<p>Mr. Fang has been in on promotion decisions at a well-known Silicon Valley firm. He says he has never seen the candidate’s college even come up for discussion as a basis for the decision. To get an interview, the college matters, but once the person has been hired, they are evaluated on their performance.</p>
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<p>Exactly. </p>
<p>Colleges are about marketing. They work on your needs/desires/fears as in ‘pay us money and your life will be better.’ That does not differ from how marketing promotes expensive booze.</p>
<p>I really don’t understand how this kind of behavior can be excused by ignorance. The data are not official state secrets - a google search or two would answer most of the confusion people supposedly have about taking out loans.</p>
<p>More to the point, I don’t understand how anyone could live for 18 years (much less 37) without acquiring some basic understanding of the value of money. Being overwhelmed by big dollar amounts is a symptom of an ego too large to educate. I don’t understand how anyone could spend a huge amount of time studying something without considering possible career opportunities. That’s a symptom of laziness.</p>
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<p>If that is the case then why are you on CC and you don’t need to send your children to college at all as in your opinion it doesn’t matter. Find some one to train them at the companies because it is just the experience that matter.</p>
<p>I really value education and the good college as I can see the difference. DD took the first course in the EECS department at MIT last semester and will be taking another in the coming fall. Both of which are considered as the introductory courses for EECS.</p>
<p>I’ve gone thru the lectures online and have looked at the curriculum, I had covered all the content as part of multiple courses during my undergrad. There is tons of difference between the labs these courses have and the courses I had.</p>
<p>Can you learn these at job? Sure as I did. Will everyone be able to get a chance to learn? May not be.</p>
<p>MIT/Caltech of the world are not just teaching the content but an ability to make use of your mind to solve complex problems. Look at the problem set of the courses taught at these colleges and then look at the courses taught at SJSU.</p>
<p>If you can’t see the difference all bets are off.</p>
<p>SJ State engineers are 5 years behind UCB grads</p>
<p>I find this very hard to believe considering where SJSU is located.</p>
<p>Calmom and Bovertine,</p>
<p>I have at least toyed with the idea of going back to college at some point to get a BS in engineering from a top 20 school in a different major. This would allow me to get internship experience. Further, if I move to a state with a good program and work there for 12 months before enrollment, then I could be eligible for in state tuition.</p>
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<p>Considering there are far too few adults here at CC that even consider the value of money (specifically the opportunity costs) when posting advice to 18 year-old students … I’m surprised that you’re surprised.</p>
<p>Since many engineers are posting it is understandable that college is viewed as vocational school. Not everyone views college this way.</p>
<p>Stephen Sondheim could not have predicted that his music major at Williams would yield him the success it did. I wonder how many people said, “You’re a music major? How crazy. You don’t even play that well.”</p>
<p>Does anyone want to argue that he would have earned more money or more to point, experienced more personal satisfaction, with a vocational major?</p>
<p>Look at it from the perspectiuve of the Professor of Woman’s studies. </p>
<p>She makes a good living in the field.</p>
<p>There are just a whole lot of academic disciplines which have enormous value as “general education” courses for other majors but which should severly restrict students from “majoring” in them.</p>
<p>Mythmon,
You are talking outliers. Just because one person can be successful does not make the “system” reasonable or good societal policy.</p>
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We are not addressing the value of school in general, which I agree goes far beyond mere vocational considerations.</p>
<p>Most of us, at least me, are responding to a particular complaint from one poster about his inability to find work after completing an engineering degree. Which is by definition a “vocational” matter.</p>
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<p>That’s always a possiblity. Especially if you like school. In fact, my first degree was in physics, and I was already working in aerospace when I went back for a BSEE.</p>
<p>@mythmom: Deciding whether to take on debt is a financial decision. Future earning potential is extremely relevant to that decision. Sure, some <em>insert major here</em> majors make a lot of money, but some college dropouts make a lot of money too. Just because Bill Gates is rich does not mean that it’s a sure path to a high income. On average, women’s studies majors do not make as much as engineers. This distinction is absolutely relevant when deciding whether a monthly payment is feasible.</p>
<p>I wrote an article about a topic similar to this. My main point was that students should NOT get themselves into a crapload of debt for a liberal arts/non-technical major and that a person should take job opportunities and [starting] salaries into account when choosing their majors.</p>
<p>Only engineers, nurses, accountants, and other majors with more direct career paths and very high salaries (engineers make roughly $60,000/year starting, nurses around $53,000/year, and accountants make around that much). Going into tremendous debt for a woman’s studies degree is unwise.</p>
<p>*
I have at least toyed with the idea of going back to college at some point to get a BS in engineering from a top 20 school in a different major. This would allow me to get internship experience. Further, if I move to a state with a good program and work there for 12 months before enrollment, then I could be eligible for in state tuition. *</p>
<p>Why don’t you try to get a job in a region that is hiring. Then THEY will pay to relocate you and they may even pay for another degree! No debt then.</p>
<p>Where state do you live in? What do you have your degree in and from what school?</p>
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<p>I don’t get it. The missing part of your resume is experience. So you want to go back to school with a different major, to earn a lesser degree (bachelor’s) than the degree you already have (master’s). </p>
<p>It seems to me that you need to fill in the experience part. </p>
<p>Since you haven’t indicated your precise specialty – and since I don’t know much about engineering – I can’t really offer direct help or suggestions. </p>
<p>I do think that the older you get – the more it stands out on a resume if experience is weak. So it seems to me like “more school” is something of a cop-out. </p>
<p>When did you get your MS degree? If it was this year than you can’t have been looking for employment very long. If it was last year, then you had the misfortune to graduated in the absolute worst possible year for job seekers. But the point is – the goal for you should be to fill in gaps, and right now the name of the school you went to may be a weakness, but its not a gap.</p>
<p>Um, many businesses do hire folks with humanities degrees, Women’s Studies included. Perhaps this is a quirk of NYC where businesses want very literate folks; I don’t know.</p>
<p>My dad, who ran a division of the very prestigious American Management Association told me that all his hires were humanities majors. As he put it, “Writing skills are a must for what I’m looking for. Everything else can be learned on the job.”</p>
<p>I am not going to just fold up and concede that humanities degrees are not worth the paper they’re written on.</p>
<p>I have friends with top science PhD’s who are washing test tubes in a lab earning half of what I earn as a tenured faculty member. My parents were utterly appalled that I could waste my time with English.</p>
<p>My sabbatical year during which I was paid my salary to complete a book of poems really put an end to their self-righteous criticisms.</p>
<p>I don’t argue against the idea that that all factors should be weighed, and I don’t argue against the conclusion that this particular young person was unwise. I do argue against the idea that such glib wholesale generalizations are fair to all concerned.</p>
<p>Why not a term of service in the military?</p>
<p>Mythmom… I agree with you on the value of a humanities degree… but I think that my approach toward debt (no more than 1st year salary, based on <em>current</em> - not future - earning potential) - still makes a lot more sense than “NYU – whatever it costs!”.</p>
<p>I mean – even coming from a prestige college and with a top GPA, my d. was looking at salaries in the ~$35K range. And that’s in NYC, where cost of living is sky high. (It was something of a come down for her, as well – she thought she would be earning $40K+ straight out of college – though I had to point out to her that the benefits package is part of the salary valuation.)</p>
<p>I actually think the student with the liberal arts degree is better off in terms of employment, because of flexibility. There seems to be an attitude among some with technical degrees along the lines of “I’m trained in X. Therefore, I must find a job in X. I can’t do A, B, or C because I don’t have the training. I’d like to do Z instead of X, but the only way I can do that is by earning another degree and certification in Z. I can’t find a job because I trained in the wrong field.” </p>
<p>Whereas the liberal arts major thinks, “I’ve got a well-rounded education. I learned something about A, B, and C in school, and this relates well to D, E, and F. I’ve worked a little along the way, so I have good skills in G, H, and I. There’s a job listing for J, and that sounds really intriguing – I’ve never done J and my education isn’t related, but I think my G and H skills might transfer and I think that I’m good at learning new stuff, so I’d like to give J a try.” And that’s how a woman’s studies/religious studies major ends up with a job as a photographer’s assistant. </p>
<p>But I still think the debt ceiling for that versatile liberal arts major should have been $20K and not $60K.</p>
<p>I remember going for a scholarship interview before I’d decided where I was going to attend.
The interviewer asked whether I was going to take loans, and I said no. She then inquired how I was going to pay for any gaps in tuition. </p>
<p>Basically I said that gaps in tuition were the reason I was trying to get scholarships, and that I wouldn’t attend a school with a gap greater than what I would pay at my in-state flagship. </p>
<p>The interviewer then looked at me and said “if you’re not going to take loans, why are you here?” Needless to say, I didn’t receive that scholarship. There is a culture, at least where I live, that loans are both necessary and easily repaid, despite the fact that any student with a 3.5 GPA and a 1270 SAT can go to an in-state school practically for free.</p>
<p>*despite the fact that any student with a 3.5 GPA and a 1270 SAT can go to an in-state school practically for free. *</p>
<p>Well, that’s not true…</p>
<p>Try going to a Calif state school, a PA state school, or many, many other state schools for practically free with a 3.5 GPA and 1270 SAT.</p>