College costs, loans and value

[msmith537]

@ThisUsernameIsForbidden

Are you sure you are not just using the term ‘strawman’ to discredit my post, without my propping up a strawman?

“Problem”? If you go back and look at my original reply, you would see that I’m commenting on the problem of youths and career changers and proper guidance. Do you understand now, or are we going to go back and forth with you attempting to discredit my posts without you having any idea of what I am talking about?

It’s a strawman in that it sounds sort of vague to me. Like there is a huge problem with students or job changers not being aware of what the long term options are for a particular career. There’s nothing to “discredit” because you haven’t really established any sort of underlying support.

Regardless, I don’t think what you are asking for is particularly useful or possible. No one has a crystal ball that can tell you “if you study architecture, you will earn X while if you study finance you will earn Y”. There’s no way to know if that person will eek out a living for $45k a year designing homes in Idaho or if they will be the next Frank Gehry.

And personally, I don’t hold much stock in what “educational professionals” have to say anyway. What does a schoolteacher making $45k a year know about, well, anything other than a career in the local education system?

And not to mention, my career as a technology consultant largely did not even exist in the late 80s when I was in high school. At least not to the extent that it did a decade later where computers were something that everyone wanted to get into. So who would have steered me into this career in 1989?
One of the “problems” IMHO, is that people are lazy and entitled. People say shit like they “want to do what they love”, “don’t want to be a cog in some big corporation” or “college isn’t there to teach you a ‘trade’”. All that is bullshit. College is there to provide 4 years of opportunity to learn skills and education that will help you in the real world. And in the real world, people need jobs. And unless you plan to start your own business, that job will likely be for an already established company looking to fill one of it’s junior-est level positions.

So unless you are specifically studying for particular career or industry (i.e. engineering, teaching, graphic design, architecture, law, medicine, computers), you had best study for one of the main functional areas that exist in any company (accounting, finance, marketing, IT, operations, HR). Or you best be charming enough to get into sales.

But again, it’s not reasonable to expect that there is any way someone can map out a career path of 10-20 or longer years for you in high school.

[ThisUsernameIsForbidden]

I tend to not like replys with multiple quotes in them because it tends to get abused as people pick sentences out of context, but you are discussing several different unrelated things so I make an exception.

It’s a strawman in that it sounds sort of vague to me. Like there is a huge problem with students or job changers not being aware of what the long term options are for a particular career. There’s nothing to “discredit” because you haven’t really established any sort of underlying support.

That’s not a strawman, but I understand you feel that my dissertation on career guidance for students and career changers is not specific enough. Ok, no problem with that. The “support” as you call it is the simple fact that career guidance is useful. Which brings me to your next statement.

Regardless, I don’t think what you are asking for is particularly useful or possible. No one has a crystal ball that can tell you “if you study architecture, you will earn X while if you study finance you will earn Y”. There’s no way to know if that person will eek out a living for $45k a year designing homes in Idaho or if they will be the next Frank Gehry.

Career counselors don’t have pinpoint accuracy about the future, but they can reveal information about careers like unemployment rate, salary, outlooks according to BLS, prospects given aptitude, etc. That’s the kind of info people need. I’m not sure why you think this is unhelpful.

And personally, I don’t hold much stock in what “educational professionals” have to say anyway. What does a schoolteacher making $45k a year know about, well, anything other than a career in the local education system?

Some schoolteachers might not know anything about career paths for students but some do, and I’m more talking about guidance counselors and career counselors that are competent, not some incompetent boob who doesn’t know anything about what options the people they are supposed to be serving have. Further, what kind of information does a high school student have about careers? For that matter, there does seem to be a huge problem with career guidance, just by looking at the huge amount of student debt and unemployment; and I think the problem stems from a lack of guidance, not from hubris on the part of individuals.

[msmith537]

@ThisUsernameIsForbidden

Career counselors don’t have pinpoint accuracy about the future, but they can reveal information about careers like unemployment rate, salary, outlooks according to BLS, prospects given aptitude, etc. That’s the kind of info people need. I’m not sure why you think this is unhelpful.

As I said, they simply can’t tell you what those careers will be like or what careers will be in demand 5-10 years from now when it will actually matter. Plus at that age, you should be painting your career in such broad strokes that it shouldn’t matter.

And between Indeed, Dice.com, Monster.com, Careerbuilder, LinkedIn, Businessweek.com, WSJ.com, FT.com, Glassdoor, Salary.com, Vault.com, PayScale.com, BLS.gov and companies and colleges own web sites, do you think there is a shortage of free information about colleges and careers?

I didn’t have any of that growing up.
Maybe you could give a specific example of what a guidance counsellor might tell a prospective student who is trying to pick a major?