I made a comment about the quadrivium and trivium to an idiot supervisor with a degree in history and the history of education and they had absolutely no clue what I was talking about. If someone who has a degree in the the history of the educational process that I made a reference to MAJOR COMPONENTS OF at the time of their field of study, what the frell did they waste 6 years upon? This ‘rhodes scholar’ that ‘went to Oxford for 3 years’ and has no clue about the field they were studying really needs to have their degree removed.
I have more education thanks to being an avid autodidact than many people actually with a degree [mainly because they stopped learning long ago and I read everything I can get my grubby paws on, and hang out online where there are reasonably intelligent people to talk with] though I will admit that I am attempting to go back to school and get a doctorate in archeology because I would like to write about it for the popular book trade, and not put in the usual bullshit errors.
But being a paleontologist or an archeologist or a museum curator or even a college professor in a liberal arts field is also a glamor job - there are very few of those positions - and while they don’t generally command the big bucks of being a pro athlete - it is similarly unlikely you will get a job.
If a History major doesn’t realize that very few people are employed as Historians (my minor was History) - shame on them. I don’t see that they have any more (or less) of a standing for complaints than someone who spent 18 years getting up at 3am for ice time - then didn’t even get a college scholarship.
Maybe that is part of the problem with business today. You have a great deal of people who are educated beyond their capabilities. They learn to be extremely articulate and convincing about topics they really have little to no understanding of. They are placed in charge of technical people who actually know how to do things but are deamed too “lacking soft skills” to be in charge themselves. And those technical people are forced to deal with the frustration of trying to convert half-baked fantasy into reality and they receive the blame when they can’t.
I think too many 22 year old college grads think that when they come out of school, they should be in these high-level positions lending their insight to people. The reality is that they don’t have enough knowledge or experience to lend any insight on anything. Their role is to perform grunt work and analysis until they get to a point where they understand the context.
I work at an Air Force Base. For civil servants, the pay is defined by the “GS” system. The more work experience you have, and the more schooling you have, the higher your GS level (and hence pay) will be.
My government sponsor is a GS level 9. He is 52 years old and has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He cannot advance to GS 10 unless he gets a master’s degree. So for the past year he has been taking online classes in an effort to get it.
Eh, I dunno. I know plenty of people with BS’s in engineering, and they have no trouble finding employment.
I’m 42. Up until last year I “only” had a BSEE. I have never been without a job and have always been well compensated. Nothing changed after I got my MSEE last year. I’m not complaining or anything; as mentioned, I’m paid pretty well. I’m just not sure why I got it. I think about all the time I spent studying when I *could *have been doing something else (e.g spending time with the family). Not sure if it was really worth it.
I am currently pursuing a BA in sociology, and have no illusions that it will do anything for me except perhaps enable me to get some kind of government job or paper-pusher position. That’s ok, because I’m already working a job I love in a completely unrelated field. There are people I work with, who have my exact position, who have advanced degrees and TONS of debt, and it makes me very sad to see them struggling. One co-worker, who got his masters in museum education, told me that he wishes more than anything that he had that time and money back. Sure, he is working in a museum now, but he’s not getting paid anywhere NEAR what is necessary to recoup his losses, and he could have just as easily gotten this job with a high school education. I realize we are talking about PhDs, but I don’t know how different that is. What does a PhD qualify you to do, besides teaching, that a Masters doesn’t? I mean in the liberal arts field here (and FWIW, where I go to school, math and science are completely different schools. Our school of lib. arts includes sociology, political science, economics, English, history, psychology, religious studies, and women’s studies. I feel like any degree in math or science is pretty marketable, and a big part of that may be that those areas of study don’t have the glut of students that lib. arts does. I feel like a lot of people go into liberal arts because they don’t feel they have the ability to do a lot of higher level math and science. That’s certainly a big reason why I chose it. If I had more time to devote to it and weren’t scared to death of math, I’d have pursued a degree in science.)
This reminds me of a thread that was around here a looooong time ago about law school- has it just become the place where liberal arts-minded people end up because they panic about not being employable?
