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All of the people I went to school with who are struggling with debt and jobs today are those who picked terrible majors or shouldn't have been in the major in

by asow92 5y ago

All of the people I went to school with who are struggling with debt and jobs today are those who picked terrible majors or shouldn't have been in the major in the first place. They knew that it would be bad going into it and still went ahead with it anyway. We need to figure out how to stop these people from committing these mistakes earlier on in the process. There is no shame in going into less technical trades—especially since they are in high demand.

bumby 5y ago
The narrative for decades has been "if you don't graduate from college you might be destined to be a loser." I think that's part of what needs to change. But I also think the student debt problem is more nuanced than just "terrible majors". Tuition has increased faster than just about anything (sans healthcare, I believe) while wages were mostly stagnant. Previous generations could largely get through college debt-free working part-time at minimum wage, regardless of major. So I don't think the student debt crisis can be chalked up to "terrible major" selection. The level of student debt is, in part, driven by the way universities spend money to attract "customers" err...I mean students. I think we need to find a way to mitigate colleges being run like businesses in that respect.
- asow92 5y ago
  Yep, agreed, and that's why they're terrible majors if you account for the ROI on them.
  - asow92 5y ago
    We don't need hundreds of English and Humanities majors—we need them, yes, but not as many as are enrolled. There is a supply and demand imbalance.
    - bumby 5y ago
      This is only if you view college as a vocational endeavor. I know that's the current prevalent thought, but it hasn't always been the case, and I'm not sure it should be a given. Just the nature of this thread (cost, ROI, supply & demand) shows how much of college is thought of in a business mindset which is a departure from how it used to be viewed. I would also argue that while the economy may not need humanities majors, society probably does. E.g., An engineer can tell you how to do something (e.g., develop facial recognition for public cameras or develop attention maximizing social media algorithms) but an engineer with a grounded understanding of philosophy can help determine if that's the right thing to deploy as policy and whether they, at the individual level, wants to support that with their career choice.
      - asow92 5y ago
        I think we totally agree, and I can say that as an engineer who attended a liberal arts school. What I'm saying is that we have too many people giving all of their attention to these majors (without a way to pay for it) and not that people in other majors shouldn't pursue these electives, as they are still valuable.
        bumby 5y ago
        I think we largely agree too, but I actually think the talk about majors in public discourse is a at best a digression and at worst a red herring. IMO, the real problem that should be addressed is why something that is considered a public good (and supported by public funds) has had insane cost inflation over the last 3+ decades. I'm not saying you're doing this, but you often hear a chortled reply about "underwater basket weaving majors" in these discussions being blamed. Certainly, people are accountable for their college choices, but the whole discussion is based on the idea that college is a business transaction that requires some ROI and ignores the systemic effects that have driven costs to a ridiculous level.
  - bumby 5y ago
    And my point is the ROI would be moot if there wasn't a massive inflation of tuition to pay for things like water parks and sports arenas. If the tuition was in-line with previous generations, the ROI would mainly only be calculated with the labor opportunity lost while in college.
    - asow92 5y ago
      Definitely agreed +1
efields 5y ago
> There is no shame in going into less technical trades—especially since they are in high demand. But there is! Few parents say "I hope Jimmy grows up to become a great carpenter." White collar professionalism is what we groom our kids for.
- asow92 5y ago
  I hope my future kid grows up to become a great carpenter.
effingwewt 5y ago
No. What we need to do is make it so people can follow their dreams. We need more people doing things other than scraping a living to survive. Sure some will hang out all day. But some could be the ones that think of the next jump in technology. Some could be amazing artists. We need to stop tying self and societal worth to dollars earned per hour. The people in this world who do the least take the most. It needs to stop.
- asow92 5y ago
  It's interesting that the same people I mention seem to be advocating for the same incoherent agenda.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    Personally I am a lot more interested in the experiences and views of those who have been failed by the current system, rather than those who have found success within it.
albrewer 5y ago
It's crazy to expect an 18-22 year old to know the market fit for their major when they've never had a job anywhere near that field. I researched my choice of major using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' data before I graduated high school, but I'm pretty sure I was the only one of my peers that did that.
- asow92 5y ago
  It's really not that crazy if we take time to make it a priority.
  - albrewer 5y ago
    I agree, but (at least circa late '00's when I was in high school) career prep consisted of taking a few career aptitude tests. Oh, and the military's ASVAB. Those of us that scored in the 95th percentile and above were singled out by the recruiters and all 40 of us got a 15 minute sales pitch to join the military. They never got any engineers, programmers, doctors, construction managers, tile setters, welders, insurance adjusters, lawyers, police officers, nurses, radiologists, tugboat captains, pipefitters, machinists, draftsmen, etc...
UncleMeat 5y ago
> There is no shame in going into less technical trades—especially since they are in high demand. People say this, but it is so often said by people not in these industries. My brother in law is an electrician and he gets paid badly, works rough hours, and is provided fairly limited safety by his employer. This is obviously a data point of one, but the fact that he feels incapable of finding a better job in his city indicates to me that this is the norm.
- asow92 5y ago
  I know an electrician up the street from me who makes six figures in a small town where the median income is less than $50k. Is your brother in law just doing it wrong? Coincidentally, I also have a brother in law who is an electrician, and he is not doing well. But then again he's a self proclaimed communist and has zero work ethic.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Maybe he is doing it wrong, but he isn't the sort to do it wrong in that manner. He lives in a medium sized atlantic city and has lower than median pay and no benefits.
the_only_law 5y ago
> We need to figure out how to stop these people from committing these mistakes earlier on in the process. I chose not to pursue higher education personally (at the time for the wrong reasons), and one thing I remember very distinctly was just how much it was promoted as “the path forward”. A counselor was visibly shocked when I as a sophomore, hadn’t been grooming myself to appeal to colleges and universities in a few years.
md2020 5y ago
I agree, just want to add my anecdotal evidence. I graduated undergrad in Dec 2020 with a good job lined up, as did many of my friends who picked majors that had been the obvious good choices when they enrolled in college 4 years earlier. It was easy to see what career tracks would be good ideas, and the people I know who put in minimal effort to research these before committing ended up just fine. It’s not like people who picked majors with poor employment prospects were blindsided at any point. Now these are the same people who I see vocally advocating for the government to cancel their debt and cancel their rent. I’d say I’m pretty progressive on most issues, and obviously I have sympathy for my friends that ended up this way, but I have to agree with you that one way we could end up with fewer people limping along is to just keep them from shooting themselves in the foot.
- asow92 5y ago
  Thank you so much for sharing your perspective. I graduated in 2015 and see very similar things in my cohort.

by asow92 5y ago

bumby 5y ago

The narrative for decades has been "if you don't graduate from college you might be destined to be a loser." I think that's part of what needs to change. But I also think the student debt problem is more nuanced than just "terrible majors". Tuition has increased faster than just about anything (sans healthcare, I believe) while wages were mostly stagnant. Previous generations could largely get through college debt-free working part-time at minimum wage, regardless of major. So I don't think the student debt crisis can be chalked up to "terrible major" selection. The level of student debt is, in part, driven by the way universities spend money to attract "customers" err...I mean students. I think we need to find a way to mitigate colleges being run like businesses in that respect.

asow92 5y ago
Yep, agreed, and that's why they're terrible majors if you account for the ROI on them.
- asow92 5y ago
  We don't need hundreds of English and Humanities majors—we need them, yes, but not as many as are enrolled. There is a supply and demand imbalance.
  - bumby 5y ago
    This is only if you view college as a vocational endeavor. I know that's the current prevalent thought, but it hasn't always been the case, and I'm not sure it should be a given. Just the nature of this thread (cost, ROI, supply & demand) shows how much of college is thought of in a business mindset which is a departure from how it used to be viewed. I would also argue that while the economy may not need humanities majors, society probably does. E.g., An engineer can tell you how to do something (e.g., develop facial recognition for public cameras or develop attention maximizing social media algorithms) but an engineer with a grounded understanding of philosophy can help determine if that's the right thing to deploy as policy and whether they, at the individual level, wants to support that with their career choice.
    - asow92 5y ago
      I think we totally agree, and I can say that as an engineer who attended a liberal arts school. What I'm saying is that we have too many people giving all of their attention to these majors (without a way to pay for it) and not that people in other majors shouldn't pursue these electives, as they are still valuable.
      - bumby 5y ago
        I think we largely agree too, but I actually think the talk about majors in public discourse is a at best a digression and at worst a red herring. IMO, the real problem that should be addressed is why something that is considered a public good (and supported by public funds) has had insane cost inflation over the last 3+ decades. I'm not saying you're doing this, but you often hear a chortled reply about "underwater basket weaving majors" in these discussions being blamed. Certainly, people are accountable for their college choices, but the whole discussion is based on the idea that college is a business transaction that requires some ROI and ignores the systemic effects that have driven costs to a ridiculous level.
- bumby 5y ago
  And my point is the ROI would be moot if there wasn't a massive inflation of tuition to pay for things like water parks and sports arenas. If the tuition was in-line with previous generations, the ROI would mainly only be calculated with the labor opportunity lost while in college.
  - asow92 5y ago
    Definitely agreed +1

efields 5y ago

> There is no shame in going into less technical trades—especially since they are in high demand. But there is! Few parents say "I hope Jimmy grows up to become a great carpenter." White collar professionalism is what we groom our kids for.

asow92 5y ago
I hope my future kid grows up to become a great carpenter.

effingwewt 5y ago

No. What we need to do is make it so people can follow their dreams. We need more people doing things other than scraping a living to survive. Sure some will hang out all day. But some could be the ones that think of the next jump in technology. Some could be amazing artists. We need to stop tying self and societal worth to dollars earned per hour. The people in this world who do the least take the most. It needs to stop.

asow92 5y ago
It's interesting that the same people I mention seem to be advocating for the same incoherent agenda.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  Personally I am a lot more interested in the experiences and views of those who have been failed by the current system, rather than those who have found success within it.

albrewer 5y ago

It's crazy to expect an 18-22 year old to know the market fit for their major when they've never had a job anywhere near that field. I researched my choice of major using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' data before I graduated high school, but I'm pretty sure I was the only one of my peers that did that.

asow92 5y ago
It's really not that crazy if we take time to make it a priority.
- albrewer 5y ago
  I agree, but (at least circa late '00's when I was in high school) career prep consisted of taking a few career aptitude tests. Oh, and the military's ASVAB. Those of us that scored in the 95th percentile and above were singled out by the recruiters and all 40 of us got a 15 minute sales pitch to join the military. They never got any engineers, programmers, doctors, construction managers, tile setters, welders, insurance adjusters, lawyers, police officers, nurses, radiologists, tugboat captains, pipefitters, machinists, draftsmen, etc...

UncleMeat 5y ago

> There is no shame in going into less technical trades—especially since they are in high demand. People say this, but it is so often said by people not in these industries. My brother in law is an electrician and he gets paid badly, works rough hours, and is provided fairly limited safety by his employer. This is obviously a data point of one, but the fact that he feels incapable of finding a better job in his city indicates to me that this is the norm.

asow92 5y ago
I know an electrician up the street from me who makes six figures in a small town where the median income is less than $50k. Is your brother in law just doing it wrong? Coincidentally, I also have a brother in law who is an electrician, and he is not doing well. But then again he's a self proclaimed communist and has zero work ethic.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Maybe he is doing it wrong, but he isn't the sort to do it wrong in that manner. He lives in a medium sized atlantic city and has lower than median pay and no benefits.

the_only_law 5y ago

> We need to figure out how to stop these people from committing these mistakes earlier on in the process. I chose not to pursue higher education personally (at the time for the wrong reasons), and one thing I remember very distinctly was just how much it was promoted as “the path forward”. A counselor was visibly shocked when I as a sophomore, hadn’t been grooming myself to appeal to colleges and universities in a few years.

md2020 5y ago

I agree, just want to add my anecdotal evidence. I graduated undergrad in Dec 2020 with a good job lined up, as did many of my friends who picked majors that had been the obvious good choices when they enrolled in college 4 years earlier. It was easy to see what career tracks would be good ideas, and the people I know who put in minimal effort to research these before committing ended up just fine. It’s not like people who picked majors with poor employment prospects were blindsided at any point. Now these are the same people who I see vocally advocating for the government to cancel their debt and cancel their rent. I’d say I’m pretty progressive on most issues, and obviously I have sympathy for my friends that ended up this way, but I have to agree with you that one way we could end up with fewer people limping along is to just keep them from shooting themselves in the foot.

asow92 5y ago
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective. I graduated in 2015 and see very similar things in my cohort.