If you want a hands on learning experience, find a school that has one, apply, get in, and do what you need to do. In my classes a mechanical engineer, and now a computer science student, there have been a lot of facts, but almost every single class has had some team or project based work too.

Also, in reply to your comment about your CS education and learning a lot of theory, that’s what computer science is. Sure, you learn software development, but if you just want to do that, you should have gone for a software engineering degree, not computer science. Scientists in the natural sciences (physics, biology, and chemistry) spend their lives researching and proposing theories. Why do you think computer scientists would be any different?

I just didn’t like the vibe of this post.

The other posts you guys have been writing are well done, though

I do disagree with Ben about 1 thing though: in my experience, college has been about learning facts rather than practice. In fact, my friend who works in the Princeton Genomics lab agrees and thinks that science education needs an overhall because it is fact-centric rather than integrative. An integrative education doesn’t just tell you the facts, but it helps you learn the facts the right way, by discovering them for yourself through experimentation, etc.

Why do you think I’ve said that college is a waste of time?

Very few classes in college are full of useless facts that you’re forced to memorize. In my experience if you try to find classes that interest you you will not feel like it’s a waste of time.

Along the same vein I’ve been talking to my classmates in my Microbiology classes down here and their degree takes a year less than mine! Lucky buggers, haha. I asked them about GECs and they looked at me like I had two heads. I think Australia has it down a bit more than we do, and technical schools are also a much bigger part of the tertiary education system here. Seems to work down here, but like you said, can’t see it changing anytime soon back home.

My main point was that you could get the very same practical education in 2 years. But it is the vested interest of the *college as business* to keep you there for 4. So I don’t see things changing anytime soon.

As far as your points about not being able to set up your own lab, etc., etc. and needing the college education. I’d argue that if your main point is to go to dental school, then even in the science curriculum, there is probably a “better way.” Just not in the current system, as you point out.

Take my degree, computer science. Along the way I’ve taken 1) accounting, 2) oral communication 3) music appreciation and 4) contemporary literature and 5) Religion in Korea. I actually enjoyed most of those classes. But I also paid a lot for them, and wouldn’t have selected them if they hadn’t met some general requirement.

But that’s not all. Learning computer science also turned out to be less useful than it could have been. We learned far more theory than practical application. Less coding, more memorizing. For those of us who just wanted to be good, well rounded programmers, the opportunity just wasn’t there unless we took our own initiative.

I can see your point for the cookie-cutter philosophy degrees and IT degrees, but when it comes to degrees in the sciences, pre-med, pre-dent, pre-law, and engineering, to name a few, what you say simply doesn’t work.

Redefining your college base to those in graphic design or web management would make more sense, but college is hardly a waste of 4 years.