<p>Here is something I found posted by another CCer (choklitrain):</p>
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<p>Likewise, when we see someone above us making tons of money, it’s easy for us to say “oh, but he’s probably not doing something that’s fulfilling for him.” Same concept</p>
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Thats why you have to find a balance. If you enjoy engineering or accounting then it makes life easier. If you want to rip your eyes out after reading an accounting textbook for 10 minutes I sympathize with you. I came into college with the ability to be an engineer but I chose not to because i would find my 4 years here god awful boring. I thought about business, but felt that the large number of requirements would hold me back from being able to set myself up well for a PhD (goal of mine). I ended up choosing to major in economics, work on my PhD prereqs, and take the necessary business classes to set myself up for employment. I’m not as competitive for jobs as a business major or as an engineer, but I feel like I’m setting myself up well. In addition I’m looking into backup options in case the economy still sucks when I graduate like getting certification as an accountant or actuary. I would much rather have a godawful boring job that i hate than being unemployed (or severely under employed working retail)and living with my parents at 25.</p>
<p>This thread turned out as expected.</p>
<p>In saying that, if you plan on teaching (elementary,high school, maybe college) then it’s not a waste. Granting one won’t earn a six figure income anytime soon after graduating with a BA, it’s a fine “alternative” if you’re worried about a steady income and that comfortable life.</p>
<p>Teaching is a no go for me. I can only stand kids for a short period of time. I’m pretty much screwed. Good thing I’m graduating with no debt.</p>
<p>I think student debt has a lot to do with it too. The fact that students dont have to pay their loans while they are still in school kind of sets people up for being really stressed out once they graduate. I try to always remind myself that I’m going to have 25,000 dollars to pay off at the end of it all. I dont want to forget just how much I’m investing into my schooling.</p>
<p>I also think a lot of kids get ripped off when it comes to which schools they pick. I hear about people paying 40,000 dollars a year and I just feel bad for them, regardless of their major. I got into The University of Miami which costs about 50,000 dollars a year. I got 17,000 dollars in scholarships. I quickly realized that I could not afford to go and it was not worth it to take out 33,000 dollars a year. This has turned out to be completely true. I have spent the past 3 years of college at my cheaper state school being utterly confused about my major and career. Had I gone to UM I wouldve been just as confused, except it would have cost me 99,000 dollars. Im so glad that I chose the cheaper state school.</p>
<p>I love education and I have a true passion for learning, but its important to be rational and objective at times and look at the reality of what college is doing to your life–good and bad.</p>
<p>NO! Absolutely not a waste. Getting a job that pays well isn’t just about majoring in the hard sciences. You can snag a good job with people skills, charisma, drive, ambition, and organization. People who make a lot of money often DON’T work in areas like medicine and technology. It’s called being in big business. Honestly, most big businesses don’t really care what you majored in. What they care about is if you’re the right person for the job.</p>
<p>I guess what I’m trying to say is this: </p>
<p>My dad majored in the humanities. Now he’s a real estate developer. He majored in something he wanted to major in, then got a job that makes plenty. He didn’t have to compromise what he majored in to make money. Frankly, I think that your major does not necessarily correspond to what job you eventually have.</p>
<p>…10char</p>
<p>This isn’t your dads workforce anymore, Parliament. People majoring in humanities do not get hired by big business. Even if they do, if two people come in, one a business major and the other humanities, to interview for the same position, which similiar credentials the business major will get hired everytime. As a matter of fact a business major could have a lower GPA and still be hired first.</p>
<p>The whole “your the right man for the job because you are such a good interviewer” thing died out about 20 years ago. Expertise is what they are looking for. Think about it, if there are dozens of graduates applying for a big business job there is a pretty good chance someone with a history degree will get thrown out before the interview.</p>
<p>You speak about how anyone major can get you into big business, but then your example is your dad being a real estate developer. Is your dad’s real estate company “big business”? If not, how is that applicable?</p>
<p>"You can’t MAKE yourself love something.</p>
<p>anything can be fulfilling if one lets go of his/her ego and puts their mind to it <–you could use a few humanities classes yourself…"</p>
<p>You pretty much completely contradicted yourself. Unless I interpreted this wrong you say that you can’t make yourself happy at work, but then right after that you say that you can enjoy it if you put your mind to it. Isn’t that making yourself love something?</p>
<p>Funny that you bring that up. I actually know of an instance like the one you just described where the humanities major actually got the job because she “had more job experience and was more confident” according to the guy I know who hired her.</p>
<p>The thing is, humanities is not a good bet for people who need or want to be financially independent out of college, particularly if they’re not planning to teach or attend professional school. So you got a degree in philosophy. What’s next? Yes, you can get a corporate job if you know how to market yourself and have attended a top school; otherwise, ring ring ring, real life is calling, and she’s telling you to go back to school to learn an actual skill.</p>
<p>And by the way, it is possible to achieve something in the humanities without ever going to college. Read, read, read and then repeat. We have so many college grads nowadays with humanities degrees who have barely read outside of the material that was part of their university education. Yes, you can take a great class with a great professor, regurgitate their theses, maybe contribute something on your own, but you can also pick up a book, think about what you’re reading, research it, learn, read some more, and so make your own path.</p>
<p>Wow, what a sound argument Parliament! I mean that really changed my mind when you said. “Oh yea! I know some person that got hired at some place because they had such a good interview!”</p>
<p>I never said it never happens. The only way it does happen is if your humanities degree is from a top school and you graduated with some sort of honors. (We are talking about big business here)</p>
<p>Edit: Haha, wait wait. I just reread your post Parliament. “She had more job experience…”. What does that have to do with her acing her interview? She was hired for experience…What was this job for? What was the company? What was her degree?</p>
<p>I love how you deleted you completely contradictory statement also.</p>
<p>“We have so many college grads nowadays with humanities degrees who have barely read outside of the material that was part of their university education.”</p>
<p>Aaah, the single biggest complaint I have about humanities majors. Here’s the deal: I have no respect for those humanities majors who do the least amount of work and then spend the rest of the time partying and whatnot. It’s obvious they want to get through college the easy way. But I have tons of respect for those humanities majors who don’t confine their work, even during the academic term, to only books required for class. The usual complaint by the first group is that they’re too tired to read after doing all the class readings. I say that’s stupid because firstly, most of them don’t do all the readings for class anyway, and secondly, reading shouldn’t be a chore, especially to a humanities major.</p>
<p>Well since I never said I was an engineering major, half of your rant just got thrown out.</p>
<p>Edit: Did you delete your post after I said that, NearL? Seriously?</p>
<p>Well I was about to nitpick your statements, so damn.</p>
<p>The one I remember most of all was your comment that college is not a trade school and it is about studying your passion. Since when? You stated it like everyone goes to college to study their passion. I personally went in with what I was interested in (business) and decided from there what my major would be. I picked it because of job stability and earnings potential. You then went on to argue that if picking up a trade was all I cared about than college was a waste. You’re actually trying to tell me that it is less of a waste to sink $100000 into school in order to study a passion? What a joke.</p>
<p>The last part I remember was how you said I was measuring job satisfaction in terms of retirement. I wasn’t. Kevercho discussed how he was going to have more time to chase his dreams. I told him I would have more time because I could retire earlier.</p>
<p>My dad’s a former engineer. His only advice to me was to avoid engineering if I was only interested in the money. It sucks if you’re imaginative, resourceful and uninterested in the field. You will suffer and you will not be as well compensated as you imagine. Sure, you’ll have a relatively high salary out of undergrad. But engineers face a very real income ceiling of ~100k. Of course, most engineers don’t make that amount anyway.</p>
<p>Here’s my take: College isn’t trade school. The point isn’t to prepare yourself to raise a family or even the working world. The point is to get a firm grounding in the liberal arts and study one’s passion. If that passion is physics, study it. If it’s astronomy, still study it. If it’s history – I think you get the point. There’s no point studying something your don’t enjoy. Chances are you won’t be able to compete against students that are both smart and genuinely interested. Motivation rarely trumps passion. </p>
<p>If your goal is money and job stability, then going to college is not the best decision. In fact, I’d argue it’s a dumb, masturbatory decision. Sure, majoring in Mechanical Engineering seems prudent, but what’s more prudent is to simply NOT go to college at all. Get a trade like plumbing, get paid to go to school (this beats a scholarship) and learn a skill that will translate to a stable income with no real ceiling. A quarter of plumbers are self employed and many make six-figures. </p>
<p>Not an entrepreneur? Well here’s an even more prudent plan: drop out of college now, enroll in a police academy in an urban or suburban district and work as a cop. There’s unlimited overtime and great federal benefits. You’ll make at least as much as engineers but do less work. If you’re reasonably smart, you’ll move up and make far more than the college grad and get increasingly more job security. Or become a firefighter. As a firefighter you’ll sit in the firehouse for maybe three days a week and do pretty much nothing the entire time. You can work a second job on the side and make bank. </p>
<p>Those are all better more stable options than going to college and will likely net a greater income than your engineering degree. If income and stability are the only qualifiers for a job, they win easily. Given those options, spending college to get a fancy engineering degree is just masturbatory.</p>
<p>Don’t major for the future. You don’t know the future. Engineers, lawyers, accountants are suffering these days. Just major in something you like and supplement it with internships and some classes in calc, stats, and maybe economics. You’ll be fine.</p>
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<p>Doesn’t matter. My point still stands. If income and stability are the most important qualities of a job, and one isn’t entitled to happiness, majoring in engineering isn’t the logical choice and is just as masturbatory as majoring in the liberal arts. Moreover, the belief that liberal arts majors are somehow destined for a life of low income, debt and job instability is absolutely preposterous. Were that the case, the market would have corrected for it. We’d see all these poor philosophy majors and avoid that fate. Schools would be majority engineering majors. That’s not the case. As it stands liberal arts majors do just fine for themselves. The benefit of the degree – any degree for that matter – outweighs the debt incurred and potential wages lost attaining it. </p>
<p>I really don’t buy the course of study elitism anyway. Engineering is hard because of the onerous amounts of work involved. The concepts are terribly difficult to grasp.</p>
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<p>College has always been about studying your passion. Going to school to get a degree that’s ‘useful’ is a relatively new attitude toward higher education. College was originally a place where the children of wealthy and well off families would get a firm liberal arts education. The life of the mind was important among the elite and a firm grasp of the liberal arts acted as a signaling mechanism among the upper class. Eventually the government began to offer grants and loans for college tuition and more and more people began to go. The value of the degree plummeted while tuition rates skyrocketed. The liberal arts degree became a joke while engineering rose to prominence. State universities began to cater to their new students taste and made steps toward becoming more like trade schools. The business major, which didn’t even exist 25 years ago, came to be the most popular major of all. That’s the history of the college-is-trade-school phenomena in a nutshell.</p>
<p>Of course, many of the most elite colleges like the Ivies and Stanford, remain true to their roots and do not offer business majors, with UPenn and Cornell being notable exceptions. Their student bodies are majority humanities and social science majors. They have no problem finding jobs.</p>
<p>You just narrowed our discussion down to engineering. Nobody else did that, so congrats on being the first to take a broad discussion down to a narrow field.</p>
<p>“The point is to get a firm grounding in the liberal arts and study one’s passion.”</p>
<p>Really? I just don’t see how you can go on to say it is a waste to go to college if you are looking for job stability and a nice income and then say this. You’re actually going to make the argument that someone going to college to make more money is being more wasteful than someone going to study their passion? That isn’t even logical. If you were measuring wastefulness in terms of intangible things maybe, but your measuring it in terms of cost.</p>
<p>“Well here’s an even more prudent plan: drop out of college now, enroll in a police academy in an urban or suburban district and work as a cop. There’s unlimited overtime and great federal benefits. You’ll make at least as much as engineers but do less work.”</p>
<p>Do you know any policemen? Obviously not. Personally I have two uncles who are police officers and if you told them they were making as much as an engineer they would laugh you out of the station.</p>
<p>" As a firefighter you’ll sit in the firehouse for maybe three days a week and do pretty much nothing the entire time. You can work a second job on the side and make bank."</p>
<p>NearL, you are just ignorant on this subject. I mean do you have any clue how much firefighters work? My girlfriends sister’s husband is a firefighter, his shifts are often 36 hours straight! Not to mention firefighters have been tested and proven to have some of the highest stress levels in any job.</p>
<p>Next time you want to make an argument don’t come in here with made up facts. You were completley wrong when talking about both the situations of policemen and firefighters. I mean WAY OFF.</p>
<p>Oh and by the way, you spoke about studying Physics and Astronomy. Note the title of the thread. NEITHER of those are humanities courses.</p>
<p>“Going to school to get a degree that’s ‘useful’ is a relatively new attitude toward higher education.”</p>
<p>Yes, but its the attitude of todays graduates. Your post just contained all kinds of “was” and “were”. We are talking about today, not the past.</p>
<p>Edit:</p>
<p>"“The point IS to get a firm grounding in the liberal arts and study one’s passion.”</p>
<p>“College WAS originally a place where the children of wealthy and well off families would get a firm liberal arts education.”</p>
<p>Which is it?</p>
<p>Also, you said that the idea that Liberal Arts majors would be struggling was “preposterous”. You then talked about how Ivies don’t have business schools. Your whole argument is so narrow. Of course an Ivy League humanities graduate will have more job prospects and a higher potential income than a Business major from Hillbilly U. My whole argument was in a broad sense. And because most students do not attend the Ivies, most Liberal Arts majors do not either. So in the BROAD SENSE, yes, Liberal Arts majors will have a much harder time with expenses throughout their life than someone who majored in business/engi. Your idea about how 15 years down the road things will even out negates the fact that income is earned during those 15 years, and more income is earned by business/engi majors than Humanities majors, at least a LARGE majority of the time.</p>
<p>“The benefit of the degree – any degree for that matter – outweighs the debt incurred and potential wages lost attaining it.”</p>
<p>You can’t be serious. You really believe that if someone goes to a private school and racks up $120000 worth of debt and comes out with a “Southern Studies” or “American Studies” or any other bs major, and then graduates with absolutley no job prospects, that their degree is outweighing the negatives? No…just, no.</p>
<p>You just narrowed our discussion down to engineering. Nobody else did that, so congrats on being the first to take a broad discussion down to a narrow field.</p>
<p>“The point is to get a firm grounding in the liberal arts and study one’s passion.”</p>
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<p>This isn’t a zero sum matter. My point is that neither is necessarily more of a waste. If you want to major in something for utility, fine. Go for it. If you want to major in something for the love of it, fine. Go for it. If you measure utility and ‘wastefulness’ on a paradigm that doesn’t account for happiness or fit, you’ll think my conclusion is illogical. I’m fine with that.</p>
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<p>Actually, yes I do know quite a few policemen. And like I said, policemen are well compensated, especially after their first few years. I know of at least one policeman who works hard and makes around an engineer’s ceiling salary and she has a lot of room for advancement.</p>
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<p>Firefighting is an easy gig. Actual fires are pretty rare, and big fires are extremely rare. Yes, firefighters have long shifts, which is why I said ‘you’ll work three days straight’ but a lot of the work the time is sleeping, maintenance, cooking and chillaxing with your firefighter buddies.</p>
<p>“Actually, yes I do know quite a few policemen. And like I said, policemen are well compensated, especially after their first few years. I know of at least one policeman who works hard and makes around an engineer’s ceiling salary and she has a lot of room for advancement.”</p>
<p>No they aren’t. You say know of one policewoman who has worked her way up to a position that I have never heard of, I don’t believe you. You probably do not know any policeman on a level that they will disclose their salary. One of my uncles is a Sergeant and has never made more than 60k a year. Let’s not forget that he has been placing his life on the line everyday for almost 30 years. To be honest, if you spoke of the ceiling being 100k, than no your friend does not make that. Police Chief’s often times do not make 6 figures.</p>
<p>Edit: <a href=“http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresult_national_LG12000025.html[/url]”>http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layouthtmls/swzl_compresult_national_LG12000025.html</a></p>
<p>Average salary for the highest rank in a police force is 93k. Yet your friend has a 6 figure salary with room for advancement? BS.</p>
<p>"Firefighting is an easy gig. Actual fires are pretty rare, and big fires are extremely rare. Yes, firefighters have long shifts, which is why I said ‘you’ll work three days straight’ but a lot of the work the time is sleeping, maintenance, cooking and chillaxing with your firefighter buddies. </p>
<p>Where did you get this information? A movie?</p>
<p>Here is the problem with your firefighter argument. The firefighters who do make a respectable income are working in large cities where they do in fact incounter a lot of danger. The firefighters who are sleeping through their shifts are in small cities and don’t make nearly a middle class income. And these guys are NOT chillaxing with their buddies. The small stations usually have one, max of two, people on 36 hour shifts, while other people will voluntarily come and go.</p>
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That is your take on education. Other people have a different take. According to college board its about 25k for a private and 7k for a public. Over 4 years that is 100k or 30k. Thats not chump change to the vast majority of people in the country. Most people go to college because they are told it will increase their earning potential and give them better job opportunities. Most people do not go to college to “get a firm grounding in the liberal arts and study one’s passion.” There are benefits to a liberal arts education (whether a full blown major is necessary, idk) but a liberal arts major is not enough to greatly improve your job prospects and pay after 4 years to justify paying a ton of money for an education. If a college student is type-A and actively seeks opportunities to improve his job outlook (gains leadership positions, networks, takes relevent business classes, internships over summers instead of doing nothing or working retail, etc.) then a liberal arts major ain’t so bad. However, if a student is passive during his 4 years at college and views a diploma as a meal ticket, then they’ll be in for a rude awakening come graduation. It’s easier for the same student to get a job after graduation if he majors in business compared to a humanity. Business has more networking and more recruiting, so it will help set one set himself up for a job better. A business major like accounting is also better because there are jobs that you have the training for, and only have other accounting majors as your competition. For any job a humanities major applies for, every college graudate is potential compeition.</p>
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Thats the point. Most people do not go to college at an Ivy League school. Most people go to state schools and local schools. Going to an Ivy is a great signaling mechanism that one is a very smart, hard working, type-A person. Most people at Ivies don’t need any type of training as undergrads because they are smart enough to learn it all on the jobs and the alumni networks lead to great recruiting opportunities. Sadly, those schools make up a tiny fraction of all college students in America, and the same rulse don’t apply if you go to a random school no one has heard of.</p>