Don’t matter. The rich will squeeze every penny out of you until a uprising occurs. Have a great idea and want to make money? Must be financed by the rich. You’re screwed every way around.
If you create a market in which everybody is de facto required to have a higher education, a lot of people–probably a majority–are going to study something that ends up not being useful in their career pursuits. Doesn’t matter what the major is or what the career path is. It’s a function of what jobs are available and what skills and inclinations the workers have, and higher ed is this extra thing that’s been shoehorned into the middle of them.
I don’t think higher ed was ever meant to do what we’re currently trying to get it to do. Things got this way not because of utility, but because it’s a big business.
Hmm… that’s funny, anthropology and archaeology are listed as the number one useless degree. I have a Master’s in anthropology and have been working as an archaeologist for almost seven years now.
Hope I don’t get fired for posting on SRK while I’m at work!
Aa’s and ba/bs degrees can get you a job straight out of the gate. If you chose a profession that requires a masters and don’t go for it you are lazy.
Seriously. Find a job that resembles the career and mirrors your studies.
Too bad though
Lol too many nurses too many filipinos thinking nursing is the only thing they can do
People have too many pipedreams.
I am content, but i have my hobbies.
High paying job with low stress level is good news. Especiall after undergrad. Fuck undergrad
I watched a movie about a guy that makes the best sushi. He dropped out of school when he was young, and eventually became successful.
Higher education can be worth it, if you make it worth it. But it’s not the be all end all to being successful. Going back to the movie, he made some great points and one that stuck with me:
HEre;s the thing with BUSINESS that simpletons don’t understand. Most business classes (at least reputable ones check schools) have people who are self made successes teaching them and you can use them and add them to your network. That is something a book can’t give you. A living, breathing success. A college degree changes lives. It’s that simple. Yes some degrees are worthless, but they still have value to the world even if it isn’t in that specialized field. If you could just pick up a book and be a success then there would be a lot of poor people right now who would have a lot more money.
That same guy also favors his kids whom he was never around to watch grow up. Is a sexist asshat, and the work he got credit for was all of his unfavored sons work.
1
What a shocking news. Thanks lol.
Jiro huh…
Nowadays you can’t suceed without finishing school. Unless you were really handsome and willing to suck dick in hollywood to climb to the top.
I believe, if you have the drive, the passion, the smarts, and the resources you can suceed in life.
What
How is it that we have to face so much more scrutiny for not obtaining a college degree, than we would from having unwanted children out of wedlock?
This country can be ass-backwards sometimes…I understand the importance and value behind a higher education, but I’ve known far too many people who did not deserve the degree they were handed, much less the university they’ve attended.
I can’t necessarily go as far as to blame the kind of degree one achieves for the lack of employment opportunities, so much as I will blame the previous generation for ruining much of our current economic climate. Acquiring all the wealth from cheap labor and abusive outsourcing have really diminished the value of pretty much anything that doesn’t require a degree in rocket surgery.
I will admit that our generation is immature and lazy, however the greed, selfishness and unwillingness to invest for the future from baby boomers is still what’s currently dictating the market (I believe they own something ridiculous like 68% of the country’s wealth, while their parents’ generation and younger generations are all left fighting for scraps). We’re probably not going to be able redistribute the wealth in this nation until the last of them either fully retires or passes away (assuming we don’t end up becoming like them). Slowly, but surely we’re getting there (seriously, why did it take this long for Jay Leno to quit?). Anyway, I’m getting off topic.
I wonder what kind of degree is needed to become a professional back-seat blogger for Forbes.
/bitch-n-moan
There are no useless degrees, do whatever you want. It’s how you market yourself, a college degree guarantees you nothing in this day of age. Obviously there is a demand for popular majors like Engineering or Nursing, but those majors are not for everyone and there is this bad consensus that you have to major in some professions in order to be marketable. A degree is tool and should be used as such, there are plenty of positions that only merit a college degree in order to be considered.
That being said, as a state college student I naturally see problems with people switching to these very “said majors” because they couldn’t handle the upper echelon of classes an Engineering degree would warrant. I know plenty of people that started off as “said major” then ended up graduating in Psychology or English.
If you are not willing to put in the effort and money to obtain the higher degree go for another degree with a more likely outcome of getting the job instead of being a quitter find something that pays well.
In this economy and with the world being the way it is going to a trade school>>>useless bs in philosophy/history/english
Sociology majors and psych majors who don’t want to work in those fields, but find the subject matter interesting are idiots when there are jobs available in those fields.
That is what i am saying if you want a degree, better make sure it lines you up into the field you want to be in. Oterwise you wasted 100k for nothing
If people want to major in something that they want to study in, then let them. Not everyone wants to go into the medical field, or Homeland Security, Computer Engineerig, etc. etc. Those are well-paid fields, but why spend the time studying for a career you may have never even looked into or thought about?
I am not saying don’t get a degree. I am saying make sure your degree has a job lined up for you when you finish.
Otherwise you can spend a1/8 of the money going to trade school getting a job or doing a degree that fast tracks you into the workforce and doing philosophy/history/art in your free time instead of being in a classroom wasting your parents/grant/fafsa/your own money
Yes, you are an idiot if you don’t have a job in mind that matches your desired degree. Also stupid to have a bs in chemistry and stop. Not thinking what comes next.
Waste of money, time, and effort
Stop being an idealist
hahaa; guaranteed with a PhD?
Generally speaking: PhD seems to guarantee that you most likely will remain slaving away in academia for unaccountable, unreasonable advisors (this is no kind of life, by the way) or have to find work outside of your degree, demonstrating the fact that the govt (NIH) is sustaining a bubble of overeducated people via bloated grad/post grad programs (ever wonder why the only people that say we have a dearth of scientists are educators or politicians - or parrots). Corp science doesnt want all these PhDs the Univer$ities are pumping out (hahaa, so its not like they are going to do the converse and offer a master’s position to a PhD). Generally speaking, from what I see. I know people who lied about having a PhD (and by lie; I mean they said they had a Master’s when they went straight PhD) in orderto land a job. Dont know anybody with a science Master’s who had any kind of trouble landing a job, even if there were madd subpar. Im sure there are some sciencey PhDs here on SRK. what they say about this? Did you happen to get your opinion from the mouth of a newly-minted master’s? just curious.
So much inertia stopping science gradstudents from ‘mastering out’ that this alone should give pause about what, exactly, is going on there at these grad programs.
But there are majors that aren’t worth $60K+
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s worth it to get a PhD, except for the top 1% of students who will get a tenured position in academia. At least it’s not worth it if you actually expect to get a job in your field instead of something in industry that may not be what you’re passionate about. Even the remaining slaving away part might not be true, since it seems a lot of PhDs go for a post-doc or two and are then pushed out in favor of younger workers to exploit. The part about the supposed shortage of qualified job candidates seems to be the case too. This guy discusses the topic a lot. I don’t know, I’m not exactly in the PhD loop, but there does currently seem to be a massive overproduction of PhDs in the sciences.
where is Acerbic? That nigga was given peeps money tips and he disappeared.
$60K as in debt? Obviously certain majors take longer to complete than others. All I’m saying is that not everybody is cut out for the best jobs, that’s why college forces you take unnecessary weeder courses to see how committed you are to your field.
$60K as in $60K.* If it’s debt it’s crushing and that’s a big problem that’s probably going to cause some big trouble in the not-too-distant future. But even if it’s not debt it’s still $60K that could be spent elsewhere.
Though having said that, and to contradict my original off-the-cuff remark, the math still works: Someone with a college degree will earn more in their lifetime, and that extra earnings far exceeds the cost of the degree. I imagine there’s a fair bit of variance by major, but still.
And while I’m actually looking things up this time here’s a good take-away for you:
“Unemployment for students with new Bachelor’s degrees is . . . 8.9 percent, but it’s a catastrophic 22.9 percent for job seekers with a recent high school diploma—and an almost unthinkable 31.5 percent for recent high school dropouts.” (January 2012 Georgetown study.)
I’m of two minds on the switching majors thing. On one hand it’s stupid: “Well, it turns out you’re not going to make it as an engineer. Here, have an English degree.” But back to the money thing, it would really suck to be in the situation of "I studied engineering for a couple years but it just wasn’t happening, so now I’m down $40K with nothing to show for it."
So I think the bottom line, and steering back towards the OP, is that tuition is too damned expensive not to be shooting high. Pursue what you enjoy doing, but to a point. You don’t have to aim for the #1 paying degree, and that’s going to change in four years anyways. But maybe stick to the top 10 or 20.
And don’t slack off because that’s just like burning money.
*Where I pulled $60K+ from the first credible Google result that suggests in-state students now average $16,500/year.