Are straight A students even as smart as they think they are to begin with? How many really financial successful people actually did well in school?

The amount of hours university students are forced to put in every weak just makes me cringe.

Is Uni the be all and end all?

Thoughts?

Australia is 39th out of 41 in the education stakes of civilised countries. Enough said? Universities are just political re-education camps, money-making businesses, and providers of back-door entry for unneeded immigrants. Most of the degrees these “straight A” students achieve are totally useless in the job market. Straight A's would be fails in the real world.

esperence,
Throughout my blue collar working life I've had close contact with educated people. Mainly in the medical & engineering fields.
Like most ordinary young folk I too was under the impression that educated people were intelligent, smart & thoughtful & I actually met quite a number who fitted these categories.
Sadly, they were the minority. In general, the "educated" proved to be highly ignorant in general knowledge, anything pragmatic, showed a gross lack of understanding of anything managerial. But, worst of all was their lack of integrity & lack of care.
Their display of egotism & their lack of common sense has cost us taxpayers dearly in ruined opportunities & extreme waste of public funding. The majority aren't in any industry, they're cooped up in public service positions of absolutely no use to society. On the contrary, they sabotage good will & progress. Their indoctrinated illusion tells them they're people of value whereas in reality they're the catalyst for progressive regress. I know many basic education blue collar worker retirees whose intelligence & knowledge heavily outweighs the "educated" in just about every field. Their contributions were exploited & misused by those "educated" who infiltrated Politics & the public service. The last executive Officer I had to work under claimed to be an engineer yet everything he got involved with required sorting out at double the original cost & time. It was the public service that harboured the majority of incompetent & self-serving & still does.
To sum this up, education for education's sake is a step backwards. Education must be used to enhance ability & foster healthy mentality. The past several decades of this failed system of education has resulted in the exact opposite.

When I did my BSc in the late 50s it was not easy. No free or almost free university, & it was not easy to get even a teachers scholarship. To get an industry scholarship was damn hard. Only around 15% even went on to senior high school.

High school matriculation exams were hard, externally set & marked, & many failed. There were many examples of kids going back to do 5Th year again, despite passing, to get the better result to get into what they wanted to do.

Of course the fact that you spent an extra couple of years in school & 4 at university did not make you any smarter than you were before doing it, but in those days of pass or get kicked out, you did know at least a little more.

Having said that, it was a totally unqualified enthusiast who taught me how to build a racing engine. That stuff was not covered at Uni. Having won its class in every race it started for 20 months with the engine we built, when I ran into my favourite professor I started excitedly started telling him what we had done. After a couple of minutes he cut me off & told me that our ideas would never work. Perhaps he missed the bit that they already had.

You must remember individual, that a bit of paper from a university is required to get even a pen pushers job in the Public service, so they do help in gaining employment. Of course in these days when students are not allowed to fail, it is probably a good thing that the bureaucracy is there to sweep up the mass. Lets face it, MacDonald can only employ so many burger flippers.

esperence at a different level education is much needed
Understand what you are saying but in my work life I found many, far too many can not read or right
They are masters of hiding that until they learn to trust you
So while unsure if higher education is always worth while I know it is a must at the bottom end
A poll of bush workers found one in six could not read, hint, if some one tells you they left their glasses at home never push yours on to them, they probable can not read and only offer help if no one else is around

Yes Belly, it is often boys who have some groups who take pride in not doing school work, who end up there, & regretting it later.

In our large near city country high school our kids got lucky with the headmaster. He introduced courses, & modified others if practical subjects that appealed to these boys.

Welding & wood work got some, & animal husbandry got some others & the mechanical course kids needed to read workshop manuals. He had us buy textbooks for these which made them see the need to read, measure, & produce engineering drawings to progress in the causes. Many suddenly discovered a reason to be able to read.

He had all departments taking projects they needed to the practical workshop, & got these kids involved in school projects. It didn't work for all, but many were quite involved & proud of it.

Unfortunately much ho this diminished with a change of head & many staff over the years.