111–120 of 209 posts
If you're going to university, repeat after me. "People who loan money to students are dangerous predators, and I am their lawful prey." That doesn't mean you shouldn't go to university, or that you shouldn't borrow money. Just be careful around predators.
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Having graduated high school in 2008, I don't quite understand it either. My school counselors were always saying "School is expensive; you need to apply for scholarships!" And then there was career day, when you quickly figured out some of the realities of work. Plus the STEM folks always said things like "The US needs more engineers!", "Math + science is important!". Perhaps because I lived on Florida's Space Coast…
I grew up in a shithole slate-mining town of less than 5000 people. Most of the people there couldn't even spell STEM. High school guidance counsellor was still extremely clear. "Do go to college, but for the love of god, major in Medicine, Science, or Engineering. Don't waste your time and money with anything else."
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Having graduated high school in 2008, I don't quite understand it either. My school counselors were always saying "School is expensive; you need to apply for scholarships!" And then there was career day, when you quickly figured out some of the realities of work. Plus the STEM folks always said things like "The US needs more engineers!", "Math + science is important!". Perhaps because I lived on Florida's Space Coast…
I grew up in a shithole slate-mining town of less than 5000 people. Most of the people there couldn't even spell STEM. High school guidance counsellor was still extremely clear. "Do go to college, but for the love of god, major in Medicine, Science, or Engineering. Don't waste your time and money with anything else."
The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't p…
> My entire generation was. No we weren't. I was definitely encouraged to go to college and study something I enjoyed that was marketable . My parents' first concern when I switched away from pre-med to Political Science was "how will you get a job?" I remember as a young child hearing my parents make a comment about a degree in "underwater basket-weaving" or similar. Getting a degree in a completely non-marketable s…
My parents were like yours. I chose not to go into STEM, and they were extremely worried, especially since the rise of the Internet, web startups, and smartphones were still in its infancy and I was basically studying things that hadn't gone into the mainstream yet. They were supportive but pretty darn skeptical they thought I was just messing around on a computer.
I will say though, I go back and forth on the benefits of University. With the rise of online videos, detailed writeups from people in the field, and scanned copies of textbooks and answers, students who are driven might be able to achieve a high level of education without needing to enroll into a program that costs tens of thousands. I've learned more in a few months of self-training via MIT OpenCourseWare, Coursera, Udacity, Stanford (online materials), Khan Academy vs. one year of studying at my University many years ago. I was even listening to an interview by Ezra Klein with Kara Swisher, who mentioned she wouldn't recommend anyone going to journalism school these days as you can probably get by via practicing things on your own, becoming much b
So I'm sort of in that camp, but on the other hand, her graduating from a University may have helped give her a slight edge in getting even entrance to a first internship/job. Likewise, earning a degree helped me get work visas and gave me access to people who eventually boosted my career and life opportunities.
The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't p…
Taking huge loans to study things like literature was either considered a extreme luxury of the rich who wanted a degree just for the heck of it, or those people going to such sciences(Even commerce, accounting etc) are largely considered people who can't do tough things in life(a.k.a losers).
Most people who study things like literature eventually have to go on and get another degree on top of it. Like say an MBA just to get a job.
Never understood why people take huge loans to study non-STEM degrees.
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I graduated high school in 2008 and dropped out of college a few years later. I can honestly say not one person (other than my parents) ever recommended considering cost until after my Freshman year of college. The message that was pounded in again and again and again was "The best college at all costs." I'm pretty sure that's no longer the case - at least I hope so.
Sorry if this is too personal, but did you think your parents were blowing hot air or something? This thread has been eye-opening from the perspective of all these comments who (apparently) had negligible guidance from a group of people (parents) who absolutely need to talk about debt to their kids. Maybe a silver lining in this topic is a generation of future parents who will have better conversations with their kid…
The culture surrounding education in this country is not rational. It's a soup of optimism, hope, preconception, ignorance, and classism, along with the avarice of those in the educational establishment that prey on the foregoing.
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I think it has less to do with viable job creation than wider political issues. It's cheap to open an office in Iowa, but talent/upper middle class people don't want to move there. Not simply because of social issues, but because companies don't pay enough. IE if I can save 20% of 150k moving to a cheap location is only viable if I can save 30k not just 20% of a lower salary.
$100k in Iowa will go a lot farther than $200k in San Francisco, and if you can get $200k in SF you can almost certainly get a similar job making $100k (or more) in rural Iowa. Now, if you don't want to do that because "gross, it's Iowa" and NYC or SF is objectively a more enjoyable environment for a 20-something single software developer, that's fine. But that's a choice and at that point you're simply deciding to l…
I'm not going back now because I realized that -20F ~ 95F annual temperature swings really suck (I did not realize this until I left).
The first question is "as an individual job-seeker, is college worth it to me personally". Which it probably still is - there's very real discrimination against folks without a degree.
The second question is "for job-seekers as a class, does college help them". Which it almost certainly isn't - there's a huge amount of time and money spent on what's mostly a piece of paper that says "I'm smart enough to get into college, not-lower-class enough to spend the time and money, and obedient enough to jump through arbitrary hoops". Employees as a class aren't magically better because they have a piece of paper, they're better because of specific skills and abilities that they learn that enable extra productivity.
People see that college is worth it for individuals, and then they go and shovel gigantic piles of money at college for everyone, and this just pisses me the hell off because it's so goddamn wasteful.
IMO, the only realistic way out of this hole is to make it illegal to ask about college education or verify with an issuing institution whether or not you have a degree. If an employer asks, they get sued or prosecuted. If a job-seeker tells, the employer can't find out if they're lying. Only remaining thing is to screen for actual knowledge, like "are you a good enough engineer to not make buildings that collapse". Professional exams - like the Fundamentals of Engineering or actuarial exams - seem like an appropriate fit for that.
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You're assuming a proper amount of intelligence/decisiveness at ~18 years old. I was a fucking airhead at 18 (11 years ago) and, like most kids, listened to my parents as I thought they knew best. They were not financially intelligent and as a result, put me on a precarious path with the best intentions of me having what they understood as a better future. I also chose a path back then (working in television) that ha…
It's sort of sad how much we have infantilized ourselves in this generation. We're almost to the point where somebody who is turning 30 is less mature and capable than someone 100 years ago was at sixteen.
And if they could attend college 100 years ago, it was worth the investment.
The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't p…
> The thing that irks me about this the most is how it's the people who were doing exactly what they were told that got hurt the most. The good kids who went to the best school they could get in to, studied whatever they were interested in, and if that thing happened to be literature or women's studies or a wide number of other things you might just spend the next 20 years figuring out how to live with debt you can't…
I was in a meeting yesterday where a professor was lamenting that too many students are majoring in business and not arts and sciences. The interesting thing about that is our biggest alumni donors are business school majors and not A&S. If you can't major in a science, CS or engineering then major in business.
I guess you can't fix stupid.
I am so glad my youngest will be attending an engineering school next fall and will get a mechanical engineering degree with an emphasis in systems.