#higher+education

[sidras-tak]

Idk how many young people are still on tumblr but as a college academic advisor please listen to me: it is fine to drop out of college. It’s great even. You can drop out of college if that is what is best for you. However. Please. For the love of god, actually drop your classes. Go to the registrar/your advisor/your student portal/whatever and withdraw from your classes. Do not just stop attending. If you just stop showing up, you will fail all of the classes you’re enrolled in. This will tank your GPA, and if you ever decide you want to go back to school for a specific career, those Fs will come back to bite you. My college program is fairly lenient for our field (healthcare) and still we have to turn away a bunch of students who don’t have a 2.5 GPA, and the reason is that they attended half a semester of college in 2000, dropped out without withdrawing, and ended up with a 0.0 GPA and 16 credits. It’s very tough to recover from that. Even if you think you’ll never go to college, please just withdraw from those classes. Depending on when you withdraw, you may still have to pay for them, but at least there will be a little W transcript that will save your GPA.

[onlytiktoks]

[thebellekeys]

And a reminder that higher education cannot be considered truly democratised if students can still be doomed to poverty with multiple or advanced arts and Humanities degrees...

[thedeluxedoll]

[outerhumanity]

Was looking around to see if there were colleges that had closed their doors or listed their campuses for sale just to browse and there's something going on here

Like 370+ up for sale in the United States, there must be some sort of quiet extinction event going on with the more niche, out-of-the-way colleges. Covid and online learning probably started it and Trump defunding everything is hastening it, its becoming a ghost town out there.

And they're also getting no bites it seems, this place in Maine (with an additional 224 acres) is assessed at $26m in value, but its list price is $5m, its sat on market for three years already so you could probably bid lower and they'd take it. I presume its because the market for such places is also other small educational institutions which are suffering badly from the same trends that forced these places under.

It feels like an opportunity, like you can do a lot with this. Its an entirely walkable, self-contained small town. You have residences, administration, services and utilities, dining and minor shopping outlets, a gym, a library. Labs/classrooms/equipment facilities can either be kept as they are or converted into entrepreneurial ventures, paying off a $3-4m loan seems easily feasible if you are a moderately successful online venture/not dependent on locality for your business.

These spaces could become intriguing projects for communal social and economic experimentation, a far more interesting use than just paving over it to make way for a golf course or data center, or letting it rot until an academic institution comes knocking.

[facts-i-just-made-up]

After many years of being out of "school," I am embarking on a "Master's in Science" in "Computer 'Science'." I will have to go to "classes" "in person" in order to receive a "degree."

I need Facts. What do any of those words even mean??

To define the terms themselves:

School-

A school is a large mass of numerous fish.

Master's In Science-

The Master In Science is the enemy of The Doctor in the famous British TV series, "Space: 1999."

Computer Science-

This is the study of naturally occurring computers and the mysteries by which they function. It began in 1932 with the discovery of the first CPU, which was growing on the underside of a fern leaf.

Classes-

Classes are a taxonomic rank between Phylum and Order, and describe whether something is a thorny-headed worm, simple soft-bodied flatworm, other non-exotic flatworm, segmented worm, arrow worm, roundworm, horsehair worm, ribbon worm, velvet worm, penis worm (that's a real one btw), or mammal.

In Person-

Mostly guts and some muscle are what's in most persons. And goo. We are composed of much goo.

Degree-

A measure of heat equal to the amount of energy needed to warm one hairless grizzly bear on a winter night in Canada for ten minutes.

So-

To reiterate: After many years of being out of fish you are embarking to meet a space villain on the underside of a fern. You will have to classify many worms and their goopy guts in order to stay warm.

I wish you the best.

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