I have become aware of a trend-embraced by many of my daughter’s fends. Simply put, these kids enroll in college, then:
-don’t attend classes
-don’t study
-party all night
I guess I don’t understand the sense of this-do they think they are actually students?
Anyway, why do their parents put up with this? Paying tuition so that the kid can waste his/her time?
I don’t get it!
This “trend” has been going on since the early-80’s if my college experience is any indicator. Most likely the parents are blissfully unaware of what little Kaitlyn is doing.
I had one friend like that, although he is an exception. He just had other interests that were more important to him than class. In the late 90’s he started a company with a few other guys and made $70 million in the IPO. He managed to get half of it out before the dotcom crash.
Jeez, that OP could’ve been written about students attending the University of Al Karaouine (founded in 859).
Wait, the putative students to which you refer are female, which would push the timeline forward, oh a thousand years or so. 
They do it because for the first time, they get to make the decisions, and they’re not very good at it.
Very often, the parents do not put up with it. Kids get one year, and, if they do poorly, the money stops. Or [and this is really mean], they will pay for a CC or local state school IF the kid lives at home and works.
That’s the worst of both worlds; the responsibility of an adult and the restrictions of a child. If that doesn’t work, they throw the kid out.
To be fair, there are some classes where you can do reasonably well with very nearly no work.
Another aspect is that for many people a college degree is just a meaningless credential. It is an official stamp of approval that you’re reasonably intelligent and not a total sociopath.
I think very few people at my college believed that attending class actually made them more intelligent or more knowledgeable about anything important. They attended college because they wanted the piece of paper, not the “education.”
This view is a little simplistic, but not wholly unreasonable–at least for liberal arts schools. For you non-engineers, how much of what you learned in college is useful to you today? Did you really learn critical thinking skills in college? My bet is that for most people, if you didn’t have critical thinking skills before college, you didn’t find them there. And you’ve forgotten virtually all of the fine points of what you learned unless you actively use them in your occupation.
Hey, at least they are hiding that from their parents. I knew a girl in high school whose declared purpose for going to college was “to get an MRS degree”. That made me angry on so many levels, mainly as she was the type of high school student that would study 3 hours for a 5 question quiz, and inquire about retaking a class if she got an A-. Good to know all that grief you put everyone else through was just so your parents can spend $20,000+ a year for you to find a husband!
Having a well-rounded, classical education has made me a better person, which trumps anything strictly practical. I did not acquire critical thinking skills at college, but I did hone them there. Oh, I’m a college senior at Boston College fwiw.
It reminds me of Aristotle’s tripartite division of knowledge… forget the Greek words for it, but basically pure knowledge, ethical knowledge, and practical tknowledge. The pure knowledge changes the essence of who you are. I think it’s quite silly to say that just because something is not applicable in every day life then it has no merit.
Isn’t this the way college works in the movies?
Their parents put up with it because one day you’ve got to let your kid go out there and make their own mistakes. Ideally the kid is prepared for the outside world and will only make a few small blunders, but some kids are going to go out there are get drunk and screw everyone in sight and earn a 1.0 GPA.
Of course, some parents just treat their kids like little princesses who can do no wrong, those kids will never learn.
This has long been a fascinating subject for me, and if I go on to graduate school I will likely write my dissertation on it. I could write about 10 pages about this, but I’ll sum it up by saying: my basic belief is that the decline of skilled trades and vocational school in America is the main thing responsible for this class of pseudo-students who treat college like 4 more years of high school. 70% of the people in college should not be in college and they are there simply to “get the degree” - these people ought to be in vocational school learning useful and practical skills in a hands-on, focused way that would allow them to get high-paying, skilled trade jobs that would also be beneficial to society. Instead, because trades and vocational school have become stigmatized as lower-class, they are in college, and they do not belong there.
You’re preaching to the choir here. I was merely describing what I see my peers having done. I think they are mistaken to be so vocationally-focused, but in that paradigm their behavior is perfectly reasonable. Since a career is their purpose, attending class is a mere annoyance.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, and yep. Believe me.
As for the question posed in the OP, living in a dorm is a fantastic way to find parties, make friends who will share their alcohol and drugs with you, get laid and live the easy life. It’s not too hard to pull of a semester or a year of that before anyone else is the wiser.
Of course, once someone is the wiser, you pay for your youthful indiscretions, but isn’t that what growing up is all about?
Yeah, Hostile Dialect, I agree with you that this is the purpose of youth. While I agree with Argent Towers that trade and vocational schools have been stigmatized to a rediculous and completely unwarrented degree, I’m not so sure that all the party students are being caused by that.
I did a lot of drinking/partying/drugs (just pot!) during my first year of university and paid for it with my marks & my parents disappointment. I really did learn from that and am actually glad I got that lesson pounded into me - only I am responsible for my success or failure. Also, hell, it was a damn lot of fun, and when else in life can you cut loose like that?
I cleaned up and went on to a successful university career at the top of my class. I really don’t think that this ‘youthful indescretion’ means that I would have been better off going to vocational school. I’m not sure that it’s very fair to judge people so harshly based on the stupid things they do at 18 or 19.
I’m not really talking about the partying, drugs, sex, etc. Everyone in college does that, basically, including plenty of students who are also very academically dedicated and who either grow out of it, or are able to keep on doing it while still performing at a high level.
That’s not the issue. The issue is students being in college “because they’re supposed to be in college,” and being apathetic about learning and the pursuit of knowledge. The middle class mentality has developed this idea that “you’re supposed to be in college” and that it applies to every kid. It’s bullshit.
And plenty of the kids I graduated high school with who were spared that “you must go to college” crap have gone on to success. Kids who chewed tobacco and rode dirt bikes - now they’re getting good jobs working on cars, doing skilled construction, going into family businesses, etc - making decent livings and doing honest work that benefits the community - with only a “mere” vocational school degree.
Those people don’t give a shit about history or math or English. And they don’t need to! They know how to fix my damn car when it breaks down and they get 500 dollars for it. They’re who I’ll be calling when my air conditioner’s busted and it’s 89 degrees outside, or when my deck needs to be re-finished. They contribute more than a bunch of pseudo-college students in lame service-industry jobs. It’s because instead of succumbing to the pressure of “COLLEGE! COLLEGE!” they went into fields they actually ENJOYED, right out of high school, and chances are that a lot of them are going to be successful contractors and making a damn good living in 10 years and a lot of my college peers are going to be jerk-off white collar service industry drones.
Absolutely true. I come from an era where they wouldn’t kick you out because you had too many units. I had two friends who took 7 and 8 years full time (they could relate to Zonker’s statement that their sophomore year was the best 3 years of their lives) while undergraduates. One graduated, one did not. Once it started becoming a problem, they capped the maximum number of quarter units to be 195 where 180 was sufficient to graduate if you met the degree requirements.
Oh you got longer than that given parents’ ability to rationalize their kids’ behavior. “Oh, he’s just having a hard time ADJUSTING.” “Well she’s just trying to ‘find herself.’” “The professor just had a different teaching style.”
This will buy you AT LEAST another year.
I overheard the girl behind me in Freshman orientation talking with her best friend. The speaker was talking about “having experiences you never had at home.” The girls response…“Like a sex life?”
But yeah, I honestly think there’s a LOT of girls that go to school to try to find someone to marry. In fact one of my good friends is going back for a second degree because she wasn’t successful the first time. :rolleyes:
College: a four year long party with a fifty thousand dollar cover charge.
Well, maybe it bought you another year. Me, I got one semester out of it.
Shit, my roommate for my Sophomore and Junior year started school a year before I did and graduated two years AFTER I did. SIX YEARS it took him to get your standard BA in Business.
“Oh…but he was dealing with his attention deficit disorder!” No he wasn’t. He was dealing with not knowing what the hell he was supposed to because he was too busy working full time to support the weekly parties he was bankrolling and trying to keep his 3 girlfriends from finding out about each other.