<p><a href=“http://cw.ua.edu/2013/07/24/every-society-needs-hunters-gatherers-cave-painters/[/url]”>http://cw.ua.edu/2013/07/24/every-society-needs-hunters-gatherers-cave-painters/</a></p>
<p>I watched the Bill Maher/ Mike Rowe interview & it was thought provoking.</p>
<p>If you only value a college degree in economic terms, it may not be worth it for some people. </p>
<p>College degrees are not purely economic. If you receive a quality, diverse education, you will live an examined life. You will better contextualize your experiences and strife. You will understand the world you live in, and be better situated to tackle the problems of your generation. You will be a more informed voter. You will live a life worth living, not simply have a job worth having.</p>
<p>Yep. And you can take any kind of job you choose afterwards…the difference is, you will have some choice.</p>
<p>And hopefully you can go to an awesome school like Alabama that will help (or completely) fund your education.</p>
<p>I agree college isn’t always about the economics. I guess I am thinking about the perception that jobs that don’t require college as somehow being beneath people. When watching this with H we both agreed that we would have thought we failed if any of our kids didn’t go to college.
I think it is good to look at the economics though- like earning potential of jobs for specific majors.</p>
<p>Coincidently I have been looking at possibilities for a second career where my ability to keep a job might be more about performance than about the company meeting an ever increasing revenue number for the street & some of these jobs don’t require college. Are they beneath me? Definitely not, but they don’t pay very well either.</p>
<p>An interesting angle, I suppose. But there is truth in the quote “The world needs ditch-diggers too”. College isn’t for everyone, and there are some professions where advanced education could be considered optional, but many just require it, such as engineering. I learned as much about myself, and life in general as I did in a lecture hall while attending school.</p>
<p>Finishing college is as much a test of your will as it is your intellect. It is all about how many hoops you can jump through and just how much you can put up with as it is your GPA. Employers recognize this and know that it is far more about the employee’s ability to adapt and cope. </p>
<p>Nothing against the young lady who wrote that article, but that is a familiar battle cry from those who didn’t finish, or chose poorly in a degree program when making that investment. In most cases, the earning potential (and income realized) is exponentially greater for those with a degree, and I don’t see this changing anytime soon, even in these troubled times.</p>
<p>What does stump me is why people don’t train or go after these jobs that are available? It would have to be better than the alternative.
While this place is a bastion of high achieving students, most of who know exactly what they want to do, there must be some who are undecided & don’t know what they want to do at 17-18 and they are not going to always choose the majors with the best future potential. Where I think it is crazy of course is to borrow extensively to do so.</p>