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Study Analyzes Recent Grads' Unemployment By Major
Hugh Pickens writes "A new report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce called 'Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal' analyzes unemployment by major. It shows that not enough students — and their families who are also taking on student loans — are asking what their college major is worth in the workforce. 'Too many students aren't sure what job they could get after four, five or even six years of studying a certain major and racking up education loans,' writes Singletary. 'Many aren't getting on-the-job training while they are in school or during their semester or summer breaks. As a result, questions about employment opportunities or what type of job they have the skills to attain are met with blank stares or the typical, "I don't know."' The reports found that the unemployment rate for recent graduates is highest in architecture (13.9 percent) because of the collapse of the construction and home-building industry and not surprisingly, unemployment rates are generally higher in non-technical majors (PDF), such as the arts (11.1 percent), humanities and liberal arts (9.4 percent), social science (8.9 percent) and law and public policy (8.1 percent)."
Assholes who take credit for your skills and your life is financially fucked for years.
There are easier ways to life like a bum.
Anyone else sick of encountering this kind of thinking?
All they do is get you past HR filters. Most people who are good at their jobs also do them as a hobby or have a genuine interest. Although it doesn't help either when you have $100k in loans and employers offer you $12/hr jobs.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Job opportunities are not relevant: by the time you get your degree the market will have changed anyway. Just study whatever you're interested in.
One thing to point out is that there is a certain stigma in an educational setting that go against 'real-world' applications. Speaking from experience, the computer science program which I went through focused purely on the academic aspects of programming - graph theory, sorting, developing text based games - and left the students to their own devices in terms of source code management, standards, and conventions. Or better yet, teachers would have their own standards that the students had to live by. I complained to the computer science director regarding the lack of real world application to what was being taught on numerous occasions but was constantly told I did not know what I was talking about. Mind you, I had a full time development job right out of highschool and was an active contributer to a number of open source projects all through highschool. Due to differences, or lack of them listening, I transfered to another school for business and make a whole heck of a lot more than my counter parts that stayed in the program.
What would be an interesting report would be how many graduates hold a job in the field which their degree is in? I suspect that the above presented number is skewed by people working at fast food or small stores trying to get by...
Besides disagreeing with the approach of the author.
I think it completely misses the point that what is true today will not always be true tomorrow, actually hordes of (clueless) people running towarda a major will easily saturate that major.
A friend of mine with a major in Chinese said that during her first class around 15 years ago the teacher told them that there was no job opportunity for such a degree except than for the 2 or 3 of them that would have gained a professorship, 5 years later commercial relationships between Italy and china boomed and she got a definitely good working position.
I believe that while it is difficult to know know which major will be useful in 5-30 years it is a safe bet to assume that in order to get a rewarding living one needs to be really good at what it does and excellence comes from passion, so following natural inclination may be a much safer bet (an inspired writer for example earns much more that a lousy programmer)
Luca
I think the reason nobody knows what major will cause them to get a good job is because no major will cause them to get a good job. That thing about going to college to get a good job, that's over. At least in the United States.
The value of a college education should not lie in the career opportunities it opens up for the graduates.
Sometimes it is the case that career opportunities is the only value offered by schools. Many colleges are little more than trade schools that replace apprenticeships with four years of studies. Some schools are so bad that they don't even amount to that.
But it seems to me that if one wants to learn a trade (even if that trade is a white collar one like computer programming) then apprenticeships have far more value in learning the requisite skills. Unfortunately, many HR departments do not see things that way.
The real value of a college education should lie in seeking education for its own sake. Not everyone needs to go to college to be well educated. But some people, perhaps most people, learn better in that sort of environment. Moreover, a well designed college program will stretch a student beyond what he or she would normally be attracted to in his or her studies and expose that student to ideas that he or she would not normally encounter. That sort of thing is difficult, but not impossible, for an autodidact to encounter.
no surprise that you'll see that gov't subsidised so called 'education' industry has the lowest unemployment rates there.
Of-course this will cost the economy dearly, as all these gov't subsidised education loans are going to cause the same exact effect as gov't subsidised housing loans and other debt (bonds) had.
You can't handle the truth.
Does this mean that the degree's are worthless enough now to the point in which that I'm better off just trying to build a portfolio instead of going to school- say if I wanted to be a programmer? Or would I need both the degree and the portfolio experience?
Study what interests you and inspires passion. If nothing inspires passion in you then you had better gain some type of technical skill. Everyone in my college is either pursuing a "business administration" degree or "computer technology." It is getting ridiculous. Business administration should be something you study along the way in any degree program. The demand for technical people is so high in the IT industry that most people following that degree path will likely get jobs, regardless of their skills. The amount of engineering students is microscopic in comparison to the rest. I haven't met anyone yet who is studying engineering to become a systems developer, it is a lonely path. During labs I spend most of my time tutoring people.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I see the results of "engineering-only" education every day. I see co-workers utterly lacking critical thinking skills or any curiosity, passively accepting whatever the mainstream media or the software vendors tell them, and who get insanely defensive when you poke holes in the wet toilet paper of their core political/cultural/technical/economic/religious beliefs. I see walking, living proof every day that technical competence != global intelligence.
Some of this is neurological, of course. I work in the software industry, an area filled with more than its share of mildly autistic souls. The rest, however, could have had their worldview drastically enhanced with a couple of courses in comparative cultural anthropology, a few philosophy courses discussing epistemology and some critical studies of human history, just as the liberal arts crew would benefit hugely from some significant study of math, physics and engineering.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Job credentials aren't the only reason students go to college.
Having everyone go to college hasn't made Americans smarter.
It has made universities dumber.
Even though I had been coding since 5th grade, I didn't know what I wanted to go to university for until late into highschool, when ultimately it occured to me that I may as well get the paper that says I can do what I already enjoyed doing.
My dad called some larger IT and software employers' recruiting departments and asked what sort of degrees they screen for, and more importantly, what degree-issuing institutions they look for.
Their answer was, roughly, if you have a CS degree, it doesn't matter where its from (unless its from MIT :))
So I went through the Barrrons College guide and made a list of schools that had CS and separate compE programs; i ranked them by cost and by SAT score of average incoming class. I restricted my search to schools that were ranked above ... 50th or 100th? place in "engineering", however arbitrary that is.
Then I went and talked to those schools, got a rough idea of which ones would give me what kinds of academic scholarships, and then chose a subset of state universities to apply to.
Part of this process is being honest about yourself. I beleive that technically, I met all of the admission requirements to get into Caltech. I noted howeer, that their average incoming freshman had SAT and ACT scores around 5 to 10% higher than where I had tested. Additionally, tuition at that time was around $30k/year.
I figured that there was little sense in struggling to get into the bottom half of the Caltech freshman class, only to pay a six figure sum and to have to work my ass off just to keep my head above water and hopefully graduate. Certainly I expect I would have had a more rigorous experience, and networked with higher caliber professors and students, and perhaps had a better pick of employers for internships and eventual employment.
But honestly, while I have _some_ smarts and _some_ drive, there are obviously people who have more of _both_, and I see little reason to compete with them if I don't have to :)
I was accepted to UIUC (then a top 5 CS school), but they knew they were a competitive program and they offered me no financial incentives to attend.
Ultimately, I went to the University of Nebraska, which offered me a full ride, allowed me to coast in non-interesting courses, and allowed me plenty of 1:1 time with professors who were interesting. The more mid-pack freshman class allowed me to differentiate myself easily from my peers in areas where I excelled.
I left school with a good GPA, plenty of knowledge that I didn't have when I started, and a full time offer at a software company you may have heard of. And no student debt.
The point of this is that if we're not equipping American kids to do even a rudimentary cost-benefit analysis; if they have no idea why they are _going_ to a university... well, they probably have no business going, and it is abhorrent that US taxpayers are paying for them to go.
I am romantically in favor of the idea of the mysty eyed dreamer going to school for indian tribal botany or some other esoteric pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. That's actually probably closer to the original idea of the university. But that experience is something he or she needs to pay for privately -- asking me to help is ridiculous. Making it national policy and funding it at the federal level is suicidal.
The debt-treadmill of university is insidious. Making it easy to get the money to go means more people are going, and in response to the rising costs that are a natural consequence of more demand, the Feds loan out more money. And so the cycle continues, and we have more and more entrants with less and less ability to pay who have no idea what they are going to do once their 4-6 years of partying are over and they need to start paying off the debt they accured.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Every summer while I was in undergrad, I was taking classes for my degree, working my ass off to pay my tuition and other bills, or both. I'm baffled by the students who feel entitled to spring break in some exotic location and summer break to do nothing of any value. Not once during my undergrad years was I more than 600 miles from school with the exception of a conference my employer sent me to for undergraduate research I was working on.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yes. I'm also really sick of the student loans crap. I worked my way through college, and busted my butt for a couple of tuition-only scholarships.
I didn't borrow a cent, and people who think work starts after graduation definitely shouldn't.
That's highly commedabel and shows your hard working can-do attitude. And you went to school in the 80s or before?
Unfortunately, to do what you were able to do cannot be done in 2012. It would take someone many years to do and if they're going for a techical degree where credits are only good for 5 years, you wouldn't be able to do it by working your through college - as soon as you had enough for tuition, you'd be retaking Chemistry, physics, and any other engineering class.
In this day and age, if you want to get through college in 4 -5 years, you need loans or rich parents - and that going to a cheap state school.
The only reason why I see medical and education with low unemployment is that the colleges have a strong working relationships with these organizations and a professor recommendation will get you far. Other majors colleges do little or less to keep professional ties with people who hire from these majors.
Engineering and tech is higher mostly because there is demmand for anyone with some real math training. Most of the highest unemployed majors treat math like one of those silly thing you never needed anyway, and is there to turture children.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
An old idea, floated in the 19th century by highly conservative economists, the capability tax was the idea that people should be taxed based upon what they were capable of earning, rather than what they earned. The idea was to discourage smart people from going into art, the humanities, liberal arts, and so forth, and encourage them to go into meaningful, productive fields, where their capabilities would be put to full use. Whether or not you enjoyed the work was irrelevant, and only liberals cared about that.
The paper is basically encouraging us to think in these term, to ask students to go into fields they may well hate, because that's where they have to go to (1) get a decent education, and (2) make enough to pay off their ultimate student loans.
If you're so smart, why aren't you naked?
I tried getting into engineering school because everyone knows it's the surest way to a conforable middle class life (Med school for a guarantted entry into upper classes).
I couldn't get in. Did average on Math SATs and I didn't have Calculus in High School. Tried the back way: take the chem, physics, pre-calc, calc in college to transfer. No deal.
All of us are born with our own talents and hard work can only get yo so far - I worked myself to the point of being physically ill trying to get the grades to get into engineering school - and this was "just" a state school.
I can't do it - or at least it takes me a very long time to grasp the material; too long to get it in the semester alloted and they only allow you to retake a class so many times.
Many kids are smart enough to know their limits and what they're capabilites are. For some reason a small minority who go to school to party and major in Communications or whatever ball players major in, give everyone else a bad name.
Everyone knows that being a Doctor or Engineer are the only ways now for a typical middle class kid to as well as his parents: everything else and you'll do worse.
I, for one, would like to see more of the voting public exposed to collegiate level political theory, comparative religion, and science.
2. If you want to make a good wage ASAP, then don't bother with university - get a job as a plumber or an electrician or one of those guys who repairs elevators. They make stupid amounts of money. IS the work intellectually challenging? No, but that's not the question.
3. If you want to really prepare for the future, just look at the splits. A classic example is energy vs. demand vs. technology. Most people heat their homes with oil or gas. Both are limited resources and both are "not good" for the world when burned. So, preparing houses for a world without oil or gas is a REALLY GOOD IDEA and if you make a business that can do a package on a home (insulation/windows retro/geothermal heating + solar electric on roof) at a reasonable price, You Will Make A Lot Of Money and be helping preapre society for the post-carbon future. Get in to it NOW while the field is sparse. When it heats up, clean up.
4. The split between the living and the dead. The boomers are set to go into die off mode. Mortuary services will explode over the next 10 - 20 years (esp. if the USA never implements national health - poor old folks will die off right quick without medicare). Start a funeral home. Print money.
If you're looking to be a slave to some giant machine - those jobs will become fewer and farther between. In the next world, you're on your own. You will need to INVENT your future. If you don't have the brains to suss that out, then don't bother with university.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Journalism has a lower unemployment rate than engineering? Wow.
1) Sorted by Unemployment rate, lowest to highest:
Major -- Unemployment Rate -- Starting Salary
Education -- 5.4 -- 33000
Health -- 5.4 -- 43000
Agricultural and Nat. Res -- 7 -- 32000
Comm. and Journalism -- 7.3 -- 33000
Business -- 7.4 -- 39000
Engineering -- 7.5 -- 55000
Science - life/physical -- 7.7 -- 32000
Law and Public Policy -- 8.1 -- 34000
Computers and Math. -- 8.2 -- 46000
Recreation -- 8.3 -- 30000
Social Science -- 8.9 -- 37000
Humanities and Liberal Arts -- 9.4 -- 31000>
Arts -- 11.1 -- 30000
2) Sorted by starting salary, lowest to highest:
Major -- Unemployment Rate -- Starting Salary
Recreation -- 8.3 -- 30000
Arts -- 11.1 -- 30000
Humanities and Liberal Arts -- 9.4 -- 31000
Agricultural and Nat. Res -- 7 -- 32000
Science - life/physical -- 7.7 -- 32000
Education -- 5.4 -- 33000
Comm. And Journalism -- 7.3 -- 33000
Law and Public Policy -- 8.1 -- 34000
Social Science -- 8.9 -- 37000
Business -- 7.4 -- 39000
Health -- 5.4 -- 43000
Computers and Math. -- 8.2 -- 46000
Engineering -- 7.5 -- 55000
Why the hell does everyone + dog think university should be about getting trained for a job? The whole bloody idea of university to to better yourself through education. The problem is with the disconnect between the cultural sales pitch and the reality of university. If you want training for a job either start at the bottom or GO AND GET SOME JOB SPECIFIC TRAINING.
In the tech field you have alot of learn on your own people and ALOT Stuff that is hands on that you can't get in a class room (tech schools are better). community colleges also some times offer the same classes that tech schools do but they do max at 2 years. But community / tech schools are good for continuing education skill in IT. continuing education for IT should not be BA , PHD , MA that is a poor fit for IT and that is what happens when you try to jam into the old college system.
community colleges / tech schools offer BETTER CLASS times for people who are working.
CS is to much on the high level and lacks at lot of lower level skills. And CS comes with the full college load of fluff and filler classes. Also it lacks the focus on big areas that a tech school can fill 2 years with.
Now IT needs some kind of a apprenticeship system to give people real skills and to have them learn how things work. Now I think a 1.5-3 year system with on going continuing education will be a good fit for IT and let CS be about the higher level stuff + open a road for some to do the lower level tech stuff + real work and then move on to the higher level stuff.
to get your master earning 45 to 60k/yr then your bachelor's at $13k/yr. A 60 hour work week at $7.25/hr (current federal min wage) is $20,880 GROSS. If you don't have kids you pay about 12% of that in taxes just to state & fed, to say nothing of sales tax (Phoenix AZ taxes food you know).
:) ). It's like those stories about people cutting back and paying off $200k of debt in just a few years. They always neglect to tell you that the family that did it had $70 or $80 k/year coming in. You can only cut back so much before life becomes impossible. I don't care what Will Buckley's telling you...
You also probably had a supervisor happy to be supportive because he/she is looking forward to getting someone with a Masters Degree w/o having to engage HR. Oh, and my local University's science & engineering curriculum specifically states you should not be working even part time while trying to pass them. Try taking compilers or operating systems while working 60 hours a week. Yes, people do it. Rare geniuses for whom this stuff comes naturally. A certain percentage of the population is fully energized after a 4 hour sleep. These people have a natural edge. Maybe you're one of them. But if that's the case you're where you are today because of good fortune, dumb luck and the roll of the die. The other option is you went to a diploma mill that doesn't teach anything. I've got a few of those at my job. It's weird. Ask 'em what they learned and they can't tell you...
This is something I just can't get the right wing (who are the ones that bring this argument up the most) to get: The lives of People who make minimum wage are a never ending wave of problems. Life is different when you can't just fix stuff when it breaks, buy ice cream for your kid when they get hurt. You end up trying to make up for the lack of money with time and effort. If you're one of those rare people whose genetics makes it easy for you, well then bully for you. If you went to a diploma mill then all that happened is you got fleeced (wait till you get out of school with that 'Masters' degree. You think HR departments don't know a diploma mill when they see one
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In other news: water is wet.
college is to long and dragged out and you have 4 years be push out to 5 with all the filler and other BS.
What you are missing is that the value of your education is revealed when you are trying to sell your labor or products of it. So the value of your education is only what other people are voluntarily willing to pay for it. This doesn't mean you shouldn't study French Poetry. But it would be a bad investment to pay alot of money to do it when you could find places on the internet to learn and discuss it for free. This is something many people do for leisure.
Many people in today's Pop culture confuse leisure and labor because there are some exceptional artists and athletes that are able to make considerable amounts of money doing what is in essence a leisure activity. Playing the guitar and singing is something most people do for fun. But if you are exceptional at it some people will pay money to watch you have fun. The same with sports. Most people play for fun. There are a few that are so good at it others will pay to watch them play a game.
Borrowing money is only reasonable if you are building your productive capacity. Borrowing money is smart if you are building a factory, buying capital equipment, or learning a marketable skill. Borrowing money to learn a leisure activity is not a smart use of your time or money. So where you are confused is you should only borrow money to learn a job skill. But once you have that skill and are earning a higher income you can use that money to learn a leisure activity. Borrowing money to learn a leisure activity leaves you with no way of every paying back your loan.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The "HR filter" does have a rational idea behind it. The college degree does demonstrate one important thing. That the holder can *finish* a long, sometimes boring and somewhat bureaucratic process. Many people can start a "project", only some of them can finish a "project".
In computer science the university program does offer valuable training. While it is possible to be self taught in these topics very few individuals will actually do so. People who are self taught tend to only study those topic they are interested in. They tend to have obvious gaps in their knowledge compared to the university trained. I only know one self taught person who had the discipline, initiative and ability to read and understand university level textbooks on the full range of topics covered in a university program.
I would agree that some levels of debt seem insane and make it hard to justify the university education but to be honest the problem seems somewhat exaggerated. If one goes to a state university and works part time when class is in session and full time in the summer one can still graduate debt free or with minimal debt. IIRC the average tuition+boarding cost for a 4-year school is US$13K per year. Even without working at all the debt would be about half what you cite.
Jim Collison
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=1969179&authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=5lSS&locale=en_US&srchid=5e9b0d96-e6f2-4bff-983e-2e8430f65ec0-0&srchindex=6&srchtotal=37&goback=.fps_PBCK_jIM+COLLISON+_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*2_*1_Y_*1_*1_*1_false_1_R_*1_*51_*1_*51_true_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2_*2&pvs=ps&trk=pp_profile_name_link
http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20111206/NEWS07/111209935
"Employers should not fear the EEOC warning. In fact, employers should use it to focus their attention on identifying the actual essential qualifications needed to perform a job...and how to assess whether or not a candidate has these qualifications. Because education has been so dumb-downed in the last 50 years, a high school graduation diploma or a high school equivalency certification simply is not evidence that an individual possesses the essential qualifications to perform a job. The same is true for many if not most post high school degrees. Check out the new book "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. Also check out the new Skills Gap research report from A.C.T. showing that just having a diploma or certificate is no evidence an applicant possesses the foundational skills of reading for information, locating information, and applied math needed for almost every job today. Jim Collison, President, Employers of America, Inc."
Why doesn't it show the unemployment rate and graduate income of maths/economics/medicine majors? Can someone point me to the mythical land where engineering majors have the highest likely income, as this article seems to be suggesting.
Did this person read their own data? Engineers have about the same unemployment rate as business majors. Computer programmers have a higher rate of unemployment, and education much lower. The data just doesn't support the conclusions. At all.
Like not even a little.
Perhaps the problem is that our corporate profit driven economy and government have created a culture that only values - read: hires and pays well - careers that directly benefit the bottom line.
If, as many expect, we're diving into both global warming and a global financial crash, we may regret that choice.
We may need people who can think creatively and tangentially, not a thousand more MBAs.
It's not just genetics, but there's timing. When I was in highschool, minimum wage was a luxury I rarely saw. I begged for jobs which were downright abusive, with very few hours, and barely paid for my bus ticket back and forth. Even out-of-area commission based paper routes were not available. It was a recession, and those jobs were being done by the people who couldn't get jobs elsewhere.
There were exceptions. One friend of mine didn't see my problem. He "did it on his own, with no help from his parents", except getting rides to/from work, getting the hand-me-down car, and being driven to and from swim practice for years which ultimately led him to his double-minimum-wage job as a trained lifeguard.... a job which followed him right through school.
This is not to say that I didn't get any good jobs at all, just that for the few jobs I got, I was lucky. Lots of people didn't see their first job until they were out of school, and it's not because they didn't look. I had to repair my bicycle with scraps on the road and buy my lunches with what little I made after my bus fare.
What I grew up with has happened again. In recent years, the bottom had dropped out of the job market. People with work experience are doing okay, but once again, highschool kids and part time university kids are wildly underemployed. This only has to last for a couple years for a whole generation of schoolkids to be screwed out of tuition or good job experience. If you graduate during one of those lulls, if your parents don't see it and help you, you're screwed... and I mean super-screwed.
...it bugs me when people say "I did it, it took hard work, you just have to get used to the idea of hard work and perseverance", it's just tooting their own horn, ignoring their own luck and advantages.
Perhaps the problem is that our corporate profit driven economy and government have created a culture that only values - read: hires and pays well - careers that directly benefit the bottom line. If, as many expect, we're diving into both global warming and a global financial crash, we may regret that choice. We may need people who can think creatively and tangentially, not a thousand more MBAs.
Three Squirrels
pretty much yes. A lot of people laugh at tech/vocational schools. In some cases, rightly so, but the concept itself is brilliant. Certain countries over in that socialist hellhole called western Europe have done really great things with their vocational school system. In particular, its seen as legitimate schooling, not fly-by-night, and high school students are encouraged to consider it.
What BS. Why don't you start a lawn service, and use your skills to grow it into something that makes you a million a year for yourself? Or open a chain of burger joints with moms 'secret' hamburger recipe. Car detailing? Be a teamster? Bottom line - NOTHING stops you from being successful and bringing in big bucks, if you don't start from the mindset of 'I'm fuqed unless I'm a highly trained technician of some sort'. Consider - when money is tight, the FIRST thing to go are those expensive services supplied by those highly trained technicians ;)
Too busy lying about all the engineers that US companies can't find because they're only looking in India and China, not in the US.
But some of it has to do with the old fashioned college system being a poor fit for to days world. The text book part is some what that way as well. Some areas need a wikipedia like text book as the area moves fast.
Also college pushes lot's filler and other classes that are not need. But some of that is old stuff that still have people where who come up with stuff just to make it look like they are going some thing. Other times it's hobby stuff that should just be hobby level not class level with tests / dragging out to a full class time frame.
Also joke classes for people on the football team do not help and others some times end taking just to fill in filler classes should not be in college.
Also the forced dorms that cost more then RENTING ON your OWN and meal plans data back to old times and in to days would people should have a choice.
Now the tech schools are a newer idea and are more trades based while stuff like tech / voc (yes big parts of the tech field fit into a vocational area) are a poor fit in to a older college system. (also the big on going part does not fit in the old college system very well)
Steve jobs dropped out of the old system and dropped into classes that HE wanted to take now maybe college should be more like that.
Badges' Earned Online Pose Challenge to Traditional College Diplomas
http://chronicle.com/article/Badges-Earned-Online-Pose/130241/
seems to be along the lines of what Steve jobs did in college just taking the stuff he wanted to do and not all of other filler classes.
One of the most insightful posts I've seen on slashdot.
You might like the related links in this comment of mine, btw:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2629450&cid=38756882
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Hard to say where might you be now by putting all that energy, intelligence, and creativity into your own small software business or an apprentiship in a trade instead of college?
http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/25/6717536-the-entrepreneur-whos-paying-kids-not-to-go-to-college
But either way is a roll fo the dice...
Make sure you get enough vitamin D, omega 3s, and vegetables to keep going at that pace.
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
People do not notice long slow trends in part because you have to be old to have seen it; if you noticed it at all-- and if the trend was within a single lifetime.
College was something different in the past. It was not for everybody either. People who went into college already had status because not just anybody could get in but also not just anybody would even want to get in. Completing college was another level of status. It was this status, this prestige that gained which was beneficial later one in multiple ways. Gradually, more and more people saw it as a way to get ahead, especially the ones who started out from behind. Now we've past the point where many jobs have nothing to do with the degree and only seriously consider people with a degree for jobs that do not require one or perhaps even benefit from the worker having one. My local weatherman is not needed, they can go back to the models they used to have because for many decades now they just repeat the national weather service. The news readers suck at everything besides news reading so they do not need a journalism degree either.
So now days we are coming AFTER the colleges because these degrees we as a society overvalued and misunderstood are not fitting our expectations. College was NOT about job training. Trade schools and Apprenticeships are designed for that.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Why is there no warning about conflict of interest here? Everytime the Washington Post opens its mouth about Higher Education Policy of any kind, it should be known that they are owners of the $2.3 billion business Kaplan, a major profiteerer in the War on Poor Students...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post_Company
Their numbers can't be correct. Or the US works different from the rest of the world.
Not a single one of my friends who did psychology even got a job offer and spent months trying to find a minimum pay job. Most of them ended up doing simple administrative tasks, essentially ending up as secretary. While every fellow engineering student got job offers before they even graduated...
The problem is everybody thinking that everything in life has to be profit-making. Not everything is about turning a profit. Anybody going to college in order to net a return is missing the point of an education, entirely.
I don't respond to AC's.
College has nothing to do with earning a living. That concept has been creeping into the colleges as they sought the money that trade schools were taking out of the educational system.
Has anyone ever seen a classified ad for "poet wanted"? How about astronomer? As a matter of fact you won't tend to see ads for first chair violens either.
College is for knowledge. It is just that simple. many people who were the best in their fields have starved all through history. Van Gogh may be listening with his one good ear or maybe Mozart could chime in here.
And just to make things worse society does not demand legitimate college educations where it needs to such as for cops but is quick to offer college degrees in mortuary or embaming trades. A cop can mess up a person pretty badly due to stupidity. A mortician might make a funeral less fun for the grieving but no mortician could ever harm a corpse. After all to a corpse one condition is as good as the next.
So if your brat is running off to school to become the next Lord byron he might want to realize that Byron was a poor guy. then there was Dr. Johnson and the poet Savage waiting for the hangman in his cell. All in all the gifted tend to suffer about like the rest of us.
There are other factors too that sometimes play a role in education choice. For me it was a medical condition. In all honesty though, I still wish I had the opportunity to go after the Science degree.
I started out as a Bio major. I had all the skills, motivation, etc. to make it to graduate school or maybe med school. First year, got hit with a major medical condition. Medication made me spaced out and I lost my short and long term memory. That lasted a few years.
I changed majors and walked away with a social science degree. I've lost money (in earnings) from changing degree and not entering workforce earlier.
A skilled labour job would have saved me time and money, but it also (usually) requires frequent commuting or going at remote job sites. I'd need a drivers' license and mine was taken away. The long hours that usually come with these jobs were not much of an option either when I wasn't feeling well.
I'm lucky that I have a great job with great opportunities and I'm better now. A master's degree in my current field could earn me a significant amount more money and I might do it PT and keep working my FT job.
I personally live with two folks who recently graduated from college, one an English major, and another a Business major. Both of them are employed but not in what they went to school for. Both are working part time service jobs with no or little benefits that barely give them enough money to make ends meet. Forget saving, or paying down debt.
So yes, technically they are employed, however it falls into the "just barely" category and their schooling has no relevance to their current jobs. Right now for them school is just a large pile of debt they're saddled with.
Workplace
It's bad writing (and frankly rude to the individual concerned) to just dump a surname into the text like that.
The first - and that of course includes only - time a person is mentioned it should include their full name (including titles), position and the institution they're affiliated with.
Correct: Hugh Pickens, a part-time dishwasher from his mom's basement, is an illiterate cunt.
Wrong: Pickens is an illiterate cunt.
Manners, you dogfucking asshole.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In a certain sense, "hard education IS for jobs". Leaving all the exceptions aside, college grads in the Hard Sciences ARE able to do something that they then want to get paid for.
If you "just want a smart thoughtful person" then do Social Education. Privacy-of-the-bathrobe, 24-7, etc. Oh, no tests!
The denizens of the Internet is my educational colleagues. Forget the localism cliques of college. Forget the cafeteria that closes at 4PM. (Rant: a *Business School* can't staff a cafeteria past 4PM? What part of Customer Service from their lecture does THAT fall under?)
But no - hidden behind these copyright smokescreens is another variant - courses are "just content". So just take a month and blast through your 24 episode "Literature Show" for free / Small Fee.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I was only working 40 during school, and it went fine.
Only 40 hours?
I had trouble getting my school work done just working my 16hours per week (2 - 8 days) on the weekends. Graduated with a GPA 2.3.
Yeah, no student loan, but I couldn't nor can I get a job in my field either.
Maybe I'm not college material or should have majored in Comunications.
In Texas that's all the same course!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Really?
Law and Public Policy (8.1%)
Computers and Mathematics (8.2%)
Computers are non-technical now?
It's the HR departments that are the problem.
I know a lot of HR people. 'Some of my best friends are in HR'. While they are lovely people, they know shit about the actual jobs. Almost every job in both the corporate and government world that is not extremely specialized or niche is subject to people just matching candidates' resumes with the positions' requirements.
Nothing more and nothing less. (to be fair, often less).
They are there because the structure of businesses and government demands that someone takes off the pressure of the actual people doing and managing those specific jobs.
...you are probably not an artist.
"unemployment rates are generally higher in non-technical majors such as the arts (11.1 percent)"
I suspect the posters who are doing so well in IT and Computer Science are out of touch with a lot of graduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering & math) majors including those who are not. I worked my way through much of college and law school, where my original job, set up by a clueless rich fellow, fell through and I ended up working practically full time and walking back and forth to work another 1.5 hours per day. I got the Tsetse Fly Award in the April Fool issue of the paper for logging the most sleep in 8:00 A.M. class and every once in awhile crashed out and slept through a day of classes. I think that was a major reason I missed Law Review and only graduated in the top third of my selective class at a top school, which cut off a lot of opportunities and better paying jobs. You can’t do it today without some special connections and skills. I live across from a second-tier state university and know people with B.S., M/S. and everything but the defense of their dissertations for Ph.D. in computers and other STEM fields, more than one of whom have ended up teaching English in China, and others unemployed in or near their fields and literally flipping burgers. Some were making six-figure incomes until their jobs got off-shored at what would be below minimum wage here and have had to travel across the country to low-pay part-time jobs. I put a lot of them through bankruptcy after they lost their jobs and homes, etc. How do we propose to collect enough taxes to dig out of the national debt pit while driving down the earning capacity, and tax payments, of what used to be much of our middle class? How do you expect these people to make enough to pay off their non-dischargeable student loans and other massive debt? They can’t. Student loans are just one of the next bubbles to burst. Another small problem: Only a very, very small percentage of even the conscientious American students with high intelligence have the specific native intelligence and talent to succeed in STEM and computer fields even when they pay well. Fewer male than female high school grads are going to college because the return just isn’t there. I’m older than most of you and remember when this country went on its big move to push everybody into engineering. I tried, and only MIT was smart enough to turn me down. It sort of worked for awhile. Then we started seeing pages and pages of ads for engineers that said “no aerospace experience need apply.” Age. Etc. discrimination laws are impossible to enforce most of the time and we’re scrapping huge chunks of intelligent younger, much less older, college grads regardless of major. Why do you think almost half of American adults are on some kind of welfare payments, a situation we cannot possibly sustain financially and which destroys everything this country used to stand for.
People start off being able to reason, school stomps it out of most of them:
http://www.alisongopnik.com/TheScientistInTheCrib.htm
Well-rounded (or rather, healthy, which does not always mean being perfectly rounded) human beings are more likely to come out of healthy communities and healthy families...
Some other links;
"The Underground History of American Education" by 1991 NYS Teacher of
the Year John Taylor Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
"The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"State Controlled Consciousness" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream" by Noam Chomsky
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
"University Secrets:Your Guide to Surviving a College Education" by
Robert D. Honigman
http://web.archive.org/web/20060707100524/www.universitysecrets.com/us.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20060710145531/www.universitysecrets.com/table.htm
"The Kept University"
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/03/press.htm
"In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness " by Chris
Mercogliano, who spent thirty-five years teaching at the Albany Free School
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm
"Teach Your Own" by John Holt (and other books)
http://www.holtgws.com/
"The Teenage Liberation Handbook" by Grace Llewellyn (and other books)
http://gracellewellyn.com/
"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and Anarchist Resistance" By Matt Hern
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Compulsory-Schooling-AnarchistMar03.htm
"Sustainable Education" by Jerry Mintz
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1
"Federated Learning Communities"
http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-1/learning.html
http://www.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.