Now I'm Angry!!!
I have 2 sims in University. They didn't miss one class, did all of their homework and all projects completed! What's more is they are both maxed in all skills! ALL SKILLS!!! AND NOW THEY ARE BOTH ON ...
Forum Discussion
Glad to see so many helpful discussions on how to handle this issue.
And astonished that some people seem to think that the University pack is there to build skills for your Sims. If that were true, then there would be no point at all in buying a "college experience" because the actual skills can be built without all that expense and time spent, far better, by simply skipping it. But the fantasy, rather than the reality, is why we love TheSims franchise. So the bubble is safe from puncture, in the game: college can be just for the fun experience, and your Sims won't suffer the crushing realities that having a $100,000 mortgage on their future before they even get a job, represents.
There seem to be two main competing modern canon for the purpose of college: That of Learning For Its Own Sake, and the newer College As Work Certificate.
The first definition was always limited to the social elite, because although luminaries are born in every social class, only the elite can afford, and afford leisure for, the making of their potential in an open-ended sense. Therefore the potential of the majority of born human luminaries never gets fulfilled, due to social class striations that persist and are protected and maintained by the existing structure.
The second competing canon, sprang from a more 20th-century version of the older canon, in which the social and economic advantage of a degree was seen as a limitless resource rather than part of a closed system. From that point of view, give everyone a degree, and suddenly everyone has the advantages of a degree! Simple minds thought that would be a solution to social inequality. But when everyone has one, the value of one drops precipitously. The more sinister problem with this is that the years spent (arguably the most energetic and potentially productive years of life, both in raw physical ability to do work, and in intellectual productivity) cannot be recovered, and the decades of debt incurred in most cases, drags down the social and economic stability of the degree-holder. Throw in the widespread human desire to have and raise their own children at some point, and you have a trainwreck in slow motion playing out across several generations, in which quality of life for everyone involved, tanks.
There are still very sound justifications for college degrees for many professions: If you plan to become a pharmacologist, you need a deep understanding of organic chemistry, IUPAC nomenclature, biochem, etc. and therefore a degree, or hypothetically, an alternative way to demonstrate having mastered the same material.
Career instability threatens even this model, however, if lateral career moves (that come with their own ongoing and increasing "continuing education" requirements) become more and more likely to be necessary. Having to be flexible and credentialed for lateral moves many times in your working life, erodes the safety of the vertically invested career path.
New degree programs created just to turn more jobs into things that require a degree, and the general deflation of a degree's value respective to jobs, is adverse to social equity and economic stability. That's a different subject, and so far, most people are still drinking the kool-aide on that one.
And astonished that some people seem to think that the University pack is there to build skills for your Sims. If that were true, then there would be no point at all in buying a "college experience" because the actual skills can be built without all that expense and time spent, far better, by simply skipping it. But the fantasy, rather than the reality, is why we love TheSims franchise. So the bubble is safe from puncture, in the game: college can be just for the fun experience, and your Sims won't suffer the crushing realities that having a $100,000 mortgage on their future before they even get a job, represents.
There seem to be two main competing modern canon for the purpose of college: That of Learning For Its Own Sake, and the newer College As Work Certificate.
The first definition was always limited to the social elite, because although luminaries are born in every social class, only the elite can afford, and afford leisure for, the making of their potential in an open-ended sense. Therefore the potential of the majority of born human luminaries never gets fulfilled, due to social class striations that persist and are protected and maintained by the existing structure.
The second competing canon, sprang from a more 20th-century version of the older canon, in which the social and economic advantage of a degree was seen as a limitless resource rather than part of a closed system. From that point of view, give everyone a degree, and suddenly everyone has the advantages of a degree! Simple minds thought that would be a solution to social inequality. But when everyone has one, the value of one drops precipitously. The more sinister problem with this is that the years spent (arguably the most energetic and potentially productive years of life, both in raw physical ability to do work, and in intellectual productivity) cannot be recovered, and the decades of debt incurred in most cases, drags down the social and economic stability of the degree-holder. Throw in the widespread human desire to have and raise their own children at some point, and you have a trainwreck in slow motion playing out across several generations, in which quality of life for everyone involved, tanks.
There are still very sound justifications for college degrees for many professions: If you plan to become a pharmacologist, you need a deep understanding of organic chemistry, IUPAC nomenclature, biochem, etc. and therefore a degree, or hypothetically, an alternative way to demonstrate having mastered the same material.
Career instability threatens even this model, however, if lateral career moves (that come with their own ongoing and increasing "continuing education" requirements) become more and more likely to be necessary. Having to be flexible and credentialed for lateral moves many times in your working life, erodes the safety of the vertically invested career path.
New degree programs created just to turn more jobs into things that require a degree, and the general deflation of a degree's value respective to jobs, is adverse to social equity and economic stability. That's a different subject, and so far, most people are still drinking the kool-aide on that one.
