I did excellent in high school and trade school but every time I attempt university I can't do it. I manage to last 1-2 years. Don't know why this happens but I see literal retards with two bachelors degrees.
Some possible explanations as to why this happens:
—Can't concentrate in classes of 100 people
—Professors who can't speak English
—Forced into group projects for literally everything with idiots
—Half the people are there to get laid and party instead of learning
—Half of your courses have nothing to do with your degree
—Workload gives zero free time outside of school hours
—Spend half your time walking around the giant campus looking for your classes
I wish I could muster the strength to get a degree because it would make my life so much easier but instead I'm relegated to skilled trades. Uni just feels like a massive humiliation ritual.
It's both. You have to be relatively intelligent (105+ IQ) to be able to sit through the classes, write a paper, listen and absorb the lectures, schedule your life to meet the demands of your classes, etc. I'm sure it's easier the smarter you are, regardless of the field.
I didn't think college was hard at all (but I graduated many, many years ago). I also did a ton of other academically related crap on campus, there's always clubs and teams to join. It's a good experience if you make the most of it. I majored in Political Science, and it's totally worthless unless you want to work in government or use it to go to Law School, which is the ultimate test of the Liberal Arts degrees. Law School is actually difficult. Just taking the LSAT (the Law School Aptitude Test) will fry your brain in a verbal, analytical way. There's no math on it, but it will still destroy you studying for it. I've never taken a harder verbally based test.
I think back to all the classes I took at University and I probably learned around 5-10 profound things that I still carry with me in life. I took some really great History courses like the History of Decolonization from 1945, where we went deep into the history of the Soviet Union. And there are definitely things you learn at a university that you won't ever learn on youtube regarding these subjects. You really do get what you pay for.
I also took a couple of good Political philosophy courses, specifically relating to the enlightenment philosophers like Mill, Locke, etc., all of which the founders studied intimately and based our government off of. Then we did ancient political philosophy like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. I also took a great course on Neitsche (still can't spell it). And you end up reading a ton of really great books that you would probably never read otherwise, everything from breakdowns of command economies in relation to market systems, Walden by Thoreau, and great surveys of the history of Western Civilization (so you can have a great grasp of everything that has come before you, going back to the beginning). I took a biology class in lower division that blew everything in High School out of the water.
The point is to make you a well-rounded, educated person. A junior scholar who has a breadth of knowledge about basically everything, and a journeyman's knowledge of something specific (your major). Most importantly, you train your mind in order to learn how to research, synthesize information, and write. Like anything, if you make the most of it you will learn a lot and it will produce its desired effect.
Also, chicks.
But yes, in theory and allegedly historically, the bachelors degree was like a junior scholar with a working knowledge about most things and a journeyman's knowledge of something specific, that is a fair characterization.
IMO, the ruining of the system is due to a mix of demographic changes, cultural degeneration, and the jews intentionally destroying the educational system to make a population of compliant zombies.
Would you be willing to disclose what kind of university you went to? State school, Ivy League, etc? This is a much more optimistic account than I hear from most people so I'm curious if it's affected by what you picked.
I always thought I was pretty smart until I ran into a couple of 16 year olds on the parliamentary debate team who had to have been actual geniuses. I realized then that there is a certain caliber of people in this world who are just incredible at what they do. My team won, but if these kids had been my age and had my experience and extra wisdom, they would have smoked me. They were so sharp that I still remember them all these years later.
If you want to go to college you should just go. If you are top 20% you will find your level and get a lot out of it, even more the smarter/more diligent you are. You'll always find your level wherever you are in your life. I'd say around half the people in my class shouldn't have been in college, but it didn't matter because they didn't affect me in any way. I'm not sure how it is now, but a lot of the overt woke stuff was relegated to the community colleges (where I went before I transferred, and you only need a masters degree to teach), and even then it was very rare. I majored in Political Science and I never heard a lick of liberal demagoguery from a professor the entire time I was there. I thought it was strange too. It really was about the academics. For reference I graduated in 09', so maybe it was different.