EPTThe Looming U.S. Giant - Page 12
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jdseemoreglass
United States3773 Posts
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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Elegance
Canada917 Posts
On December 18 2012 03:34 ziggurat wrote: It's usually not that hard to predict with degrees will be valuable. If you go to a course that teaches you how to do a particular job for which there is significant demand, that is a good start. Some good examples are going to med school, or nursing. Other obvious examples are trades like electrician, plumbing, etc. Engineering. Accounting. All these courses teach you specific skills that are necessary to work in specific fields. Other examples like Law or Teaching are a bit different, because one could argue that the skills you need to do these jobs are largely common sense; but whether or not that's true, you normally can't work in these fields without the degree. So whether or not you learn any skills in these programs, you're required to complete them in order to enter the field. Obviously spending a lot of time and money on any of these programs involves a calculated risk. You might say, the demand for nurses is high now, but it may not be so high by the time I graduate. True enough, and no one can guarantee this. Just like a lot of major decisions in life, you sometimes just have to get the best information you can and then go for it. As you may be aware, the demand for corporate lawyers dropped dramatically around 2009 and still hasn't really recovered, so people who went to law school and graduated in the last few years are doing a lot worse than expected. There are still jobs, just not as many and generally not as well-paying. These kind of risks are part of life, and I'm not trying to say that you can avoid them completely. What you can avoid, however, is entering a program that doesn't have any clear path to employment. Like doing a degree in English literature, or honestly most arts degrees. The same is true of a lot of general science degrees. You just learn a bunch of information without being prepared to do any particular job. Probably also true of many business degrees, but most business schools at least have a strong focus on networking and getting you connections to prospective employers. If you are a highly energetic self-starter then you can find a job with any kind of degree (or none), but most people don't fit this category. The monetary value of degrees that don't prepare you to do a specific job is hard to gauge, and probably not that high is most cases. Now I'm not saying that nobody should go and get a good liberal arts education. If that's what you want, then go for it. But don't expect it to be a good investment in terms of dollars and cents. Agree with this post. Hard for an 18 year old to do that though. | ||
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Phunkapotamus
United States496 Posts
Note: I speak in the most general case. Certainly there are exceptions to what I say here. With the sheer number of people in college, there will be many unique situations. My viewpoint is that of someone who went to college, experienced how insanely easy it was, and saw extremely dumb people pass their classes. I went to school with potential doctors, lawyers, and schoolteachers- NONE of them I would trust with any responsibility. College was meant to be the one-stop shop to create a well rounded competent person in a particular field. This is no longer the case. Instead of teaching people how to learn, they teach people what to learn so that they may be instantly slotted in a business that does exactly what they were taught. This stagnates innovation, which stagnates demand. Some fields still teach people the proper tools. However, a lot of schools caved in to "consumer" demand. Consumers being businesses who want specific skills, and students who want to learn them. This is wrong. Higher education has a responsibility to produce critical thinkers, not perfectly catered worker ants. We like to laugh at sub-par schools like Phoenix Online, Westwood College, Devry, or ITT tech. Those schools are fairly obviously degreemills. However, it's not just them. It's sad how close a lot of state schools are to degree mills. College is simply too costly and time consuming for the general case. And the general case doesn't cut it anymore. Every year, thousands of "general case" students graduate. Some get lucky and land entry level positions. Most don't- and thus have to figure out a different path in life to pay off their massive student loans. I propose we start an apprenticeship program. Take the 50% underachievers out of college to begin with- they weren't going to go anywhere in the first place. With America's rotting infrastructure, and aging service technicians, apprenticeships for highly skilled labor jobs should be a great fit. | ||
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