Is college worth it?

The BBQ Pit
41

I’m guessing STEM fields are quite a bit different. I have a colleague who went through four years of engineering hell in undergrad and now tests jet engines while making good money and traveling the country with her husband and child. I have an uncle with an M.S. who does quite well as a computer engineer. If you’re into job stability and economic mobility, it’s probably not a bad option.

My husband is in his 7th and final year of a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. It requires a great deal of sacrifice not just on his part, but mine too. I’m not even sure ‘‘happiness’’ is a reasonable expectation at this point. But perhaps once this purgatory is over we’ll feel differently. He went into it for the right reasons - because it was a requirement for the kind of job he wanted to have. Was it worth it? We honestly don’t know right now, because I think the kind of job he wanted to have only exists in his dreams.

I know a lot of engineers and engineering types. I was raised by one, such a mind who could not fathom why I wasted my time writing about things that weren’t real and who looked at me funny if I tried to point out shapes in clouds (‘‘It’s a turtle!’’ ‘‘No, it’s a cloud.’’) Engineering brains are special. Both Ph.Ds in humanities can think and Ph.Ds in engineering can think, but it’s not anywhere near the same kind of thinking, and both are critical to human existence. I know that’s a hard sell to an engineer, but as someone who has straddled the line between idealistic creativity and pragmatic analysis for most of my life, trust me, you need us as much as we need you.

That said, STEM fields are more valued by society, particularly in economic terms. That’s just a hard truth and anyone who wants a career in humanities will have to come to terms with it if they choose that path. I work in one of the least valued professions in the country, social work (more specifically: I write grants for nonprofits.) I’m well-rounded enough and with sufficient aptitude that I could have been an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, or whatever. I made a choice based on what I value, not what society values.

In a way it’s not fair to my husband, because the job I wanted actually does exist and I have found it more than once, after a relatively short 2 years in grad school. But honestly? I think I got lucky. It turns out one of the things I most love to do in the world is one of the things that is most in demand in my field. When I first signed up for grad school I didn’t even know nonprofit development was a thing. I didn’t realize how valuable grant writing was in my field until I tried to find a replacement for myself before leaving my last job. Most people hate this gig, and a lot of people who like it aren’t very skilled at it. You can practically see the dollar signs in prospective employers’ eyes when I announce, sincerely, ‘‘I love writing grants!’’ And I do, I fucking love it. I could do it every day for the rest of my life and die happy. It may not pay as much as other jobs, but it’s enough to make a decent living, and more importantly to me, it’s a valued skill that makes me indispensable in my field. What it lacks in lucrativeness it more than makes up for in employability.

So. I guess my point is, as someone who came from an environment where I was raised to believe education is EVERYTHING (and who still, on some level, believes that) I want to emphasize the difference between education for its own sake, or for chasing your passion, and education as a means of economic mobility. The decisions you make might vary depending on how much weight you give either consideration. It’s a choice everyone has to make for themselves, and the outcome is never guaranteed.

42

Depends a lot on where you are. It’s a pretty viable degree in DC. Probably less so outside of major government centers.

43

BS degree also? My younger daughter has a psych degree, which seems to be not that useful either. She got a Masters in international business and thus became employable.
My son-in-law has a poli-sci degree, but he always wanted to go to law school, and it seemed reasonably useful in getting in to a good one. LSATs helped also.

44

There is no STEM shortage in this country. STEM study is not a guarantee of a job. Certain slices of STEM fields are employing people at high wages today. That may not be the case tomorrow.

45

Psych degrees, IMHO, are less useful with a BS/BA, if only because it’s become a catch-all for people who don’t know what to major in.

In DC you will probably eventually get railroaded into needing a graduate degree, but if you’ve worked hard to build a good work/intern/volunteer history, you can usually get far enough with a poli-sci undergrad to progress to the point where your workplace will help pay for the grad degree. Most of my friends have managed to hold out until their late 20s- by which point they’d have progressed quite a bit.

46

And some STEM degrees pretty much suck. Biology degrees are not very marketable at all, especially outside of the handful of biotech-heavy regions. We are talking stating salaries in the $30,000s.

Furthermore, any lab scientist is likely to hit a pretty tough ceiling with just an undergrad degree. And getting a grad degree in a hard science is a VERY different game than going to law school or getting a professionally focused masters.

47

I have a masters and can honestly say I would not be able to do my job without the knowledge I got during grad school. Within a year of graduating, I was able to snag a promotion I was eyeing and take advantage of some part time work that will be useful and challenging in the future.

That being said, I have plenty of gripes about college and can see why a degree in and of itself is not a selling point for most employers. While I am able to use my college degrees, my recent promotions would not be possible if I had not be simultaneously working in my field of choice getting some much needed professional experience. WAY more of college needs to involve internships or some sort of work experience. Also, I lucked out. I was able to find work that excites me within my field. I didn’t come out of college with my bachelors degree with a clear plan of where I wanted to be but I found my footing quick. I don’t think forming a clear plan is really emphasized enough. Nor or graduates prepared for the humbling beginnings in any field. They look at inflated yearly earnings of careers and bank on that income (if they bank at all). Then when they get a job making nothing and that first student loan bill comes due, shock and surprise set in.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent. Is college worth it? Depends. IF it’s required, there are lots of ways to do it now and too many people go straight for the closest college or the first online for-profit school to sign them up and get them their loans without much regard for what they are going for and how they will pay for it.

48

Back in the “good old days” a lot of companies gave IQ tests to applicants as a matter of routine. But some people got upset about the alleged racist outcomes of those tests.

I once read a very persuasive article which claimed that requiring a 4-year college degree has become the functional equivalent of the IQ test practice. Because an awful lot of companies don’t care what the degree is–all they care about is that the applicant has one.

49

Some friends from college with the same political degree as I have:

  • Account manager
  • Corporate trainer
  • Financial adviser (after some follow on professional certifications)

Not a lawyer among them and all successful. My degree lead me into manufacturing management and military leadership positions mostly. For over 5 years I was a mainframe computer programmer… till after some asshats flew planes into buildings. My first mobilization convinced me tech and long absences was a bad mix. My focus on foreign policy related classes was even useful to my military duties. The degree’s been far from useless for any of us.

50

Thats not true in about 20 different ways. The main one being that companies can and do give whatever types of assessments they want. My own job came from a formal assessment judging, among other things, one’s ability to process and analyze large amounts of information. If companies are not giving IQ tests, it’s because IQ tests are not useful for their purposes.

51

The thing that frustrates me the most about threads like this is that the answers are all over the place. If I were a high school student trying to figure out what to do, this thread would leave me so confused. The liberal arts/humanities versus STEM debate exhausts me especially.

The basic truths to remember:

There is no “worthless” major, but there are some majors that are easier to parlay into careers than others. And not all of them are STEM.

Pursuing passion over competency is very unwise. No matter how much ivy covers your institution’s walls, you need to come out of school with marketable skills–the more technical, the better. This doesn’t mean you need to have a STEM major. It just means that in addition to taking Russian, you may want to take a statistics class or learn programming. Learn both MS Word and MS Excel. Even if you are mathphobic, stop telling people you are. Good writing and critical thinking aren’t the exclusive domain of the humanities, and STEM majors don’t have a monopoly on analytical reasoning.

There is such a thing as too much student debt.

Graduate school isn’t designed to rescue you from the poor decisions of undergrad.

Where you go DOES matter, especially if you are low-income or a member of a stigmitized racial minority. If you can be described in either of these two ways and advisers are telling you to set your sights lower for no clear reason, IGNORE them. There are resources out there you can use which will offset your disadvantages.

Ignore anyone who tells you to study anything, anywhere, no matter how much it costs. This person isn’t a con artist, though. They are ill-informed or working with outdated information.

52

Definitely.

Public and private sector employers use assessment exams all the time for selection and promotion. I’m not sure why anyone would claim otherwise.

53

Poli Sci degree here - I run marketing for a software company. I knew how to write and think, and that is what mattered in the 90s. Founder/CEO friend of mine - Philosophy. Neither of us were looking for a career in our major - we were looking for an interesting eduction, and found employers who wanted to hire us for our ability to think, write, argue, present, etc.

I LIKE hiring psych undergrads. They usually have taken some statistics, and they have been forced to read academic articles, and apply them to a report or a presentation. They is a skill I can use.

So the humanities can work for you. This article from the Washington Post shows the mid-career earnings by major and school:

54

I think this statement is untrue, or at least very misleading. Griggs vs. Duke power (1971) set the legal precedent for use of IQ tests as evidence of discriminatory practices. Therefore, if a company wants to administer an IQ test, they are opening themselves up to a claim of discrimination. This does not mean that it is patently illegal for a company to administer an IQ test for employment purposes; however, it does mean that there is a legal consideration that companies must take into account if they choose to do so.

For this reason, I do not believe that it is valid to say that the only factor influencing the decision of a company to administer an IQ test is the effectiveness of its results. The legal implications may play a highly significant role in the frequency of IQ test administration, or the legal implications may have only a negligible effect; the only way to know with any certainty would be to eliminate all possible legal risks.

55

Agreed.

Rice went to high school at the National Cathedral School, a prep school for children of the DC and East Coast elite. Money, connections, and the indoctrination into the ways of the upper classes.On top of that, a history degree from Stanford or an Ivy will open doors that a history degree from State U won’t.
Her parents were also wealthy, well educated, and well connected, and she married into a wealthy Canadian family.

56

I spent so much money on my education, just finished paying it off. And Im not even using it. So no. It was not worth it.

57

I agree with the vast majority of what has been said. However, there are still some positions out there that have hard requirements for GPA and even specific schools. It certainly can help you in many unofficial ways to go to great schools and get a good GPA but there are still some companies with really specific requirements.

I got my current job with my consulting company just by answering the phone one morning and they made me a generous offer right on the spot with no real interview. I thought it was a scam at first but I found out why that happened later. They had an emergency position to fill that day or they would be in breach of contract with one of their biggest clients. They also have a strict policy requirement of only hiring people that went to a Top 100 college or university and also earned a GPA over 3.3. Combine that with some of the other odd and somewhat rare requirements of the position and I was the only person in the Boston area that was both available and met the requirements that day so they knew they had to hire me on the spot as long as everything checked out.

They did go back and do a full academic, criminal and financial background check after they gave me a tentative offer but I knew I could pass those. I had been out of college for 15 years at that point and that is the only time that anyone ever verified all the details and transcripts but they did and it all worked out very well.

58

My general advice is to make a list of three things.

  1. Things you are good at. These are the things that draw upon your strengths. They are thing things that you have the capacity to excel in.
  2. Things you would enjoy doing. For some people, this is going to be the things that they are really deeply passionate about. For others, it may be more about working conditions. Whatever matters to you.
  3. Things that pay money (or otherwise offer some kind of security).

Now, try to find something that hits all three of those, as best you can. Everyone is going to have a different range and frankly some people are going to have a nicer range to choose from than others. But you can’t do without one of these three pillars, and trying to do without one is just asking for trouble.

59

You know, I really don’t know why people feel the need to always denigrate engineers like this. Perhaps you are unaware but an engineering education entails a great deal of humanities classes, I took writing, psychology, philosophy, religion, speech, economics, business, etc. as part of my undergrad, and not having looked at my transcript in a few years, I’d guess right now that ~50 credits out of ~210 or so total credits were in humanities. And this is a pretty typical engineering degree. Can an equivalent humanities major claim a similar amount of classes in the sciences and engineering fields? If, as is apparently the case that humanities majors have real trouble finding employment, could that be that the humanities curriculum is not well-rounded enough? My point being that, we engineers can think just like you humanities majors just fine, thank you. Can you reciprocate that ability?

Frankly, it is pretty obvious that the humanities will have to do some major reforms to their curricula for the the sake of the students they graduate. So far the humanities have done the typical ultra-rightwing defensive posturing of blaming others (the sciences and engineering) instead of focusing on why they are graduating students with unmarketable degrees.

60

This is great advice no matter who you are. Some advisers I’ve met seem to think that it would be traumatic for a kid to get rejected at a school, and told all kids to set their sights low. And it was a pretty good high school.