<p>“Are you going to read the great works if you don’t go to college” ? Why not? There is nothing to keep anyone from reading anything they choose to.</p>
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Nothing is stopping you from doing so.
All experiences promote growth: what kind of structure promotes growth in the “right” direction…however you define “right”…?</p>
<p>“Isn’t college a growing expereince, yes for a career, but also for a whole lot more than that?”</p>
<p>I’ll be in college soon and I worry that the growing experience will involve realizing I should have studied something more practical. Like the joke where the philosopher gets to choose wisdom or money and after he picks wisdom he realizes he should have chosen the money.</p>
<p>It’s kind of nice to read the great works under the guidance of a scholar, and with a class full of peers to discuss them with.</p>
<p>“The more well-read one is, the better informed, the more worldly – well, off course that would make one more employable than a high school grad.”</p>
<p>You certainly don’t need to go to college to be well read.</p>
<p>“It’s kind of nice to read the great works under the guidance of a scholar, and with a class full of peers to discuss them with.”</p>
<p>That would be very nice, but I think the reality is for many students, they are sleeping through the teachers droning on (or on their iphones).</p>
<p>“I don’t think any parents are promoting the idea of a hippie paradise where money is irrelevant and we all sit on clouds indulging our whims and passions and eating chocolate and staying slim.”</p>
<p>I personally would love to be in that paradise.</p>
<p>The original thread question is a values question. There is no absolutely wrong or right answer. I am also one of those who would pay for college, and want it for my child, even if it weren’t necessary for good employment. My D will represent the fifth generation of college-educated women in our family. I really value that legacy and would be very sad to see it end. Education becomes a part of you, no matter what you end up doing to support yourself. A Holocaust survivor who used to lecture at a school I once worked at said something that stuck with me: he said the education is the one thing that all the assorted bullies, crooks and authoritarians in the world can never take away from you. They can take away your name, your family, your possessions and your position in society, but they can’t take away what’s inside your head. The ability to spend four years studying something wonderful in depth is a gift and a privilege. I’d want that for my children even if they never made one dime from it.</p>
<p>I am also in no way anti-STEM. I am depressed by the dumbing down and corruption of college education through the offering of transient, poorly designed majors designed to chase a niche in the job market that won’t be around in 15 years. I am depressed by the replacement of rigorous discipline-based study by trendy bee-from-flower-to-flower “studies”-type majors that cater to careless dilettantism. These growths are occurring at many places at the expense of the traditional liberal arts (which include math and pure sciences). There is only funding and space available for so many programs.</p>
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Sure. But we’re talking about an academic major. There are probably many definitions for that but here’s one I like: “a Major is an approved area of study leading to an approved academic degree.” ([Source](<a href=“http://registrar.iupui.edu/chairs/degrees/Definitions_of_Degrees_Majors_Minors_and_Certificates.pdf]Source[/url]”>http://registrar.iupui.edu/chairs/degrees/Definitions_of_Degrees_Majors_Minors_and_Certificates.pdf)</a>)</p>
<p>Ideally, every course will present an opportunity for education in a subject. But that doesn’t directly relate to the major. On CC we usually talk about full-time programs with a 4-5 year duration primarily targeting high school graduates aged 18-25.</p>
<p>Socialization is “a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position.” ([Source](<a href=“http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialization]Source[/url]”>SOCIALIZATION Definition & Usage Examples | Dictionary.com)</a>) A credential is “anything that provides the basis for confidence, belief, credit, etc.” ([Source](<a href=“http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/credential]Source[/url]”>CREDENTIAL Definition & Usage Examples | Dictionary.com)</a>)</p>
<p>My claim is that the system of college education we discuss here is designed to serve the purposes of credentialing and socialization, and that students need to understand that. Education is valuable, but it is a lifetime process that we all approach differently. Degree-seeking students are not just seeking education.</p>
<p>I am not saying that any given student should or should not major in any given subject. Any major can be a good fit if it will help the student achieve his or her realistic life goals on balance. That’s my take.</p>
<p>“Are you going to read the great works if you don’t go to college?” Haha- my D, who is graduating from a top public U next week, only reads “Game of Thrones”- at least it’s not “Twilight” anymore, which is the only other non-Harry Potter book I’ve ever known her to read. As an English major, someone who read 'Ulysses" and “Moby Dick” in great detail in college, I used to be secretly disappointed that she didn’t love literature (or classic flims, for that matter, especially B&W). She would ask me to read Harry Potter and honestly, I couldn’t- I just didn’t get it. But taste is subjective, and I don’t look down on her for hers. She has other interests and talents.
What’s my point? Some people read the great works in college, some read them outside of college, some read them when they are 20, some read them (or reread them) when they are 50, and some never do. Any undergraduate major is worthwhile- Music, Dance, English, Computer Science, Physics, Engineering, Gender Studies, Ethnomusicology, Indonesian- and can lead to grad school, a career, etc. Some majors like Nursing might make them more employable initially (depending on the job market), some might lead to Law or Med school, and some may take them on the path less traveled. But any degree is better than no degree, and the rest is up to them. If your goal as a parent is for them to have a six-figure job right out of college, good luck to you both.</p>
<p>Now we’re questioning education. Why not just send away to a paper mill and get a diploma? Or hire someone to take courses at Phoenix on line and get a credential?</p>
<p>It’s true that one can do the work on one’s own and read any book one wants. I actually am that kind of person.</p>
<p>However, autodidacts often have cranky and idiosyncratic understandings of things and a strange arrogance because they are the only one they know who is well read.</p>
<p>Learning in the company of others is a profoundly social experience. One of the purposes of it is to see how others see the world. And yes, this is useful in STEM as well where collaboration often produces enhanced results.</p>
<p>Yes, I would pay to send my kid to college even if they had a lucrative job lined up, even if my son were a model or my daughter a ball player.</p>
<p>I think college is an investment in the person, not the job, even though I do think a major goal is career enhancement. Are the two goals exclusive? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>One of my cousins never went to college. She tried for two months over a summer and it wasn’t for her. She’s shrewd and pragmatic. However, she’s mired in her own point of view. The last time I saw her she started her usual argument – that college should not be necessary for jobs. She feels everything one needs to learn one can learn on the job and that it’s a stupid (her word) sorting device.</p>
<p>Since she starts this argument at every social gathering that has any college age people, I plan to avoid her in the future. She had a similar argument with my daughter about something else during which time she couldn’t hear my daughter’s point of view at all.</p>
<p>I was able to empathize a bit with her and listen. Not so in reverse. So of course, she “won” the argument.</p>
<p>She is a secretary for a school district with barely enough to scrape by. I would change that for her if I could.</p>
<p>I guarantee she is not educated in any sense anyone here has posited.</p>
<p>She has taken the vocational argument even further. She thinks an apprentice system should replace college.</p>
<p>The idea that education teaches one to look at life in a more sophisticated way has no meaning for her. But it does for me. One of my most important goals as a educator is to give my students the critical thinking thinks to be good voters (not that voting controls much any more.) They need knowledge in many fields to understand cloning, global warming, issues of privacy, questions of taxation and economic distribution.</p>
<p>I think STEM folks are essential in creating our technology and ethical and moral thinking, enhancing by study (by STEM folks and others) are needed to help us know how and when to use it.</p>
<p>It wasn’t the STEM folks who built the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island (near me) who demonstrated to keep it from opening. Anyone whose ever been to Long Island, even once, knows that it can’t be evacuated. Brilliant minds build a 2 billion dollar boondoggle that sits, decommissioned, despoiled a beautiful beach.</p>
<p>I know this seems a bit off-topic, but if we say that college is a ticket to a career, that and only that, my cousin’s argument becomes more sensible. There are other ways to train folks for careers if that is our only goal.</p>
<p>And again, lest some of this be read as STEM bias, it isn’t. I considered a career in a STEM field. I rejected it because of my temperament, not because of any lack of respect for the discipline. I still read scientific literature and do participate in an interdisciplinary study group at my institution so I don’t emerge a cranky autodidact.</p>
<p>I second every thing you say, mythmom. If one could be guaranteed a dream job with no college, and thus college should be skipped, why not skip high school and middle school, too?
I knew someone who said “Everyone should major in business”, and that poets “aren’t needed in the world”. I avoid that person, as you avoid the relative you mention. She wouldn’t be able to debate the issue, and it’s just too frustrating to try.</p>
<p>“Brilliant minds build a 2 billion dollar boondoggle that sits, decommissioned, despoiled a beautiful beach.”</p>
<p>I certainly wouldn’t blame the engineers who designed it and the workers who built it. I’d blame the power hungry, vote grubbing politicians that worked hand in hand with whomever was making the profit on the project, using tax dollars to pay for it.</p>
<p>I actually know nothing about your nuclear plant. But I’ll bet you my assumption is valid.
Always, follow the money…and the power, and there you find who gains. Certainly not the taxpayers or the people who have to live with it. I wouldn’t blame the people who were given the jobs, though.</p>
<p>Your cousin seems so entrenched in resentment of those who have what she doesn’t. I’m surprised she doesn’t just give in and put in the effort to get a degree. It is the minimum standard for many jobs, and she stands little chance of moving up without one (particularly if she doesn’t have the initiative to learn new skills on her own). Why sit around complaining about others if she isn’t willing to change her own situation?</p>
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<p>But who originally placed the order for the eventually unused nuclear power plant? Probably not the nuclear engineers who designed it or the construction workers who built it. Look at the politicians, lobbyists, and executives of companies that got the contracts. And voters who voted for said politicians and did not complain until the money was spent.</p>
<p>However, economic reasons may have stalled nuclear power plant development in many places. Such reasons involve unexpectedly cheap natural gas.</p>
<p>I’m certainly not blaming the engineers. I am saying that engineers can’t solve every problem. They couldn’t say, “don’t build this.” Or even know not to. Only activists could accomplish that. I am not blaming the engineers at all. </p>
<p>Why does everyone want to keep polarizing the thread?</p>
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Does the higher education system in any field promote activism? I have seen arguments to the contrary, but your view would be interesting.
I don’t know. What is your intent in saying that “engineers can’t solve every problem” when nobody seems to have taken that position?</p>
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<p>Assuming you agree with the activists, they failed by protesting too late, after $2 billion was spent (or if you do not agree with them, they failed by causing the worthwhile $2 billion spent to be wasted).</p>
<p>Nobody here is claiming that engineers can solve every problem.</p>
<p>“I’m certainly not blaming the engineers. I am saying that engineers can’t solve every problem. They couldn’t say, “don’t build this.” Or even know not to. Only activists could accomplish that. I am not blaming the engineers at all.”</p>
<p>? Maybe this didn’t come out how you intended? Engineers can’t say, “Don’t build this?” Or engineers couldn’t know enough to say to not build it? Only activists can say and know enough to do that? Engineers aren’t activists? They don’t have the knowledge that activists do, to know whether something might be right or wrong?</p>
<p>I suspect you didn’t exactly mean how it came across in that paragraph. It is likely that plenty of engineers are activists for many different issues. People are complex. One of my earlier memories is of my engineer parents taking me to a pro choice rally.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1512934-universities-have-film-majors-degrees-new-york-california.html#post16037029[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1512934-universities-have-film-majors-degrees-new-york-california.html#post16037029</a> seems to be an example of a student whose parents will only help if s/he majors in film.</p>
<p>Re: engineers and activists</p>
<p>Engineers might also be activists. However, for such things as a nuclear power plant, they may realize there are no absolutes in terms of “safe” or “unsafe” (which applies to a lot of things besides nuclear power plants). How “safe” do you want something, and at what cost? Of course, an engineer is likely to tell you to add first the features that give the best safety improvement per dollar over those which cost more for the same amount of safety improvement.</p>
<p>They were protesting the entire time and I was one of them. We finally got out point across, and it was not too late because Long Island doesn’t have a nuclear power plant.</p>
<p>The willful misunderstanding and “gotta” mentality of this thread has become tiresome.</p>
<p>As someone who’s currently in school (for nursing BSN), I have a suggestion to parents out there. Make sure you send a consistent message from 9th grade onward. Kids need to know whether they will be going into debt for college and be able to plan their HS years accordingly, with looking for work and whatnot.</p>
<p>My parents are divorced and I was told early on that I’d have my college paid for. My parents said things like that without really thinking it through and ended up changing their minds later on (not even remembering what they had said to me back in 8th grade). I learned that they won’t be paying for all my college just recently. Luckily, I chose a state school.</p>
<p>If you aren’t sure whether you can pay for your kids’ schooling, tell them so. That way they can plan accordingly. Better yet, maybe just tell them that they most likely will have to pay for some of their schooling (even if they most likely won’t). That way they will earn more in HS, look for scholarships early, etc. Or at least it will give them motivation to do so.</p>
<p>I have an idea of what I’ll say to my kids one day, though I’d be glad to hear some feedback from someone more experienced. I don’t think the field they want is relevant at all. I’ll probably tell them, okay, 9th grade child of mine. We will pay for x amount of your schooling. If you don’t use x amount, you can keep it for a down payment on a house, fund for a business, travel fund, or whatever. If you want to spend more than x amount, you will have to earn it yourself or pay it back in loans. X amount will (ideally, if I can afford it) equal the amount it costs to attend our state flagship with no scholarships and only accounting for any FAFSA aid, and a normal college lifestyle on top of that. I might allot some more for them to travel during college though, because I think that’s important.</p>