<p>Speaking as an adjunct at a mid-tier college, I believe there are many students in college who really should not be there. They are not interested, often lack the chops to succeed, and probably won’t graduate with anything useful. The state of the economy and our cultural emphasis on going to college have put kids in seats who would be better off going to trade schools or going immediately to work in retail and other industries. </p>
<p>Somewhere back in time they would have gone to work in factories or gotten married young and been homemakers. Things have changed, but they have left many young people in less tenable states.</p>
<p>Thanks for your insight, and it is something I have been saying for awhile,but received many posts castigating me for having such an opinion…Your observations only support my belief, thanks</p>
<p>Great post, I agree 100%! Working in public education we are now bearing the brunt of the “kids aren’t prepared when they come to college” mantra. Many fail to realize what you’ve so well stated…a moderate percentage of students don’t belong in college! Take a look at Craigslist. There are hundreds of jobs posted daily in every city in the country that do not require a college degree, in which people could make a substainable living. My oldest D is a good example. She got a BA in Tourism from a middle tier college. After two jobs in the field she concluded that she din’t like the “drama” that this profession attracts. Took a job as a temp. with a company that runs companies sweepstakes for them. She really likes it, has been hired fulltime by them & promoted within 3 months. She’s not really using her college degree but on the other hand I think her superiors opinion of her started favorably because she had a 4 year college degree from a decent school.</p>
<p>Past performance is no guarantee of the future. Yes in the past it is clear that college has helped. Now and going forward I think there are some alternatives as good for many kids–tech schools, apprenticeships, etc some of which might still count as "college"e really very skills focused. Even nurses/teachers are getting pink slips.</p>
<ol>
<li> Some people who are told to go to college, and do, really would be better off getting some type of vocational training and getting a job.</li>
</ol>
<p>However, until our economy starts up again, there will be no jobs for those people to get. So, they go to college and run up debt (bad), but they’re off the streets for four years (good).</p>
<ol>
<li> Half the stuff I read says employers can’t find enough American computer people and engineers to hire, and the other half of what I read says we have too many graduates in these fields and they can’t find jobs. What is the truth?</li>
</ol>
<p>Perhaps this may mean revisiting the common saying “it is ok to go into four year college undecided”. Hasn’t everyone has seen stories of people who dropped out or flunked out of college the first time around due to lack of motivation and direction, only to later go back to college with much more motivation (often starting at community college) and successfully finishing a bachelor’s degree?</p>
<p>Well, on another thread there was a long tangent about the availablity of jobs in north dakota and the “fact” (though I question this) that nobody but an imigrant would move to north dakota for a job.</p>
<p>Probably in some parts of the country, where people want to stay, there is an overabundance of every type of worker, and in other parts of the country, for example, apparantly, north dakota, even the mcdonald’s employees are getting signing bonuses and making 15 dollars an hour.</p>
<p>I don’t really think college is being oversold so much as being overpriced. An education is valuable, in and of itself, but it’s not really vocational training. People come out of college and you hire them and you “hope” they haven’t picked up too many unchangably awful preconceptions about what a degree means. </p>
<p>I have one who may or may not go right to college. It’s up to her. She has some other ideas, and I’m not opposed to any of them. That said, I would prefer her to get some sort of an education, even if it’s just through books she reads herself. I’m one of those people who will take an interesting class at the drop of a hat, myself, and I’m in my mid-forties. Heck, I’ve just started taking Italian.</p>
<p>But, what people here seem to be talking about is earning potential, and if the measure of the value of an education is monetary, then college is very overpriced. 24% of young black men with a 4 year degree, under the age of 25 are unemployed. 13% of caucasian women and men with a 4 year degree under the age of 25 are unemployed. It’s a lot of borrowing going on for that stat.</p>
<p>a. Mismatch of skills.
b. Employer short sightedness.
c. Location – people not able to move (perhaps stuck in an underwater mortgage in an economically depressed area) may not be able to take a job in a different area.</p>
<p>Note that a. and b. are related – employers often want to see exactly some desired list of skills, but are skeptical of someone’s ability to learn them on the job. The latter is likely because assessing learning ability is difficult in an interview, even though learning ability is probably the most valuable skill in any “knowledge” type job.</p>
<p>An education is more than a degree. Sure go major in engineering because you want to get a “well playing job” after graduation. How many people do you think want to stick in one field their entire lives? if you decide you want to change careers, then your degree according to your standards would be worthless. Even worse than the students who study disciplines such as philosophy. What are you going to if all of your jobs get shipped overseas? The philosophy student will have critical thinking and writing skills, and what will you have? Something else that should be mentioned, is that Engineers don’t even make the insane amounts of money people act like they make. according to bls.gov the average starting salary for civil engineers (largest specialty) is $52,058. I’m assuming that this number either impresses a lot of people here, or they don’t actually know how much engineers make(at least starting out). So yeah… if you want to major in engineering because you enjoy it, then go for it… but don’t try to convince everyone that its some super major that makes you godly amounts of money. Like i said at the start, an education is more than one specific career,a degree, or how much money you can make when you graduate.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus, I like your post. I never tended to agree with that saying and I always wondered how hindering it could be to be somewhere, do something, and live a certain way all at the same time not knowing why. If a prospective college student wants to go to an institution of higher learning, live there, pay to be their (more like his/her parents pay), and finally study there, they should at least know why and what their end goal is. I’m not saying some uncertainty or a possible change of heart is out of the question, but too many kids come in COMPLETELY clueless about what they wish to do. That should be a red flag. I’m not trying to imply that if a student has no idea about their future they shouldn’t go to college, but if they honestly don’t know at all and lack drive and motivation (how can you have either when you don’t even know what you are motivating yourself for?) they shouldn’t go to college until they do.</p>
<p>I agree with sylvan8798’s post wholeheartedly as well. Some kids just don’t belong in college at all. The only benefit about college is their parents spending 100k+ to keep them off the streets for 4 years. </p>
<p>I am all up for kids going to college that belong there, but a primary red flag would be total lack of motivation and/or absolutely no knowledge of a potential future career/aspiration. It seems to be the American culture to “find yourself in college.” I believe that people can and should at least “generally locate” themselves before stepping onto a campus to further explore their potential location in reality.</p>
<p>I can see that, to some extent. But an intellectually gifted kid who can learn well and contribute to class has as good a chance of figuring out what to do with their life in college as out of college. Some kids, the ones who are burnt out on school, or who learn better by doing, would really benefit from some on the job time, just to get a clearer picture of what it is they want to go to school to do. But, the intellectually gifted kid who learns well in an academic environment, if he/she is judicious, can probably get their education paid for.</p>
<p>Still, to some extent, this attitude favors the upper middle class to wealthy in the population. If you have to search for the funds to get a college education, and I mean “have to” search for the money for state u or community college, it is a much more difficult choice, and so far, in our history, fortune favors the well educated and well connected. (frequently the same population, and not for coincidental reasons, btw)</p>
<p>On the OPs question…college is not oversold…</p>
<p>We need more STEM students…and equally need those students to be good creitcally thinkers, problem solvers and collaborative! There are kids with those degrees yet without critical skills and collaborative abilities.</p>
<p>We need science and math teachers and
nurses are in demand…etc.</p>
<p>The economy will recover. </p>
<p>The issue does remain that we have far too many who really don’t belong in college–they belong in tech/trade schools.<br>
Great plumbers, exceptional millworkers, carpenters, welders…those are hard to find…
Sadly we have become a society that fails to appreciate what those fields/crafts require.
We are not seeing the right people who will need to combine and apply their knowledge of mechanical systems, mathematics and so on while in the field on a job pursue these fields.</p>
<p>However, some undecided people may find it useful to explore academic directions at a community college. This has the advantages of being relatively inexpensive and doable part time if desired, and does not have a time limit to decide and declare a major that students entering four year schools face. Note that while this keeps routes open to transfer to a bachelor’s degree program at a four year school, it also allows exploring other directions where courses are available at the community college.</p>
<p>PerfectSky just echos a common CC belief. The other belief, the only way to get any form of employment is by choosing a STEM major, has been discussed on this thread as well.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus, philosophers have helped write the constitution and the moral principles that our country is founded on, i don’t see too many engineers doing the same.</p>
<p>Not sure about critical thinking part…but the lack of good writing skills is a common perception among many employers/HR…and I’ve seen it to some extent among many engineering/CS graduates. </p>
<p>However, there are caveats to this:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>IME, many kids go into STEM fields partially to avoid classes with heavy non-STEM reading/writing loads. A reason why I’ve lost count of STEM major classmates/colleagues who ranted about writing “long” 5-10 page papers during and after college. Something which struck me as odd as 5-10 papers and having a 20 page English thesis requirement was par for the course at the math-science centered NYC magnet high school I attended. </p></li>
<li><p>They are almost invariably the weaker STEM majors who are struggling just to graduate with passing/decent grades and have a very strong anti-intellectual attitude*. The ones who are above-average/outstanding rarely have issues with writing as they tend to be strong in multiple areas IME. Unfortunately, the latter are a small proportion of all the STEM majors/graduates by definition. </p></li>
<li><p>Older colleagues…including a former supervisor who was an engineering major himself have found so many engineering/CS majors had serious issues with writing that they complained to the schools. He cited those complaints as a factor which started to motivate engineering/CS departments/schools to beef up their freshman writing requirements in the 1980’s onward. </p></li>
</ol>
<ul>
<li>The “college as vocational training institute” attitudes which created narrow-minded “code monkeys” unprepared for higher-level work my tech company friend complained about.</li>
</ul>
This is basically the path that I took. Having had my K-12 math education royally messed up due to various circumstances, I was a raging mathphobe. I started college attending CC’s at night, took some basic math courses, decided I could do that stuff after all, and ended up with a BS in engineering.</p>