Degrees
 

Do any of you lot find that degrees are almost forgotten as soon as they are learnt?

Example:

Today i was asked by some second years (i'm a third) for some help on their Economics assignments. I couldn't remember how to do most of the questions and they completely stumped me.

It seems that all degrees do is test how good you are at digesting information in each semester, regurgitating it in the exam and forgetting it the week after. If i were to do my 2nd year exams today (without revision) i'd probably fail them all.

I'm also sitting on a 73% average

Re: Degrees
 

If you're not doing a holistic degree, then yes. However, useful degrees are holistic.

Re: Degrees
 

no it's good news.

I've already realised by now how useless and boring my degree is.

I also now know im not the only one who is forgetting things.

Re: Degrees
 

I can't remember the specific details from quite a lot of last term's classes, but I'm far better at considering new problems and subjects than I was a year ago. It may perhaps be an oversimplification and it's certainly cliche, but I think a lot of what you get out of your degree does depend on whether your approach (and your subject) is geared towards simply learning factoids of information, or developing certain mental abilities (be it analytical problem solving, research techniques, critical evaluation, etcetera).

You may well fail your second year exams if you sat them tomorrow, but assuming your time has been well spent, you will be able to maneuver yourself into a position where you could pass them a LOT quicker than you could in your second year. Perhaps a few weeks at most?

Re: Degrees
 

Yes i agree with this. I have become much more efficient at revising and digesting information and i can hold my newly gained knowledge for longer periods of time if i am constantly keeping in touch with them. I am also better at problem solving than i was fresh in the 1st year.

So essentially what we are saying is that degrees (especially ones like mine) teach you nothing useful (in the long term) about the subject, but merely how to approach and solve problems more efficiently!

Re: Degrees
 

Also, it increases the resources at your disposal. You may not remember the precise details of theory X, or how to perform operation Y, but you know THAT such a theory or operation does exist. If you ever encounter a situation in the future where you need it, then it is trivial to look up the specific details. But if you had no knowledge of its existence, you couldnt even do this.

Re: Degrees
 

I'd imagine it depends on both the degree, and yourself. It would be stupid to suggest that a physics degree teaches you nothing useful about physics. I've no idea whether Economics is actually useful (I suppose you'd have to define the end for which you wanted to utilise it), but if nothing else, I would assume it opens up new avenues for you to investigate if they interest you. You might encounter something in a lecture that seems to appeal, causing you to go away to look it up in more detail, and so on.

Re: Degrees
 

that's what i'm doing :( and i find it quite interesting :(

Re: Degrees
 

Christians probably find evolutionary biology quite pointless too. And I doubt flat-earthers care much for cosmology.

Re: Degrees
 

economics is the first subject i have actually enojyed learning, my degree is Economics and Law, however i find law both fairly boring and involving a lot of reading so i'm thinking i will drop it next year and concentrate on a straight Economics degree, bad idea???

Re: Degrees
 

Re: Degrees
 

Do what you enjoy, I wouldn't stop doing something just because the Internet didn't like doing it. I quite like doing Economics (3rd year probably going to do an Msc in International Economics) and find quite a bit of it interesting, though equally there is a lot of boring stuff and I didn't enjoy having IMF and WTO policy thrust down my throat as if it was gospel in the first two years though this year they've stopped doing that.

Nodrog is right about what degrees leave you with, no one expects you to be able to recall specific models in detail but if the need arose you could just pick up a text book and have the basic grasp of it pretty easily.

Re: Degrees
 

Economics is a lot more maths than I was expecting though I have found my second year much more enjoyable than my first. Though I have thought quite a bit seemed to be absolute crap, using assumptions which to me just seemed wrong. Still better than my accounting lectures though.

I can walk out of a lecture and not remember what I was just told. Too many seem to be the lecturer talking and writing really quickly so you have to spend most of your time copying what they have written rather than actually trying to understand the work. When I revise it though I find I remember the general theme if not the specifics but with a bit of prodding it comes back fairly quickly.

Re: Degrees
 

The first year was basically 70% Maths though :(

Re: Degrees
 

There seems to be an abnormally large number of economics students here.

Re: Degrees
 

Well im a politics student and I think I dont know much, but its amazing how much I do know, for example come an argument in a pub all of a suddent i can quote random writers and books.

My dad told me before I came to uni to read, he said it was like gardening, the more he reads about gardening, he might not realise he knows stuff, but over time he remembers it and understands it a lot more.

Re: Degrees
 

Politics, Maths and Economics are all well represented on these forums, which is unsurprising given the nature of the game which spawned them.

Re: Degrees
 

I feel like I know less now than i did when I started my finished my second year :( (i'm halfway through my 4th year now)
My memory has gone to **** over the last year or two, i can barely remember what I was told in a lecture last week let alone a year ago.
And I'm likely to come out with a 2:1 Masters in Electronic Engineering (Communications) and they're asking me to stay on and do research possibly leading to a PHD...

Terrible - I feel like a fraud :(

Re: Degrees
 

Don't forget all the computer science students.

Re: Degrees
 

I graduated in 1998 and 6 years later I probably couldn't pass any of the exams I passed in the 4 years I was at Uni. However, as Nod said I could probably spend a very little time refreshing my memory in order to pass the exams or solve any problem put in front of me.

Re: Degrees
 

Not exactly worthless - it's the best degree after law and medicine to get in terms of pay, ceteris paribus. But I know what you're saying, although you'd have to be a twat to think things like the ISLM are that simple and easy to use in real life, its more the introduction of thinking of various consequences that they're trying to seach I assume.

Re: Degrees
 

Yeah, I haven't seen her either since r5 or r6... :(

Re: Degrees
 

investment bankers earn more than medics or lawyers. Then again you can do investment banking with finance, accounting, management, maths, hell even physics degrees (let alone economics)

Re: Degrees
 

Well i can tell you this- my memory is terrible, because i had a 220v electric shock a few years back and it has been fairly dodgy since.

I'm in my final year of school- I can completely relate to what you are all saying. yet i regulary studying college level physics and maths- i love the stuff. The thing with such subjects is that, generally, the material a topic consists of is the building block and foundation for stuff you will learn later, so the material will continue to be relevant and continued to be accessed and processed by your brain. Perhaps your "economice" predicament is caused by the wide diversity of the subject, and the fact that the topic are not as inter-connected as they should be?

Re: Degrees
 

I know, but then some lawyers will earn millions.
I was talking on average, it's a 'fact' anyway.

Re: Degrees
 

I agree with this - learning things in maths is certainly 'circular' (more like a spiral) in the sense that the first time you encounter something, you may not grasp its significance, and you'll forget it soon. Then it comes up again in some different topic, and you remember a bit more this time. Then it comes up again, and so on.
Perhaps not on a 'per hour' basis...

Re: Degrees
 

I've forgotten everything that was in my degree course and I've only graduated in September. (been finished for a year though)

Mine was totally irrelevant to the real world though. IT & Telecommunications is sucha broad area that it was impossible for them to bother their arses to focus the program into anything useful. So it was quite general and hence quite useless.

*shrug*

It's still a BSc after my name though (Bronze Swimming certificate ofc) ;)

Re: Degrees
 

I think it's a case of averages. Probably something like 90% of people with a Medical Degree are doctors at one point or another and earn fairly good money. 90% of people with economics degrees are doing average paid jobs and probably only like 1-2% are investment bankers or similar.

Re: Degrees
 

nods right on a per hour basis it probably doesn't come to that much, besides investment banking isn't really where top egg heads are recruited to in finance, you can get away with only an analytical approach to IB even in research.

Re: Degrees
 

Agreed- the average doctor or surgeon earns a lot on a regular basis. the average banker probably doesn't earn near as much. But then a few per cent of those bankers go invest and make it BIG, thus distorting the statistics- a "mean" value of any form of demograph can be highly misleading, a "standard deviation", if in accompiment usually gives a better indication of how things really are.

Re: Degrees
 

Well if your interested in it you'll probably retain the information.

Re: Degrees
 

Something we used to get drummed into us at college was that in the majority of cases the degree you take really doesnt matter, obviously theres a few jobs (thinking medicine in particular) where its vital you take certain subject but most careers all that really matters is getting the degree. Its the skills that you learn on the degree rather than the actual knowledge that employees often look for.

At the time we all just laughed but having graduated over a year ago it seems that they werent that wrong. In fact i've been told by a number of contacts ive made (including some HR managers of big IT companies) that quite often they will choose a graduate in a unreleated degree than one thata related for an entry level position as they often see these people as more maluable and less likly to be question or be 'up themselves' as they know very little about the area of work.

Its apparently only after you have the entry level position and got the experiance to apply for more advanced roles when having a related degree gives you a step up but most people should have gained some kind of related qualifications at this point which reduce this advantage