So, i was talking to my girlfriend about college, and how everyone thinks it’s so important to go to college… and we were curious…
How many people who go to college actually use their degree in a major way?
I mean a job they could not do without the degree, not one that just requires a degree as an arbitrary requirement.
I don’t even know if it’s possible to get that stat, but i’m just curious how useful college actually is to people in general.
Also, i keep hearing this statistic cited that college grads make $200,000 more in their lifetime than non-grads… but is that really all that much when put next to $50,000-$100,000+ in tuition?
I would not have my current job without the degree I earned in college. Admittedly, many people enter this profession in South Korea with a degree unrelated to language; however, my degree in Linguistics has helped me with additional assignments from the regional school board. That particular degree is also more attractive for selection for jobs further up the career ladder here. It is also useful to me on a daily basis in job-related discussions I have with Korean teachers and other native-English speaking teachers.
Requiring the degree is not an arbitrary requirement. Someone who has finished undergraduate studies, attested by the diploma, has shown that he has competently applied himself to the rigors of four years (or more, depending on the field of study) study in not only his expressed interest but also a number of other courses in a wide range. The degree shows what used to be referred to as “well-rounded.”
My physiology degree helps a lot in my job as a medical technologist. To work in Canada (well, in Quebec), I don’t absolutely have to have the degree, but it helps a lot with all the background theoretical information behind the tests I do.
As for offsetting the tuition fees, well, university costs a lot less in Canada, so the degree is definitely worth it in my case.
Alright, quick disclaimer i forgot to include…
I am not saying college is useless… far from it, i am currently a sophomore in college. My girlfriend, however, is interested in a job where she just needs to go to a training school, not full college. Both of us are getting rather annoyed with people telling her that she won’t amount to anything without a college degree, and that somehow, people going to college are better than her, even though many of them won’t use their degree (one of them has actually pretty much outright said that… this girl is going to college, and wants to be a stay at home mom when she graduates.)
So, thats where the question came from, if it helps.
Some people actually enjoy the experience as well so take that into account. Most traditional universities aren’t in the business of job training in the pure sense so it is a fallacy to look at it that way. The liberal arts degrees, broadly defined, are supposed to teach someone how to think and reason and learn about something that they enjoy in depth. It is true that most people that graduate with those degrees won’t find related employment (maybe because there isn’t much) but that wasn’t really the point to begin with. Employers like the fact that a potential employee was bright enough and committed enough to complete the degree and hopefully learned some thinking and social skills in the process that makes them better overall.
I think that $200,000 may be at the very low end of the estimate for the differential between college and non-college grads. The estimate for two 21 year old (one college grad and the other not should be much larger). The college grad should pass the $50K mark in a few years in many fields and the non-college grad is going to fight to break 30K or 40K within their 20’s. Over a 45 year typical working span, $200,000 is only $4500 difference which I don’t think is a reasonable estimate. A realistic estimate would be several times that at least. (My degree enables me to do this kind of fuzzy yet exacting analysis on the fly.)
Oh, that’s something I know well. I went back to a CEGEP program (like a junior college, I guess) to study medical technology after getting my Bachelor’s. I got so tired of defending my decision to people who asked why I wasn’t using my potential “properly” and aiming for a Master’s degree, or med school.
College isn’t for everyone, and you can actually make a damn good penny without a degree, depending on what you do and what other training you have.
The only thing to watch for, though, is that some sorts of jobs will almost never promote someone to management positions without a college degree.
I learned a LOT of background information in my studies, and got a lot of good training to boot.
I’ve been an IT guy, a programmer and am now a computer forensics consultant. There’s no way I could have done those jobs at the level I did, without the college education, not only from a credentials standpoint, but from an actual educational standpoint.
Although I didn’t end up programming in Pascal, C or Ada, I learned HOW to program well. It’s like the quote concerning soldiers: “There aren’t any dangerous weapons, only dangerous men”. The same thing works with programmers- I’ve seen people with plenty of certifications who just flat-out can’t program. As in, they know the language, but they don’t have the right problem solving approach and knack for writing good code.
In my current job, pretty much all my educational background comes into play at one time or another, both the CS degree and the MBA stuff. I have to know how businesses work for the forensic data mining side of things, and I have to know how computers work for the electronic evidence side of things. You could learn a lot of this on your own, but it’d take you a lot longer than 4 years, and you wouldn’t have as broad of a base, in all likelihood.
$50-100k in tuition seems a tad ridiculous, unless you’re talking about a high dollar private school. Here in Texas anyway, tuition and fees aren’t nearly as high as your room and board costs in general.