dijkarte said:
As I already mentioned, some people are better learners in a group, and others are more independent in this regard. Otherwise I will have to attend a class for everything I need to learn in daily life, which does not make sense.
You are confusing classes with academia. Most of the things that I learned in the university, I learned outside of class. Also you are confusing masters programs with Ph.D. programs. Ph.D. programs don't have classes.
Also in daily life, you are interacting with people either directly or indirectly. Even when you read a book, that's interacting with a person (who could have died several hundred years ago).
Yes I do need a computer, and other resources, which I did mention already accessibility to learning resources. I may need people to answer my questions yeah if I'm a instruction- based learner, they might be available, but in case not, there're countless online resources, forums?
If you want to learn how to do web programming in 2012, there are tons of books and forums in which you can do that. I learned web programming in 1991, and I learned how to do stuff with the internet in 1987. The reason I was able to do this was that I went to a school in which they had computers connected to the internet just lying around for people to use. Not a big thing in 2012. Huge deal in 1987. The school spend tens of millions of dollars to put together an campus computing system and it was one of the first ones available. So I was able to teach myself how to use the internet about five years before anyone had heard of the internet, so that when it did explode, I was in good shape.
Now today, everyone has access to the internet. But I bet that there is something in some university which is the "next big thing" what everyone will be using in ten years, but which no one has heard of.
Completely relative and depends on a person's self-esteem. Some people do care much about how others see them, others don't.
Everyone cares about how *someone* sees them. A lot of life involves trying to figure out whose opinions matter and whose don't. Also sometimes, you *have to care*. If my boss thinks I'm incompetent, I care about that because having my boss think I'm incompetent means that I'm not likely to keep the paychecks coming in.
Now caring about what other people think doesn't mean that you have to do what they say. If my boss is being unreasonable, then I look for another job. My wife's opinions matter more than my bosses, since it's not a huge deal to look for another job, but looking for another wife is something that one doesn't do lightly.
But even if my boss is being unreasonable, what he thinks is something I can't ignore.
One thing that academia gives you are foster parents. If my teachers think that I'm doing a good job, then that gives me the confidence to tell other people to go to hell if they don't like what I'm doing.
What does social respect have to do with how much someone makes?
Social respect gives you power. If I go to Congress and tell people that the fate of the world depends on spending $X billion on something, no one is going to listen to me. If Stephen Hawking does it, people will. They might not do what he says, but they will at least schedule a meeting.
I go to my boss and ask for money. How much I get paid depends on how much my skills are respected.
I wish that was the case, the higher your degree the more your skills appreciated and paid for.
Depends on the situation. Among some groups of people, having a big degree causes you to be *dis*respected. Some groups care about how much money you make, others about how much money you spend.
Ideas that require marketing! :)
Sure, and I hear that there these things called universities that offer classes on marketing. Heck, they offer degrees in marketing.
What about this, I make a new discovery, theory, idea, and then sell it in a usable product, and market that product instead will definitely bring more money :D
Fine. Where are you going to learn to do that? One reason that I think my university had an excellent program was that in addition to learning the science, you ended up learning about the business of science. There were all of these contests, and talks about starting your own business, and you ended up with social contacts that would help you with starting your business.
At least it will be accessible to non academia world and at the same time will hit the academia since it's proven usable.
It often works the other way. Universities have research money which they can use to develop things that have no immediate profit possibility. The other thing is that businesses have an incentive to keep things secret, universities don't. I'm working on some cool stuff for my company, but I'll get fired if I post the source code on the internet. I'll even get into major trouble if I publicly mention what I'm doing.
If it's "proven usable" there is no point in having it in the university. Universities work on stuff that may be totally useless. Universities have more money to work on useless stuff, and once in a blue moon, the useless project actually changes the world.
Ideas that are proven and based on strong scientific merits, or at least shown to be applicable and can be utilized, need no selling and pushing.
Not true. People are busy, and you need to make a *huge* effort to get people's attention.
That's one more reason universities exist. If you look at any senior scientist, you'll find an enormous amount of effort spend of raising money. When I was at UTexas Austin, you had dozens of people devoted full time to getting money, often from the state legislature or Congress or alumni or various rich people looking for a tax deduction. I didn't have to worry about that. Once you go outside the university, then you have to worry about dozens of things that you didn't have to before, and that kills time for research.
