Why You Should Complete An Engineering Degree In Five Years

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,976
Nor will they care about the education itself. Nothing is worth more than what one is willing to pay for it.
Absolutely agree!

I first noticed this after I went back to school once I got out of the military. On the day before Thanksgiving all of my classes were mostly empty, but I noticed that it was dominated by the slightly older students. So I took note of who was attending and then starting asking some gentle questions over the next few weeks and what I realized was the very strong correlation (not 100%) between the people that were in class the day before Thanksgiving and the people that were paying their own way (out of pocket, not grants, scholarships, not parents, not even loans) through school. I've seen this very consistently ever since, too. Now, there are certainly serious students that want to learn and they will be in class regardless of who's paying. I was definitely one of those and I, as a physics major, most of my fellow students were as well.

But I was not immune to this phenomenon, either. When I was an undergrad everything over 10.5 semester hours was a single price, so I took as many classes as I could, often 20+ semester hours. That's how I ended up graduating in 8 semesters with 177 sem hours. In the later semesters I would sign up for math or even humanities classes that I didn't need but that I was interested in and I would decide a couple weeks in whether to drop them or not as I got a feel for my course load. But that was because there was no financial penalty for doing so. If I had had to pay for each course I signed up for, you can bet I would have been more deliberate in choosing my courses and, once enrolled, would not have dropped any of them.
 
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