The Technische Universitat in Munich has slides on campus. TreeHugger has pictures of this and other enormous slides that are increasingly appearing in non-playground environments.
Dude, what a freaking waste of money. Higher education in the US and the rest of the world is so screwed up. Can you post this neat little ONT from ace.mu.nu(found this site btw through this blog's links, its great)
http://minx.cc/?post=309695
An arguement I'll paste here. After providing evidence that nearly 60% of jobs people get out of college don't even require a college degree, the blogger provides this viewpoint.
"Even worse than all the money wasted is the waste of student time and the opportunity costs. If instead of spending four years indebting themselves in college, the students had picked a profession and spent four years immersed in it, they could have already put in the requisite Gladwell 10,000 hours to become accomplished in the field. And would have made money the entire time without any debt hanging over their future.
I remember one of the things that the Soviet Union always boasted about was the high percentage of their citizens had a post-secondary school education and how this made them a better workforce. Most of this was in vocational and trade studies and the average Soviet worker had something like 2+ years of post-high school training.
Well after the Soviet Union collapsed it came out that most of this training was utterly worthless - the 'trained' workers were only about 1% more efficient at their jobs despite spending three years in a trade school. Basically the state authorities were using the schools to make themselves look good and as a way to hide the real unemployment among young people. I wonder if we aren't doing the same thing."
-this is 100% correct in how freaking crazy higher education is. For two years I went to a $44 thousand a year school, my major was geology with a minor in engineering, it was a complete waste of time and money. Every nonscience class was a joke for me and the people taking them, one professor with tenure missed 14 classes in one semester, for a course that met three times a week. Another four days of that course were spent watching a movie that did not add to a single, solid point of your final and did absolutely nothing to help with your understandment of the the subject she was paid for to teach.
as the bloggers at neatorama can check, my mailing address is the school I mention. the validity of my story is only enforced with the more people you meet.
I know a TON about rocks, chemistry, physics, and sciences in general, but that is because those professors were able to make the gap between the knowing(them) and the stupid(the students). they were able to make us work harder and want to succeed. Most of these ethics classes nowadays are jokes, cruel, expensive, useless jokes.
The average college student gets out of school with about $30 grand in debt, without any realworld experience and absolutely no real qualifications to do anything. Sorry for this rant, but I assure you college education in America will pop just like housing, banking, inflation, and oil. The difference in this bubble is it is designed to take people at their most productive and active years and turn them into debt riddled, inexperienced dependents.
Considering how increasingly common it is to have a college education (both in the US and in Australia where I live) and how competitive it is to get a good job, it's almost become a prerequisite not only to have undergraduate, but also graduate degrees in order stand out enough to even be considered for certain jobs, even though such degrees aren't necessarily required to perform the job - particularly in the business world. There are many industries where if you do not have a college education or even a graduate degree (even though it is not a necessary requirement), you won't even be considered for the job.
I'm just entering my 7th (and hopefully final) year of college next year, but at least I can feel satisfied that in my particular field, the things I've learned in my degrees are certainly necessary to do the job.
I would feel even more satisfied however if my college had slides like this.
Perhaps College should have invested in "West Smith" :). Can you guess how much it would have cost? :).... Perhaps not much at all....If you will start counting the wastage the list will never end. I would certainly love to try it and at least every student would have tried it :).....Else it looks like a symbol, identity, for a whole building...... and for university too :).... not a bad way to gain a recognition for sure :)
http://minx.cc/?post=309695
An arguement I'll paste here. After providing evidence that nearly 60% of jobs people get out of college don't even require a college degree, the blogger provides this viewpoint.
"Even worse than all the money wasted is the waste of student time and the opportunity costs. If instead of spending four years indebting themselves in college, the students had picked a profession and spent four years immersed in it, they could have already put in the requisite Gladwell 10,000 hours to become accomplished in the field. And would have made money the entire time without any debt hanging over their future.
I remember one of the things that the Soviet Union always boasted about was the high percentage of their citizens had a post-secondary school education and how this made them a better workforce. Most of this was in vocational and trade studies and the average Soviet worker had something like 2+ years of post-high school training.
Well after the Soviet Union collapsed it came out that most of this training was utterly worthless - the 'trained' workers were only about 1% more efficient at their jobs despite spending three years in a trade school. Basically the state authorities were using the schools to make themselves look good and as a way to hide the real unemployment among young people. I wonder if we aren't doing the same thing."
-this is 100% correct in how freaking crazy higher education is. For two years I went to a $44 thousand a year school, my major was geology with a minor in engineering, it was a complete waste of time and money. Every nonscience class was a joke for me and the people taking them, one professor with tenure missed 14 classes in one semester, for a course that met three times a week. Another four days of that course were spent watching a movie that did not add to a single, solid point of your final and did absolutely nothing to help with your understandment of the the subject she was paid for to teach.
as the bloggers at neatorama can check, my mailing address is the school I mention. the validity of my story is only enforced with the more people you meet.
I know a TON about rocks, chemistry, physics, and sciences in general, but that is because those professors were able to make the gap between the knowing(them) and the stupid(the students). they were able to make us work harder and want to succeed. Most of these ethics classes nowadays are jokes, cruel, expensive, useless jokes.
The average college student gets out of school with about $30 grand in debt, without any realworld experience and absolutely no real qualifications to do anything. Sorry for this rant, but I assure you college education in America will pop just like housing, banking, inflation, and oil. The difference in this bubble is it is designed to take people at their most productive and active years and turn them into debt riddled, inexperienced dependents.
Considering how increasingly common it is to have a college education (both in the US and in Australia where I live) and how competitive it is to get a good job, it's almost become a prerequisite not only to have undergraduate, but also graduate degrees in order stand out enough to even be considered for certain jobs, even though such degrees aren't necessarily required to perform the job - particularly in the business world. There are many industries where if you do not have a college education or even a graduate degree (even though it is not a necessary requirement), you won't even be considered for the job.
I'm just entering my 7th (and hopefully final) year of college next year, but at least I can feel satisfied that in my particular field, the things I've learned in my degrees are certainly necessary to do the job.
I would feel even more satisfied however if my college had slides like this.
To the pathetic individual who thinks you need a college degree to compete in the corporate world: I already said it, You are pathetic.
How the heck does anyone clean the urine and feces from a slide anyhow?
The idea is kind of cool. Lets have a roller coaster in there too.