<p>Calling all parents for your collective wisdom. I will refrain from replying to allow for meaningful contributions. </p>
<p>Does not going to college, or even, not having any interest in college have any correlation to success? Will I live a mundane existence as a labor commodity if I do not have a piece of paper that costs $80,000? </p>
<p>Should I expect job interviews to laugh me out of the door after I tell them I dropped out of college? Or will I never get the job interview in the first place because my lack of degree has subjected me to the lower ranks of the homeless class?</p>
<p>Will my opinion on any matter be ignored because there isn't any credential next to my name? Will my friends be stoners and slackers? Does not being interested in college mean I am not suited for the life of the mind and therefore my future does not have in store life-long learning, but life-long ignorance?</p>
<p>The purpose of this post is for me to find out what my future contains and to separate reality from all the cliches.</p>
<p>Depends on your skills.<br>
Depends on what you want to do.<br>
Depends on what you define as “success”.<br>
Depends on who you want to care about your opinions.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen Inception, but if you’re not learning anything, you’re doing it wrong.</p>
<p>Existence can be mundane no matter what. What sucks is not having money or the chance to make much money, legally. Actually, no. Even that is okay if you don’t have kids. What sucks is having someone you love more than life itself, and telling that person, “No, you can’t have what you need, because I have no money.”</p>
<p>Granted, that can happen with a college degree, but it’s less likely.</p>
<p>I know you can’t imagine having children now. I can only assume you are a man from your user name, so perhaps you could just leave them with the women. Some men do. Lots of men do, actually. So perhaps that is not a concern. Assuming, however, you plan on providing for future progeny, I would say, stick it out and get that piece of paper.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you are not that enthusiastic about college, I would suggest saving some of that $80k and spending two years in community college and then going to a state school and living off-campus. You ought to be able to get it for much less than $80k.</p>
<p>Oh, and I found college underwhelming until I got into my major, as well. What I hated was that in high school, I had time to study and learn but classes were easy. And finally when I got to take classes in what I loved, I had to work all the time. Oh, well. I have gotten over it. I’m really glad I have that diploma!</p>
<p>No, it’s your opinion that people that aren’t happy with college are “doing it wrong.” Not everyone needs/wants/must have a college degree. There are threads where people posted all the different careers and jobs that do not require a college degree. Not for me to pass judgement whether the OP should be in college…I can’t predict the OPs future not knowing the OP. Totally up to the OP how his/her “life” turns out. So asking us what the future holds is a rather fruitless question.</p>
<p>If the OP isn’t thrilled with college why would the OP go to community college…that makes no sense at all. College is college. It is possible that the OP is unhappy with the college he/she is at…but that’s a whole different thing and not what the OP is alluding. The OP is musing about what life would be like with no college…not life at a different college.</p>
<p>I cannot stick it out since I have already been to two different colleges and dropped out four times. I felt like I wasted a huge amount of time and I hated every second while I was at both of them. The last thing on my mind is to go back to any sort of college, including community colleges. </p>
<p>I personally felt like college was a tyranny in disguise- the professors and administration claim to have all the answers and all the knowledge when they don’t, and the students claim to be very smart and inquisitive when they’re out parting and socializing most of the time. College is a great idea but has ended up similar to the situation in animal farm where the only winners are the ones in control, in this case the college bureaucracy who have transformed the system into a cash-cow corporatized ponzi scheme. If you agree with me that college has turned into vocational training then you essentially agree with me that colleges offer a product. But there is a problem with that since their product isn’t exclusive to the college campus (information). Then you agree with me that college is a ponzi scheme.</p>
<p>Anyway, the reason I made this post was to find out what happens AFTER college, assuming I don’t have a degree in hand and what I should expect. Or at least a general idea…</p>
You totally don’t prove that information transfer is the net benefit of a college education. And even if that is the goal, verifiable information transfer warrants an institution of higher education.
Already answered to the best of my abilities: Depends on your skills.
Depends on what you want to do.
Depends on what you define as “success”.
Depends on who you want to care about your opinions.</p>
<p>You could become a successful entrepreneur. You could become a homeless panhandler. You could be elected governor. You could become a drug mule. This is a worthless question without further information.</p>
<p>noimagination, you’re saying not having a degree is not a hugely limiting factor regarding employment? Or the only jobs where it will help to have a degree are in bureaucratized corporations where creative or out of the box thinking is discouraged? Basically, that the world is my oyster even without a degree? That would be excellent news.</p>
<p>Ok, but why can’t I take only the subjects I’m interested in? Or, why can’t I simply come take the final at the end of the semester? I actually asked that question and the Dean of Students laughed at me. Current higher education is more like verifiable subordination.</p>
How on earth do you get that from my post? I’m saying two things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Anything is possible. Some things are very improbable. Asking us what you can do without a degree is utterly pointless because the range of possible outcomes is large. I’m not saying that the set of possibilities without a degree is equal to the set of possibilities with a degree. I am saying that the former set is still too large to be worth discussing.</p></li>
<li><p>The way you can improve this thread is by thinking about the four “Depends” points I have raised twice now. That gives us the perspective necessary to try to provide a constructive response.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>EDIT:
Arguing that college is flawed does not prove that the advantages of college fail to outweigh its costs.</p>
<p>So, you’ve given college a couple of tries and its not for you. Well, with national grad rates running around half, I’d say you’re in good company. Do you think all those folks who didn’t finish college and all those folks who never went at all – whew, that’s a lot of people – are sleepwalking through dreary lives? Some may be; so might be a fair number of college grads. </p>
<p>The question is, what would you rather do? Can you earn a living doing that? If you can’t, will that keep you pleased with your life even if you are working another day job?</p>
<p>noimagination didn’t say that at all. You might be a ■■■■■ because you seem very argumentative. Be that as it may noimagination said that there are about a million answers to what will happen to you with or without a college degree. Bill Gates didn’t finish college, neither did Steve Jobs. Now Steve Jobs has cancer at a young age. Who knows what will happen to any of us? I think that if you have dropped out of two different colleges a total of four times then you’re right, it is a waste of your time, your professor’s time and the resources of whoever is footing the bill.</p>
<p>I’ve thought about this, and what I want more than anything is freedom. I feel like leaving college (and school in general) is a good thing, obviously since college in my mind is glorified subordination, but I am still scared about the world outside of the bubble that is college. I’m worried that since I don’t have a degree that I’ll have to work at a place like Wal-Mart 8 hours a day, which is the ultimate anti-intellectual mind-numbing grind, which scares me to death.</p>
<p>Noone has to work at Wal-Mart. If you are working at Wal-Mart then it is because you have chosen to. You want freedom? The people I know who have the most freedom are the ones who have the most money. The ones without as much money are slaves to trying to make ends meet every month.</p>
<p>You’ve got more freedom now then you’ll have when you are older. Once you have kids and a mortgage and car payments, that is when you won’t have any freedom.</p>
<p>Why don’t you give the real world a try for a while? Maybe you’ll find a niche that you really like and be able to thrive, or maybe you’ll find a reason for getting a degree that’s compelling enough to make you willing to put up with the things about college that you don’t like. Colleges and universities are filled with older students who have taken the time to find out why they want to be there. The decisions that you make at age 20 don’t have to define the rest of your life.</p>
<p>loserman, you posted the following in a previous thread:</p>
<p>There are a lot of paranoid parents on this forum who will try to scare you into thinking you cannot live a happy life without college. In reality, college is usually a waste of four years of your life listening to professors who would rather research and being around kids that would rather make a mockery of learning and socialize. College is excellent at producing propagandized sheep and bureaucrats but will be a prison for those seeking liberation and freedom for the mind.</p>
<p>In another thread, you stated that you feel that you are above working.</p>
<p>In a reply to a person’s lament that they hated college your advice to them was to “stop buying a defunct product.”</p>
<p>From reading this and other postings of yours, it seems that you have a massive chip on your shoulder. And we get it --you think college is worthless. It’s okay.</p>
<p>It’s not okay to use a “tyrannical” college or disengaged professors and students (in your mind) as an excuse. It seems to me that your negativity about school (or negativity in general) mars your entire world. Just because students are having fun or drinking at parties does not mean that they are not interested in learning. It’s dangerous to think so narrowly. You are so afraid that employers and peers will judge you harshly because you judge others harshly.</p>
<p>It sounds like you already know it’s not necessary to go to college to have a curious mind a love of learning. It’s possible to be an autodidact. It’s possible to have a great idea and start a business. It’s possible to have hobbies that fulfill you. And, it’s possible to work at Wal-Mart and have happiness. College is not necessary for happiness or fulfillment. </p>
<p>Could it be possible that you have a problem with authority? The fact that you have dropped out of college several times and don’t want to work sounds like you are depressed or have much difficulty with authority. </p>
<p>I forgot to mention that it is entirely possible to only take courses that interest you. I can enroll in my local community college and local four-year university and take only courses that interest me. I might not earn a degree but I can pick and choose. I can also log-on to:</p>
<p>No. You just shut the doors to a bunch of options that would have been available to you. It can make it more difficult as a result.</p>
<p>For those kids who have a directed interest or skill in something that is needed in the work force, this doesn’t hold at all. I know many non college graduates who have great quality of life and earn more than many college graduates. </p>
<p>But let me give you an example of how it can hurt. My son is with many non degreed kids and many of them do better than he in terms of getting theater type gigs. He is a starving actor and that degree does not give him any extra sustenance while he is out of work, or even in many auditions. The industry could not care less.</p>
<p>But an opportunity arose to help direct an elementary school play. Hours were limited but doable and meant a nice $3500 payout. So he took it. It’ll pay his bills for the next 3 months if he is careful. But then he was offered some opportunities to teach as well. That he has a Bachelors, a BFA was mandatory. Without it, the offer was off the table. He will be doing some work shops and substitute teaching. If he takes a few courses towards accreditation, it will give him some more options. Schools and other institutions do love that piece of paper. Without it, you may not get the job. </p>
<p>My friend had an opportunity for a fantastic job at a major university that required a masters. They wanted her the minute they met her, but could not hire her without that piece of paper. Thankfully she had it. A correspondence course, “stupid” (by her description) diploma but legitimate and she has her dream job because of it. I would not be eligible for the job because I don’t have that piece of paper, though my friend assures me that she cannot conceive of any reason why that master’s is needed.</p>
<p>There are many such positions, particularly in large companies, government, schools. The requirements are set and without the paper, you are eliminated from contention.</p>
Oh, well. I have gotten over it. I’m really glad I have that diploma!</p>