Aside from hard science and engineering degrees where the technical knowledge is a foundation for what you’ll learn in industry, a college degree is simply a piece of paper that says “I received a balanced education and have my life together enough to focus, manage time, and complete tasks reliably for 4 years straight.” Rarely do you ever use most of the knowledge you gained in college besides the aforementioned life management skills.
Then why even bother going to a university? Seems like community college would be a much better use of your money to accomplish that
University is meant to be higher level and teach you soft skills. Academics also aren’t supposed to be the only thing you do, but participating in clubs and sports is supposed to give students experience in leadership to make them better leaders when they graduate.
It is supposed to be a civilian version of officer candidate school.
So then I really fucked up by working fast food to pay for my textbooks when I could have been out playing sportsball
Or being in a fraternity or student clubs.
The only club I had time for was the chicken club
2 vs 4 year degree. I do recommend going to community college first though and transferring if pursuing a degree.
At least in the US, most community colleges offer 4 year degrees
Maybe it varies state to state but I don’t know of any that offer real 4 year degrees, and I went to a community college
Yeah, IvyTech here in Indiana will get you credit to transfer to a 4-year school but only offers associates degrees.
Where? I can think of one that had a university satellite campus for a handful of programs. But those were the only 4 year degrees and they were still through a university and had university pricing.
It is
Right, and without it the only thing you’re qualified to do is work shit blue collar jobs and live out of your car. That is, if you were lucky enough to buy one before they became unaffordable.
Working in the AEC firm, I can absolutely confirm that engineering degrees teach you almost nothing you’ll do on the job. The disconnect between college and work in engineering not only exists, but is far, far larger than anyone may think.
It depends. I absolutely use my degrees in my job, including my Masters. However, I’m heavy into the kinds of design where it is valuable.
Also, a lot of the job is plan preparation and no one really teaches that in college.
That’s good you can use your skills in your design work! I see a lot of shell shock in my civil firm.
And yeah, absolutely. So many EITs, engineers, and even PEs live in CADD which is not taught nearly enough in the curriculum. Also, computer literacy is not emphasized enough, IMO. Every engineer these days works with computers, especially in Excel. Additionally, a lot of engineers especially don’t have people skills enough to effectively coordinate with all parties involved in their roles; it would be great to get some of that experience in mock PM situations or something during school. That all has to be taught on the job.
So many EITs, engineers, and even PEs live in CADD which is not taught nearly enough in the curriculum.
A lot of that seems to come from non-practicing professors teaching classes. They really need to create homework that requires reading plans more, if not generating them.
Also, computer literacy is not emphasized enough, IMO. Every engineer these days works with computers, especially in Excel.
In my day, it was assumed that engineers would just have that competency. That assumption has changed. You also have cases where, again, non-practicing professors don’t know that you should incorporate Excel as part of some classes.
Additionally, a lot of engineers especially don’t have people skills enough to effectively coordinate with all parties involved in their roles; it would be great to get some of that experience in mock PM situations or something during school. That all has to be taught on the job.
This is actually where the Greek system and student clubs are supposed to do this work. The best way to learn PM skills is by managing projects. You aren’t going to get that in a class unless you are working on group projects. You get that by running a club or putting together a campus event.
Those are all really good points, and yeah, you’re completely right in that too many of those fall upon non-practicing professors. Or moreover, very disconnected professors.
And that is true, but not doing Greek or many clubs myself, that didn’t even cross my mind.
Eh. There’s more to it than like you need a degree to become a doctor, lawyer, psychologist etc. It’s just that you need to have a well layer out plan and a good understanding of what your strengths and weakness are. Unfortunately, in the US there’s a massive emphasis on getting into college right after high school where people barely know what they want nor have any real world experience. In Ireland there’s a scheme there’s a thing called a mature student where its basically encouraging people 23 or older to go into college. Like courses will have spots reserved for them and the like.
What do the kids do in the meantime? I understand it’s a lot to throw a “kid” into university, but it’s often done so they can get a career and start contributing to retirement and building wealth.
I mean it’s also impractical to have a family without some career so that gets put on hold too. Or worse they have kids and have to go to school at the same time.
I’m not saying everyone should go to college, but just defending the reasoning for those that do why they go as young as they do.
To be fair I feel like college is way less about teaching you anything specific and way more about teaching you critical thinking and abstract conceptualization.
Like I didn’t learn jack shit from my “American economical development in the 14th century” class but I did genuinely get good at telling good sources from bad ones while writing essays, and that IS a skill that has uses in life
It’s showing that you can complete a multi-staged project that required years of effort and investment without any immediate return on investment.
Even if you don’t learn anything in college, the sheer process of going through the motions and getting the degree demonstrates skills that are useful in an employee.
Skills that can be shown from working at an entry level job. Or through several other methods.
That’s not a good reason to require someone to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the opportunity to even apply for a job.
Where else am I going to learn how to chug a liter of goon out of a sweaty gumboot?
Skills that capitalist scum loves in exploitable workers
FTFY
To be fair I feel like college is way less about teaching you anything specific and way more about teaching you critical thinking and abstract conceptualization.
That’s because conservatives want to replace universities with vocational schools. Nothing wrong with those schools, but its just another face of their culture war politics making their way to everyday discussions.
Yeah I really don’t know what your reasoning here is. Can you explain?
Conservatives often want to talk down the value of attending a university (particularly when studying liberal arts and humanities). Like the commenter above me points out much of university is about understanding concepts and developing ideas, and less how to do a particular weld or which pipe to use (vocation). It depends on what you study too, STEM will have more hands on but never as much as someone who went to a technical school to actually do the building of stuff. By convincing people that university is supposed to be vocational it feeds into their talking points about education being woke and unnecessary.
Kind of ironic coming from a group of lawyers and theologians.
It sounds like what they are saying is correct then, so I don’t get how they have fallen for the idea that everything needs to be vocational
Normalize lying to employers.
They lie to you all the time so fuck it.
Me: “I’m the best neurosurgeon in the entire southern hemisphere”
Interviewer: “Wow! You’re hired! Welcome aboard. Can you start tomorrow?”
The next day: “Haha bonesaw goes brrrrrrr”
Don’t you know? Jobs work like prestige classes. You have to max your level and then you need to reset everything to be qualified. Age too, that’s where we get all the 20 year olds with 30 years of experience.
Time to do a 3rd prestige reset.
BTW forget all that stuff in college while you are at it.
people always act like you’re going to directly use stuff you learned in class “in the field” (think about how antiquated that term is, my god) and you’re really not; every place has different standards and expectations. and the day-to-day is usually more trivial and doable than the raw theory in school – i feel like most people could do most jobs if trained well by someone competent at them
I am living testament to this… i have blagged my way into several jobs (had some knowledge but not the qualifications required) and have done pretty well for myself learning as I go. I always say “Just treat me as if i know nothing, I won’t be offended, i want to learn the way you do things here” and employers/managers seem to love that…
However i must stress the fundamental knowledge was essential. along with an interest and desire to learn.
Agree entirely.
I am in my 40s, have two bachelor’s degrees, got my second SPECIFICALLY in my field, have changed job directions half a dozen times within my field (because money talks), and have used nothing from college that I couldn’t get in a month long certification program.
I’ve gotten way more out of getting the respected industry specific certs than I did in more than half a decade of school.
I’ve gotten a thousand times more skills from learning on the job from colleagues and working managers than college and certifications together.
bring back apprenticeships
Besides, you are 30 already, yet have only 10 years experience. We are looking for at least 25 years for someone your age
We need someone with a millennium of experience with a framework that just came out a month ago.
My favorite is the ones where programmers are like “they wanted someone with 5 years experience with ? Guess I’m unqualified, I wrote it 3 years ago”
Basically ageism in the workforce.
Yeah they want you to have 30 years of experience, but you also aren’t allowed to be old either. You have to be some weird enigma of someone who is 30 but also had 30 years of experience.
The difference is regardless of whether you directly use what you learned in college or not, you have gained experience and tools that will help you in your future endeavors.
I read this sort of thing as: Forget what you were taught because we’re going to reshape you to help you succeed in this position, but DON’T forget how you learned, what tools and concepts you used along the way, connections built, etc.
You have to understand the core building blocks you became familiar with still apply one way or another. All of that hardship helped you build experience and understanding which enabled you to enter the industry of your choice and get a job where they start to mold you in a way that benefits the work you were hired to do.
If you don’t go to college you didn’t have all of those building blocks from approved curriculums and standardized testing, in person labs, team projects, etc.
You can achieve without college no question but that usually means the job will need to do potentially even more molding to get a person to a similar spot. Not always but much of the time.
Great explanation! I always knew this but never had the chance to mold the thoughts into one clear explanation which you just did.
Connections?
“Forget everything…”
Way ahead of you buddy. I literally got like amnesia, a day after the qualifying exam for college.
Life is a game unfortunately. Play the game by the rules, win the game.
If being saddled with debt AND a shitty low paying job is your condition of winning, then yeah
Sadly I think winning in capitalism for the 99% is not starving on the street.
i just lie about my degree, works everytime
it’s not what you learnt but how you learnt it… or so they say, anyway
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