8 ms·

So one thing i dont see is what their degrees were. If you have a bunch of people saturating the field, then jobs will be hard to find and low paying. If you

So one thing i dont see is what their degrees were. If you have a bunch of people saturating the field, then jobs will be hard to find and low paying. If you have people getting degrees in leisure studies, they wont get a job, etc... My 17 year old wants to go to trade school to be a beautician. We live in San Antonio, there is a nail place like every 2 blocks. After she goes to school, how is she going to do in that saturated field (hopefully well). My oldest sister got a 4 year degree in english, she graduated in 1994 and is still paying student loans. She never planned on writing or teaching, so now she does neither, was that a good choice for a degree. Point is, are the degrees people are getting in "in demand" fields? Are people activily talking to students about their career paths and getting statistics if they are even in demand. I understand chasing dreams, but be prepared for the outcome.

kemiller2002 7y ago
I understand what you are saying, but really how many alternatives do they have? What if you aren't interested (or just not good) at things that are in demand like engineering, computer science, or accounting? Does that mean you don't go? That significantly diminishes (like to almost none) the possibility of ever getting a job within an office environment. So you're stuck, do you wait tables for the rest of your life, grind it out in retail, or roll the dice and get a degree in a "useless" field? The argument is always, "well there is always trade school" and that's true....for some people. I have the utmost respect for people doing trades, and the thing that most people skip over in this argument is that it is hard and often brutal work. Pulling cable is hard, building cabinets is hard, cooking food for 400 customers is hard. It can be absolutely crushing on the body, and not everyone can do it. People going into extreme debt for a shot at an OK life is a massive problem, and personally, I don't think its fair to just say "well you should have thought about that before." I agree, they do need to take some responsibility to think things through, but at the same point, we as a society need to leverage their intelligence and work ethic, and give them a path forward in life. We don't do that now for the majority of cases.
- chii 7y ago
  > we as a society need to ... give them a path forward in life that's what degrees like science/engineering is. It's a path forward. The trades are also one, but less "comfortable". What else could've society done?
  - cryoshon 7y ago
    i would say that 90% of people do not have the talent for science/engineering that is necessary to succeed. and even if they did, that would just dilute the wages of those fields and make jobs harder to come by because there would be too many jobseekers and not enough jobs.
  - kemiller2002 7y ago
    Personally, I think we need to make sure that college does not force you into debt for decades. The rise in tuition over the last 30 years is completely nuts. I think we also need to reevaluate what we really need from people graduating. I think there needs to be a serious discussion around how badly you need a STEM degree for some jobs. Do you need a CS degrees to test an application, probably not. This leads me to another problem, because everyone wants to get a degree in a STEM field for a better job, the pool is diluted. I've met several people with degrees in CS where I seriously question if they actually ever attended class. (Actually from what I've seen the profitable jobs are really just in TE, science and math in undergrad seems to be little better than an English degree as far as decent job prospects.)
  - shakyshakyshaky 7y ago
    Provided a safety net? Collectively decided that education shouldn't be a gamble, and that the way we classify degrees as more or less useful is flawed? Funded more rigorous public education? Reduce the portion of labor value shaved off by executives and shareholders so that workers can live comfortably off of their labor without government assistance? As of now, society is doing practically nothing. Don't act like there's nothing more we can do.
  - _hardwaregeek 7y ago
    There's something seriously concerning about having the only path forward be science/engineering and trades. That's essentially limiting the liberal arts to only the rich and the delusional. If fields such as architecture, literature, photography, film, journalism are populated by people who grew up with wealth, their privilege be reflected in their work. Would a journalist who grew up in a gated community be the best choice to cover and discuss income inequality and gentrification? Would an architect who has only lived in million dollar houses necessarily understand how to design public housing? The liberal arts fundamentally shape how we view, live and act in the world. If this perspective is purely driven by the rich and the privileged, we risk losing an understanding of how the other half lives.
xzel 7y ago
I have friends who got English degrees and went to medical school, law school or got jobs as assistants and moved up the corporate ladder; they're doing great. I don't think its necessarily the degree that is super important, outside of engineering heavy fields of course. The real key is figuring out what to do next after college as early as possible and executing that plan. That is not to say that plenty of people get random degrees, have no plans and college ends up being a total waste.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Yep. I know tons of people who got English, History, etc. degrees who are doing just fine with or without advanced (typically law) degrees after that. There's a certain bias here that if you don't get an engineering degree you might as well plan of digging ditches for the rest of your life. But that isn't actually true. Lots of people (including many with engineering degrees) follow rather non-standard career paths that are still quite successful by any reasonable measure.
  - siffland 7y ago
    Just to clarify I was not implying a English degree is a bad thing. My sister is smart, she just didn't use it for anything or have any goals for it. So that is why i posed the question if it was a good choice (i had to use references i was familiar with in my post).
- RestlessMind 7y ago
  Here is the best data I could find comparing average salaries with English degrees (71K) and Engineering degrees (109K): https://datausa.io/profile/cip/english?compare=engineering https://datausa.io/profile/cip/english?compare=engineering
  - cableshaft 7y ago
    I think that's because lots of people take English because "I want to write" or "I want to teach English", and get stuck in the mindset that they HAVE to do that, compete with all the other English teachers out there, and don't think outside the box at all to use it to lead them to something more lucrative. My fiancee majored in Creative Writing and she ended up using it to write proposals for major companies and moved up and is now a marketing and proposal manager and making pretty decent money. When writing proposals she has to think a lot about how to sell the company and their business and that's been leading to a greater focus on business strategy lately too, so she could potentially make the leap into an executive position before too much longer.
fencepost 7y ago
I didn't see any real mention of this in other comments about the trades (and it wouldn't apply to beautician), but a key word there is daughter. Given time to get to business ownership even on a small scale MBE/WBE can be a huge thing. There are also a ton of weird little niches for things that may not be in huge demand but where the value of being able to hire someone can be substantial (e.g. watching someone driving a power flooring removal machine around a local grocery store the other night).
will_brown 7y ago
>I understand chasing dreams, but be prepared for the outcome. Since when is a degree about “chasing a dream”? We aren’t talking about starving artists or people pursing acting or becoming a professional athlete. These are 18 year old kids who are pursuing an education and wind up in a mountain of debt they will service for the rest of their lives (at least 30-40 years). In a world where the system is set up so these 18 year olds have to take on debt to obtain an education. These kids shouldn’t be blamed for the shit economy that doesn’t have jobs and the jobs that are available won’t be sufficient to repay their loans. 1million student loans are defaulted on every year, these are not dreamchasers its an entire generation that is finding there is no more middle class in this country rather a new unemployed/underemployed/indebted class.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Since when is a degree about “chasing a dream”? When a high school student asks a high school english teacher whether studying english is a stupid idea, what do you suppose the teacher says?
- Mirioron 7y ago
  But these kids are living in a good economy. College isn't "an education", they already have one. College is additional education that doesn't teach you many skills that will help you find a job. Some majors do, but most don't. If you pick a major that doesn't lead to gainful employment then you are buying a luxury product.
  - will_brown 7y ago
    >But these kids are living in a good economy. If they were living in a good economy then there wouldn’t be 1,000,000 student loans going into default every year. Sure corporations are making record profits, but wages have been stagnant for 30-40 years, workers have never seen a higher wage gap, and the economy has the lowest social mobility of any 1st world country.
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
anbotero 7y ago
Indeed. It’s a topic I sometimes wonder about. I always tell people we have things we are good at doing, and things we love to do, and while they sometimes coalesce, you have to think about the future yourself and plan ahead so you can generate some income doing what you’re good at. I don’t understand why other kids don’t think about their future the way my brothers and I did. Parents teaching maybe? We didn’t really have the problems of other people, not knowing what’s being phased out of markets, not knowing what we were good at. I always like to tinker to a certain degree with computers and videogames. My parents supported my decisions, but I was no slouch, I knew I had to work in whatever I could and was good at to generate money somehow while I found what I excelled at (and hopefully liked doing it too). Eventually I became a (Computer) Support Assistant, changing keyboards and setting up backup plans, and that started a career which now has me as a DevOps Specialist. I’ve always thought that even if you like doing art with scraps, why not try to market some of it for money? It’s absurd not to look around and figure there are people who would buy such things. You like doing it (probably on spare time), might as well share some of it for some extra money, while you do what you’re really good at on your daytime (and again, hopefully you liked doing it too). I’m sorry I didn’t explain more, but I always feel constrained by written forums/tweets. In general, yes, I think people need to be more conscious about their future. I was a teenager drinking alcohol and doing crazy things too, but it was clear to me the concessions I would have to make sometimes in order to move forward: Stop drinking and go study, or hey, maybe I can drink this time, or hey, maybe I need to go outside, walk for a bit, refresh my mind and come back to work. Try to educate your children more to be conscious. Just because I skate and with practice became good at it doesn’t mean I don’t really think every time I get on the board that I might not fall; I know I will at some point (and I have). Just accept the responsibility and live with the consequences.
WalterBright 7y ago
It's pretty easy to google what salaries are for various degrees, and compare that against the debt one is taking on. It should be straightforward to determine if it makes fiscal sense.
- joyeuse6701 7y ago
  It is, I took my brother-in-law aside and had him walk through some basic scenarios for his future (future salary, job opportunities, cost of living, etc.) Had I not done this with him, I am not confident he would have had enough sense to do this himself. As it turns out, many people are not willing or know how to do the research, even if it's just a little google-fu. I wonder if, because of programming it is second nature to me to search the internet for answers about anything. I've found anecdotally that many people don't bother trying to figure this information out.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    > many people don't bother trying to figure this information out. I don't doubt it, but don't understand it, either. Not much google-fu is required to type in [starting salaries for college majors]. When I was in college (before the internet) my fellow students were quite interested in what the salaries were for various majors.
tomohawk 7y ago
The thing that is missing from the education industry that is present in others, especially those receiving lots of taxpayer money, is appropriate oversight. Many of these institutions are selling shoddy products to gullible buyers. If getting a student loan did not involve a government guarantee, you can bet that there would be much more scrutiny of the product being purchased and of the students progress. The government is grossly distorted this market by pouring in money for products that will not pay out, and by not providing appropriate feedback as to the quality of the wares. It's all very fine for someone to spend their own money and time on a degree where employment prospects are low and pay is low. This is called a hobby. It is not alright for precious taxpayer money to be spent on frivolities or hobbies.
- athenot 7y ago
  > Many of these institutions are selling shoddy products to gullible buyers. Your point is about universities or higher learning institutions and is spot on. But I'd say that even applies earlier on, starting in middle school. I distinctly remember being "sold" various career paths that were deemed noble but without the caveat of dim economical outcomes. Fortunately for me, I already knew I wanted to be a software developer and I stuck to my choice despite there not being much support from an academic side, at least not until much later. I knew back then that this is what I liked AND that this led to comfortable wages. Money is not everything in life. BUT economy realities need to be disclosed to young students.
turk73 7y ago
Trying to time the job market is almost as bad as timing the stock market. Maybe Instagram model? Youtube influencer? You can always cut hair, but maybe it would be better to aspire to owning 2-3 salons?

kemiller2002 7y ago

I understand what you are saying, but really how many alternatives do they have? What if you aren't interested (or just not good) at things that are in demand like engineering, computer science, or accounting? Does that mean you don't go? That significantly diminishes (like to almost none) the possibility of ever getting a job within an office environment. So you're stuck, do you wait tables for the rest of your life, grind it out in retail, or roll the dice and get a degree in a "useless" field? The argument is always, "well there is always trade school" and that's true....for some people. I have the utmost respect for people doing trades, and the thing that most people skip over in this argument is that it is hard and often brutal work. Pulling cable is hard, building cabinets is hard, cooking food for 400 customers is hard. It can be absolutely crushing on the body, and not everyone can do it. People going into extreme debt for a shot at an OK life is a massive problem, and personally, I don't think its fair to just say "well you should have thought about that before." I agree, they do need to take some responsibility to think things through, but at the same point, we as a society need to leverage their intelligence and work ethic, and give them a path forward in life. We don't do that now for the majority of cases.

chii 7y ago
> we as a society need to ... give them a path forward in life that's what degrees like science/engineering is. It's a path forward. The trades are also one, but less "comfortable". What else could've society done?
- cryoshon 7y ago
  i would say that 90% of people do not have the talent for science/engineering that is necessary to succeed. and even if they did, that would just dilute the wages of those fields and make jobs harder to come by because there would be too many jobseekers and not enough jobs.
- kemiller2002 7y ago
  Personally, I think we need to make sure that college does not force you into debt for decades. The rise in tuition over the last 30 years is completely nuts. I think we also need to reevaluate what we really need from people graduating. I think there needs to be a serious discussion around how badly you need a STEM degree for some jobs. Do you need a CS degrees to test an application, probably not. This leads me to another problem, because everyone wants to get a degree in a STEM field for a better job, the pool is diluted. I've met several people with degrees in CS where I seriously question if they actually ever attended class. (Actually from what I've seen the profitable jobs are really just in TE, science and math in undergrad seems to be little better than an English degree as far as decent job prospects.)
- shakyshakyshaky 7y ago
  Provided a safety net? Collectively decided that education shouldn't be a gamble, and that the way we classify degrees as more or less useful is flawed? Funded more rigorous public education? Reduce the portion of labor value shaved off by executives and shareholders so that workers can live comfortably off of their labor without government assistance? As of now, society is doing practically nothing. Don't act like there's nothing more we can do.
- _hardwaregeek 7y ago
  There's something seriously concerning about having the only path forward be science/engineering and trades. That's essentially limiting the liberal arts to only the rich and the delusional. If fields such as architecture, literature, photography, film, journalism are populated by people who grew up with wealth, their privilege be reflected in their work. Would a journalist who grew up in a gated community be the best choice to cover and discuss income inequality and gentrification? Would an architect who has only lived in million dollar houses necessarily understand how to design public housing? The liberal arts fundamentally shape how we view, live and act in the world. If this perspective is purely driven by the rich and the privileged, we risk losing an understanding of how the other half lives.

xzel 7y ago

I have friends who got English degrees and went to medical school, law school or got jobs as assistants and moved up the corporate ladder; they're doing great. I don't think its necessarily the degree that is super important, outside of engineering heavy fields of course. The real key is figuring out what to do next after college as early as possible and executing that plan. That is not to say that plenty of people get random degrees, have no plans and college ends up being a total waste.

ghaff 7y ago
Yep. I know tons of people who got English, History, etc. degrees who are doing just fine with or without advanced (typically law) degrees after that. There's a certain bias here that if you don't get an engineering degree you might as well plan of digging ditches for the rest of your life. But that isn't actually true. Lots of people (including many with engineering degrees) follow rather non-standard career paths that are still quite successful by any reasonable measure.
- siffland 7y ago
  Just to clarify I was not implying a English degree is a bad thing. My sister is smart, she just didn't use it for anything or have any goals for it. So that is why i posed the question if it was a good choice (i had to use references i was familiar with in my post).
RestlessMind 7y ago
Here is the best data I could find comparing average salaries with English degrees (71K) and Engineering degrees (109K): https://datausa.io/profile/cip/english?compare=engineering https://datausa.io/profile/cip/english?compare=engineering
- cableshaft 7y ago
  I think that's because lots of people take English because "I want to write" or "I want to teach English", and get stuck in the mindset that they HAVE to do that, compete with all the other English teachers out there, and don't think outside the box at all to use it to lead them to something more lucrative. My fiancee majored in Creative Writing and she ended up using it to write proposals for major companies and moved up and is now a marketing and proposal manager and making pretty decent money. When writing proposals she has to think a lot about how to sell the company and their business and that's been leading to a greater focus on business strategy lately too, so she could potentially make the leap into an executive position before too much longer.

fencepost 7y ago

I didn't see any real mention of this in other comments about the trades (and it wouldn't apply to beautician), but a key word there is daughter. Given time to get to business ownership even on a small scale MBE/WBE can be a huge thing. There are also a ton of weird little niches for things that may not be in huge demand but where the value of being able to hire someone can be substantial (e.g. watching someone driving a power flooring removal machine around a local grocery store the other night).

will_brown 7y ago

>I understand chasing dreams, but be prepared for the outcome. Since when is a degree about “chasing a dream”? We aren’t talking about starving artists or people pursing acting or becoming a professional athlete. These are 18 year old kids who are pursuing an education and wind up in a mountain of debt they will service for the rest of their lives (at least 30-40 years). In a world where the system is set up so these 18 year olds have to take on debt to obtain an education. These kids shouldn’t be blamed for the shit economy that doesn’t have jobs and the jobs that are available won’t be sufficient to repay their loans. 1million student loans are defaulted on every year, these are not dreamchasers its an entire generation that is finding there is no more middle class in this country rather a new unemployed/underemployed/indebted class.

michaelt 7y ago
Since when is a degree about “chasing a dream”? When a high school student asks a high school english teacher whether studying english is a stupid idea, what do you suppose the teacher says?
Mirioron 7y ago
But these kids are living in a good economy. College isn't "an education", they already have one. College is additional education that doesn't teach you many skills that will help you find a job. Some majors do, but most don't. If you pick a major that doesn't lead to gainful employment then you are buying a luxury product.
- will_brown 7y ago
  >But these kids are living in a good economy. If they were living in a good economy then there wouldn’t be 1,000,000 student loans going into default every year. Sure corporations are making record profits, but wages have been stagnant for 30-40 years, workers have never seen a higher wage gap, and the economy has the lowest social mobility of any 1st world country.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago

anbotero 7y ago

Indeed. It’s a topic I sometimes wonder about. I always tell people we have things we are good at doing, and things we love to do, and while they sometimes coalesce, you have to think about the future yourself and plan ahead so you can generate some income doing what you’re good at. I don’t understand why other kids don’t think about their future the way my brothers and I did. Parents teaching maybe? We didn’t really have the problems of other people, not knowing what’s being phased out of markets, not knowing what we were good at. I always like to tinker to a certain degree with computers and videogames. My parents supported my decisions, but I was no slouch, I knew I had to work in whatever I could and was good at to generate money somehow while I found what I excelled at (and hopefully liked doing it too). Eventually I became a (Computer) Support Assistant, changing keyboards and setting up backup plans, and that started a career which now has me as a DevOps Specialist. I’ve always thought that even if you like doing art with scraps, why not try to market some of it for money? It’s absurd not to look around and figure there are people who would buy such things. You like doing it (probably on spare time), might as well share some of it for some extra money, while you do what you’re really good at on your daytime (and again, hopefully you liked doing it too). I’m sorry I didn’t explain more, but I always feel constrained by written forums/tweets. In general, yes, I think people need to be more conscious about their future. I was a teenager drinking alcohol and doing crazy things too, but it was clear to me the concessions I would have to make sometimes in order to move forward: Stop drinking and go study, or hey, maybe I can drink this time, or hey, maybe I need to go outside, walk for a bit, refresh my mind and come back to work. Try to educate your children more to be conscious. Just because I skate and with practice became good at it doesn’t mean I don’t really think every time I get on the board that I might not fall; I know I will at some point (and I have). Just accept the responsibility and live with the consequences.

WalterBright 7y ago

It's pretty easy to google what salaries are for various degrees, and compare that against the debt one is taking on. It should be straightforward to determine if it makes fiscal sense.

joyeuse6701 7y ago
It is, I took my brother-in-law aside and had him walk through some basic scenarios for his future (future salary, job opportunities, cost of living, etc.) Had I not done this with him, I am not confident he would have had enough sense to do this himself. As it turns out, many people are not willing or know how to do the research, even if it's just a little google-fu. I wonder if, because of programming it is second nature to me to search the internet for answers about anything. I've found anecdotally that many people don't bother trying to figure this information out.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > many people don't bother trying to figure this information out. I don't doubt it, but don't understand it, either. Not much google-fu is required to type in [starting salaries for college majors]. When I was in college (before the internet) my fellow students were quite interested in what the salaries were for various majors.

tomohawk 7y ago

The thing that is missing from the education industry that is present in others, especially those receiving lots of taxpayer money, is appropriate oversight. Many of these institutions are selling shoddy products to gullible buyers. If getting a student loan did not involve a government guarantee, you can bet that there would be much more scrutiny of the product being purchased and of the students progress. The government is grossly distorted this market by pouring in money for products that will not pay out, and by not providing appropriate feedback as to the quality of the wares. It's all very fine for someone to spend their own money and time on a degree where employment prospects are low and pay is low. This is called a hobby. It is not alright for precious taxpayer money to be spent on frivolities or hobbies.

athenot 7y ago
> Many of these institutions are selling shoddy products to gullible buyers. Your point is about universities or higher learning institutions and is spot on. But I'd say that even applies earlier on, starting in middle school. I distinctly remember being "sold" various career paths that were deemed noble but without the caveat of dim economical outcomes. Fortunately for me, I already knew I wanted to be a software developer and I stuck to my choice despite there not being much support from an academic side, at least not until much later. I knew back then that this is what I liked AND that this led to comfortable wages. Money is not everything in life. BUT economy realities need to be disclosed to young students.

turk73 7y ago

Trying to time the job market is almost as bad as timing the stock market. Maybe Instagram model? Youtube influencer? You can always cut hair, but maybe it would be better to aspire to owning 2-3 salons?