5 ms·

I was just about to suggest the same thing. The degree seems like a very important piece of information to a creditor making a decision. If I know that 60% of s

by jmtame 14y ago

I was just about to suggest the same thing. The degree seems like a very important piece of information to a creditor making a decision. If I know that 60% of students of a particular degree will default within 4 years, why would I continue to loan that money out? If it's impossible for them to get out of it, that'd be good enough a reason. It seems that most of my engineering friends have a very existentialist perspective on it: the person is entirely responsible for the actions they take. If they got themselves into debt, then they should figure out how to get themselves out of debt. That's valid. The student wasn't forced to go study art history, but they were lied to by a lot of people, including their parents and society, which are two difficult groups to ignore. I think it's good that we're airing out some of college's dirty laundry--it needs to be known that if you go study art history, there may be a greater than 50% chance that you will be jobless or working as a waiter or waitress. I had this debate with someone last weekend where I made the same argument, and she got very defensive. It's hard to get specific and criticize certain degrees without being offensive to somebody because people feel they need to defend their choices. I later found out she studied art history, she was a waitress, and she had just quit her job. To her credit, she probably didn't realize her job options were grim when she chose to do that. If this issue is spoken about publicly, it should at the very least make the decision easier for people. Every graduating senior in high school should hear both sides of the story and fully understand they can't arbitrarily pick any degree and expect the same results.

mgkimsal 14y ago
It's a greater likelihood, sure, but... people also need to learn to take control of their lives. Dude - the $80k Art History job ain't coming along - deal with it. Pivot. I have an undergrad degree in Philosophy, but have been working in software development for more than 15 years, earning a good living most of that time too. This notion that "oh no, i have a liberal arts degree - my life is forever ruined and I'll be serving coffee part time until I die" is a tired meme. "There are no jobs!". Yes there are, in some fields. Hustle to get in to those fields, regardless of what your "major" was. Just do it. Now... I realize not everyone can do this - life situations dictate that some people have more struggles than others. But I meet single, healthy unattached 20-somethings that complain about the state of things - this is the best time in your life to retool, readjust and get moving. And they generally don't.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  That would be pretty good advice if there was any field at all with a shortage of new-graduate level employees in the USA.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    See, I still disagree with you here. Forget 'graduate-level' anything - you're still thinking in terms of formal education and degrees. Compete on hustle, moxie, other initiative - create your own life/job/work/etc - people will find you. Make a name for yourself doing something. I know, this all sounds airy-fairy pie-in-the-sky, but it's largely true. Many employers are still going to be impressed more with hustle than with degrees on paper. The ones that aren't - perhaps you don't want to work there anyway. The world is very much who-you-know vs what-you-know, and getting out there networking with people is going to get you a better chance of work than fighting with 9 other degree-holding applicants filling out forms on monster.com.
    - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
      And I still disagree with you here. It's not about me and my personal employment situation; specifically, because my situation can always be improved via a purely relative advancement that would have no net benefit if everyone did it (see: "Darwin the Market Whiz"). Also, generally, because I personally am doing decently right now: I damn well wanted to go back to academia and get a research degree, and I've lucked out to get into a damn fine research institution. I've had to turn down 1 offer to convert a a good contract gig to full-time and turn away four recruiters pursue that (not to mention previous interviews where I was told I was turned down because they saw that I truly fit in grad-school more than I fit in their team right this month). I'm also continuing my open-source/research project and working on a side-business idea in the meanwhile. But just because I'm ok doesn't mean everyone else is ok, once we dispose of the false assumption that I'm average. The real problem here is that you have half a generation 18-22 year-olds coming of age, trying to leave their parents' care, and finding that there's basically no demand for their labor. Millions of people can't all have more hustle, moxie, initiative, mojo, or whatever other nigh-meaningless abstract term we've chosen to convey "the capitalistic equivalent of sex-appeal", than each other. There has to be actual demand for labor to hire these people. Conversely, even though I'm not average, an overall bad labor market affects me. The tech sector is "recession-proof", but nothing is Great Depression proof. An ultra-capitalist economy geared towards maximizing debts and rents for bankers, lobbyists and lawyers does, in fact, ripple out to the tech sector and affect hiring. For instance, it means that there are very few R&D labs in computing right now (though a friend of mine has been interviewing with R&D teams at Oracle and I'll be happy to have the connection!), lots of VC-funded start-ups, and much of the world's top technical and scientific talent ends up writing financial algorithms. Someone who wants to actually do hard-core technology like me finds himself really curiously starved for places to work, given how well the tech-sector is supposedly doing. Oh, and everyone is wondering when this latest start-up bubble will pop, especially after GroupOn, Facebook, and Zynga IPOs.
LockeWatts 14y ago
Perhaps we should stop telling kids they can be whatever they want when they grow up. That's a rather depressing idea, but it's the truth. Unless you're independently wealthy or one in a hundred million, you will not be able to sustain yourself in certain pursuits. They're great to have as a hobby, but sometimes you just need to pay the bills. The land of opportunity is closed for our generation, but nobody told us until we had already packed our bags and boarded the plane.
- jmtame 14y ago
  I would probably ask them to read What You'll Wish You'd Known (http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html). I like the analogy of staying upwind because it provides you more options when the time comes that you find out what you want to do.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- danielweber 14y ago
  Used to be poets earned very little but had very simple lifestyles. It was their choice so everyone was happy. Now if you want to be a poet, you still can. But the problem is that there are upper-class kids who want to be poets but not live like one, and they are going to bid up the cost of the poet lifestyle. A similar thing happened in journalism. Kids of rich families wanted to "change the world" and bid the wages of working journalists down to nil.
- cdcarter 14y ago
  The issue here is that the liberal arts degree shouldn't be seen as job training. That's not the purpose of a liberal arts degree.
- fuzzythinker 14y ago
  No, telling kids they can be whatever they want can never change (as long as it isn't unethical). The idea is to teach them to be responsible and logical. If tuition for say an art major cost $15k a yr, they have to understand or be told that unless the parents support them, they will either need to work part time or other means to come up with the tuition, or if getting a loan, working more than fulltime outside the major field may be necessary.
rmk2 14y ago
Maybe everyone should become an engineer, so everyone can be happily living in a technocracy were we make everything remotely tangible into money. Maybe we should tell people to stop doing psychology, art history, history, political sciences, theology, literature etc. I mean, it's on Wikipedia, right? You can just go there and read about it, you know, as a hobby, so, why bother studying it? Maybe we can all become engineers and convert everything into profit. What do you mean I probably shouldn't track someone's every movement? Why? It's the logical solution, it's possible, it's doable, it gives the greatest monetary return. And it's the best developmental solution! It's perfect!
- jmtame 14y ago
  I don't think engineers are all about making things into money. I think they're more interested in doing things efficiently. Think about a barber shop: would an engineer repeat the same task every day, or would they automate it? I think most would try to automate it. The tradeoff would be efficiency for personality, and I think some people value it enough to keep it, while others wouldn't. That's probably a separate debate: would life be happier if everyone were an engineer? I'm also not saying everyone should be an engineer on this thread. I'm saying it's an interesting thought to change the way lending the money out works. What I'm getting at is this: is the non-absolvable nature of student debt a conflict of interest with the creditors, and are they giving it out indiscriminately?
  - rmk2 14y ago
    No, but companies are all about making things into money. That's why they choose a number of subjects (and degrees) that they deem useful and disregard everything else. What people fail to understand is that a degree in the humanities also provides qualifications other than "let me tell you about the depiction of French rats in late medieval English clay paintings." However, these skills are not seen as being easily converted into revenue and thus ignored. Such skills include independent problem solving, a high degree of organisation, formulation and proof of theories, descriptive and abstract work etc. However, if you have an engineer who builds you parts for a car or a website or a backend or what not, you can immidiately slap a price tag on it and give more money to your shareholders.

by jmtame 14y ago

mgkimsal 14y ago

It's a greater likelihood, sure, but... people also need to learn to take control of their lives. Dude - the $80k Art History job ain't coming along - deal with it. Pivot. I have an undergrad degree in Philosophy, but have been working in software development for more than 15 years, earning a good living most of that time too. This notion that "oh no, i have a liberal arts degree - my life is forever ruined and I'll be serving coffee part time until I die" is a tired meme. "There are no jobs!". Yes there are, in some fields. Hustle to get in to those fields, regardless of what your "major" was. Just do it. Now... I realize not everyone can do this - life situations dictate that some people have more struggles than others. But I meet single, healthy unattached 20-somethings that complain about the state of things - this is the best time in your life to retool, readjust and get moving. And they generally don't.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
That would be pretty good advice if there was any field at all with a shortage of new-graduate level employees in the USA.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  See, I still disagree with you here. Forget 'graduate-level' anything - you're still thinking in terms of formal education and degrees. Compete on hustle, moxie, other initiative - create your own life/job/work/etc - people will find you. Make a name for yourself doing something. I know, this all sounds airy-fairy pie-in-the-sky, but it's largely true. Many employers are still going to be impressed more with hustle than with degrees on paper. The ones that aren't - perhaps you don't want to work there anyway. The world is very much who-you-know vs what-you-know, and getting out there networking with people is going to get you a better chance of work than fighting with 9 other degree-holding applicants filling out forms on monster.com.
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    And I still disagree with you here. It's not about me and my personal employment situation; specifically, because my situation can always be improved via a purely relative advancement that would have no net benefit if everyone did it (see: "Darwin the Market Whiz"). Also, generally, because I personally am doing decently right now: I damn well wanted to go back to academia and get a research degree, and I've lucked out to get into a damn fine research institution. I've had to turn down 1 offer to convert a a good contract gig to full-time and turn away four recruiters pursue that (not to mention previous interviews where I was told I was turned down because they saw that I truly fit in grad-school more than I fit in their team right this month). I'm also continuing my open-source/research project and working on a side-business idea in the meanwhile. But just because I'm ok doesn't mean everyone else is ok, once we dispose of the false assumption that I'm average. The real problem here is that you have half a generation 18-22 year-olds coming of age, trying to leave their parents' care, and finding that there's basically no demand for their labor. Millions of people can't all have more hustle, moxie, initiative, mojo, or whatever other nigh-meaningless abstract term we've chosen to convey "the capitalistic equivalent of sex-appeal", than each other. There has to be actual demand for labor to hire these people. Conversely, even though I'm not average, an overall bad labor market affects me. The tech sector is "recession-proof", but nothing is Great Depression proof. An ultra-capitalist economy geared towards maximizing debts and rents for bankers, lobbyists and lawyers does, in fact, ripple out to the tech sector and affect hiring. For instance, it means that there are very few R&D labs in computing right now (though a friend of mine has been interviewing with R&D teams at Oracle and I'll be happy to have the connection!), lots of VC-funded start-ups, and much of the world's top technical and scientific talent ends up writing financial algorithms. Someone who wants to actually do hard-core technology like me finds himself really curiously starved for places to work, given how well the tech-sector is supposedly doing. Oh, and everyone is wondering when this latest start-up bubble will pop, especially after GroupOn, Facebook, and Zynga IPOs.

LockeWatts 14y ago

Perhaps we should stop telling kids they can be whatever they want when they grow up. That's a rather depressing idea, but it's the truth. Unless you're independently wealthy or one in a hundred million, you will not be able to sustain yourself in certain pursuits. They're great to have as a hobby, but sometimes you just need to pay the bills. The land of opportunity is closed for our generation, but nobody told us until we had already packed our bags and boarded the plane.

jmtame 14y ago
I would probably ask them to read What You'll Wish You'd Known (http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html). I like the analogy of staying upwind because it provides you more options when the time comes that you find out what you want to do.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
danielweber 14y ago
Used to be poets earned very little but had very simple lifestyles. It was their choice so everyone was happy. Now if you want to be a poet, you still can. But the problem is that there are upper-class kids who want to be poets but not live like one, and they are going to bid up the cost of the poet lifestyle. A similar thing happened in journalism. Kids of rich families wanted to "change the world" and bid the wages of working journalists down to nil.
cdcarter 14y ago
The issue here is that the liberal arts degree shouldn't be seen as job training. That's not the purpose of a liberal arts degree.
fuzzythinker 14y ago
No, telling kids they can be whatever they want can never change (as long as it isn't unethical). The idea is to teach them to be responsible and logical. If tuition for say an art major cost $15k a yr, they have to understand or be told that unless the parents support them, they will either need to work part time or other means to come up with the tuition, or if getting a loan, working more than fulltime outside the major field may be necessary.

rmk2 14y ago

Maybe everyone should become an engineer, so everyone can be happily living in a technocracy were we make everything remotely tangible into money. Maybe we should tell people to stop doing psychology, art history, history, political sciences, theology, literature etc. I mean, it's on Wikipedia, right? You can just go there and read about it, you know, as a hobby, so, why bother studying it? Maybe we can all become engineers and convert everything into profit. What do you mean I probably shouldn't track someone's every movement? Why? It's the logical solution, it's possible, it's doable, it gives the greatest monetary return. And it's the best developmental solution! It's perfect!

jmtame 14y ago
I don't think engineers are all about making things into money. I think they're more interested in doing things efficiently. Think about a barber shop: would an engineer repeat the same task every day, or would they automate it? I think most would try to automate it. The tradeoff would be efficiency for personality, and I think some people value it enough to keep it, while others wouldn't. That's probably a separate debate: would life be happier if everyone were an engineer? I'm also not saying everyone should be an engineer on this thread. I'm saying it's an interesting thought to change the way lending the money out works. What I'm getting at is this: is the non-absolvable nature of student debt a conflict of interest with the creditors, and are they giving it out indiscriminately?
- rmk2 14y ago
  No, but companies are all about making things into money. That's why they choose a number of subjects (and degrees) that they deem useful and disregard everything else. What people fail to understand is that a degree in the humanities also provides qualifications other than "let me tell you about the depiction of French rats in late medieval English clay paintings." However, these skills are not seen as being easily converted into revenue and thus ignored. Such skills include independent problem solving, a high degree of organisation, formulation and proof of theories, descriptive and abstract work etc. However, if you have an engineer who builds you parts for a car or a website or a backend or what not, you can immidiately slap a price tag on it and give more money to your shareholders.