You’re talking about people like me. Please forgive me if I sound like I’m boasting, but: I graduated from high school with the highest SAT scores in Pennsylvania, went to Harvard (class of '62) on a full scholarship, and hated it. I never wanted a desk job, never cared much about owning stuff, never wanted to boss other people around. Now I’m a furniture maker/ woodworker with a one-man shop, have been for twentyfive years, never regreted it. And I get just as much respect from people who know me as any lawyer in town.
I had no trouble getting into college, got a degree, and it helped me get some very nice jobs over the years.
And now I’m working in a trade, and oddly, I’m much happier.
Yes, I’m smart enough for college and did well in college, but in fact, I would have been better off going into a trade from day one. Why didn’t I? Because I was told I was “too smart” to “waste my time” with a trade and needed to go to college.
I don’t regret going to college, but if I had to do it all over again I’d go the trade school route.
See, that’s the sad thing - society missed out on 30 years of me being a fantastic tradesman, and we do need tradesmen.
The other stupid thing I see? Companies want highly skilled tradespeople, but won’t train anyone, they want to hire someone with 30 year’s experience for minimum wage, and whine they can’t get educated workers. Meanwhile, the trade schools and unions still impose arbitrary rules like maximum ages (which may or may not be relevant any more) or require a reference from someone already in the union/trade, which locks out new blood.
Not universal, of course, but I’ve seen far too much of all that when changing careers.
Used to be businesses were willing to do at least some training, now all they want to do is poach workers off other businesses, then whine when suddenly all the skilled people are old enough to retire and non one has trained new ones.
[quote=“redtail23, post:16, topic:635873”]
Um, because they are my friends of many years? Are you unable to tell “very smart” people from “not smart” people, even when you know them well? Or is it just the differentiation between “smart” and “very smart” that troubles you?
[quote=“redtail23, post:16, topic:635873”]
I’m sure they are bright enough within your peer group. But I highly doubt you guys are pushing the boundaries of each other’s intellect. At least not in the same way that four years of structured course work would.
How is that different from being lazy or dumb?
People in this thread are talking about “college degrees” as if they are all equal. Sure, a person with a degree in English or Philosophy is serving Starbucks right now. But people with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) degrees are doing just fine and have jobs waiting for them. The same can be said for Law and Medicine of course.
This is the entitlement. Kids think they can just study anything of interest to them and get a high paying job when they get out. It doesn’t work that way.
Oversimplification.
Nobody can predict to an exact degree what will be needed in the future. We can make guesses, sometimes very good and safe ones like the sectors you mentioned; however, that completely fails to take into account things like talents/ interests/ personality characteristics that are all relevant to success in any given field. There are many people who are smart enough for medicine yet cannot deal with bedside manner. Plenty of people who can do numbers but have no interest in engineering, those who could smoke the Bar, but simply hate the idea of being a lawyer. This is the difference between a Job and a Career.
But there are lots of fields which will lead to jobs, and lots of specialties inside these fields. Unless someone’s interest is only in things that won’t make a good living, you’re set.
I can agree that no one knows for sure what degree will be best while still saying it certainly won’t be one in English. People who are really, really good at such things will still get jobs - but most will have to do something else.
[quote=“msmith537, post:43, topic:635873”]
[quote=“redtail23, post:16, topic:635873”]
Um, because they are my friends of many years? Are you unable to tell “very smart” people from “not smart” people, even when you know them well? Or is it just the differentiation between “smart” and “very smart” that troubles you?
So Broomstick and I, among others , are lazy and dumb? Or is it that Broomstick is lazy and I’m dumb? Thanks a lot.
I’m not sure there is a huge market for untalented engineers and mediocre chemists. One of the reasons why STEMM fields are so highly valued is that people with talent in those fields are relatively rare. I know I couldn’t pass a calculus test to save my life. Would you really encourage me to got into a STEMM field? Trust me, you don’t want to be on any bridge I design or take any medicine I formulate.
All the the (many) mid-20s English majors I know are doing pretty well. I know a few community college teachers, a couple lawyers, a high school principal, a girl who creates standardized test questions, an ivy league debate coach, some corporate communications types, and a few people who own English schools and translation businesses abroad.
Yeah, nobody is going to be knocking down your door to find you and you probably won’t hit the 1%, but as long as you know your market (education, for example, is strong) and manage your career well, it’s a fairly reasonable bet, and certainly not a dealbreaker.
Which again, is true for anyone. I’m sure most computer coders would love to be writing innovative business games and game-changing software. Most of them, however, end up writing boring proprietary corporate stuff.
You’d be surprised - during booms, at least.
That’s why I broadened it to include other fields. Not much chemistry or math in law school. The point is to do something that you like and will make money, unless you are so good at it that you can make money no matter. It’s very similar to kids not pinning their hopes on joining the NBA.
You never can predict. When I decided to major in computer science in 1969 my father advised me to take some business classes to have something to fall back on.
Many community college teachers I know aren’t doing all that well, and it is not a job you can get with a BA anyway. Majoring in something in college with the intention of getting a professional degree is another matter entirely. My son-in-law majored in political science which would have been useless except for getting into law school, which he did. And in the old days when any college degree made you somewhat elite English degrees probably were better for jobs.
But we’re talking averages here. Here is a list of majors by starting salary. English is #73, tied with forestry. People with a passion can do well, but they aren’t going to listen to advice - or shouldn’t.
Hell no. I’d hate to write games. I write proprietary stuff, and I love it, but then I’m also the subject matter expert so I get to define it too. But that is a good example, because I love to program, and have a stack of ideas to work on after I retire.
I really think it is fairly simple. Get a degree that has value, unless you want to take a chance that you’ll serve coffee instead of working in your field.
Precision isn’t required. The sectors I mentioned are safe and will continue to be so. The exceptions are when government gets involved like when lots of people end up making six figures with criminal justice degrees because the war on terror creates lots of government jobs.
There’s plenty of room for creative engineers or lawyers. It’s not all just dry numbers. You can take an engineering degree or law degree and end up in sales or account management or any number of things.
Go into research. Or go work for an insurance company. You are aware that there are doctors who don’t ever see patients, right? Or ones that don’t even work in hospitals or clinics? If he wants to a doctor can spend his career writing books.
Get over it. If people only did what they loved there would be no doctors or lawyers because everyone would be on a beach somewhere.
Sorry, but this just sounds flaky to me.
You must not have ever worked with technical folks. Incompetence is not unheard of.
Why the two M’s in STEMM?
Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Music? Magic? Metal shop?
“STEMM” adds medicine into the mix. I worked for a STEMM think tank, and I got used to using both M’s.
The myth of the underwater basket weaving major is just that- a myth that is extraordinarily attractive to everyone from old fuddy-duddies to racists (“Down with ____________ studies!”)
Business is far and away the top undergraduate major, which somehow never catches flak despite the fact that undergraduate and even graduate business education is systematically poor, with little reading, lots of group work, and low expectations all around. There are nearly twice as many business graduates as there are history and social science. The top four US undergraduate majors are business, social science and history, education and healthcare. Given how strongly business dominates, that’s relatively few people in non-education liberal arts. The fastest growing college majors are healthcare, “green” majors, computer science, kinesiology, engineering and statistics.
Interestingly, the top majors represented in the “1%” include economics, political science, art history and religious studies. These are represented right along side finance, accounting and pharmacy.
Encouraging everyone, en masse, to major in “practical” skills is only going to contribute to the REAL tragedy, which is the number of people dropping out of college who have the massive loans without the degree. Only 56% of people who set out to get a Bachelors degree finish within 6 years. We know why people drop out of college, and it’s generally not because they are dumb. Financial pressures and family obligations play a major role. For-profit colleges (which it’s worth noting usually offer “practical” majors) are another major driver.
The problem is not the major. Being directionless, not having a clear concept of the job market, not having connections into your industry, not gathering substantial work experience while you get your education…these are problems. And yes, it’s somewhat likely these directionless people are going to choose liberal arts majors, if not because they seem more open to possibility than majoring in a specialized technical skill. But a person with direction, a good concept of the opportunities in their field, good networking and strong work experience is going to succeed no matter what they major in.
I agree. There are simply fewer barriers to entry in some liberal arts fields. If we really want to educate people and separate them for the job market, then we should just raise barriers to entry around every discipline. English and psychology aren’t inherently easier academic disciplines than anything else. Just design washout classes. If you don’t pass a major in something, you get out without a major. I am not sure that graduating without a major at all would make anyone economically worse off than graduating with a major with low barriers to entry that communicates nothing to potential employers. I think that for most people, it matters less what you study than that it be as difficult as you can handle and require layers of cumulative knowledge. Mathematics is good for this, but so is Roman poetry. It takes years of arduously acquired linguistic skill in several languages, two of which are more difficult than most modern languages. Classics has rather good non-academic job opportunities. People don’t major in it because either they’re not interested (understandably for any major) and because it’s quite demanding.
So… you think Bill Gates is lazy and dumb? Steve Wozniak? Both dropped out of college to build their business.
Some entrepreneurs bypass college to pursue their business interests and do very well at it. I’m not sure I’d call the highly skilled tradesmen I’ve known who choose an apprenticeship over a four year degree either lazy or dumb when they wind up running a company employing a dozen or more other people, and do so successfully for decades.
If you don’t go to college and wind up living in mom’s basement playing WoW and Unreal Tournament all day, yeah, dumb and lazy. Going to college because parents said you had to and are paying the bills, but you party all the time and never study and are barely passing enough to stay enrolled? That is also lazy and dumb. If you have an alternative and are actively pursuing it? Might be very ambitious and working your ass off. Context is important.
Excellent idea! I’ve got one for all these fields - writing. (Business too.) (Though the psych classes my kids took had significant amounts of math.) Really, if you are in liberal arts and can’t write a decent paper, you have no business getting a degree. Engineering and CS majors should be forced to take writing also, but not as a washout class.
It’ll never happen because the students and parents will be up in arms and the universities will lose all that money. But it should.