<p>In the 70's and 80s, people were told that a higher level education from a respectable university could open doors. But now that isn't exactly the case and a degree by itself is no longer a golden ticket to a secure or high-paying job.</p>
<p>Recently, I asked my upperclassmen friend which classes I should take that could be practical of applicable in the real world. To my surprise, he told me that nothing I learn here is of any real use. What matters instead is real-life experience through internships and other jobs. </p>
<p>So this makes me think: if the skills I learn here aren't going to be of any use later, why am I even here? I'm investing money to gain an education I hope that would make me a better candidate for whatever job I pursue, but are the skills I'm getting even necessary?</p>
<p>So why would this investment be worthwhile?</p>
<p>Is there any other alternative? So parents, why do you spend thousands of dollars for your kid to go to college?</p>
<p>College should be for learning the skill of maturely thinking things through. That sounds simplistic, but it’s actually a rare skill and one on which you can build a lifelong career in any field.</p>
<p>The primary purpose is to get an education. That may mean different things to different people, but one should emerge culturally literate AND with a track record that will give a potential employer some confidence that you can get to work on time, write expository prose and engage in critical thinking.</p>
<p>Assuming your major does not have obvious job and career application (and even if it does), …</p>
<p>You should learn how to communicate, research, think, and analyze.</p>
<p>You should be able to communicate a subject you are expert at to both other experts and to the general non-expert public.</p>
<p>You should be able to research and find information that you do not know beforehand. As another poster mentioned above, this includes knowing or figuring out what questions to ask.</p>
<p>You should be able to (critically) think in both qualitative / humanistic ways and quantitative / logical ways. You should be able to analyze what each argument means and where it comes from.</p>
<p>You should have sufficient broad knowledge in humanities, social studies, and sciences to understand how they interact and how they relate to whatever problem you are trying to solve.</p>
<p>You should be an expert (relative to the general public and most other students) in the particular field of study that is your major.</p>
<p>Remember The Graduate (the original movie with Dustin Hoffman, not the crappy remake)? The older man takes the Graduate aside and says one word: Plastics. That’s what’s important.</p>
<p>Now I would say that the one word that’s important is Plasticity. The ability to evolve, change, adapt to an ever changing marketplace. That’s what you learn in college – the ability to evaluate ideas and challenges. The ability to get out of yourself, and morph into someone new. And to adopt new patterns of thinking – remember Charles Darwin’s study of species on the Galapogos Islands – it should have been called “Survival of the most readily able to adapt” instead of Survival of the Fittest. Fitness had nothing to do with it. Sometimes, you need to be able to grow a new beak. That’s what college teaches you.</p>
<p>And/or it’s a holding cell for 4 years while the brain matures, which takes until 26 y/o.</p>
<p>A university, in contrast with say a trade or vocational school, provides you with an education. With some majors aside, for the most part it isn’t teaching specific skills nor explicit knowledge, nor even training you for a particular entry level job. While it might, of course, the real value is in expanding your mind, adding foundational knowledge, building mental connections, and teaching you to think. Some of the most valuable education makes you a much more intelligent, competent critical thinker…that occurs gradually overtime even if you can’t come home each day and report ‘what you learned’. No one said it was tacit knowledge. </p>
<p>Of course you can go to a college where you do very little, get high grades, and mostly it’s a social experience with a piece of paper at the end. I’m not sending my kids to university for that reason at all. </p>
<p>But I believe if you go to a rigorous university and pursue and rigorous degree, you come out a very different person than when you went in. If this doesn’t make a lot of sense just think of highschool. Most students become a different, more educated person from 9th to 12th grade, even if they will never “use” the algebra they learned, the books they read, the labs they competed or the history they learned.</p>
<p>starbright hit it right on the nose, IMO. If you think about it, very few jobs (at least outside the realm of engineering, nursing, accounting, and perhaps a few other vocational style majors) track closely to ANY undergraduate college major. But success in most professional and technical fields - success that will bring advancement and more money - depend a great deal on your ability to think critically - to gather evidence, assess evidence, deal with ambiguity, and make a decision based on the evidence, on reason, and on assessment of probabilities. Law? Absolutely essential. Medicine? Ditto. Business? Yes. Engineering? Of course. Science? Without question. </p>
<p>The ability to think critically is developed by courses and assignments that require you to apply the skills of critical thinker, then get feedback on how effectively you’ve applied the skills. Any course, in any field, can (and should) do exactly that; sadly, many don’t, though that’s the fault of the way a course is taught, not inherent in the subject matter. I think (without evidence to back it up, though some may exist somewhere) that to become a really effective critical thinker, you need courses in different areas that cause you to apply those skills to different kinds of problems. Solving a unique math problem, generating and testing a scientific process, critiquing a literary work, analyzing a set of social science data and drawing a conclusion, considering and assessing the impact of decisions made by historical figures - they all bring into play different kinds of critical thinking, and I strongly believe that there is cross-fertilization between them.</p>
<p>So if your coursework includes a variety of courses that require you to think critically, then you are being prepared for a successful life - and a life that is successful not only in the workplace and the chosen career but in other ways as well.</p>
<p>Aside, to the OP: I would give short shrift to what a random upperclassman told you. He’s a student, just like you are, and has, what, two or three more years of college than you do and probably very limited real-world experience. Talk to your professors - see what they say.</p>
<p>However, it would not be surprising if most students chose even what people here consider non-job-specific majors for pre-professional reasons (though the reasoning may sometimes be faulty):</p>
<p>Engineering, nursing, accounting, business, finance, art (practice), music (performance), theater: obvious pre-professional goals
Biology, chemistry: pre-med (though medical schools do not require any particular major)
Political science, English, criminal justice: pre-law (though law schools do not require any particular major)
English: envisioning a writing career
Math, statistics: actuarial or quantitative finance
Economics: seen as a substitute for business
Psychology: seen as a substitute for business (marketing, consumer behavior, organizational behavior)
Foreign language and literature: work in foreign country speaking that language, teaching that language, or teaching English to speakers of that language
Any major: preparation for graduate school to prepare for academic or research job</p>
<p>I own my own business. I can tell you someone who graduates from a decent college tells me they were able to get through, buckle down and study, had goals they were able to complete, had 4 years to expand their knowledge, and had goals for themselves for the future.</p>
<p>I know plenty of people my age who have tons and tons of money and never went to college. But being wealthy and successful and being well educated, are two entirely different things. </p>
<p>I tell my kids there is nothing wrong with being a ditch digger or garbage man if that is what you choose and it’s a hard job and there is no shame in any job you do well and receive money for, but at the same time it’s one thing to choose to be the garbage man, it’s another to have it be your only choice. </p>
<p>And btw… I know the schools that are jokes with the party reputations and the decent schools where you at least had to try.</p>
<p>I’m not gonna lie - The four years I spent in college were the four most fun years of my life. Not just because we partied, but because I met lifelong friends, learned how to accomplish goals, and just had plenty of adventures. Sorry, but you just don’t have that opportunity when you’re working 40+ hours a week. I’ve been in the workforce now for over 30 years, and many of the happy memories of my college days still sustain me. Believe me, you’ll have endless years of drudgery ahead of you. Enjoy college while you can and make the most of it. (P.s. I also worked hard in college and got good grades, which is part of the deal.)</p>
<p>I think ideally you go to college both for the general education it provides (see post #9), and also the access it provides via your major, coursework (like foreign languages, math, writing), internships, networking to the things that will make finding a job possible. Some majors may be a little more career oriented than others, but I don’t think you have to go to college with a particular career in mind. Just talked to a friend of mine whose son is working for the Boy Scouts in New Orleans. He’s gotten great training in all aspects of non-profit work. His major, if I recall correctly was political science after math proved to be a bad fit. He’ll probably stay in the non-profit world. His liberal arts education will be fine.</p>
<p>ucbalum, a business degree does not qualify you to succeed in business unless it also teaches you to think critically. And data shows that business majors are at the bottom of the list when it comes to critical thinking skills. </p>
<p>And I have two business degrees, and I can understand why.</p>
<p>I was not saying it does, just that pre-professional motivation is likely a big reason why students choose that major (though, as noted in the previous post, the students’ reasons for choosing majors may be faulty).</p>
<p>Well, they’re not yet ready to be independent, self-supporting adults, and that’s not just becuase they’re not “job-ready”. They need to mature. They need to learn how to think. They need to know how to work and play nicely with others. College is a good middle ground, a place to pick up a whole range of life skills as well as an education. Now, my college years were like mom483s, loads of fun. But the work I do now would be impossible without my education.</p>
<p>For me, all the skills I use in my profession were acquired on the job. In fact, the only college class I ever came close to failing was accounting, and now I’m an accountant. Debits and credits made zero sense to me as a college student, because I couldn’t apply the theory to anything tangible in my life. Once I worked in the business world, I understood the context and accounting became easy. So if you asked me if college was valuable for job skills, I’d have to say no. But for social skills it was off the charts.</p>