Many people believe higher degree one have, the more successful and useful a person is. Like my parents, who become really happy because I said I want to get a ph.d in CS or math.

I don’t have any statistics on this. But I do believe people with higher degrees are better off simply because of supply and demand.

Flip burgers are a easy job because of the low entrance requirement.
High school students can do it, too…
That’s why older people don’t work in fast food restaurants. Young people can take their jobs for lower pay. Getting a job taking away once in a while isn’t too nice.

I agree with there is no need to know everything in the world. A person only need to know enough for him to do his job and do it well.

College degree doesn’t automatically making a person more brilliant than people without college degree. Most courses one ever learn in college can be completed in a fractional of time. Effort plays a much more important role in one’s brilliance.

btw what college are you aiming for?

These days, not going to college is like considered as an epic failure to you, your life, your family, etc and we’re pushed so hard to get there. The problem is we still need people to work at McDonald’s and other places like that. If everyone were to go to college then we would have a bunch of smart people flopping burgers.

The point is, it should be considered economically/mentally OK to not know everything there is to know in the world and have a college degree just to be considered well.

We _need_ people flipping burgers just as badly as nuclear physicists.

US system sucks?
Well yeah, US system does suck…
but can you find a school system better than US’s? currently, I didn’t find any.

See what I found really interesting is…you believe
“Expectations are so high!!!”
uhhh…
no…
I find US education system sucks for exact opposite reasons…
Expectations are so…LOW…
I don’t know what your expectations are…
I have been to Australia and China… compare to them… US’s course work IS A JOKE… expectation? another JOKE…

I see the point that not many people remember stuff taught in high school. I don’t either xD.
I cram for the finals a day before the test and ace it…
I did that for some AP tests too.
See, the point for a education that EVERYONE can have is to produce people who are smart enough to be useful to the society, nothing more. So really, there isn’t anything hard. This is true for US.
It’s also true for Australia, so those two systems are about the same level, but Australia learns a lot more deep stuff….

In China, it’s different. The point for high school education is to get into a good college. That’s why the expectation would be a lot higher in China. In my opnion, it is too high…

I got over confident with my success in pwn high school courses. and try to learn some REAL university level courses.
Fail…
in university(at least… good ones…) The expectation will be WAY higher than high school. Completely 2 different level. Look at “Introduction to Algorithms”(MIT open course), after watching some lectures, all I can go is “WHAT?”, and I’m suppose to be good in math and computer science.

If you are complaining now… how do you think you can get though uni?
Really, if one put in the effort, everything is easy.

About learning
School don’t care about if you learn or not, that’s not their problem, it’s your own. They provide a place to teach, the teaching might suck, but if you care enough, you will learn.

About getting into a good college.
those SAT and ACT tests are there for a reason…
not because “someone do it faster wins”
it is “someone do it fast and correct wins”
If one cares enough, they will go though the effort to study for those tests.
Yes, people who study for those tests generally does better.
and those tests have no real use other than getting into college.
It also do some filtering…
these people will be filtered out from the college:
1. one who doesn’t care enough to study for those tests
2. one who does care for those tests but think the current system is flawed and chose to not follow it.
3. people who studied and still suck.

Well, to be fair..
I too, complain about high school…
Mostly because I’m learning things I don’t want to learn. I’m currently in composition class, and it’s HELL for me.
I found I’m way more productive to do things I like.
Everything comes with a cost, I chose to study things I like and never do homework, my GPA suffers greatly. I chose to study olympiad level math instead of SAT. Ultimately leading me getting into Stony Brook and not any good schools.
It’s not the system sucks. If I excel in those areas, I too will get into good colleges. The fact is, it is much harder to excel in those specific areas than just do homework, get good GPA and do good on the SATs.
Its not the fault of the system…
College don’t need people who are just good with math/physics/programming/w/e…
College need people who will do well academically, or expectional(national to international level honor) in a field. good enough not good enough. If you are the founder or very important person of a large enough project, say… Debian… college will like you. If not. College don’t need the real life things you do, because it doesn’t benefit them.