It’s not as simple as that. The number and level of degrees held by employees and owners is seen as adding value to businesses, and a marketing advantage that adds value to products. It’s just another part of the system.
Sure it is. I have no truck with a chemical company that says it needs qualified chemists to do its chemistry. However, there is absolutely no reason that a bachelor’s degree (or even an associate-level degree) is required to do what most office monkeys do. There’s certainly no value added; how does the customer even know what the qualifications of the secondary and tertiary employees are?
I’m starting to wonder if I should do a poll; “do you want to see Mr. Nylock with his shirt off?” I mean, I’m assuming, like msmith537 is, that there would be little interest. If the majority answer yes, however, I will post a pic. I think that anyone reading the recent thread on three piece suits would vote “no”. I think a weighty question such as this can’t go by unchallenged.
The downward trend began in 2004, long before the recession. And if you really think things are looking better now, in the current “improving” economy, I’d be happy to make a wager on it. $100 says the number doesn’t drop with the 2011 cohort.
You don’t weed out individuals. But you do:
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Emphasize that the skilled trades are honorable, important, needed, and remunerative. Speaking as a teacher of college freshmen, many do not know this. Support vocational training.
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Emphasize that while education is invaluable for everyone, a college degree is an investment, and that students need to have a plan for repayment. Speaking as a teacher of college freshmen, most do not have this.
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Close down government-run colleges and universities with unacceptably low graduation rates – there are loads of them where under 25% finish. The last two presidents have accepted that some K-12 schools are just FUBAR and need to go away … same logic here.
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Use the bully pulpit to shame private schools that do the same. Obama has done this, but only if the schools are for-profit; there are plenty of non-profits that are just as bad. Many of these schools prey on minorities.
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Move towards at least partial privitization of the student loan industry. For political reasons, no bureaucracy is going to tell a minority 19 year old with a 900 SAT and 2.5 GPA that he isn’t college material. A bank will. Require that 10% of student loans be privately financed at market rates. In return, the banks will give students a report explaining their risk profile – i.e. students with your grades in your major at your school are estimated to earn X at graduation and default Y% of the time. Some will proceed in the face of data, but some will reconsider.
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Move aggressively to support the expansion of online learning to cut costs.
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Encourage the movement toward competency testing as opposed to the one-size-fits-all four-year degree.
“Aside from the bankruptcy and poverty that came afterwards and ruined my life for years, the nine months I spent travelling through Europe on credit cards really made me a much more rounded person.”
Probably about the same number of new college grads that will take their place. Actually, a little less than that, since the number is rising.
I never said that. And my attitude is the opposite of elitist. I’m one of those poor kids. My family was in the bottom quintile, and I was the first kid in my extended family to go to college. I did it by working for three years after high school first, then going to a 2-year college, then transferring to a larger 4-year. It was the most affordable route, and even so it required working 20 hours per week and during all vacation time to make it through. Even so, I wound up with $25,000 in student loans, and that hung around my neck like a millstone for nearly a decade before I could pay it off. Luckily I studied engineering, so I managed a good paying job. I think had I wandered through college taking random courses to ‘broaden my education’ and graduated with a B.A. or a general B.Sc, it might have destroyed my life, or at least substantially damaged it. Certainly today it would if I needed five times the student loans to follow that course.
I think that it’s the upper middle classes who have concocted a vision of college as a place you go to ‘find yourself’, socialize, broaden your education, become a ‘world citizen’, and all that stuff. Those are upper middle class values, and for the poor they are an unaffordable luxury. The rich kids went to Florida for spring break. Us poor kids signed up for extra shifts at work. The rich kids had fraternities and weekend parties and all kinds of social events. The poor kids go to school, then go home and put on their work clothes and put in an evening shift.
But we pushed so many kids into going to college that we drove tuition and living costs through the roof, making the ‘work your way through’ path nearly impossible. So to be magnanimous, we offer the poor enough rope to hang themselves in the form of student loans, and we tell them that it doesn’t matter what they take in college. The ones who take that message to heart load themselves up with a lifetime of debt and come out of college unemployable. That’s not my definition of helping the poor.
We should do everything we can to help gifted poor students go to college. We should tie student aid for poor people to their choice of faculty, or help build workshare and co-op programs. Instead of building climbing walls and Olympic pools, we should be telling public institutions to be more austere. We don’t need diversity czars or million-dollar salaried ‘athletic directors’.
The hope for the poor lies in 2-year colleges, apprenticeships, scholarships, job sponsorships, and online education. We need to strengthen all of those systems and stop kidding ourselves that we’re helping the poor by herding them into debt and useless degrees.
I wasn’t talking about people with specialized measureable technical skills. And I agree that a degree is often unneccesary for the job. The value is added by perception of those considering it, and they find out because the businesses advertise the number of degree-holders in their employ, breaking it down by level of degree often. Value is usually determined by MBA types who have no grasp of the actual work product involved. They need to measure in quantifiable terms even if the accuracy and precision of the measurement is questionable. The good ones will admit it, they know they are in the business of measuring perception.
I think it’s a good idea. The poll will likely generate more meaningful debate than you find in this forum.
I will have my master’s degree in psychology next March. I will owe close to 80,000 in student loans by then. I am currently unemployed. Is college worth it? I will let you know. Lol. Hopefully I can find full time employment after graduating next year. If not, six months later the first student loan payment will be due (1000 per month). Yes this is outrageous and I doubt I will be able to pay that even if I do find full time employment by then. If it does not happen I will most likely pursue my doctorate: reason one -to avoid defaulting on the student loan, reason two- maybe a phd or psyd will guarantee me a future job. So you tell me…it is worth it? I look forward to reading other’s opinions and stories.
The 2011 cohort graduated near the peak of the job crisis. I’ll make a bet with you for the 2013 cohort.
What state colleges and universities have graduation rates below 25%? 
I’m an MBA in 3 weeks … there are so many college grads running around now that it doesn’t hurt to require it. Yes, the degree is meaningless, but at least it is a signal that the person can show up on time occasionally. We may even pay $1 more an hour for the degree in an effort to get a better caliber of employee.
Of course that doesn’t mean the extra $1 an hour is worth them going $40,000 in debt, but that isn’t the employer’s problem…
Done.
Here’s a slideshow. http://money.msn.com/college-savings/11-worst-public-university-grad-rates
here’s an article http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_dropout_factories.php
There’s a full list somewhere on http://nces.ed.gov
A college education is only worth walking through the door for the 1st job at whatever level you choose to start at.
Get on with it in 5 years and no one cares about what school you went to. Be it East Bum Fuck U or an Ivy League school. From that point on it is your performance in the work place that determines your outcome in the world.
Holy shit. Ohio has some 'splainin to do.
That may depend on what kind of college education you’re talking about: professional training, or a liberal arts education. I’ve heard it claimed that the value of the latter really reveals itself in the longer term, when you have to learn and adapt and manage other people. Here’s one somewhat relevant cite.
You’re right that, in the long run, what matters is what you’ve shown you can do, not what you graduated from. But that doesn’t mean your college education doesn’t have value; it just means that its value depends on what’s in your head, not on what’s on your diploma.
Assuming that you are interested in clinical, it’s supposed to have a 12% growth rate over the next 8 years. Median pay is $70K/year. That’s close to $6000/month once you’re at median. After taxes, that is probably closer to $5000. Then you lose $1000 to student loans. You are looking at anywhere from 4-6 years more of education beyond the year you have left toward your Master’s. I am assuming your Ph.D. will be next to free since you typically trade teaching or research for tuition and a stipend (about the salary you earn working at Starbuck’s).
All the above is true if only if you can get in: So, are you good at it? Are you near the top of your class? Are you at a top 100 school in the world? I wouldn’t worry about it if you say yes to all questions. If you don’t think your job prospects are good, if you feel you’re mediocre or poor relative to your peers, if your master’s is from some local school with an unexciting program, I’d say that you are likely to be disappointed by what you get from 6+ more years of education.
What do you think most “office monkeys” do? Most companies I’ve been around have people working in specific roles requiring specific skill sets like accounting, finance, marketing, IT and so on. Other than maybe the office admin who only needs to know how to answer phones, forward emails and type in Word, there really aren’t a whole lot of corporate jobs I can think of that don’t require some education in a particular field.
Maybe one of the problems is that people go to college thinking some company will hire them to do some nebulous “office monkey” work with no understanding what actual jobs are?
What is an “MBA type”? Is that different from someone who simply has an MBA? I suppose as an MBA with an undergrad in Engineering, I have a stronger “grasp of actual work product” than a Liberal Arts / MBA combo which might be more abstract. Then again, it could also be because my getting my hands dirty and figuring out how stuff works is in my nature.
I’m not sure why people hate on MBAs so much. Wouldn’t you want your manager to have actually…oh I don’t know…actually studied business and management for a couple of years?
Your next employer doesn’t really know your performance at your last employer, does he? A top school is a signal that it might have been good.
And there is a halo effect. People are going to assume you know what you are talking about if you came out of a top school. They might be wrong, but the assumption is there. Plus top schools have good alumni clubs which can be a good means of networking.
Not to mention that getting in the door at a top company is easier if you come from a top school. I have to get special permission to speak to a student at a school not on our list, even a good one. Forget it if the student is at a crappy school. And it is easier to get a job at another top company if you are already in one, and easier to go down a level than go up a level.
It’s the stereotype for MBAs who have only abstract or high level knowledge of business management without any detailed knowledge of a specific business’s means of production. The kind with an undergraduate degree in Business Management and no desire to get their hands dirty. Since they don’t start out in high level management positions they are a pain in the ass to people who are actually producing. I said ‘types’ because it’s more of an attitude than the degree.
Everybody gets hated on by somebody, MBAs tend to be in positions of power so will get hated more. Don’t take it personally.
Exclusively, no. Also, I don’t find MBAs learn much about the management of people (if you can count engineers as people). YMMV.
There is another reason. Most people are really bad at interviewing. It appears that in many companies HR people who don’t know what the job entails do the interviewing and selecting. A college degree is a signal of superiority to those who aren’t capable of actually evaluating talent. I’m not arguing that it is a good signal, but a person hiring a college grad has a good excuse if they screw up.
Well that brings up the topic of HR degrees. Something the world would be better off without.