This is my story as well, I’m just in a different field than your brother. I didn’t want to go to college so much as college was What You Do after high school. It took me way too many years to figure this out. The only reason I have a degree is that by the time I figured out there were other options between sitting in a cubicle and flipping burgers, I was a senior, and dropping out with one semester to go would have been stupid.
Since I do have a college degree, I think I’m more than qualified to say that college is not for everyone, even for those who can (eventually) finish it.
Recently, the Boston newspapers covered the story of a Boston College (law school student) who wanted his money back.
He was discouraged about the job market for lawyers, and felt his $180,000 investment would not pay off (in the form of a high-paying lawyer position).
Now, I can sympathize to certain extent- $180,000 is a big chunk of money.
And, there seems to be s surplus of lawyers.
So, even though this is common knowledge, he invested the time and money.
Should he be able to get his money back?
Sadly, though, that’s really what the expectation is for so much higher education–especially law school, medical school, or MBA programs. It’s a sense of self-entitlement stemming from the ability to pay for admission, and the idea that maybe your mind is just too mediocre to justify six figures escapes them.
I definitely agree that college is not for everyone, and no I don’t mean “It’s for my kids, but not your kids” I didn’t go to college because my parents forced it on me. I went because I really love learning, reading and all things academia. I’ve always loved school so college was a natural choice for me. Pick a random high school student and ask them how they feel about school and I guarantee you will not get that response. The fact is some kids are not really suited to a classroom setting. If my daughter loves school and wants to go to college, great for her! If she dislikes school and can’t stand the thought of sitting in a classroom for 4 years, but has a passion for hairdressing, I would tell her to go for it. My only stipulation is that she pick something she likes and does it well. And before you jump on me with the "what if…"s, I would not be so happy about her working at McDonalds or something because I don’t see that as a job that people really go into because they have a passion for it, it is something you do because you don’t have the qualifications to do anything else and don’t want to put in the work to earn those qualifications. It is settling, and my only wish for her is that she does not settle for anything less than what she loves.
I don’t think that there is very much room for people without college educations in 20 years. We are automating so much that relatively unskilled labor can perform most of the work involved in building a house.
You do not need college to be an entrepreneur
You do not need college to be a skilled tradesman
You do not need college to be a computer programmer
You do not need college to be a salesman
You do not need college to be a realtor
You do not need college to be a office manager
You do not need college to be a customer service rep
You do not need college to be a policeman
You do not need college to be a fireman
etc.
None of those jobs are going away.
College may help with some of those things, but when you factor in expense of college, plus the opportunity cost of not working for four years, it makes sense to think carefully about what their plans are.
Other than “customer service rep” and “office manager” all of those jobs pay very well (computer programmer, skilled trandesman) or offer prestige + guaranteed pay increases+ tasty pensions (police officer/firefighter), or have tons of upside for a go-getter (entrepreneur, realtor, salesman).
You keep living in aspirationland, I’ll deal in reality.
**17 million **people have bachelor’s degrees, but hold jobs that do not require them. Cite. **That’s about 10% of the entire workforce.
**
That’s half-a-million customer service reps who are stuck trying to pay off student loans on $30K a year. Over half-a-million secretaries, 300,000 waitresses, and 100,000 janitors with bachelor’s degrees they didn’t need.
You can quibble with some of those numbers – a few may be second jobs, and some may be people who knew full well that their BA in Art History was something that wouldn’t pay off financially, and some may be recent graduates who are just killing time before getting started in a “real” career. But it’s obvious that millions upon millions of people go to college expecting it to lead to a better career, and are getting no such thing. And we aren’t even beginning to address the even larger number of people with two-year degrees they didn’t need, or worst of all, those with “some college.” Those are people that have been fucked over by the “everyone should go to college” myth. Even worse, it’s a safe bet that those people are disproportionately poor and/or minority.
The US is very much in need of people with education in skilled and technical subjects.
The US definitively does *not *need people with “a college degree” in any random subject.
The “experts” who say that we do are usually part of the education industry, and should be taken as seriously as car salesmen telling you chicks will dig you if you’ll just buy a new car.
I’m curious what people actually expect college to do for them? Do they expect to come out with a degree and just be magically handed some high paying job?
And who decides which jobs “need” a college degree (other than the employer)? Maybe a Banana Republic clerk doesn’t need more than a GED, but what about someone selling more complex products to major industries? furt, your “reality” is that because some percentage of students attended college and “failed” to achieve a job of sufficient salary and stature, they should not have attempted college in the first place.
Or more to the point, does it necessarily mean that they don’t want a job that doesn’t “require” a degree? If only 15% of “secretaries” (a title that can refer to a wide range of responsibilities) have 4-year degrees, I don’t think that necessarily means we’re “over-educating” the country.
It says as much about our economy as our educational needs. But to institute a teleological determination for educational need will only inflexibly limit the overall productivity of the economy.
It’s like shutting down your store because you think it should have zero overhead.
If the OP was “really expensive private college is not for everyone” then I’d be totally on board.
But the number of jobs available to high school grads and college drop outs is only going to shrink in the next 20 years and the number of jobs that require at least a college degree are going to grow.
This is about as close to certainty as you can get when it comes to predicting the future.
The problem I have with college for everyone is that in order meet the many goals thrust upon them schools are dumbing down their courses.
Not so long ago I was a general manager / plant manager for the Westinghouse Electric Corp… We had approximately 100 college educated professionals of which about 60 were engineers.
My staff and I were astonished at how ill prepared and incapable many of our new hires were, and when, even after a large investment in training, we eventually had to let a lot of them go it caused much ill will and some nasty legal problems.
It also caused some ruined lives, at least in the short term.
Read the cite – the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And note that “corporate purchasing” is not on the list. “Janitor” is.
Why is “failed” in scare quotes?
1)Aspiration for a better career is by far the most common reason students go to college. While we might wish they were all seeking intellectual broadening, very few are, and having taught for a decade, I can assure you that many actively avoid said broadening at all costs.
2)Tens of millions of students who enroll do in fact fail to secure careers that would have been unavailable to them without college.
In the process, many of them incur significant debt, and spend valuable time.
So, yes, millions of people would have been better off if they had never attempted college in the first place.
Because you are arbitrarily deciding what is a “good” or “bad” job.
In spite of their student loan debt, I think very few people are not better off having gone to college.
Also, where are those “millions of students” in 5, 10, 20 years after graduation? Having a degree makes you a potentially better candidate for jobs and promotions than someone without a degree.
Not at all. IMO, so long as it’s honest work and pays your bills, any job is not a good job. Never said otherwise. You were the one that responded dismissively to a list of perfectly good jobs one can obtain without college.
However, If a student goes to college for the specific reason of getting a better career than they could have otherwise, and ten years after graduation they’re a mailman or a janitor, than by their own criteria they’ve failed, since those are jobs that do not require college. That’s not a knock on the job at all; its a knock on the people who say there are no good jobs without a degree.
Of course, they may later say they’re glad they went for other reasons; but clearly they failed to achieve their stated goals. The fact that people may grow from their mistakes is not a rationale to encourage mistake-making.
And I think a lot of people aren’t. Whee for bald assertions!
They are in those jobs listed. Some of those degreed bartenders may have become paralegals; but it also seems likely that some paralegals lost their jobs and had to become bartenders. We can speculate back and forth.
What I do know is that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 17 million people with college degrees holding jobs that do not require them. I also know that, according to the Census Bureau, 33 million Americans over 25 are listed as “some college, no degree.” Put those two together and you’re near 1/4 of all adult Americans who have more education than they needed for their career.
Let me repeat that: 1/4 of all adult Americans have more education than they needed for their career.
Common sense and an elementary understanding of what it is people actually go to college for (and not what you or I might wish they went to college for) leads to the inescapable conclusion that among those ~45 million people, there are a lot who would have been better served by not going to college in the first place.
As I keep telling you, your analysis is flawed. You are looking at a snapshop taken in the worst job market in 50 years and drawing an erroneous conclusion.
Also from the BLS, here are unemployment rates by education:
Less than a high school diploma: 13.8%
High school graduate, no college: 10.1%
Some college or associate degree: 8.3%
Bachelor’s degree or higher: 4.5%
Even if they are underemployed, having a degree makes you more competetive.