And an expensive degree is not needed for many good jobs, service jobs.
For example, omputer training can land students a very well paying job without a CS degree.
There are many options for students that choose not to go to college. Many good options. Not everyone thinks it is smart to go to college and potentially rack up debt, while putting off earnings at a full time job doing so, just to end up in a job that doesn’t require that degree.
Much of it could come down to a cost/reward scenario.
Absolutely.many jobs can be learned while you work too. There are many ways to be successful at life. College isn’t the be all end all.
Don’t disagree with your point - just referring to the retail sector, restaurant and hospitality sectors. The “barrista” with a degree, or small store retail manager. One can be an excellent employee in these areas, without a degree. Many of the employees, however, do have some type of post-secondary experience.
Think it depends on the kid. Those type A parents mostly believe that they are paving the way for their kid. When, the kid enters college, they either sink or swim.
Negative:
Many kids drop down to much easier majors. I won’t name them for fear of offending but they are well known and have many graduates. These kids then follow an easy path (often with the help of someone they know via an internship) into a job with little demands. Sometimes it’s retail/barista etc. But often it’s an easy job that 20 years ago would not require a degree and now does.
Positive: The kid digs deeper, realizes that they have to work hard to produce results and actually uses the structure they grew up with to make their own plans.
Many “high performing” kids also have issues with perfection. And many have mental health issues as they wrestle with keeping up and being at the top of the heap in a bigger, more competitive environment. Some will do well in college but not the workforce or vice versa.
(At the risk of offending some people) I came across this thread/post earlier today in the UCLA forum because I was curious about what the Fiat Lux classes are:
Looks like the UCLA Fiat Lux classes are 1 unit passed/not-passed-only classes offered as frosh-registration-priority electives. They do not appear to count toward any major or other requirements, so it is not like a UCLA student can build an “easy major” out of them.
Yes, they’re 1 unit pass/fail courses, but there’re apparently nearly 200 of them and they aren’t limited to freshmen (upperclassmen can also take them). They can also be counted toward honors. If the student’s major has light requirement, then it appears to me that these classes can be used by that student as electives in order to fulfill the graduation requirement.
While others can take them, the classes are geared toward freshman and freshman have priority in enrollment. Only two fiat lux credits can be counted toward Honors College credits
More generally, I’m trying to understand the point here . . . it seems like you are suggesting that these courses somehow dumb down a UCLA education because not all these courses are particularly challenging. If so, I believe you may have missed the point of the courses. They are meant to be small, cross discipline seminar discussions exploring topics about which faculty members feel particularly passionate. They aren’t geared toward fulfilling a major requirement, or to weed out or rank students, or as job training.
I’m not suggesting these courses dumb down UCLA’s curriculum for everyone. They may, inadvertently or not, allow some students to take an easier path to graduation. In my days, seminars were what a student went to after classes, if s/he was interested in the topics, not because of some college credits.
UCLA offers those too. My kid went to an astrophysics seminar by Nobel Laureate Andrea Ghez. She hasn’t taken any Fiat Lux classes but has taken introductory engineering classes that are pass/fail 1 unit classes and were geared towards exposing the freshman engineering students to engineering design. They were extremely valuable and fun. Now that I think of it, Marching Band counted as a one unit class and offered a letter grade. I think it’s a way to acknowledge the commitment and time a student puts into these more “extra curricular” courses. Taking a Fiat Lux is not the same as going to a seminar from my understanding. Just sharing my understanding of the system.
Two of those credits can count toward an honor degree, but many more credits can be used to meet graduation requirement, if I understand correctly.
You’re distorting what I suggested. All I suggested is that by providing an easier path to graduation some less than self-motivated students will likely end up with a lower quality education. There is a difference.
My understanding is that fiat lux courses do not count toward GE requirements or major requirements, so it is difficult to understand how even the most motivated of these supposed “less than self-motivated students” could significantly exploit these one credit courses to reach the 180+ credits to graduate while still satisfying the other requirements. Plus, these courses don’t even seem to be a good fit for your “less than self-motivated students” because attendance is required.
Provided that all the GE and major requirements are satisfied, I think UCLA would disagree with your fundamental assumption that students who take these courses are receiving “a lower quality education.”
In terms of underprepared students, it looks like at UCLA, ENGCOMP 1, 2, 2i (remedial English) has space for only about 2.5% of the incoming frosh class for fall 2022. MATH 1 (precalculus) has space for only about 3% of the incoming frosh class for fall 2022. So it is not like UCLA is filled with those underprepared students that you are suggesting should not go to college.
It is also not a given that all of even those students taking the remedial courses in English and math will necessarily be looking for the easiest possible path to a degree (and there are probably easier ways to do that than trying to load up on those 1 unit seminars). It looks like the fall 2022 offering of those seminars can accommodate a number of students that is approximately 10% of the incoming frosh class.
Service industry jobs do not pay enough to live, whether or not one has student loans.
Minimum wage is simply not enough to live off of, if a person wants to rent or own a home, eat, and actually have health care. Most food service workers are a month’s salary from being homeless. One of the reasons that we have people in food service and other service jobs going to work while running fevers is because they cannot afford to miss any days of work.
Oh, also these service jobs do not pay for health care, do not have paid time off, and will often fire an employee who misses a couple of days of work.
Are people so out of touch with the real world, that they do not know how these workers are living.
A full-time employee worked 2,080 hours a year. Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. SO a full time worker on minimum wage will be making $15,080 a year.
There is no place in the USA in which a person can actually live off of $15,080 a year, much less “live comfortably”.
Without a degree and without a profession, that’s all that a person can make.
Now, if people would say that many young people are going to learn to be plumbers, carpenters, welders, electricians, etc, those are career options which can very definitely lead to making enough money to live comfortably.
But service jobs for people with no degrees? They’re miserable jobs, having to deal with clients from hell, petty tyrants for managers and almost no possibility for advancement.
Oh, as for waitstaff? The get paid less than $3.00 because they are supposed to be getting tips. Not only do too many people not provide tips, but way too many managers will steal the tips, and legally, there is often nothing that the waitstaff can do. Managers will also very often take the cost of dine and dashers out of the pay of the person waiting on the table.
People in service jobs are being abused by customers and managers, and being paid a pittance. That is why they are quitting in droves, preferring to not work than to have a job which sometime does not even pay for the costs incurred by having the job.
In my corner of the world there are even entry, low level service jobs (McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Royal Farms, etc) paying several dollars above minimum wage. And that’s to start, not counting raises over time.
Minimum wage here is currently $12.50/hr. Plenty of “service” jobs are paying way above that. Even in areas where the minimum is $7.25, there are many jobs paying above that.
There are a wide variety of jobs that one does not need a degree to perform that do in fact pay above minimum wage. Bus driver, police officer, automobile mechanic, store manager, mail person, UPS driver, state road worker, etc, etc. Many of these, and other jobs that don’t require a degree, can and do pay well above minimum wage.
I.work with individuals making six figures that only have a high school education. It’s not college or a minimum wage job forever.
My oldest son worked at a minimum wage job before starting college (retail). If he had decided to stay there he would have gotten raises above minimum wage. He could have advanced beyond the entry level by learning more and taking on.more responsibility.
If someone is stuck for years making minimum wage they really need to work on changing something.
We should certainly be focusing on providing a quality high school education. It’s both important for those continuing on to college and those entering the workforce directly after HS.
I never suggested that they do. However, for a major with light requirement (gender studies?) a student could take 3 or 4 of these 1-unit classes in lieu of each full elective course.
Attendance isn’t such a horrible disincentive, is it?
You’re again distorting what I said. I said some of these students could receive a lower quality education (if they took these classes to avoid other full elective courses), but obviously not all of them do.
I agree with your intentions, but your deductive math doesn’t represent reality.
Less than 2% of all hourly employees in the US are at or below the Federal minimum wage. This is primarily the result of higher population states raising their minimum wage above the Federal standard. NY, NJ, MA, CA, OR, WA…are all over $12/hour. Most will be at $15/hour in the next year or two.
$25k per year doesn’t alleviate the difficulties of paying bills and living day to day, but repeating a number ($15,080) that’s 40% understated for a vast cohort isn’t appropriate.
UCLA gender studies electives must be taken for a grade and must be on a pre-approved list of courses. Fiat lux courses are mandatory pass/fail and are not included on the list of approved courses. So this isn’t accurate.
As I’ve explained, I don’t think it is accurate. More to the larger point, though, given that the courses don’t count toward major requirements or electives and don’t count toward general education requirements, what is it about these fiat lux courses the lead you to believe that “by taking them some of these students could receive a lower quality education?”
I don’t think you understood what I said. UCLA gender studies major, which, BTW, isn’t the major with the lightest requirements, has only 11 required courses for a total of no more than 44 quarter units. A gender studies major needs many more free electives/credits to graduate. S/he could take other full length courses that aren’t necessarily required by the major to reach the required number of credit units to graduate, or s/he could take many of these 1-unit Fiat Lux classes instead.