5 ms·

I'm frustrated by articles like these that lump all of "college" into one bucket, as if the variety of degrees that one can earn at any four year institution ca

I'm frustrated by articles like these that lump all of "college" into one bucket, as if the variety of degrees that one can earn at any four year institution can be combined into a single undifferentiated mass. Is college worth the cost? The answer, as with so many things in life is, "It depends." If you go to college with a clear idea of what sorts of careers your degree is going to open up, and what the earnings potential of those careers are then college can definitely be worth it. Is an engineering degree worth the money? Given the numbers I've seen fly around whenever Hacker News talks about engineering and programmer salaries, I'd have hard time arguing no. Is a degree in, say, Art History worth it? I don't know. I don't know anything about the sorts of careers Art History majors get, and what the costs of an Art History degree are.

jordanpg 11y ago
Agreed. I would take this a step further, though. If the degree is simply a means to an end, a credential, a set of skills needed for some job, then I would submit that a live-in university is a grossly inefficient way to transmit those skills, in most cases. Something more akin to community college, or perhaps what Georgia Tech or Coursera, et al. are doing is more appropriate. If, on the other hand, the goal is to sharpen critical thinking, to learn how to solve difficult problems, to become more well-read, to become a writer, to debate ideas, and a host of other less tangible skills, then a university is called for. In either case, what the modern undergraduate university has become accomplishes neither. It is an obscenely expensive, grotesque, hyper-social playground with the occasional cookie-cutter class, with the exception of a smattering of upper-level classes. The university will only survive the next few years is if they return to their more austere roots and shed about 60% of the students and 80% of the staff in the process.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  Yes, you could hire a few professors, rent a few classrooms with chairs and whiteboards, and you have the essence of a university. No real need for all this bloat. Students could live at home and brown bag it for lunch.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    Learning in many fields is social. When you have a sufficiently nerdy student body, the best debates, mind-expanding and perspective-enhancing experiences, friendships, etc. are not in classrooms but in dorm common rooms at 3am. They're spontaneous conversations between people who bumped into each other at a coffee shop outside a reading room, both procrastinating a paper. They're at dinner with your dorm-mates at your table together in the dining hall. Common spaces, and a curated set of people (for intellectual ability, general passion, etc) spending a lot of time in those common spaces, are an incredibly important component of a modern elite education. If lectures are all that matter, just do it on the internet. They aren't.
    - klean92 11y ago
      If that's the real value of college education, it's definitely not worth $40K a year x 4.
      - StillBored 11y ago
        Yah, see hacker spaces, and social dinners....
      - superuser2 11y ago
        Take a look at NPR's "What you'll Actually Pay At 1,550 Colleges" [0]. To pay $40k at a good school you'd have to be pretty wealthy ($110k+ household income). At median income, good but not Ivy League private schools (UChicago, Columbia, CalTech, MIT) are running $8-12k. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/30/444446022/what-youll-actually-pay-at-1-550-colleges?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150930 http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/30/444446022/what-...
    - SilasX 11y ago
      Very true, but the typical college student's experience does not include that.
    - blisterpeanuts 11y ago
- calinet6 11y ago
  I completely agree with the noble goals you've called out, and I'll add two points: First, when is it truly undesirable to broaden your skills, to develop intangible quality, to improve your abilities as a human being beyond a specific depth? I argue (and I know it's arguable) that it's always a positive. To some degree I think the market agrees with this and, without a clear answer to "what is a good education worth," has overvalued (or rather, overpriced) the unmeasurable intangible results of a college education, which is one of our problems. Second, I completely disagree that the modern undergraduate university accomplishes neither of these things. It is obscenely expensive (needs correction), but it is not "grotesque," it is not "hyper-social" in the derogatory sense (simply diversely social, which is neutral/positive), it is not a "playground" other than the type that nurtures minds and enhances opportunities for learning, it is not "cookie cutter" except in the sense of being an effective and repeatable system. The university deserves to survive, it deserves to flourish, and it is an institution deserving respect for the effect it has had and will continue to have on the rise of civilization and the improvement of society. Because it is both difficult to measure and easy to understand such an enormous impact, universities have become expensive. That is regrettable and needs recalibration from a more powerful entity (public universities have it right, but they rightfully need support from society). But don't think for a second that the castration of the university to an austere intellectualized minority luxury is the way forward for the institution of higher learning or for society itself. As civilization becomes more complex and more difficult to comprehend, we will only need more and better universities, and ones that continue in the tradition of the liberal arts—that we may continue to be human in the face of ever greater inhumanity. Save us all if we are required to measure that.
  - jordanpg 11y ago
    I couldn't agree more about the intrinsic or potential value of the idealized university, and I've seen glimpses of that ideal in my small sliver of experience there. I was using hyperbole for rhetorical reasons, but the words were chosen deliberately. Grotesque: college athletics. Hyper-social: the Greek system, "hookup culture". Playground: grade inflation. All egregious, ubiquitous examples. Sure, there are many exceptions, but in my experience at decent to good campuses, these things are dominant influences, if not the definitive ones. This includes most of the great American campuses. (I don't know much about what it's like outside the US.) Universities cannot be serious places if they are filled with unserious people doing unserious things. No institution could.
ecdavis 11y ago
I totally agree, but it goes further than just differences between degrees. There are huge differences between individuals and institutions as well. In every area, the best (and sometimes only) jobs go to the best people. Where an applicant attended college can have a big influence on how they're perceived by prospective employers.[0] The question of individual performance also comes in to play. Some reports have said that almost 75% of STEM graduates don't actually work in STEM.[1] I'm sure some of that is driven by the fact that companies want to hire above-average people - but only 50% of people fall into that category. Even in the current crazy environment in computing, there are computing graduates who can't find jobs. There's a lot more to this issue than engineering vs. art history.[2] Sure, there's a lot of people who get degrees in fields with small labor markets. There's also the 50% of graduates with below-average transcripts. On top of that, there's people who think attending a lousy college is better than no college at all - they're shouldering a whole lot of debt for something that may ultimately bring them close to zero benefit. There are a lot of people for whom college has paid off in spades. These people aren't necessarily lucky, they may have simply made more sensible choices. [0] Of course there are pros and cons to this, but we know it's true. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-shortage-of-scientists-and-techies-think-again/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-shortage-of-scientists-and-tec... [2] I'd rather an art history degree from a great school than an engineering degree from a terrible school.
- 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
  This. It's also worth mentioning that labor markets change. A lot of people working in Silicon Valley today weren't around after the first crash so they can't imagine how an engineer making six figures today with seemingly unlimited opportunities can find himself or herself making $0 tomorrow with seemingly few opportunities. But it has happened, can happen and will happen again at some point.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    People with genuine talent in the industry have extremely little to worry about, IMO. I was shopping for a used car shortly after the 2000 crash. Car salesman found out what I do for a living and said, "Yeah, I was a programmer for a couple years; made a lot of money. Then when I got fired and couldn't get another job, I went back to selling used cars." The no-talent temporary programmers are the ones who flood into and wash out of the market in crashes. If you have genuine talent, your time between employment is measured in hours right now, in days during normal times, and maybe in weeks during crashes.
davidw 11y ago
> Given the numbers I've seen fly around whenever Hacker News talks about engineering and programmer salaries, I'd have hard time arguing no. Even there, though, there are plenty of people (myself, for instance) doing just fine in this industry without a degree. There are things I'll likely never work on, like complex computer vision stuff involving oodles of math, but heck, most people without a masters or doctorate don't work on that anyway.
- bcheung 11y ago
  I've actually been studying computer vision on the side. The highest formal math education I had was Integral Calculus. I'm not going to be hired doing that any time soon but it is fun to play around with none the less.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
_rpd 11y ago
> I'm frustrated by articles like these that lump all of "college" into one bucket I have a relative who thought of college in exactly this way. She gamed the admissions process to get into a "good" college, then took the easiest classes she could get away with for the next four years - openly mocking those who took classes that required effort. A few months after graduation, she was genuinely angry and felt betrayed that someone hadn't offered her a job with an office and a high 5 figure starting salary - presumably related to "leisure studies" which was her major. After all, she had gone to a good college like everyone had told her to. She was definitely not the only one of her friends who thought the same way.
- ardacinar 11y ago
  I'm not an American, and at first I thought the "leisure studies" major was just sarcasm(similar to Kaldirim Muhendisligi, i.e. Sidewalk Engineering in Turkish), then I googled it, and I am completely baffled that it is actually a thing.
the_watcher 11y ago
> articles like these that lump all of "college" into one bucket The reason they do this is because my generation actually was brought up with the idea that going to college, any college, and getting any degree made you more successful than those without degrees. Now, some realized that this wasn't true, but it wasn't the message hammered into us from kindegarten on.
- vacri 11y ago
  It used to be very true, back in the days before "everyone" had a degree. Even as recently as when you were in kindergarten.
austenallred 11y ago
But that's exactly the point. All growing up my generation was told, "Just get a degree! It doesn't matter what it's in, it doesn't matter what it costs, just get a degree!" There was no other acceptable route, so all the "good" kids went to college to get degrees. That leaves parts of my generation racking up student loans they literally cannot pay off with the careers they will get, all the while assuming they'll be alright financially because "degree!" Of course, college is a big bundle of things: Friends, connections, good time, hopefully skills to get a job. Of course, college is a great thing and completely necessary for some people. But there are a lot of people going into so much debt they would have been in a better position financially by not going.
- harryh 11y ago
  I'm frustrated by comments like these that lump all of "my generation" into one bucket, as if the variety of people all around the same age can be combined into a single undifferentiated mass. Was your generation told this? The answer, as with so many things in life is, "It depends." Some millennials were probably given bad information that lead them to make poor choices. Some were given bad information but nonetheless were able to see past it to make good choices. Some just had rich parents so they were able to go to college without accruing any debt at all. Lumping 80 million people together (the majority of whom will never get a degree) is silly.
  - gambogi 11y ago
    But that's exactly the point. All growing up we were told, "Be a generalist, not a specialist" There was no other acceptable route, so all the "good" kids identified patterns to get ahead. That leaves many of us barking up when we notice a pattern. Of course, a generalization is a big bundle of things: abstractions, ceteris paribus, the act of generalizing, a general statement, pattern naming
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - RevRal 11y ago
msutherl 11y ago
Interesting result from a survey I conducted on behalf of an artist at the Venice Biennale (possibly the most important contemporary art event in the world): nearly all visitors during the preview (prior to the public opening) who answered (about 1000 people) said they held at least a master's degree. Albeit this is in Europe, where in many countries advanced degrees are quite common, but suffice it to say an Art History degree may be quite valuable to those looking to succeed in the art world. Anecdotally, I know this to be the case. On the flip side, you are very unlikely to succeed unless you have connections from the outset.
bcheung 11y ago
It's true that programming and engineering tend to pay more. But it is also true that those fields don't require a degree to work in them. You can get paid very well as a programmer even without a college degree. Also, with programming the vast majority of that information is available for free online. It doesn't make sense to pay that much for something that you can get for free.
- rhodysurf 11y ago
  Outside of software engineering, all other kinds of engineering absolutely require an ABET accredited degree
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    in the US, you can make almost the same salary as a 'technical designer', who work alongside engineers. or if you're a very talented draftsman / cad operator / machinist kind of individual. your career as an employee will be somewhat limited - however, entrepreneurialism is the great equalizer when it comes to money. starting early in a trade field with a solid career foundation can set the stage for running a business later in life after a decade or two of wages and experience under your belt. again, remember this is all in the context of paying/borrowing $TONS for college. that's the tradeoff here. is being an engineer worth the debt you incur as a very young person, versus starting in a lower track but making the most of your time and money earned.
    - rhodysurf 11y ago
      That depends what you want to do. The work and opportunities a degree holding engineer will get is far higher than a tradesmen. Also, you dont need that much debt. A state school engineering degree is extremely affordable and gives the same opportunities as a more expensive degree. But if you want a position as an engineer you need to go to school to be one, its one of the more cut and dry professions out there (Not talking about software engineering)
  - StillBored 11y ago
superuser2 11y ago
More interesting than major is quality. Is an Art History degree from a rural commuter school interesting? Probably not. Is a Philosophy degree from Harvard interesting? I'd say so.
- akhilcacharya 11y ago
  Yup. Prestige is more important than a lot of people like to admit.
  - Matachines 11y ago
    I'll go as far as to say that when it comes to degrees like Art History, prestige (i.e. reputation of the school's department) is what matters the most. That way, you will get to do the interesting research and make the necessary connections to advance your career.
    - akhilcacharya 11y ago
      Correct, but if it works for art history, it should also work for other degrees that more directly translate into career paths, no?
muraiki 11y ago
I think the situation is more complicated than what the average salary is for a given degree, or even what career opportunities a particular degree opens up. I was a liberal arts major (Religious Studies) and through a winding path ended up becoming a programmer. I knew at the time that I wouldn't be able to do much with my degree, but sometimes people pick degrees because of things besides career options and earnings potential -- and I would argue that these decisions can still be classified as perfectly rational at the time. I thought I'd work any sort of job to pay off my thankfully small student loans and then become a monk, but life turned out differently. Now you might say that my story is an unusual exception, but I think that similar thoughts (minus monasticism) drive the hearts of most liberal arts majors. We need to consider that in the current educational system we are asking young people who are in the midst of trying to understand the world and their place in it to make a decision that very few are equipped to decide, but which they generally cannot delay, and with which they will incur great cost. And the effects of making this decision will last their entire life -- I myself know that it's possible to "pivot", but extremely difficult to do so. Furthermore, there's no guarantee that a job even awaits those who pursue high paying degrees. For anyone who graduated in 2008, those with degrees in finance or MBAs will suffer the consequences of ill timing the rest of their life. Likewise with those who graduated with CS degrees during the dot com crash, or with advanced degrees focused on AI during the AI Winter. Sometimes things completely beyond our control result in what seemed like a prudent decision falling apart. So my point is that our current educational structure is not well suited towards producing people who are resilient to disruption. And I mean disruption in a few senses: graduating when the market for their skills crashes, studying for a decade to get a degree in something that is beginning to be replaced by automation (I know one M.D. in a particular field who is preparing for this), and so on. It of course takes some time to acquire the skills to perform any particular job, and it might be unrealistic to expect someone with a family to even have the time to work and retrain at the same time. I know places like Udacity have things like "nanodegrees" and Coursera has certificates and whatnot, but I remain unconvinced that there are enough, say, web development jobs to meet the demands of both the unemployed and the recently graduated. And once there are too many web developers, what will they retrain to (and what will be the mobility and growth potential of us current developers)? My comment is starting to turn into a blog post, so I'll try to wrap it up now. Ultimately I think that disruptive forces -- whether economic, automation-driven, or something else -- will only increase over time, and will exacerbate the already existing problems, causing significant social upheaval because we do not equip people to function in such an environment, but rather try to train them for their lifelong job, which is a thing that no longer exists. And I guess that I just ended up stating one of the motivations behind a liberal arts education (as opposed to something like a trade school where you generally focus upon one particular set of job skills) without even intending to end up here: it's not necessarily that you need to know art history or music theory in particular, but that in expanding the scope of your intellect and the modes of thought you are capable of, you will be much better prepared to learn what you do need to learn and to think critically about it.
mildbow 11y ago
It's a crap situation, and victim blaming doesn't help. We just happened to be lucky we like STEM. I know I was lucky enough to find my passion before college, then follow it, which luckily just happened to be a booming field. Sure we can look back and pat ourselves in the back. But really, it should just be for being in the right place at the right time. Anyway, if you researched what you were going to do, why not pursue a career with a lot less risk/more career growth opportunities? Say being a MD?

jordanpg 11y ago

Agreed. I would take this a step further, though. If the degree is simply a means to an end, a credential, a set of skills needed for some job, then I would submit that a live-in university is a grossly inefficient way to transmit those skills, in most cases. Something more akin to community college, or perhaps what Georgia Tech or Coursera, et al. are doing is more appropriate. If, on the other hand, the goal is to sharpen critical thinking, to learn how to solve difficult problems, to become more well-read, to become a writer, to debate ideas, and a host of other less tangible skills, then a university is called for. In either case, what the modern undergraduate university has become accomplishes neither. It is an obscenely expensive, grotesque, hyper-social playground with the occasional cookie-cutter class, with the exception of a smattering of upper-level classes. The university will only survive the next few years is if they return to their more austere roots and shed about 60% of the students and 80% of the staff in the process.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago
Yes, you could hire a few professors, rent a few classrooms with chairs and whiteboards, and you have the essence of a university. No real need for all this bloat. Students could live at home and brown bag it for lunch.
- superuser2 11y ago
  Learning in many fields is social. When you have a sufficiently nerdy student body, the best debates, mind-expanding and perspective-enhancing experiences, friendships, etc. are not in classrooms but in dorm common rooms at 3am. They're spontaneous conversations between people who bumped into each other at a coffee shop outside a reading room, both procrastinating a paper. They're at dinner with your dorm-mates at your table together in the dining hall. Common spaces, and a curated set of people (for intellectual ability, general passion, etc) spending a lot of time in those common spaces, are an incredibly important component of a modern elite education. If lectures are all that matter, just do it on the internet. They aren't.
  - klean92 11y ago
    If that's the real value of college education, it's definitely not worth $40K a year x 4.
    - StillBored 11y ago
      Yah, see hacker spaces, and social dinners....
    - superuser2 11y ago
      Take a look at NPR's "What you'll Actually Pay At 1,550 Colleges" [0]. To pay $40k at a good school you'd have to be pretty wealthy ($110k+ household income). At median income, good but not Ivy League private schools (UChicago, Columbia, CalTech, MIT) are running $8-12k. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/30/444446022/what-youll-actually-pay-at-1-550-colleges?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150930 http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/30/444446022/what-...
  - SilasX 11y ago
    Very true, but the typical college student's experience does not include that.
  - blisterpeanuts 11y ago
calinet6 11y ago
I completely agree with the noble goals you've called out, and I'll add two points: First, when is it truly undesirable to broaden your skills, to develop intangible quality, to improve your abilities as a human being beyond a specific depth? I argue (and I know it's arguable) that it's always a positive. To some degree I think the market agrees with this and, without a clear answer to "what is a good education worth," has overvalued (or rather, overpriced) the unmeasurable intangible results of a college education, which is one of our problems. Second, I completely disagree that the modern undergraduate university accomplishes neither of these things. It is obscenely expensive (needs correction), but it is not "grotesque," it is not "hyper-social" in the derogatory sense (simply diversely social, which is neutral/positive), it is not a "playground" other than the type that nurtures minds and enhances opportunities for learning, it is not "cookie cutter" except in the sense of being an effective and repeatable system. The university deserves to survive, it deserves to flourish, and it is an institution deserving respect for the effect it has had and will continue to have on the rise of civilization and the improvement of society. Because it is both difficult to measure and easy to understand such an enormous impact, universities have become expensive. That is regrettable and needs recalibration from a more powerful entity (public universities have it right, but they rightfully need support from society). But don't think for a second that the castration of the university to an austere intellectualized minority luxury is the way forward for the institution of higher learning or for society itself. As civilization becomes more complex and more difficult to comprehend, we will only need more and better universities, and ones that continue in the tradition of the liberal arts—that we may continue to be human in the face of ever greater inhumanity. Save us all if we are required to measure that.
- jordanpg 11y ago
  I couldn't agree more about the intrinsic or potential value of the idealized university, and I've seen glimpses of that ideal in my small sliver of experience there. I was using hyperbole for rhetorical reasons, but the words were chosen deliberately. Grotesque: college athletics. Hyper-social: the Greek system, "hookup culture". Playground: grade inflation. All egregious, ubiquitous examples. Sure, there are many exceptions, but in my experience at decent to good campuses, these things are dominant influences, if not the definitive ones. This includes most of the great American campuses. (I don't know much about what it's like outside the US.) Universities cannot be serious places if they are filled with unserious people doing unserious things. No institution could.

ecdavis 11y ago

I totally agree, but it goes further than just differences between degrees. There are huge differences between individuals and institutions as well. In every area, the best (and sometimes only) jobs go to the best people. Where an applicant attended college can have a big influence on how they're perceived by prospective employers.[0] The question of individual performance also comes in to play. Some reports have said that almost 75% of STEM graduates don't actually work in STEM.[1] I'm sure some of that is driven by the fact that companies want to hire above-average people - but only 50% of people fall into that category. Even in the current crazy environment in computing, there are computing graduates who can't find jobs. There's a lot more to this issue than engineering vs. art history.[2] Sure, there's a lot of people who get degrees in fields with small labor markets. There's also the 50% of graduates with below-average transcripts. On top of that, there's people who think attending a lousy college is better than no college at all - they're shouldering a whole lot of debt for something that may ultimately bring them close to zero benefit. There are a lot of people for whom college has paid off in spades. These people aren't necessarily lucky, they may have simply made more sensible choices. [0] Of course there are pros and cons to this, but we know it's true. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-shortage-of-scientists-and-techies-think-again/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-shortage-of-scientists-and-tec... [2] I'd rather an art history degree from a great school than an engineering degree from a terrible school.

7Figures2Commas 11y ago
This. It's also worth mentioning that labor markets change. A lot of people working in Silicon Valley today weren't around after the first crash so they can't imagine how an engineer making six figures today with seemingly unlimited opportunities can find himself or herself making $0 tomorrow with seemingly few opportunities. But it has happened, can happen and will happen again at some point.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  People with genuine talent in the industry have extremely little to worry about, IMO. I was shopping for a used car shortly after the 2000 crash. Car salesman found out what I do for a living and said, "Yeah, I was a programmer for a couple years; made a lot of money. Then when I got fired and couldn't get another job, I went back to selling used cars." The no-talent temporary programmers are the ones who flood into and wash out of the market in crashes. If you have genuine talent, your time between employment is measured in hours right now, in days during normal times, and maybe in weeks during crashes.

davidw 11y ago

> Given the numbers I've seen fly around whenever Hacker News talks about engineering and programmer salaries, I'd have hard time arguing no. Even there, though, there are plenty of people (myself, for instance) doing just fine in this industry without a degree. There are things I'll likely never work on, like complex computer vision stuff involving oodles of math, but heck, most people without a masters or doctorate don't work on that anyway.

bcheung 11y ago
I've actually been studying computer vision on the side. The highest formal math education I had was Integral Calculus. I'm not going to be hired doing that any time soon but it is fun to play around with none the less.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

_rpd 11y ago

> I'm frustrated by articles like these that lump all of "college" into one bucket I have a relative who thought of college in exactly this way. She gamed the admissions process to get into a "good" college, then took the easiest classes she could get away with for the next four years - openly mocking those who took classes that required effort. A few months after graduation, she was genuinely angry and felt betrayed that someone hadn't offered her a job with an office and a high 5 figure starting salary - presumably related to "leisure studies" which was her major. After all, she had gone to a good college like everyone had told her to. She was definitely not the only one of her friends who thought the same way.

ardacinar 11y ago
I'm not an American, and at first I thought the "leisure studies" major was just sarcasm(similar to Kaldirim Muhendisligi, i.e. Sidewalk Engineering in Turkish), then I googled it, and I am completely baffled that it is actually a thing.

the_watcher 11y ago

> articles like these that lump all of "college" into one bucket The reason they do this is because my generation actually was brought up with the idea that going to college, any college, and getting any degree made you more successful than those without degrees. Now, some realized that this wasn't true, but it wasn't the message hammered into us from kindegarten on.

vacri 11y ago
It used to be very true, back in the days before "everyone" had a degree. Even as recently as when you were in kindergarten.

austenallred 11y ago

But that's exactly the point. All growing up my generation was told, "Just get a degree! It doesn't matter what it's in, it doesn't matter what it costs, just get a degree!" There was no other acceptable route, so all the "good" kids went to college to get degrees. That leaves parts of my generation racking up student loans they literally cannot pay off with the careers they will get, all the while assuming they'll be alright financially because "degree!" Of course, college is a big bundle of things: Friends, connections, good time, hopefully skills to get a job. Of course, college is a great thing and completely necessary for some people. But there are a lot of people going into so much debt they would have been in a better position financially by not going.

harryh 11y ago
I'm frustrated by comments like these that lump all of "my generation" into one bucket, as if the variety of people all around the same age can be combined into a single undifferentiated mass. Was your generation told this? The answer, as with so many things in life is, "It depends." Some millennials were probably given bad information that lead them to make poor choices. Some were given bad information but nonetheless were able to see past it to make good choices. Some just had rich parents so they were able to go to college without accruing any debt at all. Lumping 80 million people together (the majority of whom will never get a degree) is silly.
- gambogi 11y ago
  But that's exactly the point. All growing up we were told, "Be a generalist, not a specialist" There was no other acceptable route, so all the "good" kids identified patterns to get ahead. That leaves many of us barking up when we notice a pattern. Of course, a generalization is a big bundle of things: abstractions, ceteris paribus, the act of generalizing, a general statement, pattern naming
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- RevRal 11y ago

msutherl 11y ago

Interesting result from a survey I conducted on behalf of an artist at the Venice Biennale (possibly the most important contemporary art event in the world): nearly all visitors during the preview (prior to the public opening) who answered (about 1000 people) said they held at least a master's degree. Albeit this is in Europe, where in many countries advanced degrees are quite common, but suffice it to say an Art History degree may be quite valuable to those looking to succeed in the art world. Anecdotally, I know this to be the case. On the flip side, you are very unlikely to succeed unless you have connections from the outset.

bcheung 11y ago

It's true that programming and engineering tend to pay more. But it is also true that those fields don't require a degree to work in them. You can get paid very well as a programmer even without a college degree. Also, with programming the vast majority of that information is available for free online. It doesn't make sense to pay that much for something that you can get for free.

rhodysurf 11y ago
Outside of software engineering, all other kinds of engineering absolutely require an ABET accredited degree
- beachstartup 11y ago
  in the US, you can make almost the same salary as a 'technical designer', who work alongside engineers. or if you're a very talented draftsman / cad operator / machinist kind of individual. your career as an employee will be somewhat limited - however, entrepreneurialism is the great equalizer when it comes to money. starting early in a trade field with a solid career foundation can set the stage for running a business later in life after a decade or two of wages and experience under your belt. again, remember this is all in the context of paying/borrowing $TONS for college. that's the tradeoff here. is being an engineer worth the debt you incur as a very young person, versus starting in a lower track but making the most of your time and money earned.
  - rhodysurf 11y ago
    That depends what you want to do. The work and opportunities a degree holding engineer will get is far higher than a tradesmen. Also, you dont need that much debt. A state school engineering degree is extremely affordable and gives the same opportunities as a more expensive degree. But if you want a position as an engineer you need to go to school to be one, its one of the more cut and dry professions out there (Not talking about software engineering)
- StillBored 11y ago

superuser2 11y ago

More interesting than major is quality. Is an Art History degree from a rural commuter school interesting? Probably not. Is a Philosophy degree from Harvard interesting? I'd say so.

akhilcacharya 11y ago
Yup. Prestige is more important than a lot of people like to admit.
- Matachines 11y ago
  I'll go as far as to say that when it comes to degrees like Art History, prestige (i.e. reputation of the school's department) is what matters the most. That way, you will get to do the interesting research and make the necessary connections to advance your career.
  - akhilcacharya 11y ago
    Correct, but if it works for art history, it should also work for other degrees that more directly translate into career paths, no?

muraiki 11y ago

I think the situation is more complicated than what the average salary is for a given degree, or even what career opportunities a particular degree opens up. I was a liberal arts major (Religious Studies) and through a winding path ended up becoming a programmer. I knew at the time that I wouldn't be able to do much with my degree, but sometimes people pick degrees because of things besides career options and earnings potential -- and I would argue that these decisions can still be classified as perfectly rational at the time. I thought I'd work any sort of job to pay off my thankfully small student loans and then become a monk, but life turned out differently. Now you might say that my story is an unusual exception, but I think that similar thoughts (minus monasticism) drive the hearts of most liberal arts majors. We need to consider that in the current educational system we are asking young people who are in the midst of trying to understand the world and their place in it to make a decision that very few are equipped to decide, but which they generally cannot delay, and with which they will incur great cost. And the effects of making this decision will last their entire life -- I myself know that it's possible to "pivot", but extremely difficult to do so. Furthermore, there's no guarantee that a job even awaits those who pursue high paying degrees. For anyone who graduated in 2008, those with degrees in finance or MBAs will suffer the consequences of ill timing the rest of their life. Likewise with those who graduated with CS degrees during the dot com crash, or with advanced degrees focused on AI during the AI Winter. Sometimes things completely beyond our control result in what seemed like a prudent decision falling apart. So my point is that our current educational structure is not well suited towards producing people who are resilient to disruption. And I mean disruption in a few senses: graduating when the market for their skills crashes, studying for a decade to get a degree in something that is beginning to be replaced by automation (I know one M.D. in a particular field who is preparing for this), and so on. It of course takes some time to acquire the skills to perform any particular job, and it might be unrealistic to expect someone with a family to even have the time to work and retrain at the same time. I know places like Udacity have things like "nanodegrees" and Coursera has certificates and whatnot, but I remain unconvinced that there are enough, say, web development jobs to meet the demands of both the unemployed and the recently graduated. And once there are too many web developers, what will they retrain to (and what will be the mobility and growth potential of us current developers)? My comment is starting to turn into a blog post, so I'll try to wrap it up now. Ultimately I think that disruptive forces -- whether economic, automation-driven, or something else -- will only increase over time, and will exacerbate the already existing problems, causing significant social upheaval because we do not equip people to function in such an environment, but rather try to train them for their lifelong job, which is a thing that no longer exists. And I guess that I just ended up stating one of the motivations behind a liberal arts education (as opposed to something like a trade school where you generally focus upon one particular set of job skills) without even intending to end up here: it's not necessarily that you need to know art history or music theory in particular, but that in expanding the scope of your intellect and the modes of thought you are capable of, you will be much better prepared to learn what you do need to learn and to think critically about it.

mildbow 11y ago

It's a crap situation, and victim blaming doesn't help. We just happened to be lucky we like STEM. I know I was lucky enough to find my passion before college, then follow it, which luckily just happened to be a booming field. Sure we can look back and pat ourselves in the back. But really, it should just be for being in the right place at the right time. Anyway, if you researched what you were going to do, why not pursue a career with a lot less risk/more career growth opportunities? Say being a MD?