How in the world does "being compliant to authority" contribute to university success? What major emphasizes compliance over learning the material and doing the work?
You say, "I already know this stuff, can I just take the final?"
Uni says, "this is a required course for graduation, you must take it."
If you don't comply or push hard enough to make Uni comply with you, you don't graduate.
This is how I ended up learning all about System.out.println my final semester of university.
It's true that if you want credit for completing a major, then it is necessary for you to actually complete the major, but that still doesn't equate to graduating at or near the top of your class.
I completed all of the courses for the major, with the exception of CS101, introduction to computer programming. I took many classes that ostensibly had a prerequisite on CS101, including additional nonrequired courses that could have easily been substituted for CS101. Nonetheless, as you say, it was "necessary for [me] to actually complete the major" by going back after taking CS4xx to complete CS101. Was this a required part of the major? yes. Was it a valuable part to be required without exception? Maybe, but I tend to not think so.
> I don't see anything in your response about success
"Not graduating" is a pretty clear way in my mind to "not succeed." I indicated that compliance to authority in my experience was necessary for graduation, which implies that it was necessary for success, does it not?
> graduating at or near the top of your class
ok?
I don't quite agree with his overall conclusion that university education is pure compliance off of this one gripe though. Moreover, I do believe that many universities allow you to bypass certain module via a test / some other demonstration.
I don't think it is purely or even mostly based on compliance. I was responding to:
> How in the world does "being compliant to authority" contribute to university success
by indicating one way the compliance contributes to success.
You say, "I already know this stuff, can I just take the final?" Uni says, "Yes, you can test out of it and get credit for the class."
I was allowed to take the final for any class I wanted to and if I passed I would get the grade I got on the test. I thought this was pretty standard as I've seen it at multiple universities.