Does anyone get annoyed by intellectual wanking?

[diplomatic_lies]

Man, if you've ever done business or liberal arts subjects at college, most of the professors are like those guys who talk about pick-up strategies, but never actually get laid!

If there's one reform to the education system, it should be to only hire professors with real experience in their industry (ie. Marketing professors should have worked in marketing for at least 20 years)

 

[CLOONEY]

In business and economics courses, most professors have worked in their fields for years, and work in their field continuously while they are teaching. Contracting out to business. Have a chat with one and you will see. Then of course, maybe you go to very bad university.

 

[Jariel]

Yes, I feel the same.

To be honest though, I find a lot of academia is like that. While at university I find most of what we learn is how some professor uses one set of terms and definitions and how other professors prefer other set of definitions, and what those definitions mean. Then you always have the wannabe famous professors who invent new terminology to describe old concepts (just like sosuave!).

Ultimately you have some theorists argue a case, another theorist argues another case and you end up with a whole lot of conflicting theory! Very rarely have I learnt anything factual, practical or applicable.

 

[Celadus]

Yeah, I just graduated from college and saw a lot of that. My school wasn't that great but most schools are the same. I'd say Business and economics classes are among the worse. Who the hell is going to teach hungover kids how to use power point and give multiple choice tests if they are actually decent business people?

I had a really incompetent Public Finance teacher. Beware of professors with work experience in the government.

Celadus

 

[RedPill]

Man, if you've ever done business or liberal arts subjects at college, most of the professors are like those guys who talk about pick-up strategies, but never actually get laid!

If there's one reform to the education system, it should be to only hire professors with real experience in their industry (ie. Marketing professors should have worked in marketing for at least 20 years)

I went to a business school where all the profs had to have produced somehow in the real world. Many of them still had either their own business going or were well-paid for consulting work. It made all the difference. I made 'independent study' my major and did my homework on which profs I wanted to learn from. My education made me less employable in the short run, but will help make me infinitely wealthy in the long run.

On the other hand, the rest of the university was liberal arts oriented and full of foofoo hippie ultra-liberal homo/feminist professors who had done nothing other than teaching. That's not to say there isn't value in liberal arts or the humanities, completely the contrary, but the "keyboard jockey profs" you speak of cannot connect with their students at all, at least the ones with testicles. It sucks that sometimes you have to flush money to write papers that parrot their opinions so you can get the piece of paper saying you graduated and move on. But hey, that's life.

 

[Call_Me_Daddy]

Most of the professors at my University are researchers in their filed.

But then I do go to a University with a good reputation. Don't know if that makes a difference. Maybe its an individual school thing?

 

[Bible_Belt]

Of the two newest Supreme Court appointees, one has only been a judge for two years, and the other has only been a lawyer, never a judge. Imagine being placed at the very top of a profession without ever having actually worked that job. And btw, that job is a lifetime appointment; it's about impossible to get fired. You can sleep during work, or even read a novel, no big deal. Or you can change the lives of everyone in the country with monumental legal decisions - that's the Supreme Court, masters of intellectual wanking.

 

[CLOONEY]

For all those doing economics, dont you wonder why you can even study? Why the unemployment rate is low? Why the inflation rate is stable and low? And most of all, why GDP is growing, year after year, instead of declining. If the teacher is talking a load of "wank", then why are these things far more stable today than they were in any other period of human history? In other words, if they were talking from no experience, and it was useless, you would not be writing on your computer as you are now.

 

[diplomatic_lies]

Guys: Note that I'm excluding bean counting subjects from this (ie. accounting, finance) or fact-based subjects (history, eco). Since they're based on facts and statistics, theory is close enough to reality.

Some subjects I'm doing -
Marketing: My professor has never worked in the industry, other than as a PhD student and a "researcher" (how do you research an industry you have no experience in?). He can't even use the internet properly, and is trying to teach us how the internet is changing the marketing environment.

Management/HR: Same goes for most of the professors here. No credits to their name except PhD and writing thesis'.

And shouldn't there be some assignments where they make you go into the workplace and learn by experience? I asked my department head about this and she goes, "How do you expect to learn anything by doing that?" (gee, I wonder!)

But then I do go to a University with a good reputation. Don't know if that makes a difference. Maybe its an individual school thing?

Around here, the best (aka snobby) colleges are the least practical, while some of the lower-end colleges have more practical training. But lower-end colleges won't get you a decent graduate job either, so its a trade-off.

 

[RedPill]

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com

Not sure where you live, but take a look on this site. It looks a lot different (read: they make some decent coin now) than when I was going to school, but this site radically improved my college experience.