[JonnieCache]

Education is what you make it.

If the grading structure is so rigid and foolish, then it ought to be trivial to game it, leaving almost all your time free to get laid/start a business/contemplate the human condition to your heart's content.

If you choose to spend your time trying to eke out as many marks as possible from each minute spent cramming, then I'd wager you probably aren't imaginative enough to be ultra-successful anyway. Aim to leave university having done something so cool that your eventual grade is rendered irrelevant, (ideally so irrelevant that you can drop out.)

"But these benefits cannot completely justify a system where creativity and genuine learning isn't properly rewarded."

If you're in your 20s and you still need to be "rewarded" by a teacher giving you a shiny gold star then again, something is wrong.

EDIT: upon consideration, I am putting across a somewhat elitist view here. Not everyone can be expected to "do something so cool that your eventual grade is rendered irrelevant," to transcend their peers in order to gain value from their degree; that's a contradiction. There are indeed many flaws in the system and it is unreasonable to say "just hack your way around them for your own benefit!" when we could just fix the system so one can take the normal, average route though it and still get value from one's money/time.

In lieu of that though, I still think what I said stands, although I didn't have to pay american tuition fees.

[aidenn0]

>Not everyone can be expected to "do something so cool that your eventual grade is rendered irrelevant," to transcend their peers in order to gain value from their degree; that's a contradiction.

Not everyone, but those who plan to be mentioned along with "Steve Jobs, Alexander Flemming, and Adam Smith" certainly can.

[JonnieCache]

You can't design an education system just around those people though.

[kls]

I think a education system could be designed for those people, it just may not be a system for all people. That is a huge problem that we have now days, equality has ballooned into this one size fits all, everyone is a winner mentality. Equal rights and opportunities does not mean equal capabilities, abilities, or experiences.

We do need to design systems around groups of people that are alike, but what we don't need is the systems we have now, that are designed around the medium, because it creates medium value at maximum.

[aidenn0]

Right, but the original article was saying the education system is bad for those people, and my point is your original comment wasn't elitist, it was a valid response to the complaint in the original article.

[JonnieCache]

Also, I don't think the christ-figure of apple corp is in the same bracket as the discoverer of penicillin and the author of wealth of nations, but I don't imagine arguing about that is going to get us anywhere. Just wanted to register my dissent.