What College Taught Me

[Gribble]

If your focus is to land a good career a four year degree is a waste of time and money. I learned that after starting my first real job out of school. I was no more prepared for it after college than I was right after high school. It took months of on the job training for me to do my job right. But that was it. Four years of education, tens of thousands of dollars, and I got less than a fraction what six months apprenticeship gave me. The only point to most degrees is to get employers to even consider you for the position. They still have to train you from scratch, regardless of what you studied and how well you did.

That's ****ing pathetic. Idiocy and capitalism at its finest. When are these wretchedly stupid old businessmen going to ****ing die out and get replaced by younger, more intelligent people? Or are those younger folks just going to continue the cycle forever, keeping the poor but intelligent from getting decent jobs and making certain that education is largely a joke?

How can education have any value when just about anyone with the money and the time can get a degree? You shouldn't need a degree to make ends meet. College should be a place for the elite. It should be a place for doctors, lawyers, scientists, and for those who seek knowledge for knowledge's sake. Phaw! But where's the money in that, right?

[Mish]

I think it all depends on what you study and for what purpose Grib. I'm studying business at the moment because I want to be a good manager and I want to be a good manager because I want that knowledge for the time when I have enough to start a business of my own. As long as you can see a clear path and not rely on anyone apart from yourself, studying can do you a lot of good.

[Gribble]

I'm not saying college won't help you, Mish, but purely in regards to your career, the actual work itself, not the advantages the piece of paper alone provides you in getting hired and promoted, I do believe you'll find that you get more from six months at work than you did in all your years of study.

Obviously that's not the case with chemical engineering or anything math and science heavy. But to get your foot in the door as a businessman should not require a college degree. You ought to be able to get yourself an entry-level job and easily move into a managerial position if you show the willingness to put in the hard work. You shouldn't need a degree. In the time it takes to get an MBA you should be able to get every bit as far by working your way from the bottom up. Without the debt.

[BackUpOrGetStng]

I think the social aspect of college helped me tremendously. For 5 years I never went to class, never did my homework, and dropped out after getting arrested for drug importation. I'm now 2 years removed from that incident, and making $80k salary as a programmer, using a skill I had coming out of high school. Most of my friends with degrees are living at home, underemployed, and flabbergasted at the path I've taken and where it's gotten me so far. I think college has value in different ways for different people. My experience taught me how to effectively charm people by letting them think they're smarter than you, and that cheaters do, in fact, win. But anyway, I don't think it has any implication as to a person's intelligence, only their work ethic, which I do think is important as it shows potential employers that you can take something on and see it through to completion.

[doppelgaenger]

I'm not sure what you studied in college, but most accredited universities are divided between the liberal arts and vocational studies. The root word in university identifies the purpose of attending such an institute; you learn to combine your knowledge and skills into a critical, universal entity. You can't really blame corporate, capitalist society for something that has existed for hundreds of years. You can blame it, though, for adopting high school traditions like daily homework assignments and class attendance; with a wider audience to appeal to, it really loses the value it once had.

My field of study is linguistics, particularly etymology, and everything I've studied in college has been strictly liberal arts. That likely will not yield much in the way of work, but that is the basis and reasoning behind everything I do; most of the jobs I've had in my lifetime had nothing to do with those things. I've been doing freelance web design, management, and programming since I was 15 years old; I developed a skill set out of practically nothing. It all started with a couple of web page HTML tutorials floating around the Internet and an interest fueled by curiosity and eventually I got an opportunity to use that and landed myself a part time job with a publishing company when I was in high school. Now I'm a coordinator of a college-funded research program aiming to develop a highly accurate, open source translation software.

For what it's worth, you prepare yourself for your own future. College gives you an excuse to have a few years of freedom to explore all your curiosities and develop and consolidate your skills. A degree is a flimsy piece of paper that says a person completed a certain number of credit hours, which doesn't have any real value.

[Petit Papillon]

Nowadays if you go to a company without any "paper" and say you want to work there, they will hire you...as cleaning staff maybe. Especially in business field. The times when you could become successful without any degree are past. Now just 1 in a 1000 000 have the luck to succed this way.
**** it, I just want to finish university and work somewhere. I don't want to do such crap jobs that I did ,struggle all my life and have to work my ass off for money that will not even let me live like a normal person .

[bluesummer]

The only part of my business education that I really needed uni for was the math (statistics), economics, and accounting. The numbers stuff. The rest is common sense. Mind you, common sense isn't so common. I guess some people really need shit read out to them.

[Incognito]

That's ****ing pathetic. Idiocy and capitalism at its finest. When are these wretchedly stupid old businessmen going to ****ing die out and get replaced by younger, more intelligent people? Or are those younger folks just going to continue the cycle forever, keeping the poor but intelligent from getting decent jobs and making certain that education is largely a joke?

How can education have any value when just about anyone with the money and the time can get a degree? You shouldn't need a degree to make ends meet. College should be a place for the elite. It should be a place for doctors, lawyers, scientists, and for those who seek knowledge for knowledge's sake. Phaw! But where's the money in that, right?

Unfortunately I see this cycle being perpetuated forever. Once those who have paid their money rise to power they will make sure that their own efforts were not in vain by making sure they discriminate the same way the people before them did. If all the "highly educated" started hiring those who were not it would be an admission that almost all are equal and that they paid money to earn a worthless piece of paper. Simple pride and ego will keep the cycle from ever being broken to any real extent.

Also people's willingness to comply by believing that college is the only answer and paying/going insures that expensive worthless education will continue to be touted as "the only real means to make a living". If this generation stood up and said "NO" to all the higher learning institutions there would be no one else for them to hire. We all know that there aren't enough people who will selflessly unite to solve great issues as this anymore though.

I was talking to someone about this last week and one real solution would be for a group of focused, dedicated individuals to actually go to college, get degrees in varying fields, and teaching degrees. They could then pursue funding from non corporate means and open a college that omits forcing students taking classes that they don't need and would charge fair fees for education. This obviously is a long process that would demand focused, determined, and principled people, but it seems a more likely means to bring down "big education".

[vashti]

I have two sisters who make excellent livings working in the computer software field, and neither of them went to college. If you are smart and know how to work it, you can still do it. Small business owners want the best person for the job, regardless of whether or not they were formally educated.

But I agree with you Gribble, that undergrad degrees (except in the hard sciences) are pretty much worthless for the vast majority, and a good percentage of kids in college are simply wasting their time and their parent's money. It's too bad the standards aren't more rigorous for acceptance. These kids are diminishing the value of higher education.

[BackUpOrGetStng]

Petit Papillon, you are sadly mistaken, hahahahaha. I'm glad there are people like you that accept everything you're told at face value; without you life wouldn't be so easy for people like me.

[Lipp]

So what job is that the case for?

At least for archi you won't get accepted without a very solid portfolio covering your design, visual comm and technical understanding/drawing abilities. Some kids here can do graphic design quite well, but are shit at architectural design, you'd have serious trouble learning that without a structured brief, tutor and course, and no firm will ever let you chip in on the design if you don't have any experience in doing so.

[Gribble]

Honestly, I believe you'd get more from a focused trade school than a university. Courses taught by retirees in the field who actually know what the real world is like outside the classroom and who will show you what you need to know. Not what sells textbooks and keeps you paying tuition for four years.

It's a dirty shame that you can't just go to a trade school, learn what you need to learn without any of the bullshit, and jump into your career. Sure, trade schools do exist, but it's a lot easier to get yourself hired with a four year degree than it is a certificate or an associates degree.

[RdHrshyKss]

i feel the same way...i have years and years of student loans to look forward to paying off and i could have easily done the job i'm doing now without a degree. it's sad really. i mean, i do appreciate everything i've learned in college...it helped me take responsibility for myself, become independent, work towards something, and delve into studies i really enjoyed. but everything i do in my current job could have been learned within a few months of me working there. a degree is really only a piece of paper.

i work for a university, and all i can say to you is it's one big giant business...all universities are. their goal is to hire extremely well-known faculty at the top of their fields, who will boost up their reputation and programs, to inevitably bring in more students...which surprise, surprise, means more tuition money that they can use to hire MORE faculty to create even BIGGER programs and the cycle goes on and on. it's one big business that hides under the title of "education". and don't even get me started on collegiate athletics, particularly football. yeah it creates camaraderie and school spirit, but it really is another facet of creating revenue. higher education is one big money-making machine.

[Mish]

Obviously that's not the case with chemical engineering or anything math and science heavy. But to get your foot in the door as a businessman should not require a college degree. You ought to be able to get yourself an entry-level job and easily move into a managerial position if you show the willingness to put in the hard work. You shouldn't need a degree. In the time it takes to get an MBA you should be able to get every bit as far by working your way from the bottom up. Without the debt.

I'm not doing MBA to get into management, i'm already in a management position. I'm doing it to be a "good" manager. I'm doing it for myself and I'm learning a lot from it. The kind of things I wouldn't be able to learn in my regular job. Let's face it, what manager gets a chance to be an economist, a marketing manager, a statistical analyst and an financial adviser all in one role? I'm sure there are a couple out there, but very few.

[Gribble]

And I'm saying you'd get all that and more if you actually did it instead of studied it. Marketing. I don't care how much you study or how well you do. You're not going to get it without on the job training. Will a few years of coursework better prepare you? Yes. Will two years of study beat a few months of experience? No. Resounding NO. I've worked in marketing. Did it for years. If you want to learn it, really learn it, you've just got to get down and dirty. Same as anything else.

I'm not saying college is without worth. I find it immensely valuable. I've spent about seven years in college and I don't see myself leaving any time soon. But I'm not studying <Career> 101. College is for calculus, philosophy, phsysics, thermodynamics--even literature. It's not for hotel management, information technology, business or marketing. You can't learn marketing in a classroom. They know that, of course. In addition to the classes, typically you'll be forced to take internships. The one chance you have to maybe learn something during all those years.

In short, college should focus on the technical and on thought.