Is college really all what it is cracked up to be???

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I never graduated college, took a lot of classes, drop many classes I was no good at, and to this day still take classes, attend groups that follow my interest although study it is more online now.
I have been running across different people who have college degrees yet no employment or whose employment has nothing to do with there degree and in reality had no bearing in them getting employed.
Is college really all what it is cracked up to be???

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That depends on what one thinks it is "cracked up to be." Viewed as a path to employment, it is not as helpful as it used to be, depending on one's major. The gulf between what is studied and the needs/wants of the job market grows continuously. College might be closer to what it is supposed to be if viewed as the pursuit of knowledge, but public surveys on basic knowledge and the general direction of society suggest college is failing in that regard.

EDIT: We also must distinguish between the diploma-for-pay college system in the U.S. and the state of college in places where it is mostly free.

Last edited by starkid on 02 Dec 2012, 6:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"cracked up to be?" another way to put it is "is it worth it?"
You spend time and money (money is usually in the form of a large debt obligation with a compounding interest)
You are legally obligated to pay the debt back, how much does the degree help in paying this debt off?
Who is on the hook if the degree has no real help in generating real income? Is there any form of recourse or refund if the degree is worthless??

Last edited by DoodleDoo on 02 Dec 2012, 6:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is why we need more grants. I think college also has some utility if you enjoy classes.

I definitely think there is value in a college education, even if you never end up directly using the degree in your career. Learning for the sake of learning is important and interesting.

I also think that university education develops one's critical thinking and analysis skills in a way that high school never does. I wish it could be otherwise, but the way high school teaches students about history, literature and social issues can be very formulaic and intellectually shallow. I've studied history at high school, and now I'm doing it as part of a double major at university, At high school, you were taught the dominant idea of what happened. That's it. At university, you are taught why that idea is dominant, how it can be re-interpreted, what ideas and stories that dominant idea erases, and how that idea's dominance continues to marginalise and privilege certain groups to this day. This is really, really important to gain a deeper and more socially aware concept of why our world is the way it is today.

Take New Zealand history for example. Throughout primary, intermediate and high school, we get taught "once upon a time the Maori people were living in New Zealand. Then along came the Europeans. They fought. Then they signed the Treaty of Waitangi. Then all the fighting and racism ended forever. Now let's make some Maori crafts to show how not racist we all are". I'm not kidding. Whereas at university, it's all about challenging, questioning and re-interpreting this popular narrative.

So yes, I do think university has been worth it for me. If I hadn't gone, I might continue to think of New Zealand history as boring and simplistic, but university gave me a more complex understanding of it. So I think it's definitely worth it, especially if you come from a privileged background, because it challenges you to deeply analyse the social factors that have been present in your life. Just as a lot of people see the church as a guiding force for living a good life, I see university education as a guiding force for living a good life. It makes you more aware and culturally sensitive than you may otherwise have been.

I'm sorry that was so long.

Depends on what you go to school for and what you want out of college.

I am seeing a ton of people getting degrees and not jobs too, but I look at their degrees, it's usually in liberal arts like men's studies, sociology, etc. They have no back up skills and there aren't enough jobs.

But also, STEM fields like engineering and math are producing people for jobs that are available.

In terms of critical thinking, I am seeing less and less critical thinking in college. Much more parroting of what they read or learn. More and more teachers it seems are indoctrinating, not educating.

College is becoming a necessity in our American society today, but in other ways, it's slightly overrated. I mean slightly as for me college was no easier than high school. Dating was near impossible, but I did learn quite a bit and my eyes on the world opened further. But I've accepted the fact that I'm somewhat developmentally delayed.

College is useful, if you use it for something useful. If you go in with no idea of what you want to do, and major in something like art history or english, chances are you're just going to be wasting your time and money. If you want to get a degree in something, you have to make sure that your degree actually has some value in the real world and is desired by employers. I ran into this first-hand: I originally went to college in a specialized branch of engineering because I really wanted to work in that field. I graduated and got sent into the real world only to realize that practically no employers even knew what my degree was, much less wanted to hire anyone with it. So I went back a second time in a related, almost identical, field...am graduating soon, and have had so many companies after me that I've practically had to fight them off lol.

The difference isn't what I know or my skills...by all means I've learned essentially nothing new this second time around. All my classes are basically recaps of things I learned for my first degree. The only difference is that now, I'm not automatically excluded from the hiring process. Previously, pretty much no employers knew what my degree entailed, and rather than ask questions or research it, they just took the easy road and went with what is familiar to them. However, this time around they recognize and are familiar with what I majored in, so I'm not sent straight to the bottom of the stack. The whole experience has left me rather jaded if you couldn't tell...kind of a bad system if you ask me!

I am taking math econ because I genuinely enjoy the subject and it just happens to be useful to employers.

No I don't believe so, it got me debt I have no way to pay back.....but that is about it. I suppose some of the classes were interesting but probably not worth the accumulated debt. Trying to do what I can to get a deferment, the college loan place or whatever was supposed to send me something in the mail for a proper deferment or something and never did so I have to call and hope its not to late to do anything about it.

Yeah so for me it really was not worth it...I was kind of pushed into it anyways, and of course I didn't see what could go wrong so i went along with it, thought I'd figure something out and well it didn't exactly work out at all.

Let's just suppose no one goes to college, and enters the workforce directly from high school. They would probably earn less money, but they would have absolutely no student debt. What kind of effects would that have on society if no one had a college education? How about on academia or the sciences? Only in the past century has there been a class of academic professionals -- earlier scientists (like Charles Darwin) were almost always independently wealthy.

College may be less of a value today, but don't write off its importance yet. Higher education is still the engine of innovation, especially in the U.S. Even Silicon Valley, where college drop-outs are fashionable, owes its very existence to an academic institution.

The problem isn't college, it's going to college without a purpose. People go to college just because, major in something useless, and are stuck in debt.

There are tons of good jobs for those without degrees, hell in Baltimore there are factories begging for people to work in them, 22 dollars an hour, benefits, everything, but we produce so many liberal arts graduates who's only goal is a government job, and won't do work.

But we do need people in college, especially in the STEM fields (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math). In fact, so much, I've seen articles with people arguing that we should base financial aid on the ROI of a degree. That means return on investment. The highest ROI is in the stem fields since they produce actual things that people can use.

Going to college is investing in your future. Some people I think would benefit from spending a few years in the work force, finding their calling. Then your ready to invest.

I have at least 3 friends who regret their degrees and the money they spent because they either have no job prospects or found out they actually love something else.

All of them were told "Only dumb kids don't go to college right after HS"

In regards to liberal arts, how much do you think their employment prospects are linked with the present employment situation?

I love college! In my senior year now- learned great things, made friends, felt like part of a community, had wonderful experiences all around. Worth the several decades of strangling debt.

The crazy cost in college is fueled by easy money (government backed loans). Teenagers, easy money and you can never loose going to college thinking. Kind of reminds me of real estate a few years ago. And while I am in this train of though might as well mention How the West Was Lost by Dambisa Moyo

I like this story wrote up in the New York Times about Sophia Cosmadopoulos, who consistently keeps her rent hovering around $625 a month, her field of work is in Art Therapy, she has no shortage of student debt to service for this.

I do think that college can be a much richer experience if you have an internship, and preferably several internships. I graduated with a liberal arts degree (well, is public administration liberal arts?), and was required to intern somewhere to graduate. I found a small non-profit ran by a dynamic leader, and it grew while I was there. I contributed with writing copy and a weekly newsletter on the things that mattered to their membership. I ultimately spent 18 months there, and earned decent money. I treated it as a part-time job, and it looks stellar on my resume. My old boss is still my mentor.

I know internships are often mundane and thankless, but they can be great tools to see how the workplace works, and how your degree fits in. Even if you can't parlay it into a job after graduation (like me), you still learn valuable skills. I think this is especially true for ASD, as internships offer a low-risk environment to make mistakes.