement, not the completion of an arbitrary window of time set aside for a class. It's comparable to the Boy Scouts. If you're familiar with the BSA, in the boy scouts, you advance to the next rank once you've met the requirements, not based on age. You could have some 14 year olds at a higher rank than 17 year olds, if the boy is driven.

How is it that we are in the year 2022, and the tech has been around for ages by this point, yet nothing like this has materialized? Remember iTunes U and MIT Open Courseware? How come services like that never expanded or grew into something the scale of Youtube? But with the credibility of academic authority. Sites like udemy are far from comprehensive, and their courses obviously lack the same level of prestige as actual schooling.