college is a waste of time and money

<p>@ryh- that sucks for you. I’m only a second year and I already have jobs that pay over $10 an hour. I wouldn’t call that normal though, to graduate college with no skills.</p>

<p>To better understand where you’re coming from, what did you major in? Have you fully explored job openings? Besides, We’re in a tough economic situation positions may open up in the future, don’t give up.</p>

<p>I say if you are a humanities/liberal arts major and are not going to college for the sake of learning, it’s a complete waste. The liberal arts is FULL of people who think they have something new and interesting to say on Keats or Chinese literature or Poe. And in the upper-levels of the profession, the ivory towers are full of old dinosaurs, and the associate professors waiting behind them are the younger BabyBoomers and the ones behind them are the Gen-Xers and so on…</p>

<p>Myself, being a Classics major knows this, and I don’t intend on going to grad-school or through a doctoral program to simply grovel at the feet of “The Masters” for 20 years before I even have a chance at getting tenure. Nope. Rather, I’d do independent research, write a book, or something of that nature, and if I’m approached to teach, well that’s even all the better.</p>

<p>College is a business- You pay for tuition and you decide how you want to use the time(Whether it be in the library or in the frat house). After you graduate you get a piece of paper and you move onto something else. Something else can be graduate school, something else can be work, something else can be unemployed, or something else can be directionless.</p>

<p>I think that in this sort of economy people should really be concentrating on what will get them employed after they graduate. If you want to go to graduate school, concentrate on your schoolwork and research. If you want a job, don’t complete a BA in BS.</p>

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<p>Being surrounded by “thousands upon thousands of sluts” means absolutely nothing if you don’t possess the alpha personality traits that women feel attracted to. College can actually be a very depressing experience if you must deal with people who don’t like you and if on top of that you are spending energy and money on something that probably won’t even pay off. I can confidently say that college was the most horrible experience of my life. And the problem was not related to academics.</p>

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<p>I am not interested in being a leader. I am just looking for a humble job where I sit in front of a computer monitor and get something done. As far as the smooth talking goes, some people are good at it and some are not. I am not. But that’s not a concern right now because I haven’t even been invited to interviews.</p>

<p>What did you want me to do? Don’t you think that it would have been not only stupid but also unbelievable for an A student to pursue a career mixing concrete instead of going to college?</p>

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<p>I did not screw up; I did exactly what I set out to do: I obtained a college degree in the subject that I liked. But lacking reliable advice, I relied on the advice of advisers who claimed that if I studied the subject that I liked the money would follow. It sounded like a pretty good deal, didn’t it?</p>

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<p>I have over 3 years of professional work experience. I don’t think that at this point anyone cares if I worked while I was in college.</p>

<p>I guess my school is just better than yours because day one Freshman year in my First Year Seminar class the Professor (not even my individual adviser) tells the whole class, “You need to get involved in some way some how… Employers want to see well-rounded applicants, not a perfect GPA with no relevant experience…” I have three advisers; one in the Division of Undergraduate Studies, one in the Smeal Business College, and one in the Liberal Arts college (because I’m thinking about double majoring in Finance and Economics) who are all telling me the exact same thing. </p>

<p>You can’t tell an Employer you don’t want to be a leader and you’re showing it with your lackluster resume. Why would you hire someone with no motivation to better themselves. </p>

<p>Lastly is the professional work experience anyway related to your major? Because if not then I’m pretty sure whatever major it is being that out of touch for so long is killing you right now also.</p>

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<p>I found a permanent job and had it for more than 3 years, in spite of never doing extracurriculars in college. It wasn’t a great job, but I never aspired for a great job, as demonstrated by my unwillingness to waste my time participating in activities that had nothing to do with my education.</p>

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<p>Not all jobs require you to be a leader. The fact that you don’t feel the need to be a leader does not mean that you have no motivation to better yourself. The part that bothers me is that you seem to be implying that leadership is the ultimate goal of personal improvement. I don’t believe that’s the case at all. Furthermore, what makes you think that my destiny in life is to be a leader? Most people are not leaders. Most people don’t have what it takes to be leaders. Maybe I’m one of them!</p>

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<p>There might be some overlaps in the right fields but at my previous job I never did anything related to my major.</p>

<p>"Being surrounded by “thousands upon thousands of sluts” means absolutely nothing if you don’t possess the alpha personality traits that women feel attracted to. "</p>

<p>Truth</p>

<p>College is a huge scam if:</p>

<p>A. You are lazy and don’t want to study and/or go to class. Alternatively you could just go to an easy college in which you don’t really have to study.</p>

<p>B. You don’t know what you want to do with your life at the age of eighteen so you pay thousands of dollars in courses which don’t count towards your degree.</p>

<p>C. You are led to believe(As the OP has posted) you will will be making $100,000 a year(???) for your undergraduate degree in XXX. Don’t pay $80,000 for a BA in English.</p>

<p>Leadership experience isn’t only useful to become a leader. Whether or not your employers are looking for a leader, someone hiring for any position wants an employee with ambition, someone who comes in to work ready to face the day and get *** done without having to be supervised. Leadership experience shows the empolyer that you have those attributes. </p>

<p>If you do get an interview, I suspect that your negative attitidue won’t be asked to return. Who would want to work with someone like that? ETA: And who would want to admit that they’ve hired someone like that?</p>

<p>I’m also very curious what you majored in. Since you said it was something you “liked” rather than something useful, I bet that it’s one of the reasons you’re not being asked in for interviews.</p>

<p>Replace college with highschool</p>

<p>Or replace college with private undergrad colleges (excluding Ivy’s)</p>

<p>And OP would be correct</p>

<p>Meh. If I make more money than my parents do… I’ll be pretty happy. 30k sounds like a lot of money to me. I don’t know what I could even do with $100k.</p>

<p>And I’m not spending much on college either. Hopefully less than $8k a year.</p>

<p>Looks like the OP has 1) an attitude problem, 2) an ego problem, and 3) does not understand that while college often leads to a job, it by no means is a guarantee. Going to college definitely increases the overall likelihood of a person of finding a nice-paying job, but when you have an attitude and ego problem (or are lacking other qualities that help people get jobs) it is not surprising when you are not able to find your ideal job. </p>

<p>Some other observations -
Working 3 years for a job unrelated to your major is almost useless if you want to find a job within your major. First of all, while employers like to see dedication and your ability to stick to a job, at the same time, they also like to see a diverse work background…that you have tried different jobs, some within your major and some not because each job teaches you different skills. You didn’t even bother to get an internship related to your major while in college, which seems to be a huge oversight on your part (believe it or not, internships can be for credit…PART of your education as well). The fact that you didn’t do extracurriculars because you didn’t think it would help your education displays that you have an extremely naive, immature and limited view of what “education” is. Education isn’t just a GPA and going to classes, or getting your degree. Education is only powerful when it can be used as a stepping stone to learning something else. Just because you master your classes doesn’t mean you automatically master life and the working world. College can and will provide the critical problem solving skills that allow you to get access to the working world, but only if you let it. Get over yourself! (I realize that this thread was made several months ago, but my points still stand)</p>

<p>The OP’s major was Mathematics and he could make a very strong argument that many of the extra-circular activities offered by the university would not apply to his studies. This isn’t to imply that he shouldn’t have done any extra-circulars nor does it mean that this reasoning is applicable to everyone. What I don’t understand is why someone so focused in school would not consider graduate school or further. He had to know at one point or another that simply going to school and getting good grades in classes would not be 100% applicable to obtaining employment outside of school.</p>

<p>I hate to go against popular opinion here, but I completely agree with the OP and actually feel sorry for him as I can totally relate to many of the feelings he described after having experienced college. </p>

<p>So I am going to say, yes, for the majority of people college is a complete and utter waste of time. And even more so for the kind of people who think for themselves and are the leaders instead of the followers. </p>

<p>For one, knowledge is not valuable anymore. It may have been valuable before the technology revolution, but nowadays you can get information for free, fast, online. And not only that but you can get tons of information anytime you want. Instead of waiting to have to get up at 6:30AM to go to International Relations class with Doctor Boring, you can find 40 books on International relations online and read it at your own pace, discovering it for yourself instead of having someone else preach it to you. Instead of locking yourself into a single major that will last 4 years you have ultimate flexibility if you go it alone.</p>

<p>Two, everyone and their uncle Sam has a degree nowadays, which translates into the degree being absolutely worthless. Obama (who has good intentions, I am sure) wants to change the percent of people who get college degrees to 55% by so and so date? What a joke!? I mean, sure, it sounds great on paper, but in reality, you, cannot, give everybody, a degree. You can’t simply push everyone through the system and declare everyone a college graduate. As if they are apart of the “Kool Kids Klub” now. It’s just not possible, even though it sounds like a good idea, because it becomes totally meaningless, a huge waste of resources, a huge waste of time, and angry and bitter citizens. </p>

<p>Third, which has more to do with my own opinion…is that ideas are going to be the new wealth. Not information. Information by itself is not very valuable. It’s how you use that information, it’s the person who figures out how to coordinate all the information and compose it together who will be the most valuable.</p>