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A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

theatlantic.com

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Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#151

Post by spamizbad »

JamesBarney wrote: post #127
spamizbad wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always trot out this canard but you should look at how few actual degrees get awarded. cultural gender studies only produces about 15,000 degrees[1] compared to nearly 42,000 for Computer Science [2]. [1] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/cultural-gender-studies [2] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/computer-science The problem here really isn't unmarketable degrees. It's low wage jobs that require college-educated…

Those numbers are insane. As a society we need 100x or more developers than gender scientists, not 3x.

Do we? After a certain point more CS majors will just push salaries down. There is probably more valuable academic pursuits.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#152

Post by enkid »

francisofascii wrote: post #58
imgabe wrote: post #38

Nothing is a guarantee of a good life. It seems like people think you should be able to just check a few boxes, then slot into a 9-5 and have everything taken care of for you for the rest of your life. Well, it doesn't work like that. Even after college you're still going to have to plan and think and take action to make things happen for you. It's not just all going to fall into your lap because you took a few class…

To be fair, it used to work like that in America. Graduate high school, get a decent paying union job in your hometown with an okay house to raise a family. Drink beer and watch sports on the weekends with neighborhood buddies. Work 30-40 years and retire.

It may have worked like that for a portion of the population for a short period of time, but getting a union job was not a guarantee, and what your describing was not possible or very difficult for the majority of the population like women, non-white people, and recent immigrants.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#153

Post by joelbluminator »

dhairya wrote: post #126
qzx_pierri wrote: post #96

It is if you major in STEM (and you apply yourself and get internships, etc) - Majoring in "Eastern Gender Studies" will likely waste 4 years of your life.

Very few people I know actually have careers directly related to their undergrad majors. I majored in Creative Writing and interdisciplinary (politics, philosophy, and economics) studies. Currently working as an applied AI researcher and about to go back to get my phd in AI as well. There are many paths to take. Often being different helps you stand out. Having a humanities and social science background is just as im…

"Currently working as an applied AI researcher and about to go back to get my phd in AI as well" : You're probably in the top 2% of intelligence, that's a huge advantage over most everyone else. People who are closer to the average may need to take more conventional paths to succeed.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#154

Post by francisofascii »

foobiekr wrote: post #70
francisofascii wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it used to work like that in America. Graduate high school, get a decent paying union job in your hometown with an okay house to raise a family. Drink beer and watch sports on the weekends with neighborhood buddies. Work 30-40 years and retire.

Even on the relatively short timeline of the history of the US, the period you’re referring to was quite short.

With the huge increases in productivity since the 1950's, people should be working less hours than in 1950. I don't have a good reason why this should be an anomaly in history.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#155

Post by throwawaygh »

compsciphd wrote: post #133
throwawaygh wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Majoring in "Eastern Gender Studies" will likely waste 4 years of your life. I took a bunch of art history courses that focused mostly on Asia while double majoring in STEM fields. I'm a scientist, not a designer, but I do manage a team that includes designers. I often have to weigh in on certain design choices, and getting those choices right is often make/break for the project. The tools and skills I developed in…

that's the argument for going to a liberal arts college and majoring a BA in CS instead of a BS. It be an interesting study to look at universities that offer both tracks. Take Columbia University that where one can earn a BSE in CS from the school of engineering, or one can earn a BA from columbia college. where the students are taking many of the same "core" CS classes, but the engineering students have a larger CS…

Comparing outcomes at places like Columbia would be fascinating.

Not sure I agree about liberal arts colleges writ large. The tippy-top tier are pretty great. But the ones in our region have... eclectic... CS faculty. Random math phds and early retirement from industry types. Entire departments taken together have single digit H-indices. I'm sure they're great teachers and all, but...

$25K+/yr for the same sort of de facto non-academic retired/shifted-from-industry instructors you can get at any coding bootcamp or community college is robbery. Especially when the state school next door is about the same price and has a real faculty still pushing the edges of the field.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#156

Post by non-entity »

throwawaygh wrote: post #144
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree regarding about the awfulness of SWEs who can't write or communicate (which is most of them), college credit hours are too valuable to be wasted on humanities courses, particularly when humanities topics are far more amenable to self-study than STEM topics.

> particularly when humanities topics are far more amenable to self-study than STEM topics. Really? I feel exactly the opposite, especially for CS. How do you become a good writer without feedback from a good writer (or, at least, critical reader)?

CS is an outlier. I imagine mathematics could be a good outlier as well. Its probably easier to find someone to help criticize your writing as opposed to getting your hands on expensive scientific / engineering equipment (both because of cost and regulations) however.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#157

Post by Upvoter33 »

Nothing is a guarantee of a good life.

A good life requires so many different elements, but mostly comes down to one thing: what you put into it, esp. in regards to improving the lives and welfare of others around you. Do this, and you will find that your own life gets better and better. Be kind, do work to help others, care about people and their lives (and not just your own) and you'll find that life will turn out pretty darn fine.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#158

Post by bradly »

Kinrany wrote: post #146
hackinthebochs wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. Probably because a high school diploma has been so normalized that it is seen as the baseline. But that underscores the problem. Of course everyone having a high school diploma devalues it. That's part of why its seen as the default. If we make undergraduate education a similar default, it will just devalue that too. Not…

You're explicitly saying that good jobs are zero-sum. Why do you think that? It seems like a non-prediction that having more people with good education will enable new businesses.

Yep, you are correct. Paul Graham writes in Hackers and Painters about how wealth is not zero-sum.

You can read more about it in his essay here: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#159

Post by devalgo »

atom-morgan wrote: post #59
mac01021 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big question is "what is Y in this case"?

Teaching yourself new skills using the Internet.

People always parrot this but how many Doctors do you know with no degree? Take a poll at Google engineers and see how many are actually self taught and have no degree. How many Wall Street bankers/traders/etc have no degree? How many US Senators have no degree? How many World Leaders in history have had no formal education? Not counting dropouts, what percentage of Billionaires have no college education? The reality is still that the overwhelming majority of "successful" people still have degrees. You can argue what the root of this is whether it's the added knowledge or signalling of the degree, or intrinsic self motivation of the person, etc. but that fact still remains.

Re: A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life

#160

Post by parsnips »

spamizbad wrote: post #121
qzx_pierri wrote: post #96

It is if you major in STEM (and you apply yourself and get internships, etc) - Majoring in "Eastern Gender Studies" will likely waste 4 years of your life.

People always trot out this canard but you should look at how few actual degrees get awarded. cultural gender studies only produces about 15,000 degrees[1] compared to nearly 42,000 for Computer Science [2]. [1] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/cultural-gender-studies [2] https://datausa.io/profile/cip/computer-science The problem here really isn't unmarketable degrees. It's low wage jobs that require college-educated…

Ok, let's try say psychology instead?
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