Between the first and second paragraph, add something like I went to the university, was totally lost, unable to cope and unable to ask for help so I got kicked out on the first ocassion.

The last two years of high school I had a severe depression and a social phobia that successfully prevented me from telling anyone that I feel sort of unwell. Nobody cared and I wasn't able to ask for help so I wasn't kicked out of the school only because I had a few friends who were as teenagery and immature as they could be at 17 or 18 but they sensed that there's something going terribly wrong. They wrote my tests and papers despite knowing that they would be in deep shit if someone found out. (*waves to Paris and Hague*)

I started to work. I don't think that a publishing house is a sheltered place, no way, but it worked like one for me because I got one task at a time, the boss checked that I understood it right, she perfectly guessed that I would be useless for phonecalls or contact with outside people so I was only asked to make a few coffees. I guess that it would be perfectly in like with what the behavioral psychology does with phobias - expose the person to whatever causes the fear bit by bit. When I was 25, I somehow felt that I'm not the stupidest there but I'm the last one without a degree on the workplace and... and anyway so I started to study again. It must have worked somehow better because I'm in the postgrad course and I'm still mostly enjoying it. (I hate hate hate all the paperwork. When I'm a big girl, I'll buy myself a secretary.)

As for Nemko, the school down the street was the Department of Mathematics of the local university. I guess that he didn't mean this one. I always wanted to be a scholar - although I wasn't sure whether I would enjoy theory of law more than, say, medical research. I just needed to be growing up a little longer than the average population to be able to be one.

My cousin is a failure, too - he wanted to study mathematics. Like, all the theoretical stuff that remains totally obscure to me and it remained obscure even to him so he dropped out - he thought it would be easier and he was the best in math in his year at the high school and it wasn't that easy. He started studying some geekery for office use (the guys who handle servers and drag wires around, if I understand it well) and he's doing perfectly well. He says that those two semesters of math eight hours a day were a good base so now he can concentrate more on the practical stuff and doesn't need to cram all the theory. Bad one for the statistics but does well otherwise.

I couldn't agree more. There is a certain disdain for community colleges tht I find offensive and terribly impractical. I attended a community college in CA before I transferred to a state university, for my BA. The quality of education was extremely high. The general education classes at the community college were actually more rigorous and demanding than the gen ed courses at the four year university.

I owe my career to the community college system and think they provide an excellent foundation for academic scholarship. There are a surprizing number of community college alumni among my academic school of friends.

I read the article referenced in this post myself, prior to ever coming across this rant on Broadsheet. The tone in the article, I agree, was alarmist and elitist, but there are some good nuggets of wisdom in there too. My husband works in academia, and I have several friends who do as well, and I hear the same thing all the time. Those in the lower half in high school (and some even in the upper half, depending on the quality of the high school) really need additional schooling before taking college level courses. Some of these students, because they did not care, or as I suspect much more often happens, were not adequately taught in high school, do not know how to put together a coherent essay, do higher level high school math, or otherwise have relevant skills necessary to thrive in college. Therefore, 4 year colleges have had to add lots of extra courses for freshmen and sophmores that are basically high school level to teach them these basic skills before they can move forward, and those that do not take those, or sometimes if they do, flounder in college wasting their time and money in the process, or get passed by the institution so their graduation rate is high, or to get more money, or so the professor gets a good teaching evaluation. This is a waste of time and money for all involved. It costs money for four year colleges to add these courses, and it costs lots of money for these students to take them. Community colleges have these courses available, and for much cheaper. Besides the obvious need to better the public schools from grade school through high school, I think having a majority of the students in the lower half of high school classes go to community college for two years is much better than having them go directly to 4 year institutions. The students can still get financial aid, it costs less for all involved, and they can see if college life is what they want and whether they can succeed at it before going to a 4 year institution. I have read a statistic, but I can't find it now, that if you succeed in community college, you are more likely to finish and succeed in 4 year college, than if you go straight in to the four-year college when you are in certain demographic types, including those in the bottom 50% of their high school classes. And the final result, if you do 2 years of community college, and then move on to the 4 year institution, is that you can graduate with a 4 year bachelors degree for less money, in the same amount of time, and you get the same degree as everyone else (it doesn't have an asterisk saying you spent 2 years in community college). Don't just rant, Broadsheet, that there are always some really exceptional students among the pile that this article says should not go to 4 year college. Everyone knows there are always exceptions to the rule. What I want to see is solutions for the majority of those people in the group -- bottom 50% in their high school class -- what helps them succeed the most and/or cushion the blow of failure? The answer - 2 years of community college before going to a 4 year institition.