A college degree used to be rare, meaning you could get any degree and do any job.
Obviously, it’s not like that anymore. Everyone has a degree. You need to get a degree that means something.
If you have rich parents that will support you, great, you can fuck around and graduate after 8 years with an English degree, and you’ll be alright.
If your parents aren’t rich and can’t support you indefinitely, you need a degree in something that is hiring or will be hiring when you graduate. Preferably, with a large paycheck, so paying back the loans is reasonable.
Or, ya know, just don’t go to college. Learn to weld or install sattelite dishes, or even better, be a general contractor. You can make a goddamn fortune as a general contractor.
Or, do what Mark Twain did, and mary into wealth. Love is fake anyway!
But, ya know, being 18 and impressionable to romantic ideas, it’s tempting to think you don’t have to follow this guidance and get an art degree and you’ll be fine. Don’t fall into that. Be smart.
being 18 and impressionable to romantic ideas, it’s tempting to think you don’t have to follow this guidance and get an art degree and you’ll be fine
The bigger trap IMO is going into a field you aren’t passionate about. I have a computer science degree, my program had many students who didn’t really like it but were there for the money. While I’m sure some succeeded a lot of people who were just there for the money failed out, or performed so mediocre that they could only get less desirable jobs, which don’t pay as well and are also shit working conditions (which since these folks don’t like the career means they tend to burn out super quick).
There is a compromise to be had, you need to find something that you at least mostly find enjoyable, but has a viable career to go into, their are plenty of arts careers out there that pay alright, and if you specialize into them early instead of pursuing eye in the sky careers then you’ll find yourself ahead of the pack. Of course you must also look outside school to see what these careers value (paid coops are a great opportunity if your school has them) I have a few friends with social work degrees who are doing pretty good for instance.
That said, Tuition is somewhat subsidized where I am (my tuition was 15K USD a year and one of the more expensive schools and programs, an arts degree would be more like 10K USD) so YMMV compared with the USA where I hear tuition can commonly be well over 100K a year.
The bigger trap IMO is going into a field you aren’t passionate about.
I went to an art school for a degree in audio engineering and I encountered seniors in their final year who had no idea what the fuck they were doing because they didn’t seek out any opportunities outside of classes. I interned at a recording studio for about two years while I was in school and that prepared me better than any class I took. This is an industry where you need to be passionate about what you’re doing because work is rare in the beginning and the pay is pretty shit. There were several kids in my advanced practicums who didn’t even know how to properly wrap cables or mount microphones onto stands. I couldn’t help but think to myself “why the fuck are you even here”. You really have to go out of your way and fight for every opportunity you can get in this industry. I’m fortunate to be able to make a living in it but somehow some of the people I graduated with came out with less knowledge than what I learned in my freshman year.
It just baffles me that people get degrees in these highly competitive industries without any sort of drive to actually make a career. Interesting to hear that this happens in STEM fields as well.
Universities shouldn’t even be offering those degrees, imo. Perhaps at a higher level for those who have already worked the field and can have meta conversations about it, but the undergrad programs teach far too little over far too many years. It’s a waste for everyone but the administrators.
There are lots of useful things I learned in school but school is really what you make of it. I did my best to utilize the facilities that my college provided and got a lot of experience. Others just coasted and took courses, doing nothing outside of the coursework. Ultimately, the education helped me get to where I am. Especially in this industry where connections are everything, school can be a great tool to connect with professors and other students. It was also my gateway into the professional world because I was a good candidate for internships because of my background.
It’s a horribly inefficient way to structure networking and learning tradecrafts, though. Many of the most capable students will miss critical opportunities through no fault of their own - some people are taking care of parents who just happened to start dying during the short time they were enrolled, for example. Others have to work before and/or after classes.
Equally importantly it was built on top of a liberal arts foundation that was never supposed to produce engineers and the sort, and while it fails to enforce a liberal arts education on applied science majors, it also sacrifices its liberal arts programs to make it palatable for tradecraft. Liberal arts are certainly of benefit to tradespeople and everyone else, but it is no longer the reason people enroll - students often bemoan being forced to take even the most introductory courses. It is extremely beneficial for people who do want to pursue these studies and develop their systemic thinking, that they should be allowed to do so, for the benefit of any and every field. But a lit class or two during 4 years of career training and extracurriculars does not provide that.
I think the current system has found itself traveling down a dead-end path, and that it is now bound to be replaced as its haphazard construction will prevent it from overcoming its growing challenges.
I’m referring to the US system in particular here as I think that was the context. Even most of the top names have turned their undergrad programs in particular into exploitative diploma mills. I think the replication crisis is properly seen as a symptom of a fundamentally misbalanced system and that it won’t resolve itself by continuing business as usual.
I’m a very big fan of education and access to education. I think we’ve gone about this all wrong, and like I said, to all of our detriment except the administrators.
That’s the thing, some people aren’t smart enough to study. Or better said: some people never received the right guidance to know what they’re good at.
It also used to be a liberal arts program for developing critical thinkers, not a new form of trade school with an infinitely more predatory profit model.
Go figure - capitalism killed higher education, too!
Ok, it’s true college isn’t what it used to be.
A college degree used to be rare, meaning you could get any degree and do any job.
Obviously, it’s not like that anymore. Everyone has a degree. You need to get a degree that means something.
If you have rich parents that will support you, great, you can fuck around and graduate after 8 years with an English degree, and you’ll be alright.
If your parents aren’t rich and can’t support you indefinitely, you need a degree in something that is hiring or will be hiring when you graduate. Preferably, with a large paycheck, so paying back the loans is reasonable.
Or, ya know, just don’t go to college. Learn to weld or install sattelite dishes, or even better, be a general contractor. You can make a goddamn fortune as a general contractor.
Or, do what Mark Twain did, and mary into wealth. Love is fake anyway!
But, ya know, being 18 and impressionable to romantic ideas, it’s tempting to think you don’t have to follow this guidance and get an art degree and you’ll be fine. Don’t fall into that. Be smart.
The bigger trap IMO is going into a field you aren’t passionate about. I have a computer science degree, my program had many students who didn’t really like it but were there for the money. While I’m sure some succeeded a lot of people who were just there for the money failed out, or performed so mediocre that they could only get less desirable jobs, which don’t pay as well and are also shit working conditions (which since these folks don’t like the career means they tend to burn out super quick).
There is a compromise to be had, you need to find something that you at least mostly find enjoyable, but has a viable career to go into, their are plenty of arts careers out there that pay alright, and if you specialize into them early instead of pursuing eye in the sky careers then you’ll find yourself ahead of the pack. Of course you must also look outside school to see what these careers value (paid coops are a great opportunity if your school has them) I have a few friends with social work degrees who are doing pretty good for instance.
That said, Tuition is somewhat subsidized where I am (my tuition was 15K USD a year and one of the more expensive schools and programs, an arts degree would be more like 10K USD) so YMMV compared with the USA where I hear tuition can commonly be well over 100K a year.
I went to an art school for a degree in audio engineering and I encountered seniors in their final year who had no idea what the fuck they were doing because they didn’t seek out any opportunities outside of classes. I interned at a recording studio for about two years while I was in school and that prepared me better than any class I took. This is an industry where you need to be passionate about what you’re doing because work is rare in the beginning and the pay is pretty shit. There were several kids in my advanced practicums who didn’t even know how to properly wrap cables or mount microphones onto stands. I couldn’t help but think to myself “why the fuck are you even here”. You really have to go out of your way and fight for every opportunity you can get in this industry. I’m fortunate to be able to make a living in it but somehow some of the people I graduated with came out with less knowledge than what I learned in my freshman year.
It just baffles me that people get degrees in these highly competitive industries without any sort of drive to actually make a career. Interesting to hear that this happens in STEM fields as well.
Universities shouldn’t even be offering those degrees, imo. Perhaps at a higher level for those who have already worked the field and can have meta conversations about it, but the undergrad programs teach far too little over far too many years. It’s a waste for everyone but the administrators.
Hard disagree. College filled in a lot of missing gaps in my education and gave me a good basis for continuing to learn when I started my career.
There are lots of useful things I learned in school but school is really what you make of it. I did my best to utilize the facilities that my college provided and got a lot of experience. Others just coasted and took courses, doing nothing outside of the coursework. Ultimately, the education helped me get to where I am. Especially in this industry where connections are everything, school can be a great tool to connect with professors and other students. It was also my gateway into the professional world because I was a good candidate for internships because of my background.
It’s a horribly inefficient way to structure networking and learning tradecrafts, though. Many of the most capable students will miss critical opportunities through no fault of their own - some people are taking care of parents who just happened to start dying during the short time they were enrolled, for example. Others have to work before and/or after classes.
Equally importantly it was built on top of a liberal arts foundation that was never supposed to produce engineers and the sort, and while it fails to enforce a liberal arts education on applied science majors, it also sacrifices its liberal arts programs to make it palatable for tradecraft. Liberal arts are certainly of benefit to tradespeople and everyone else, but it is no longer the reason people enroll - students often bemoan being forced to take even the most introductory courses. It is extremely beneficial for people who do want to pursue these studies and develop their systemic thinking, that they should be allowed to do so, for the benefit of any and every field. But a lit class or two during 4 years of career training and extracurriculars does not provide that.
I think the current system has found itself traveling down a dead-end path, and that it is now bound to be replaced as its haphazard construction will prevent it from overcoming its growing challenges.
I’m referring to the US system in particular here as I think that was the context. Even most of the top names have turned their undergrad programs in particular into exploitative diploma mills. I think the replication crisis is properly seen as a symptom of a fundamentally misbalanced system and that it won’t resolve itself by continuing business as usual.
I’m a very big fan of education and access to education. I think we’ve gone about this all wrong, and like I said, to all of our detriment except the administrators.
That’s the thing, some people aren’t smart enough to study. Or better said: some people never received the right guidance to know what they’re good at.
Agreed.
It also used to be a liberal arts program for developing critical thinkers, not a new form of trade school with an infinitely more predatory profit model.
Go figure - capitalism killed higher education, too!
Who was Mary?