Faking it til you make it (now with MOAR college entrance exams)

Liberal Arts degrees get shit on but strong writing skills and the ability to think critically and are only going to continue to increase in demand as technology automates more and more technical jobs. The problem is that a Liberal Arts degree doesn't immediately lend itself to a high-paying job right after graduation like a lot of STEM degrees do, and when you're staring at a mountain of debt the willingness of graduates to start at the bottom and work their way up goes way down. And speaking of debt, the bigger problem isn't that people are getting the wrong degrees, it's that idiots want to go to out of state Prestigious Private Rural College Nobody's Ever Heard Of for $50,000 per year instead of their local stage college for a fifth of the cost while still likely receiving at least 80% as good of education. It did a cost breakdown between the state university I got my undergrad from and the same degree from a prestigious "elite" university in a small down an hour south of where I live and the degree from that school would've cost eight times (~30k vs. ~240k) mine. It's stupid.

 

Usually the only people who get careers in those fields are the professors who teach those useless courses.

 

I graduated high school in 2004. The top 10 students in my class by numeric average were called up to the stage with the valedictorian, who got to speak. Of the top 10 students in my class, 5 went to UGA, 1 went to Georgia Tech, and the other 4 went out of state. That high number of elite students staying in state may have had something to do with the HOPE scholarship, which at the time paid full tuition and half of book costs for any student at a public school in Georgia who kept a 3.0 GPA or better. I know that in the span of just a few years UGA had gone to accepting pretty much anyone to requiring about a 3.5 on average (I got rejected from there with a 3.34, 86 numeric average, and a 1200 on my SAT).

Still, I have to ask: is there really that much pressure on the smartest high school students to go to the most elite schools? And is anyone who can actually get into MIT really going to have to pay a whole lot out of their or their parents own money or take out loans?

Also, I went out with a girl a few years ago who was an English major and was 3 years out of school but was working as a sales analyst. It's possible that she had a connection or took a Udemy course or something similar, but I still think that an English major will become more valuable in the future. I still wouldn't recommend it as a major, and I know that "sales analyst" is the type of job that can technically probably be taught to anyone who is willing to learn, but I thought that I'd point out that one example.

 

Yes.

My high school was pretty small, and there was one room where every senior had a star and the colleges that had accepted them were written on it. Peer pressure, just a tad. No trade schools anywhere. No community colleges. It wasn't the greatest thing if you only got accepted to public universities, and you got made fun of if you were staying local.

I went to the school that offered me the most scholarship money and after switching majors about 5 times (transfer, surgery, then brain tumor knocked out my writing ability for a semester or two) I ended up with a degree in public speaking that I didn't use for over a decade until I had to officiate a wedding about two weeks ago.

I've literally gotten more use out of the ministry credentials I got online, for free, in about 5 minutes, than I have out of a degree that took me 5 years and enough money to make my head hurt.

 

My perspective:
In the 1960s high school changed from teaching teenagers how to be productive members of society to places that prepared teenagers for college. Most all shop, home ec, driver's ed and every other non-STEM programs have been killed off and there's an over emphasis on standardized testing. If you don't fit the college mold, you're on your own to figure it out.

I graduated in 1999 with a degree in history. I didn't plan it this way, but I lucked out; I was in ROTC and went straight into the military. The critical thinking and writing skills I developed because of my degree helped immensely throughout my professional career. Over the years I've worked with people with STEM degrees who while very bright couldn't write or articulate a point if their life depended on it. That said, I still think I lucked out and got lucky...none of it was planned. I joined the military because I wanted to fly and it helped pay for school. My vision sucks and I became an analyst (still got to work around jets and eventually flew as a mission crewman)

My wife has a PhD in geology, but works as a data analyst because she was sick of writing soft money proposals and doesn't want to go back to oil & gas.

Between the two of us, she's much more marketable based on her degree alone.

When my kid(s) hit college age, the discussion will revolve around get an education that is well rounded. Whether ichat means college and/or trade school. Also, in something they enjoy AND is a marketable skill.

 

College is what you make of it, largely. I think the issue is on two sides: fewer jobs and fewer employers (labor monopsony), means that fewer people get jobs using the skills they learned in college. However, I can say that I've seen an explosion in trade grad schools for more specific skills like GIS, Emergency Management, etc. So, the universities are trying to catch up to the job market, at least in some areas. Previously, I think a master's in GIS (one of my staff had one) would have been a degree in geography or cartography and been ridiculed.

The other side is far too many people go to college for it to be a clear path to middle class. I recall my ex working in a call center, which objectively doesn't require shit to do well. Read the script and take notes. Half of the employees faked a degree on their resume, and with turnover at 70% a year, who the fuck would bother to check? The half that actually had a degree, typically either had a party certificate from Keg State, or an online degree from somewhere like Phoenix. I remember visiting Clemson in high school and seeing "classes" with 400 kids in it. The class was architecture...I realized we don't need that many architects, the vast majority of them are too stupid to be one in the first place, and there's not enough architecture firms hiring.

I also recall a couple of studies claiming that the 2008 recession caused a kind of bump, because kids who couldn't work went to school, riding out the rough years. Well, that recession also meant the geriatrics lost their retirement and postponed it, so now you have boomers working well into their 70s, occupying jobs longer, delaying the promotion chain. This process ("Sam won't retire, so we keep everyone junior in the same chair longer, so the entry level guy making nothing is 25 and has been with us for 3 years, with no promotion in sight") fucks over the young college grad the worst, because they entered the job market with the highest levels of student debt AND a few short years later, an exaggerated housing market with a dearth of starter homes.

However, I think for most individuals, this is the "if a bear is chasing us, I don't have to outrun the bear, I have to outrun YOU" scenario. It's whatever is within MY range to set ME apart, that's the best option. When applied en masse, we see a bunch of fucktards sporting extended credentials that don't mean much.