The world would be a 'poorer' place if people only saw education as a way to make money.
Of course, but it's not like the only choices are "only a way to make money" or "not caring at all about making money". I studied biomedical engineering because it's interesting to me and I suspected it would make for a great career. If I only cared about money I would have gone into finance probably, but I know I would have found it much less engaging. FWIW I'm still in the top 10% of earners in my age group.
I'm a millenial and we were not told that liberal arts degrees were bad ideas until long after we got them. We were not told it was hard to get a job without a STEM degree until after the Great Recession hit. We were not warned about the dangers of student loans until after we were in debt.
Before that happened, we followed the advice given to us by our parents, which was to go to school and work hard, and in exchange, we would get better jobs with higher income. We did exactly what we were told to do, and it got us nothing that we were promised, simply because many of us entered the job market at the exact moment unemployment spiked, leaving us with gaps in our resumes that locked us out of the jobs for which we were qualified. I'm not the only one that has marveled that we are held accountable for a recession that struck before we even had the right to vote.
Now we have an entire generation that is substantially poorer than the ones that came before despite being substantially more educated and working longer hours, at more jobs.
The fact of the matter is, "Guess you should have gotten a better degree!" is not a solution. It's an excuse for not implementing a solution.
Even if we teach children that STEM degrees are the way to go now, it might be different again in the future. Sometimes there is just an element of bad luck as well.
In Germany there was one generation (about ~5 years) of graduates in Chemistry which had extreme difficulties to find a job as the main chemical companies (e.g. BASF and Bayer) were not hiring at the time, and when they started hiring again they preferred the fresh batches of graduates.
Encouraging STEM degrees by itself isn't enough. We also need to provide funding for R&D in these fields so graduates can make use of them. The private sector isn't the only one that stands to gain from hiring scientists. A lot of talent is wasted because competition for grants is stiff and funds are limited.
You are an adult by the time you're choosing a higher degree. "I followed the advice of my parents" is not a valid reason. Do your own research and make an informed decision.
EDIT: If it wasn't obvious I am a millenial with a STEM degree. I made the choice based on researching a multitude of factors in high school and moved to the capital region to get the best training. Shanghai top 500 actually, pretty good for a free university.
Speaking of college, given the news of the past couple days, maybe we can stop talking about affirmative action and focus on the fact that there was elaborate fraud and bribery operation focused on getting rich kids into certain universities. Absolutely nothing matters in this society other than how much money you have. At this point it's a failed experiment.
Speaking of college, given the news of the past couple days, maybe we can stop talking about affirmative action and focus on the fact that there was elaborate fraud and bribery operation focused on getting rich kids into certain universities. Absolutely nothing matters in this society other than how much money you have. At this point it's a failed experiment.
Best hot take I've seen about that: that fraud case is shining a light on the college admission process, and the real scandal is how messed up that process is in ways that are perfectly legal.
Well, that and the fact that the main figure in the public eye of this case is Lori Loughlin (aka Aunt Becky from Full House). The kicker came when it was found out that her daughter, at the time her mother was arrested, was literally on vacation on the yacht of one of the members of the board of trustees at USC. It's almost farcical. But yes, one wonders why they would have to do things like take fake photos of her suggesting she was on a crew team she wasn't even member of when their parents could have just donated a building or paid to renovate the basketball team's locker room. There is so much systemic rot that is being revealed the last 2 or 3 years that it defies belief. To quote both The Wire and George Carlin, the game is rigged, and there is a big club, and you aren't in it.
Translation, we can't get out shit together, we stupidly voted to leave, but please bail us out anyway because we're incapable of dealing with the shitstorm we unleashed on ourselves. It's about time the EU just says "go pound sand".
It looks like the Senate just opposed Trump's "national emergency" declaration. The kicker in all this is Trump tweeted earlier today that he would be open to reining in presidential power to declare national emergencies... AFTER this one.
Talking out of both sides of his mouth, he pays lip service to reining in government so long as it isn't his...
It looks like the Senate just opposed Trump's "national emergency" declaration. The kicker in all this is Trump tweeted earlier today that he would be open to reining in presidential power to declare national emergencies... AFTER this one.
Talking out of both sides of his mouth, he pays lip service to reining in government so long as it isn't his...
It looks like the Senate just opposed Trump's "national emergency" declaration. The kicker in all this is Trump tweeted earlier today that he would be open to reining in presidential power to declare national emergencies... AFTER this one.
Talking out of both sides of his mouth, he pays lip service to reining in government so long as it isn't his...
That's nothing. In an interview with Breitbart, he seemed to explicitly imply that if he keeps losing political battles (or, one has to assume, re-election), that he will unleash the police, military and (I shit you not) biker gangs to commit violence. In other words, give me what I want, or I will turn the streets of America into Altamont:
Sorry, I don't have a lot of sympathy for folks who don't get a degree in something that will get them a real financial payback. Liberal Arts will get you a job at Dairy Queen, if it doesn't make you 'overqualified'. Just saying...
Oh yeah, because that's all that's going on. Never mind that I did everything right. 4.0 GPA school wide through highschool, college prep, extra curricular activities, advanced classes, all before high school. Went into the science field at university with above average grades, encouraged to take more advanced classes early by my mentor/proffessor because of my competency, and was near the top of my class, only having to drop out because of debt and family health reasons. But screw me for not being born into a rich family, right? Man, when will I learn?
Sorry, I don't have a lot of sympathy for folks who don't get a degree in something that will get them a real financial payback. Liberal Arts will get you a job at Dairy Queen, if it doesn't make you 'overqualified'. Just saying...
Oh yeah, because that's all that's going on. Never mind that I did everything right. 4.0 GPA school wide through highschool, college prep, extra curricular activities, advanced classes, all before high school. Went into the science field at university with above average grades, encouraged to take more advanced classes early by my mentor/proffessor because of my competency, and was near the top of my class, only having to drop out because of debt and family health reasons. But screw me for not being born into a rich family, right? Man, when will I learn?
In all fairness, that's not what I said. You were pursuing a degree that would likely have paid off for you. My point is there are degrees you could have finished that wouldn't put you in any better of a situation than you are in now...
As a reminder, the thread guidelines strongly recommend against sarcasm. It's best to be serious when discussing these subjects.
That said, it's true that "doing everything right" doesn't always translate into success, since the definition of the "right" career strategy varies wildly between careers and between years. Other factors, like family crises, can always get in the way. The job market is not governed by karma.
My friends who majored in computer science are generally doing better than those who didn't, but even then, there's not a one-to-one correlation. My brother is making good money in computer science, but his job might disappear in the near future depending on the decisions of the higher-ups, and one of his friends from college is still struggling to find work as a programmer because he's legally blind. You'd think a "legally blind" person wouldn't be able to work with code at all, but he can read stuff if it's really close. It makes other stuff in life a lot harder, though. Meanwhile, my friend Dahlia has found work in various places despite not having a STEM degree.
I'll definitely recommend to anyone in college, or about to go to college, to pursue a STEM degree if you can, and to research post-graduation jobs to see where exactly you'd be going once you completed your degree. But there's more to forging a solid career than picking a certain college degree, and I mean that both as a warning against unrealistic expectations for current students, and a reminder against generalizing about the choices of former students.
While we're on the subject, what do you guys think about the prospect of a student loan forgiveness program? What features would be necessary to make it work?
Canceling the loans entirely--declaring them void--would mean a lot of banks that lent them would lose a massive amount of income, and it would be a huge deterrent against granting student loans in the future. Paying them off on behalf of students would mean a lot of money lost by the government. Doing nothing would mean the next generation remains poor and in debt long into the future. A compromise solution--like cancelling "predatory" loans, however you might define them, and partially paying for other loans--could get us somewhere in between.
Problem is, we've got three generally competing objectives: protecting the interests of banks, protecting the interests of students, and protecting the interests of the federal budget. I'm not sure how we should balance out those interests.
In Finland there is a program where the government covers some of your loan if you graduate fast and with good grades. I think it's a good way to help students and encourage efficient schoolwork.
Sorry, I don't have a lot of sympathy for folks who don't get a degree in something that will get them a real financial payback. Liberal Arts will get you a job at Dairy Queen, if it doesn't make you 'overqualified'. Just saying...
Oh yeah, because that's all that's going on. Never mind that I did everything right. 4.0 GPA school wide through highschool, college prep, extra curricular activities, advanced classes, all before high school. Went into the science field at university with above average grades, encouraged to take more advanced classes early by my mentor/proffessor because of my competency, and was near the top of my class, only having to drop out because of debt and family health reasons. But screw me for not being born into a rich family, right? Man, when will I learn?
In all fairness, that's not what I said. You were pursuing a degree that would likely have paid off for you. My point is there are degrees you could have finished that wouldn't put you in any better of a situation than you are in now...
You DID talk like the only reason anyone ends up without a job, degree, or in debt is entirely because they made poor choices. It was a huge slap in the face to those of us who worked our butts off and did everthing "right" only to fail because of circumstances outside our control. My post was to illustrate that its not always the case. In the current US climate, being born poor is far more damaging and more common.
Sorry, I don't have a lot of sympathy for folks who don't get a degree in something that will get them a real financial payback. Liberal Arts will get you a job at Dairy Queen, if it doesn't make you 'overqualified'. Just saying...
Oh yeah, because that's all that's going on. Never mind that I did everything right. 4.0 GPA school wide through highschool, college prep, extra curricular activities, advanced classes, all before high school. Went into the science field at university with above average grades, encouraged to take more advanced classes early by my mentor/proffessor because of my competency, and was near the top of my class, only having to drop out because of debt and family health reasons. But screw me for not being born into a rich family, right? Man, when will I learn?
In all fairness, that's not what I said. You were pursuing a degree that would likely have paid off for you. My point is there are degrees you could have finished that wouldn't put you in any better of a situation than you are in now...
You DID talk like the only reason anyone ends up without a job, degree, or in debt is entirely because they made poor choices. It was a huge slap in the face to those of us who worked our butts off and did everthing "right" only to fail because of circumstances outside our control. My post was to illustrate that its not always the case. In the current US climate, being born poor is far more damaging and more common.
You're putting words in my my mouth now. I was pointing out a poor choice that many people make, getting a degree that is just a piece of paper and not much else. I mentioned no other circumstance or choice other than that. I certainly never said a word about not finishing a degree. Choosing one's major is totally within a person's control...
The House has passed a nonbinding resolution to make the Mueller report public. I'm glad to hear the vote was 420-0, with 4 Republican members voting "present." It's good that we had a nonpartisan vote on a subject that important.
I've been waiting for that report for a long time!
The House has passed a nonbinding resolution to make the Mueller report public. I'm glad to hear the vote was 420-0, with 4 Republican members voting "present." It's good that we had a nonpartisan vote on a subject that important.
I've been waiting for that report for a long time!
Then Lindsey Graham was able to singlehandedly stop it in the Senate.
He is demanding an additional special counsel and investigation into Hillary's emails be added to it. I kid you not. Nothing to do with Muellers report but 'whatabout Hillary's emails' is the pretext he's going with.
It's 2019 we have a President profiteering off the Presidency, lying with every word, compromising National Security by top ordering top security clearances for his kids, and meeting Russians (Putin) in secret while in office and Lindsey Graham is pretending to be butt hurt about Hillary's emails. Graham is totally corrupt.
The Starr report was not only made public, it was sold in stores like the newest Danielle Steele paperback. This very minute, you can purchase it on Kindle for $.99 cents. The idea that Lindsey Graham, one of the House managers during the Clinton impeachment, refuses to vote for a resolution to make it known to the public is the absolute height of hypocrisy. It can't get any worse.
And eveyone should damn well remember this when/if Barr holds portions of the report back, because I won't let anyone forget. The Starr Report was put into book form and sold to the public in supermarkets and chain stores. It was literally a best-seller that at a certain point in '98 was doubling the numbers of the current Tom Clancy novel. If the Mueller report is held back in ANY way, then someone with access to it should just make copies and deliver it in a package with a bow on top to the front steps of the New York Times and Washington Post.
Then Lindsey Graham was able to singlehandedly stop it in the Senate.
He is demanding an additional special counsel and investigation into Hillary's emails be added to it. I kid you not. Nothing to do with Muellers report but 'whatabout Hillary's emails' is the pretext he's going with.
It's 2019 we have a President profiteering off the Presidency, lying with every word, compromising National Security by top ordering top security clearances for his kids, and meeting Russians (Putin) in secret while in office and Lindsey Graham is pretending to be butt hurt about Hillary's emails. Graham is totally corrupt.
What the actual fork??
Man... what happened to that guy?
Russia has something on Graham.
Speculate on what that is it's somewhat believable that they know he's in the closet gay and that's a thing that would end his career as a Republican in South Carolina.
Comments
I agree. However, those folks who don't see it as a way to make money still need to pay for it!
Of course, but it's not like the only choices are "only a way to make money" or "not caring at all about making money". I studied biomedical engineering because it's interesting to me and I suspected it would make for a great career. If I only cared about money I would have gone into finance probably, but I know I would have found it much less engaging. FWIW I'm still in the top 10% of earners in my age group.
Before that happened, we followed the advice given to us by our parents, which was to go to school and work hard, and in exchange, we would get better jobs with higher income. We did exactly what we were told to do, and it got us nothing that we were promised, simply because many of us entered the job market at the exact moment unemployment spiked, leaving us with gaps in our resumes that locked us out of the jobs for which we were qualified. I'm not the only one that has marveled that we are held accountable for a recession that struck before we even had the right to vote.
Now we have an entire generation that is substantially poorer than the ones that came before despite being substantially more educated and working longer hours, at more jobs.
The fact of the matter is, "Guess you should have gotten a better degree!" is not a solution. It's an excuse for not implementing a solution.
In Germany there was one generation (about ~5 years) of graduates in Chemistry which had extreme difficulties to find a job as the main chemical companies (e.g. BASF and Bayer) were not hiring at the time, and when they started hiring again they preferred the fresh batches of graduates.
EDIT: If it wasn't obvious I am a millenial with a STEM degree. I made the choice based on researching a multitude of factors in high school and moved to the capital region to get the best training. Shanghai top 500 actually, pretty good for a free university.
Well, that and the fact that the main figure in the public eye of this case is Lori Loughlin (aka Aunt Becky from Full House). The kicker came when it was found out that her daughter, at the time her mother was arrested, was literally on vacation on the yacht of one of the members of the board of trustees at USC. It's almost farcical. But yes, one wonders why they would have to do things like take fake photos of her suggesting she was on a crew team she wasn't even member of when their parents could have just donated a building or paid to renovate the basketball team's locker room. There is so much systemic rot that is being revealed the last 2 or 3 years that it defies belief. To quote both The Wire and George Carlin, the game is rigged, and there is a big club, and you aren't in it.
Translation, we can't get out shit together, we stupidly voted to leave, but please bail us out anyway because we're incapable of dealing with the shitstorm we unleashed on ourselves. It's about time the EU just says "go pound sand".
Talking out of both sides of his mouth, he pays lip service to reining in government so long as it isn't his...
womp womp.
That's nothing. In an interview with Breitbart, he seemed to explicitly imply that if he keeps losing political battles (or, one has to assume, re-election), that he will unleash the police, military and (I shit you not) biker gangs to commit violence. In other words, give me what I want, or I will turn the streets of America into Altamont:
That said, it's true that "doing everything right" doesn't always translate into success, since the definition of the "right" career strategy varies wildly between careers and between years. Other factors, like family crises, can always get in the way. The job market is not governed by karma.
My friends who majored in computer science are generally doing better than those who didn't, but even then, there's not a one-to-one correlation. My brother is making good money in computer science, but his job might disappear in the near future depending on the decisions of the higher-ups, and one of his friends from college is still struggling to find work as a programmer because he's legally blind. You'd think a "legally blind" person wouldn't be able to work with code at all, but he can read stuff if it's really close. It makes other stuff in life a lot harder, though. Meanwhile, my friend Dahlia has found work in various places despite not having a STEM degree.
I'll definitely recommend to anyone in college, or about to go to college, to pursue a STEM degree if you can, and to research post-graduation jobs to see where exactly you'd be going once you completed your degree. But there's more to forging a solid career than picking a certain college degree, and I mean that both as a warning against unrealistic expectations for current students, and a reminder against generalizing about the choices of former students.
Canceling the loans entirely--declaring them void--would mean a lot of banks that lent them would lose a massive amount of income, and it would be a huge deterrent against granting student loans in the future. Paying them off on behalf of students would mean a lot of money lost by the government. Doing nothing would mean the next generation remains poor and in debt long into the future. A compromise solution--like cancelling "predatory" loans, however you might define them, and partially paying for other loans--could get us somewhere in between.
Problem is, we've got three generally competing objectives: protecting the interests of banks, protecting the interests of students, and protecting the interests of the federal budget. I'm not sure how we should balance out those interests.
I've been waiting for that report for a long time!
Then Lindsey Graham was able to singlehandedly stop it in the Senate.
He is demanding an additional special counsel and investigation into Hillary's emails be added to it. I kid you not. Nothing to do with Muellers report but 'whatabout Hillary's emails' is the pretext he's going with.
It's 2019 we have a President profiteering off the Presidency, lying with every word, compromising National Security by top ordering top security clearances for his kids, and meeting Russians (Putin) in secret while in office and Lindsey Graham is pretending to be butt hurt about Hillary's emails. Graham is totally corrupt.
And eveyone should damn well remember this when/if Barr holds portions of the report back, because I won't let anyone forget. The Starr Report was put into book form and sold to the public in supermarkets and chain stores. It was literally a best-seller that at a certain point in '98 was doubling the numbers of the current Tom Clancy novel. If the Mueller report is held back in ANY way, then someone with access to it should just make copies and deliver it in a package with a bow on top to the front steps of the New York Times and Washington Post.
Russia has something on Graham.
Speculate on what that is it's somewhat believable that they know he's in the closet gay and that's a thing that would end his career as a Republican in South Carolina.
He went from this:
to
being Trump's bitch really quick and there were some hush hush trips to Russia in between.
The liberal media myth wreckt. Someone's missing here.
CNN and MSNBC are not liberal media. They are establishment media.