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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

#121

Post by spamizbad »

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 workers.

Also - in my subjective opinion as someone who has been in the workforce for nearly 20 years: that Gender Studies student is going to be a better writer than the STEM major with a B.S. Too often they barely capable of professional writing. 90% of the good technical writing I see is done by less than 10% of the engineers. And the best writing I see is from the self-taught people who got a History major or something like that. Being able to produce a 100-level college paper is just table stakes.

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

#122

Post by qzx_pierri »

qsymmachus wrote: post #112
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.

I see that STEM chauvinism is still alive and well on Hacker News. Believe it or not, there are some skills you can pick up studying the humanities that will set you apart from your CS major peers. Being able to write and communicate clearly, for example, is pretty much a super power in most tech jobs.

You were a bit vague, but STEM has the highest concentration of job options that can pay you $60-70k straight out of college.

Well other than finance, but you could argue that STEM is heavily mixed into that field of study (and its derivatives) as well (mathematics, technology, data science)

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

#123

Post by drunkpotato »

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.

What a stupid, dismissive comment to have as the top comment. What a disgrace to this community.

I majored in English, which has been at least as helpful in my career as my CS classes.

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

#124

Post by tryptophan »

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…

So a random useless degree only has computer science 3x as popular? Seems like a significant enough number to me...

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

#126

Post by dhairya »

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 important and useful as a strong tech and quantitative background.

My first tech job, I was the only English major in the candidate pool. Turns out being able to communicate well and being articulate is also super useful.

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

#127

Post by JamesBarney »

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…

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

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

#128

Post by compsciphd »

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…

that's more than 1/3. That doesn't seem to be "few".

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

#129

Post by pizza234 »

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.

That's, I suppose, the view in "certain parts of the worlds".

In some other parts of the world, it is considered meaningful to learn a subject because one is passionate about it, and therefore is not a "waste of life".

Additionally, consider that some non-STEM degrees may produce trained thinkers (e.g. philosophy), which may turn to STEM careers in an indirect way; I've witnessed this on both sides - employees (careers) and employers (hiring).

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

#130

Post by hackinthebochs »

bradly wrote: post #106
hectorr1 wrote: post #4

Most successful people have X. Government: “Let’s give everyone X!” Over time the value of X is diluted, loses its status signaling, and overall quality degrades. Successful people move to Y.

We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. Why would higher education be different? The purpose of free higher ed for all is not to guarantee everyone a good life–it is to try and give everyone an equal chance at a good life. If higher ed is highly correlated to escaping poverty and upward economic mobility, then college costs raising at a rate 11 times faster than…

>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 to mention what happens to the people who can't complete an undergraduate degree. They become even further marginalized in society.

It is faulty reasoning to notice that a bachelors degree correlates with good outcomes and then conclude that more bachelors degrees means more good outcomes. Good jobs are zero-sum. If there are more people who satisfy the requirements for good jobs, the requirements just increase. It's not like most office jobs require a bachelors degree, the fact that so many people have them makes them an effective zero-effort filter.

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