To think you can be well educated without a degree?

[Birdylade]

I left school very young although I always did very well academically. I don't have a degree although almost everyone else in my family does and this makes me feel intellectually inferior. I have young DC's but spend a lot of time reading and have a real thirst for knowledge, just no time, or more importantly money, to do a degree.

I like to think I am well educated, albeit through self-education, but I find I do get judged for not having a degree. Is it unreasonable to consider myself well educated without a university degree?

Why does the OP need to do a degree to find out what is waiting to be learned?

My personal experience of Oxford was that they said 'This is what you need to know about to take this particular degree, there's the library, there's the odd lecture available if you can be bothered, see you in Examination Schools at the end.'

I taught myself how to learn bloody quick. A person with more of an innate thirst for knowledge than myself might not need the pressure of the 'See you in Exam Schools' bit to find that out.

You'd get a loan, though, birdy - you don't need 27,000.

It still might not be financially the right thing for you, I know.

What degree would you do if you could, btw? I'd love to be able to speak Arabic but the idea of a degree in it would just frighten me off - sounds pretty hard core!

(Btw, I just mean my post as chatting, not trying to push you one way or the other about actually doing it - I think EBD is spot on on that count.)

But I would still be getting £27,000 in debt, I really do not want to be in debt!

I started a degree at University of Bath in politics with international relations & Russian - I love languages and speak three (including English) but I got pregnant 4 months into my course and deferred. Unfortunately I haven't had teh chance to go back yet!

Didn't you learn anything else at Oxford though EBDteacher? No in-depth discussions with your fellow students, seminars, debating society meetings, talks with eminent professors who are specialists in their field? University is about so much more than just reading.

Sorry to hear finance is a barrier for you Birdy. I've never been well off but education was more affordable (just) a couple of decades ago. It's disgraceful education is so prohibitively expensive now.

Some of the world's most famous and richest billionaires (including the second richest man in the world, Bill Gates) are college dropouts. The combined net worth of these dropouts is USD 246 billion.[3] This list is not exhaustive.

The average net worth of billionaires who dropped out of college, $9.4 billion, is more than double that of billionaires with Ph.D.s, $3.2 billion. Even if you remove the world's second richest man, Bill Gates, who left Harvard University and is now worth $59.0 billion, college dropouts are worth $5.3 billion on average, compared to those who finished only bachelor's degrees, who are worth $2.9 billion. According to a recent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, 20% of America's millionaires never attended college.

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Yeah, I can understand that.

I think (for me anyway) languages are one of the few things it is hard to learn off your own bat. I've found it really hard, anyhow. But then it wouldn't need to be a degree for that.

Why did any of us bother to do A-levels at school then? We could have just taught ourselves....

Aren?t exams just to prove that you have the capability to learn?

A qualification is just an indicator to someone uninvolved with your learning of what you have learned, to what level and what ability you have demonstrated of that learning.

A gold ring would still be a gold ring without a hallmark, but those uninvolved in its making would not know its value.

I think different people learn how to educate themselves at different times. That's why you're more closely taught at GCSE than A Level, and more at A Level than as an undergraduate. You're taking more and more responsibility for your own learning.

But the other reason to bother to do exams is people value qualifications. Question is, if you don't need a qualification, does it matter to do the exam course?

YANBU

I have a degree and I am as thick as shit

i've always taken 'well educated' to mean a good degree.

but i agree that of course you can be well-read, informed and intelligent and have good general knowledge and knowledge of current affairs with no degree and that people with a degree can be none of the above

You can certainly be clever and have no degree.

But can you be educated? Yes, I'm sure you can.
However, it would be difficult I think to find that sort of time. Studying somegting for three years in a collegiate atmosphere is hard to replicate independently, I think.

So whilst I am interested in books and English Lit and I have made it my business to learn, I don't think I could say I am as educated in that sphere as a grad.

I never got any A-Levels so do not consider myself well-educated.

However my PhD DH considers me more intelligent than him. This is because despite not HAVING knowledge, I have the ability to find it and apply it as the situation requires.

There is far too much information in the world for it to be possible or even desirable to store it in our heads. But knowing how to find it, evaluate it and use it is IMO (well it would be as I'm good at it) the most important life skill far in advance of collecting PhDs.

Nope BBQJuly I can honestly say I did not engage in a single item from your list.

I rowed a lot, drank a lot, gazed out of the window in a 'tutorial' once a week where keener students than I had in depth discussions with Dons, engaged in some Serious Hedonism and then did 6 months solid sat in the library to write my dissertation and get through Exam Schools.

It was not an uncommon path.

Yet you would probably read my CV and think I was 'well educated'. I think your view on it might be too simplistic.

No, not too simplistic EBD. I did some of the things on my list and thoroughly enjoyed them. I'd never have been able to learn so much from others had I not been to university. I valued the daily contact with people with in a variety of academic pursuits, which the world of work doesn't necessarily bring.

I also gazed out of the window, socialised and did other studenty things.

Everyone's different but I do think wordfactory is right that it's hard to find three years outside university where there's such a concentration of learning and associated activities available.

Sadly I have some closed-minded acquaintances who pride themselves on not having been to university as it is of course "useless" and "people just spend the whole time drinking". They don't know what they've missed.

LeQueen - what would you say constitutes being well read? I like to think I am but am always open to literary suggestions!

I know a few very smart people without degrees, there is no doubt you can be well educated without a degree, but the issues for them are:

• you have to know them to know how smart they are, tnere is no easily shown bit of paper to prove it to others eg employers

• they haven't had 3 years of time to focus on structured learning so there are noticeable gaps in the knowledge. It doesn't matter as they are smart and pick things up fast, but it counts against them sometimes at first impression

We could form a crack pub quiz team, LeQueen- I amaze myself sometimes with the amount of seemingly random stuff that's stuffed in there, all because I can't even go to the loo without reading the side of the shampoo bottles

Me and DinaHomum went to the same University.

My mum did a degree with the OU, which she started when I was a baby (boring child, apparently) and got a 1st Class honours degree in Sociology and something else I can't remember.

She is vair clever, but reads the Daily Mail- not online, she actually buys it!

I left school with a handful of O levels, but then spent the next 20 years going to evening classes in everything from Latin to music to art to maths. Just for fun. Didn't take one exam as I didn't need to and didn't want to. Then I went to University; on the strength of the letter I wrote to the admissions officer I got an unconditional offer. (Also got unconditional offers from 2 others I'd applied to through UCAS.)

I had not been schooled, but I was educated.