is college overrated? How many people that go to college actually get a blue collar job? should someone actually waste their time at this blood sucking corporation? College degrees don’t really matter that much. They primarily prepare you for the real world or job your going to do, but if you are already prepared then you don’t need college. All bosses care about is what you can produce. You just need to know what you’re doing and be the best at what you do.
Do you really think at 18 a person is “prepared for the real world”?
Do you actually know anything about “working at a blood sucking corporation”? Specifically, “generic cubicle worker” isn’t a job. People go to work in corporations to perform jobs in engineering, accounting, marketing, finance, technology and so on. Can’t do any of that without a degree.
Personally I find uneducated people dull and boring. Yes they may be interesting from an 18 year olds perspective but not an adults.
Let’s put it this way, you can’t just apply at a hospital/court/school to be a doctor/lawyer/teacher now can you? So, for some, it isn’t over-rated. Of course, for Mrs Liberal Arts it probably is.
I respect college education (as defined in the USA) for it’s hopeful attempt at teaching critical thought.
But outside of that and some ‘trade school’ college courses I’ve often thought that far more people go to college than need to. Hell, I know that my degree has done me little good in the world as large and I have little doubt that most degrees end up being of little use to the possessors.
Of course, the current office-job climate of a degree being a ‘working card’ (in which a degree merely indicates to some employers that a person in employable compared to someone without a degree) makes it sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If one can’t work without a degree than one must get a degree to work.
But honestly, as an employer I might easily choose someone with 2-3 years experience in field over a kid fresh out of school with a degree in field.
Well, it would help to know what it is you want to do with your life. If we knew that we could probably come to a general conclusion about whether or not college is necessary.
But if you still have no idea what you want to do, then yes, I recommend going to college (at least to start getting the basics out of the way).
P.S. Your original post is a little convoluted, but I think you meant to say “white collar job”.
Like a lot of things in life, you get more from college the more you put into it. Do your homework up front: What majors are in demand? Can you see yourself in a job for that major?
Overall though, I believe that regardless of you major, you have a better chance at earning a higher salary/wage if you go to college than if you do not.
On average, more education leads to greater lifetime income, but there is a lot to be said for starting young at a skilled trade in a unionized environment rather than staring later as a general office employee with a high education debt load to pay off.
Put me in the camp for pursuing a career that you enjoy. If it requires higher education, then take it. If it does not, then get on with the career, but try to take part time courses over the years for personal development, for quite apart from career training, a university education tends to make for more educated and interesting people.
I disagree with this a little bit. I find stupid people dull and boring, but lots of bright, interesting people from my generation couldn’t find the resources to go to college, and not a few good people from my parents and grandparents’ generation didn’t have the resources to finish high school.
As for the OP, I suppose it depends. If you get your degree in Elizabethan Poetry after four years of drinking and partying and wind up working on a loading dock, then yeah, college was probably wasted on you.
If you wind up a heart surgeon, saving lives, making money and raising kids with your beautiful wife whom you met at a math fraternity dance, then it wasn’t.
You could ask the same question about military service, working in a corporation, or being a nurse. What you get out of it will depend on your goals, abilities, and effort.
You’re failing physics, aren’t you?
I guess the key phrase in your rant is “if you’re already prepared”. Very few people are these days. Unless you’re a pro athlete or have somehow acquired mad skillz while in high school, then what are you actually prepared for? Certainly not a technical job. And most employers are going to want to see a diploma, if not for the skills and education, then at least for evidence that you have the gumption to stick to something for a few years and accomplish it. Granted, there are a few famous college drop-outs like Bill Gates who have done fabulously well for themselves. So if you have some kind of obsessive hobby that could be turned into gold, then go for it. Otherwise, a college education is probably key to a decent white collar career.
A few caveats – you may not want a decent white collar career. Plumbers and electricians make good money. You still have to go to a trade school and/or an apprenticeship first.
Some people are just not ready for college at 18. It might be worth taking a year or three off, working or travelling. That might motivate you to go back and get the degree. Or, you might find a path that doesn’t require it. Just don’t burn any bridges in the process of finding out.
I think the cost of college to earn some degree programs with the name brand value of some university’s diploma is completely overvalued, absolutely.
But as for overrated educational and social experience, you get out of college whatever you put into it, so potentially it’s not overrated if your espectations are realistic.
Decades ago my uncle moved from Philadelphia to L.A. After a long, unsuccessful job search, he added a Bachelor of Arts degree, Temple University to his resume. Keep in mind, the closest he’d been to a Temple classroom was driving down Broad Street.
Not long after, he got a nice office job with a company that apparently doesn’t check resumes too closely. He was very successful in his new job. So in his case, strictly speaking, college was unnecessary to a career.
Personally, I knew plenty of dim-bulbs in college who were mostly passing time, doing the bare minimum to get their Liberal Arts degree, because that piece of paper is the ticket to a higher paying career. A good friend of mine was promised a nice career in the local Health Care system by a prominent aunt, all he had to to was get a degree in anything. He got his degree in Psychology (Penn State is a Psych major factory) and is happily employed, and doing quite well.
College doesn’t make a dumb person smart. It can be an incredibly enriching experience, or a waste of time, depending on the person. I think in the US we tend to over-value a college degree. Technical and Trade schools are seen as “less” of an accomplishment, when in many cases, the student has actually achieved more than a four year university drone.
In my case college was worth it, if for no other reason than it was where I met my wife!
College probably won’t help you much when you are getting your first job or two.
But without college- any college, in just about any field- you are going to find a ceiling that you keep bumping up against.
As for the educational experience- well, it does make a big difference. An education wil make you a better conversationalist. It will make you better able to see the patterns and big pictures in things. It will give you more context. It will teach you to understand the background of what you read in the newspaper- not just the immediate background, but the whole thing. It will teach you to write in such a way that you achive your goals- be it getting a job or making a sale.
Yes, of course you can get all this on your own. But chances are if you are not in college, you are working. And working- especially the jobs that are availible to young people without degrees- doesn’t afford a lot of time or energy for a diciplined education of your own.
An infinite number. I base my evidence on the enormous number of people I know if the corporate and government sectors who have degrees utterly unrelated to the very nature of their work. English majors doing Comp Sci, Philosophy majors doing marketing, psych majors doing accounting, as well as a certain unspecified history major running his own publishing firms. In all of these cases college was merely a place-marker from which they took some basic ‘how to survive’ skills but didn’t begin learning useful employment skills until they were out on their own.
Aside from qualifying you to do a job that you would not be otherwise qualified to do, college has an outside chance of turning an unthinking person into a thinking one. It might, just might, teach you to research things instead of accepting word-of-mouth facts and knee-jerk conclusions.
You will always need experts in your life. It would be nice to be able to talk with them on a more level playing field. A college education help lesser the fog.
That’s optimistic, but this college student sees it as an outside chance indeed - plenty of the folks I’m here at school with are just credulous as the day they first arrived - indeed, the fact that I am NOT credulous and don’t take surprising statements at face value makes me unpopular. I “always think I’m right.” Uh, no, I just don’t see any reason to believe that you’re necessarily right, and “my English professor told me” just doesn’t count for much, in my book.
Then again, it’s still two years till graduation. We’ll see.
By the way, as someone who’s in the system, my bellyache with college would be the hyperfocus on getting a specialized degree that will define what you do with your career after college. People who ask me what I’m studying also want to know what I’m going to be doing after college. These same people will freely admit that many people, even themselves, have ended up doing work totally unrelated to what they majored in when they were college. And yet, they still cling to the belief that my major is a meaningful indicator of my eventual trajectory in life. Nope. I have NO IDEA what I want to do - only vague notions, at best. I am studying what I am interested in studying, not what I think is going to lead an interesting, meaningful and fulfilling occupation later in life.
Honestly, can I just major in Everything, please? Thanks.