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I think you're being a bit harsh. He's partially to blame, but everybody makes mistakes. I think there's a slight lag in what people educate themselves in. For

I think you're being a bit harsh. He's partially to blame, but everybody makes mistakes. I think there's a slight lag in what people educate themselves in. For the longest time, only a minority went to college. When few go to college, having a degree at all meant you could get a job, so there was this culture of "study what you're passionate about, it'll be alright". This is unfortunately not true anymore, but this is what the older generations are telling us young people, because they haven't realized that things have changed. Today, you have to be able to make a life determining decision right out of high-school, with limited and outdated information and years of the older generations giving you an incorrect view. Soon we'll probably get an over correction with nobody going into humanities and loads of people going into engineering and computer science. What's really needed is mandatory statistics for every degree and school on the form "1 year after graduation 70% of graduates was able to find jobs, 40% related to their degree, 30% with salaries of $50k+, do you still want to apply?". That's what's needed to even remotely be able to make a rational choice. If you're great at humanities and you love it, it might be worth the chance, but for us average people, we're better off with something that gives us a better chance of success.

kamaal 14y ago
No, I would say you have to super dumb if you 'chose' to study something that doesn't have much value or doesn't pay well. Its your life and you have to make smart decisions. Its not a game, where you can just shrug it off as a mistake, blame the government and then expect something miraculous to happen. Looking back, I can tell you about my own experiences here in India. When I opted to study engineering and before that science for my pre-university college, there were a lot of friends of mine who wanted to study history or commerce because it was 'easy'. Really, you have whole life to live on that and you take a wrong decision just because you want it easy for the next 4 years? Now after 4-5 years when we were all looking for jobs, the very same people who consciously studied history and commerce complained that either had no jobs or jobs that payed very poorly. Most of them either ended either being clerks(where their jobs are constantly threatened by automation) or working at call enters. And again you see the same government blaming. How can the government or people around you help if you make wrong decisions all over the years? And not surprisingly it turns out most of such people are generally the kind of guys who don't very hard and are always looking for short cuts. One fine day you suddenly wake up and realize its not that easy after all.
- ixacto 14y ago
  Hah, it is the same here in the USA. The people who studied the easy stuff don't have jobs, and if they do they are low-paid and don't offer much security. The sciences don't even pay that well, although they can if you try hard and schmooze. 100% of the people that I know who studied CS or Engineering (Chemical/Mechanical) _have jobs_ that are well paid, have nice benefits, and are able to live in nice areas of the country and if they want to raise a family. The liberal arts kids, not so much. There is no way of saying it nicely, but for the next 10 years of their lives, they're fucked. It is IMO hugely unethical for the educational system to shove 'you can be whatever you want to be' down everyone's throats during HS, then expect the Liberal arts to actually be able to find a job, earn enough money to pay off student loans, save $ for a house down payment, pay for health/car/etc insurance, and be able to save for retirement. I am never reproducing (yay childfree), but I shudder to think how my peers with children are managing to pay for for childcare. Oh, and don't forget those who do did not finish college, yet still have $20k of loans collecting interest. Would you write a check for $150k to a 18 year old kid and let them go party in NYC/LA/Paris for 4 years? Replace Paris with college and that's what college is like, unless you study engineering or maybe medicine.
  - neurotech1 14y ago
    The old joke is that because of the downturn in the airline industry, the largest employer of aeronautical engineers is McDonalds. These are 4 year college degree graduates, not aviation mechanics, which go to trade school.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Just like being in the group "college educated" is not a free ticket to a successful career, being in the group "engineer" is not a free ticket to a successful career. Is a college educated person in a better position to have a successful career? Of course. Is an engineer in a better position to have a successful career? Of course. The only difference between an engineer in the wrong discipline and a college graduate with the wrong degree is magnitude.
zalew 14y ago
> For the longest time, only a minority went to college. When few go to college, having a degree at all meant you could get a job, so there was this culture of "study what you're passionate about, it'll be alright". This is unfortunately not true anymore, but this is what the older generations are telling us young people, because they haven't realized that things have changed. So true. We're currently suffering badly a similar effect in Poland. My generation and current graduates were raised in the belief that you got to have a diploma to find yourself in the market. That led to a crisis of vocationale schools and an overflow of private colleges offering the wackiest fields to graduate in. Now we have waitresses and mcdonalds cashiers with degrees, and employees facing hiring problems because of unskilled labor. Of course all those "educated" youngsters are frustrated, they were told if they study they'll get a career other than salting fries. Only recently our education system started slowly recovering from this madness.
mgkimsal 14y ago
"Today, you have to be able to make a life determining decision right out of high-school, with limited and outdated information and years of the older generations giving you an incorrect view." I remember being terrified in 11th grade - all my friends were doing college applications, and it all felt permanent. I remember crying in the counselor's office one day, and she didn't understand the pressure. "I'm being told I have to choose 'a major' in a college, which is going to determine the rest of my life, and I can't even drive yet". "Oh, don't worry, you can always change it later!" (She was nicer than that, but that was the gist).
- purplelobster 14y ago
  You can change it later, it just takes a long time to realize it, at a huge financial cost. I chose wrong, but I was lucky that I realized it so soon, after only 6 months. It was a decision made out of laziness as much as anything. I realized that the one programming class I took was way more easy and fun than anything else. I should've gone into CS right away, but for some reason I thought I was way behind the "nerds" who would go to CS, the people who had been coding since they were 6. I thought that I would have no chance in that environment. That said, not everybody wants to, or can become an engineer or scientist, and they shouldn't. If the choice for a person is between not going to college at all, and going for a humanities education, I vastly prefer they go for the education. I think people getting educated and pursuing their passions are a good thing for society as a whole, if we can afford it.
SilasX 14y ago
What I don't understand is, why weren't more people able to make the inference I did: "If a college education doesn't actually make you better at performing a job, then there's nothing to sustain the trend of employers from hiring you simply because you have one -- they could just quit doing it one day, and I'd be out in the cold. So I should take a major that is actually needed for certain jobs." Or, to put it another way, "College doesn't actually make you a better worker for most majors, so hiring based on it is stupid -- that trend can't continue." If I could see it long before applying for college, why couldn't others? Yet I was continually seeing many, many people around me taking majors with no clue as to how that would make them substantively employable.

kamaal 14y ago

No, I would say you have to super dumb if you 'chose' to study something that doesn't have much value or doesn't pay well. Its your life and you have to make smart decisions. Its not a game, where you can just shrug it off as a mistake, blame the government and then expect something miraculous to happen. Looking back, I can tell you about my own experiences here in India. When I opted to study engineering and before that science for my pre-university college, there were a lot of friends of mine who wanted to study history or commerce because it was 'easy'. Really, you have whole life to live on that and you take a wrong decision just because you want it easy for the next 4 years? Now after 4-5 years when we were all looking for jobs, the very same people who consciously studied history and commerce complained that either had no jobs or jobs that payed very poorly. Most of them either ended either being clerks(where their jobs are constantly threatened by automation) or working at call enters. And again you see the same government blaming. How can the government or people around you help if you make wrong decisions all over the years? And not surprisingly it turns out most of such people are generally the kind of guys who don't very hard and are always looking for short cuts. One fine day you suddenly wake up and realize its not that easy after all.

ixacto 14y ago
Hah, it is the same here in the USA. The people who studied the easy stuff don't have jobs, and if they do they are low-paid and don't offer much security. The sciences don't even pay that well, although they can if you try hard and schmooze. 100% of the people that I know who studied CS or Engineering (Chemical/Mechanical) _have jobs_ that are well paid, have nice benefits, and are able to live in nice areas of the country and if they want to raise a family. The liberal arts kids, not so much. There is no way of saying it nicely, but for the next 10 years of their lives, they're fucked. It is IMO hugely unethical for the educational system to shove 'you can be whatever you want to be' down everyone's throats during HS, then expect the Liberal arts to actually be able to find a job, earn enough money to pay off student loans, save $ for a house down payment, pay for health/car/etc insurance, and be able to save for retirement. I am never reproducing (yay childfree), but I shudder to think how my peers with children are managing to pay for for childcare. Oh, and don't forget those who do did not finish college, yet still have $20k of loans collecting interest. Would you write a check for $150k to a 18 year old kid and let them go party in NYC/LA/Paris for 4 years? Replace Paris with college and that's what college is like, unless you study engineering or maybe medicine.
- neurotech1 14y ago
  The old joke is that because of the downturn in the airline industry, the largest employer of aeronautical engineers is McDonalds. These are 4 year college degree graduates, not aviation mechanics, which go to trade school.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Just like being in the group "college educated" is not a free ticket to a successful career, being in the group "engineer" is not a free ticket to a successful career. Is a college educated person in a better position to have a successful career? Of course. Is an engineer in a better position to have a successful career? Of course. The only difference between an engineer in the wrong discipline and a college graduate with the wrong degree is magnitude.

zalew 14y ago

> For the longest time, only a minority went to college. When few go to college, having a degree at all meant you could get a job, so there was this culture of "study what you're passionate about, it'll be alright". This is unfortunately not true anymore, but this is what the older generations are telling us young people, because they haven't realized that things have changed. So true. We're currently suffering badly a similar effect in Poland. My generation and current graduates were raised in the belief that you got to have a diploma to find yourself in the market. That led to a crisis of vocationale schools and an overflow of private colleges offering the wackiest fields to graduate in. Now we have waitresses and mcdonalds cashiers with degrees, and employees facing hiring problems because of unskilled labor. Of course all those "educated" youngsters are frustrated, they were told if they study they'll get a career other than salting fries. Only recently our education system started slowly recovering from this madness.

mgkimsal 14y ago

"Today, you have to be able to make a life determining decision right out of high-school, with limited and outdated information and years of the older generations giving you an incorrect view." I remember being terrified in 11th grade - all my friends were doing college applications, and it all felt permanent. I remember crying in the counselor's office one day, and she didn't understand the pressure. "I'm being told I have to choose 'a major' in a college, which is going to determine the rest of my life, and I can't even drive yet". "Oh, don't worry, you can always change it later!" (She was nicer than that, but that was the gist).

purplelobster 14y ago
You can change it later, it just takes a long time to realize it, at a huge financial cost. I chose wrong, but I was lucky that I realized it so soon, after only 6 months. It was a decision made out of laziness as much as anything. I realized that the one programming class I took was way more easy and fun than anything else. I should've gone into CS right away, but for some reason I thought I was way behind the "nerds" who would go to CS, the people who had been coding since they were 6. I thought that I would have no chance in that environment. That said, not everybody wants to, or can become an engineer or scientist, and they shouldn't. If the choice for a person is between not going to college at all, and going for a humanities education, I vastly prefer they go for the education. I think people getting educated and pursuing their passions are a good thing for society as a whole, if we can afford it.

SilasX 14y ago

What I don't understand is, why weren't more people able to make the inference I did: "If a college education doesn't actually make you better at performing a job, then there's nothing to sustain the trend of employers from hiring you simply because you have one -- they could just quit doing it one day, and I'd be out in the cold. So I should take a major that is actually needed for certain jobs." Or, to put it another way, "College doesn't actually make you a better worker for most majors, so hiring based on it is stupid -- that trend can't continue." If I could see it long before applying for college, why couldn't others? Yet I was continually seeing many, many people around me taking majors with no clue as to how that would make them substantively employable.