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

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I graduated with a music degree and managed to get a good music-related job. The people who claim that college is a waste of time typically are the ones who don't have their lives together and need something to blame. The mistake people make is that they expect a job to magically appear after they graduate. You have to work really hard to get that first job. You have to know how to market yourself, you have to be competent in interviews, and you have to try multiple times. Our generation was raised to be dependent on quick fixes. Unfortunately this is not how things work in the real world.

LMAO!! !! !! !! !! !
She is hot!

What the future may bring, education, business and other things.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceEog1XS5OI[/youtube]

My girlfriends sisters daughter (the princess as this is an accurate description of her personality) is about to acquire 167K (it may be more if some grants do not go through) of debt from Cal State Fullerton for an accounting degree. As best as I can figure the reason why they are doing this is for prestige. The mom of the daughter is close to being flat broke.
I have a work colleague whose son also has an accounting degree and is considering getting a masters, he says the going wage is around 40 to 50K. It took him several years to land the job he has. He is also debating where to scrap accounting all together and become a plumber as he feels the accounting job prospects are not good and pay is no good.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... essClassic
And while employment options a college degree gives may be better than shoveling sh*t in Louisiana, sometimes even this may be debatable. Speaking of Louisiana here is what they have to say on this matter.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXpwAOHJsxg&list=[/youtube]

A longer piece about education, not from Louisiana

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpk_u_VmPD4&list=PLEAAZHBUVXY1j3QgImiRUJvG8QztnQKmw[/youtube]

Last edited by DoodleDoo on 26 Oct 2013, 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well if you actually have a clue what the heck you are doing, then yes. You need to have as clear knowledge as possible if you are ready to get into loans/debts about what you want to do with your life. For a while, I had plans to transfer from a community college to study Political Science and go to a four year. But I have discovered my main passion and that is music and recording it. So I am looking to save up for a vocational program for music recording. You have to know what you want in life and not live in la-la land though. This is what getting an education is all about.

Last night when I wrote my post I was eating dinner with my girlfriend at a popular local Mexican restaurant. I was playing that YouTube from Bourbon Street in Louisiana and it was also being watch by the restaurant receptionist. She was laughing, she also had a degree, in psychology.

Over 10 year ago I went to take some more classes at a local community college named Mt Sac. But because I had not finished many classes in the past I was put probation. The counselor, who keep referring to herself over and over again as a "doctor", she was tiring to bust my chops and discourage me from taking more classes. I said ya ya ya I will do better. I took Chinese 1 and next semester I took Chinese 2 and English 101. I though I would try for a 3rd time to finish my English 101 class. I ended up dropping English 101 it because the class was more like feminism 101. Now what was really interesting about the Chinese class was virtually all the kids in there were Chinese who already spoke Chinese. Here in Southern California there are a lot of Chinese. They were all taking it to meet the foreign language requirement. I was taking it to learn to speak and write Chinese. True I was at the bottom of the class as I was not a native Chinese speaker but hey I worked really hard to learn to speak and write a little Chinese.

Because I did not want to deal with the "doctor" I just went to a different college for other classes. I went to East LA college for some computer classes. By time I was done with my classes there the dean of the college was trying to hire me on. At that time Compton College was folding and the State was tiring to get East LA to take it over, I think it when to Saddleback College instead.

10 years ago money was not a problem for me so I did not need any loans but when I was younger it was a big problem. I had to really scrap to get the cash to pay. Because of the easy money in student loans now students are forced to take classes they do not want or need at extremely high prices. In my honest opinion the current situation is very corrupt, there is a strong conflict of interest to keep make work teaching jobs going.

Horatio Nelson, 200 + years ago,the age of sail. Here is what is interesting, he got his first command (captain of a ship) at 20 years old. How is that possible? He started when he was about 13 years old, by the time he was 20 he had 8 years of real world applicable experience. Often they would start with the job of powder monkey and work there way through the many jobs on board gaining experience as they went along.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN1ts-ks1ns[/youtube]
I have gotten this question again at work' "where did you get your masters at?" I told her the truth and it confused her world view a little. Its just that she was so conditioned into thinking (expensive overpriced name brand) college was the only door possible to higher paying jobs.

This a pretty funny pdf called, "So, you want to go to college".

http://christianpioneer.com/blogarchieve/go2college.pdf

This is a complex problem. Currently you have alot of people going away to college that are academically gifted but may not realize that in today's economy you have to be able to tell prospective employers that you have more than just the academic training. In this new and cut-throat economy you also have to have practical application experience in your chosen field. One can accomplish this in one of two ways that I know of. You can either join a student group for you entire time that you are college and move up to an officer position or you can volunteer.

Usually the type of individual that joins a student group is someone who is very young, 18-23 years old. Comes from a very well off family. Meaning either Mom and Dad have the financial wherewithall to pay for their education or they had parents who have brains that are geared towards academics and were therefore able to pass that along genetically to their offspring. These are usually the people who get academic scholarships.

Or as I stated above one can volunteer. But maybe alot of people out there don't realize that.

There is also this mentality that existed in the mind of the average middle class American for a very long time which was, ' I don't necessarily need to go to college to get a good job, I can just take whatever job I want and it will pay well' That is almost gone. Or I will get a job somehow, someway, the right one will fall into my lap. That is a bad mentality to have. To think that the right opportunity will just fall into your lap.

Tyler Cowen writer of The Great Stagnation suggest there will be a trend toward a more parochial school or boot camp style to education as an end run around the failings of primary schools. That would be a responce to the percieved way to end up in the poor class by living "I think that the right opportunity will just fall into my lap."


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed6gNSZRawY[/youtube]

In my opinion, if you consider college as a means to an end (the end being employment), then you will be disappointed unless you are genuinely passionate about the applied sciences, math, accounting, or some form of vocational training. However, if you can afford to consider college a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet interesting people who might actually share your special interests, explore that interest (whatever it may be) in depth, and learn about yourself and the world around you, then, yes, it is all it is cranked up to me. In my case, attending a liberal arts college was the best time of my life thus far; it was the only time in that I have felt competent and socially functional and it did wonders for my self esteem.

+1

My generation was sold the lie of "education = employment." While true on some level, the mantra was that no matter what happened in the job market, new jobs would be created. Yeah...fewer and fewer jobs with very specialized requirements to be able to apply.

At the cost of education you get ONE SHOT to be "job ready" at graduation, and schools across the nation are utterly failing to accomplish this goal...to the detriment of the students who graduates with a useless education, a ton of non-dischargable debt and possibly unemployable due to being "overqualified" for the work that does exist.

Einstein said '"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education"
This is more about primary school and options to public school.

http://www.unpluggedmom.com/
http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/fe ... e_lynn.mp3

Dr. Clayton Christensen discusses disruption in higher education,
This is quite good.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUGn5ZdrDoU[/youtube]

College for employment isn't all it's cracked up to be.

College for LEARNING is what's important. If there isn't a specific skill a college class teachers that you want to know, then it's probably better off going right into a field of work you're comfortable with. It's the knowledge that's important, not the degree.

To quote Mark Twain, "I never let my schooling interfere with my education"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEvg2zBYWtU[/youtube]