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The rather obvious point is very intelligent people with appropriate habits get ahead in life.
I note from another thread here at CD that President Obama criticized Art History majors in a recent speech. I wager there is at least one brilliant person in an Art History program who will succeed in their chosen career field.
I noticed this in jrHS, HS, university undergrad and graduate programs: There are high flyers and then the middle and lower tier. Even Jack Welch mentioned this is typical in an organization. He also indicated a number of the C-level folk he encountered had some of these degrees which are ruled as worthless here on CD by pundits.(failures in my book)
Outstanding people always get ahead unless they selfdestruct.
The real problem has many linkages from diminished standards of a four year program to insufficient employement to unrealistic expectations of today's youth.
The other problem is fear. I have never heard or read of so much fear in today's youth until finding CD post-2008. Confidence is an attribute of youth.
These types of threads are very irritating. No degree is useless. A person can make a degree useless if they don't know how to put it to good use. These days any degree will open doors. Most employers prefer people with any degree over those with no degree.
I'm an English major and I've already found some internships that I am going to apply for in the next few months. It's all about creativity in getting the type of job you want. I have met some engineers and accountants who were miserable in their jobs. The only reason they chose that area of work is because they wanted to make a lot of money right away. A degree that is not technical can be very flexible and a person with one of these degrees is not tied down to one job their whole life.
I'm tired of these threads too. A useless degree can be defined in other ways.
Here's an example - if your parents force you to major in accounting, or medical technology and you hate it, get bad grades but graduate.
Finally you get a job and lose it because you hate it, and your talent in that field is marginal at best.
So then, for some students, accounting and medical technology are useless degrees.
We'll continue to see these threads as long as the mindless "no-think", free market-dogma brainwashed, meritocracy-believing sheeple continue to believe that everyone can have a good job as long as they have a "worthwhile" degree. These idiots believe that the supply of good jobs in "worthwhile fields" will magically expand to accommodate all college graduates who major in "worthwhile" fields. The concept that a huge excess of college graduates can be produced never occurs to them.
We'll continue to see these threads as long as the mindless "no-think", free market-dogma brainwashed, meritocracy-believing sheeple continue to believe that everyone can have a good job as long as they have a "worthwhile" degree. These idiots believe that the supply of good jobs in "worthwhile fields" will magically expand to accommodate all college graduates who major in "worthwhile" fields. The concept that a huge excess of college graduates can be produced never occurs to them.
Well, I wouldn't have put it quite like this LOL, but I agree with this basic idea.
All of this argument about "worthless" degrees just obscures the real issue... there is a shrinking number of jobs that pay working to middle class type wages, and the ones that are left are increasingly require one to have a college degree. Tech jobs always tended to pay more but it wasn't as much of an issue because there were plenty other decent jobs out there. More and more ANY kind of job, even ones that only require on-the-job training to do well, ask for a college degree. Unionized labor jobs are virtually gone, and the retail jobs that are replacing them for the most part can't sustain a family. So we have more people going to college at the same time the cost to go is rising. All those people think they are going to walk into decent paying white collar jobs with little planning or effort because that used to be true, but now there are more people out there than jobs that pay decently, so you actually have to PLAN for graduation if you have a liberal arts degree. Many people can and do find decent jobs with their "worthless" degrees, but some will not. And even so, without the degree they'd be even worse off.
As the environment gets more competitive, people are out there blaming each other, calling each other names, and not seeing the big picture. Why has the economy lost the ability to provide a variety of opportunities to earn a liveable wage at various education and skill levels? Why is it required to earn more credentials to do the same jobs people used to do with only a high school diploma? Why are people trying to make careers out of jobs that used to be primarily for high schoolers and retirees? What happens to all the people that were never meant for college, and are destined not to earn a bachelors? Do we realize that is the MAJORITY of the population? Exactly how are they going to live? How much debt are we going to ask people to take on to get these degrees we are making them get, even when we know they may not earn the wages to pay back the loans?
That's our problem, not that Becky wants to major in Art History.
As the environment gets more competitive, people are out there blaming each other, calling each other names, and not seeing the big picture. Why has the economy lost the ability to provide a variety of opportunities to earn a liveable wage at various education and skill levels? Why is it required to earn more credentials to do the same jobs people used to do with only a high school diploma? Why are people trying to make careers out of jobs that used to be primarily for high schoolers and retirees? What happens to all the people that were never meant for college, and are destined not to earn a bachelors? Do we realize that is the MAJORITY of the population? Exactly how are they going to live? How much debt are we going to ask people to take on to get these degrees we are making them get, even when we know they may not earn the wages to pay back the loans?
That's our problem, not that Becky wants to major in Art History.
Exactly. It's a blame game. Same with school reputation, major, and GPA. Nobody wants to feel they are at a disadvantage, it is so damn competitive out there.
You're going to see more and more people with degrees in Engineering and even Masters Accounting taking jobs such as claims adjusters for Progressive. And they'll be fighting for those jobs with somebody who has an English degree who really wanted to be a fashion magazine editor or something.
It's all a gamble and almost no degrees are immune to being 'wasted'.
You may not see the usefulness in such a degree. However, that may simply be because your definition of usefulness differs from their definition of usefulness. It is not clear cut, though some may delude themselves into thinking that their subjective definition of 'usefulness' is actually an objective truth. However, it is not.
Simply remember that people get degrees based on what they find useful, not what you find useful.
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