Less QQ, More Pew Pew!
Today I ran across this interesting editorial out of the Star Tribune, and since I have been very good and quiet lately, I feel like I'm entitled to a little bit of snark. So, I will be reproducing the article in its entirety below, so I can comment. Feel free to read the article on your own beforehand, if you wish. In short, the author feels that college degrees are pointless and that colleges are money-grubbing greedy bastards. Not that either argument is completely without merit, but his argument in particular is completely without merit. Let's begin!
That college degree paid off -- for the schools, not for me
*****
* Article by: NATHAN MARKS
* Updated: January 9, 2012 - 9:50 PM
I'd advise thinking twice before shelling out for a diploma.
Colleges and universities want your money. They shroud their avarice in flowing gowns and ivory towers, but they are not cradling knowledge so much as they are selling sheepskin.
I began my college career in a different time. It was the late '90s, and the economy was booming. I started at a junior college in California, not knowing what I wanted to do. Red flag number one.
This, coupled with the fact that I was young and restless and was paying a total of about $600 a semester, did not impel me to any sort of urgency about completing my education. Red flag number two.
I had grave doubts. Red flag number three. I excelled in the humanities and soft sciences, but could not really justify buying a piece of paper with the governor's signature on it when I could read Shakespeare and learn Latin in my spare time. Reading Shakespeare and reading Latin sound like interesting, if lonely, hobbies, but what WOULD you do with those skills that you learn in your spare time? What would make learning them in a structured setting more useful?
After meeting with more than one counselor at that junior college and making clear that I would not make a good high school teacher, I was sold on the idea that I could do anything with a degree in the liberal arts.
"Corporations need good writers and thinkers," I was told. "Just get a degree ... in anything." Literally anything? Red flag number four. A salesman isn't the best person to ask about the merits of the product he sells.
I transferred to the University of Minnesota after meeting the Minnesota woman of my dreams and studied history and Latin for three years.He chose his school to be closer to the hometown of a love interest? Red flag number five. I did well enough at the U to gain entry to the University of Chicago's Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences. If you had grave doubts about bachelors degrees, why were you researching Masters programs in the first place? Red flag number six.
On my visit to Chicago to learn more about this seemingly pointless degree, the director made a comment that has stuck with me. He said that the master's is the new bachelor's. I checked out this seemingly pointless degree, and it does indeed seem pointless. So once again, why did he gravitate toward it? Red flag number seven.
With this in mind, and with the assurance that a master's from one of the best universities in the world would make me more competitive than the average college graduate, I bit the bullet and filled out another aid application. Let me repeat that: "More competitive than the average college graduate." We're aiming awfully low here. Red flag number eight.
The idea that a "new bachelor's" would make me more attractive to those corporations looking for good writers and thinkers was important, as it was by then the depths of the so-called Great Recession.
Now, here I sit, two years after graduating from the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota, working a menial job in the service industry (luckily, I had contacts, otherwise I fear I would have been seen as an overqualified, underexperienced risk to most human-resources departments).
While I am grateful every day for my job, about half of what I bring in per month goes out in student loan remittance alone.
Luckily, that Minnesotan I moved to Minnesota for makes up the difference. The irony of her making as much as me, working a white-collar job with more immediate potential for advancement, and without a college diploma to hang on the wall, is not lost on me.
However, I don't think that the irony of my screening calls to avoid not creditors but my two former universities' continual fundraising efforts registers with those on the other end of the line. Those people sure are annoying. I screen my calls too.
In today's university-industrial complex, colleges are graded as well, and I have been told by many of these telemarketers (assumedly students at their respective universities) that the more alumni who donate, the better they look to the sellers of stature (U.S. News and World Reports and the like).
The easiest way to impact the scores handed out by the ranking pimps is to increase the percentage of alumni who donate; the hardest is to up the percentage of recent graduates with jobs.
I have yet to ask one of these callers how much I would have to donate for my degrees to gain enough stature to be worth more than the paper on which they are printed.
My advice to a student thinking about shelling out $40,000 to $80,000 on a diploma?
Perhaps you should invest in a luxury car. They hold their worth better than diplomas and, if you ever had the need, you can live in them. Ahh, but can you think of BETTER things to do with $40,000 than spend it on a luxury car? If not, you might end up with a worthless college diploma...
*****
If you noticed those red flags, you might have figured out that they all smacked of someone who is unconfident, bored, and easily fooled. Guess what sort of person well-paying employers want to hire? Someone who is confident, interested, and smart. All I'm saying is, I'm not convinced by this guy's article that his financial situation is caused by his money-grubbing universities.
OK, so for any pre-college folks that stumble upon my blog, here's some advice from someone who got a non-worthless college degree. In general, college degrees apply to career fields. With degree A, you can get jobs x, y, and z. With degree B, you can get jobs y, z, and t. If your professor or college counselor has to explain to you what you can do with degree C, it's not a degree for you. I'm not saying it's a worthless degree per se, but it can't be a good fit for you if YOU can't imagine what sort of job you might be getting with it.
There are four factors to consider with a college degree: Money-making potential, cost, difficulty, and satisfaction. Understanding the interplay between these four factors is the best way to make a WISE college decision, including whether or not to even go to college at all.
Cost is unavoidable for a few fields, like medicine or law. That's something you have to accept if you want to get into nursing. Past that, a cheap state school is just about as good as a prestigious ivy school. The best thing you get from an ivy school is contacts; hobnobing with the rich people that can afford tuition and the supergeniouses that can get scholarships. Even state schools cost money, but the price range is a lot wider than you might think. If the cost of in-state colleges sound prohibitive, you might be better served getting a job now and saving money for a few years before trying college.
Money-making potential is the reason most people want college degrees. The difference in money-making potential between degrees is primarily what sort of job the degree SPECIFICALLY qualifies you for. The job that requires "any bachelor's degree" is also the one with the largest pool of applicants, and therefore the most difficult to get--and is probably worth little more than a "high school education required" job, due to supply and demand. For instance, a computer science degree can get you a computer science job. A history degree can get you a teaching job. Mark out jobs that you have a gut reaction against, because their salaries don't count. There isn't much research required to find out the average salary ranges for different job fields.
Difficulty is different for every person. Some folks have an easier time dealing with numbers, others with words, still others with people. Still, while counting for the variety in personality, some degrees are just easier than others. Difficulty is a big factor in deciding which career path to venture down.
Satisfaction is another great reason to choose one field over another. Some people ENJOY working with people, others ENJOY pouring over computer code twelve hours a day. Sounds terrible to you? We're all different.
If you have a good idea what kind of work would satisfy you, your college decision will be easy, because you won't care about the money. Money only really matters if you are cold and starving. Go to a place you can afford (assuming you need the training and experience), and you're set to have a very happy life.
If you don't know what you want to do with your life, you really have two options. You can go for as much money as possible, or you can go for the easiest degree you can get. An easy degree will give you more leisure time to ponder life, or likelier more time to get in trouble in the college atmosphere. Going for the most money will likely make you miserable, but hopefully you can put some cash into savings while you figure out how to do what you really want.
But do you even need a college education? Maybe not! Embarking on a college degree is risky business when you don't know what you want to get out of it. Having a bad job for a few years while you think about it is a lot cheaper than getting a degree and not being able or willing to use it, especially if it turns out you need a different degree for what you DO want.
Anyway--if you go for the easiest degree you can get, you'd better not complain when you don't get paid well. And if you're dumb enough to believe for a minute that every college degree is a get out of poverty free card, you deserve those student loans. And a good college degree doesn't guarantee a good job, either! You still have to be the sort of person a business would want to hire. That's scary, but it's just something you have to push through.
Good luck, college/job investigators!
That college degree paid off -- for the schools, not for me
*****
* Article by: NATHAN MARKS
* Updated: January 9, 2012 - 9:50 PM
I'd advise thinking twice before shelling out for a diploma.
Colleges and universities want your money. They shroud their avarice in flowing gowns and ivory towers, but they are not cradling knowledge so much as they are selling sheepskin.
I began my college career in a different time. It was the late '90s, and the economy was booming. I started at a junior college in California, not knowing what I wanted to do. Red flag number one.
This, coupled with the fact that I was young and restless and was paying a total of about $600 a semester, did not impel me to any sort of urgency about completing my education. Red flag number two.
I had grave doubts. Red flag number three. I excelled in the humanities and soft sciences, but could not really justify buying a piece of paper with the governor's signature on it when I could read Shakespeare and learn Latin in my spare time. Reading Shakespeare and reading Latin sound like interesting, if lonely, hobbies, but what WOULD you do with those skills that you learn in your spare time? What would make learning them in a structured setting more useful?
After meeting with more than one counselor at that junior college and making clear that I would not make a good high school teacher, I was sold on the idea that I could do anything with a degree in the liberal arts.
"Corporations need good writers and thinkers," I was told. "Just get a degree ... in anything." Literally anything? Red flag number four. A salesman isn't the best person to ask about the merits of the product he sells.
I transferred to the University of Minnesota after meeting the Minnesota woman of my dreams and studied history and Latin for three years.He chose his school to be closer to the hometown of a love interest? Red flag number five. I did well enough at the U to gain entry to the University of Chicago's Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences. If you had grave doubts about bachelors degrees, why were you researching Masters programs in the first place? Red flag number six.
On my visit to Chicago to learn more about this seemingly pointless degree, the director made a comment that has stuck with me. He said that the master's is the new bachelor's. I checked out this seemingly pointless degree, and it does indeed seem pointless. So once again, why did he gravitate toward it? Red flag number seven.
With this in mind, and with the assurance that a master's from one of the best universities in the world would make me more competitive than the average college graduate, I bit the bullet and filled out another aid application. Let me repeat that: "More competitive than the average college graduate." We're aiming awfully low here. Red flag number eight.
The idea that a "new bachelor's" would make me more attractive to those corporations looking for good writers and thinkers was important, as it was by then the depths of the so-called Great Recession.
Now, here I sit, two years after graduating from the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota, working a menial job in the service industry (luckily, I had contacts, otherwise I fear I would have been seen as an overqualified, underexperienced risk to most human-resources departments).
While I am grateful every day for my job, about half of what I bring in per month goes out in student loan remittance alone.
Luckily, that Minnesotan I moved to Minnesota for makes up the difference. The irony of her making as much as me, working a white-collar job with more immediate potential for advancement, and without a college diploma to hang on the wall, is not lost on me.
However, I don't think that the irony of my screening calls to avoid not creditors but my two former universities' continual fundraising efforts registers with those on the other end of the line. Those people sure are annoying. I screen my calls too.
In today's university-industrial complex, colleges are graded as well, and I have been told by many of these telemarketers (assumedly students at their respective universities) that the more alumni who donate, the better they look to the sellers of stature (U.S. News and World Reports and the like).
The easiest way to impact the scores handed out by the ranking pimps is to increase the percentage of alumni who donate; the hardest is to up the percentage of recent graduates with jobs.
I have yet to ask one of these callers how much I would have to donate for my degrees to gain enough stature to be worth more than the paper on which they are printed.
My advice to a student thinking about shelling out $40,000 to $80,000 on a diploma?
Perhaps you should invest in a luxury car. They hold their worth better than diplomas and, if you ever had the need, you can live in them. Ahh, but can you think of BETTER things to do with $40,000 than spend it on a luxury car? If not, you might end up with a worthless college diploma...
*****
If you noticed those red flags, you might have figured out that they all smacked of someone who is unconfident, bored, and easily fooled. Guess what sort of person well-paying employers want to hire? Someone who is confident, interested, and smart. All I'm saying is, I'm not convinced by this guy's article that his financial situation is caused by his money-grubbing universities.
OK, so for any pre-college folks that stumble upon my blog, here's some advice from someone who got a non-worthless college degree. In general, college degrees apply to career fields. With degree A, you can get jobs x, y, and z. With degree B, you can get jobs y, z, and t. If your professor or college counselor has to explain to you what you can do with degree C, it's not a degree for you. I'm not saying it's a worthless degree per se, but it can't be a good fit for you if YOU can't imagine what sort of job you might be getting with it.
There are four factors to consider with a college degree: Money-making potential, cost, difficulty, and satisfaction. Understanding the interplay between these four factors is the best way to make a WISE college decision, including whether or not to even go to college at all.
Cost is unavoidable for a few fields, like medicine or law. That's something you have to accept if you want to get into nursing. Past that, a cheap state school is just about as good as a prestigious ivy school. The best thing you get from an ivy school is contacts; hobnobing with the rich people that can afford tuition and the supergeniouses that can get scholarships. Even state schools cost money, but the price range is a lot wider than you might think. If the cost of in-state colleges sound prohibitive, you might be better served getting a job now and saving money for a few years before trying college.
Money-making potential is the reason most people want college degrees. The difference in money-making potential between degrees is primarily what sort of job the degree SPECIFICALLY qualifies you for. The job that requires "any bachelor's degree" is also the one with the largest pool of applicants, and therefore the most difficult to get--and is probably worth little more than a "high school education required" job, due to supply and demand. For instance, a computer science degree can get you a computer science job. A history degree can get you a teaching job. Mark out jobs that you have a gut reaction against, because their salaries don't count. There isn't much research required to find out the average salary ranges for different job fields.
Difficulty is different for every person. Some folks have an easier time dealing with numbers, others with words, still others with people. Still, while counting for the variety in personality, some degrees are just easier than others. Difficulty is a big factor in deciding which career path to venture down.
Satisfaction is another great reason to choose one field over another. Some people ENJOY working with people, others ENJOY pouring over computer code twelve hours a day. Sounds terrible to you? We're all different.
If you have a good idea what kind of work would satisfy you, your college decision will be easy, because you won't care about the money. Money only really matters if you are cold and starving. Go to a place you can afford (assuming you need the training and experience), and you're set to have a very happy life.
If you don't know what you want to do with your life, you really have two options. You can go for as much money as possible, or you can go for the easiest degree you can get. An easy degree will give you more leisure time to ponder life, or likelier more time to get in trouble in the college atmosphere. Going for the most money will likely make you miserable, but hopefully you can put some cash into savings while you figure out how to do what you really want.
But do you even need a college education? Maybe not! Embarking on a college degree is risky business when you don't know what you want to get out of it. Having a bad job for a few years while you think about it is a lot cheaper than getting a degree and not being able or willing to use it, especially if it turns out you need a different degree for what you DO want.
Anyway--if you go for the easiest degree you can get, you'd better not complain when you don't get paid well. And if you're dumb enough to believe for a minute that every college degree is a get out of poverty free card, you deserve those student loans. And a good college degree doesn't guarantee a good job, either! You still have to be the sort of person a business would want to hire. That's scary, but it's just something you have to push through.
Good luck, college/job investigators!