Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My wife has one semester left to get her Arts' degree, and around here unless you plan on teaching, it isn't good for anything.
Any arts program that is not training their students to be teachers as well as artists/performers is doing a disservice to their students. Far too much of the revenue and employment opportunities in the arts come from teaching to ignore that entire aspect of the field. Even the top performers still teach as part of their portfolios and resumes (which is a large part of developing their legacy too).
When you talk to some young people in this country, it makes you wonder how they formed their world views, their perceptions of reality, and how unprepared they are for the global economy. It makes you wonder how they will face the obstacles in life, what kind of life they will have.
Young people have been lied to. It is partly parenting styles, partly school education, and partly the media. Let's quickly run through some of the myths they were taught to believe in and reality they face in the future. I would like the peers here to add on to this list of Myths and Reality.
Myth 1: Everyone gets a reward. There is no first place and last place.
Reality: There is always a first place and last place. Rewards are often given to people who have the merit, background, social network, smart/dominant personality, and sometimes luck. Rewards are not reversely related to how much you have.
Myth 2: You can do what you love.
Reality: It has never been truly possible to simply do what you love. Humans must work to provide shelter, food, and medicine for themselves and their family. The financial concerns trumps most other things. People need means to survive. A much better strategy is to do what makes money for work, and then take that money to do what you love outside work. As you generate more finnacial security, eventually even independence, the ratio between work and life changes. You work more when you are young, and you live more when you are older. Eventually, you will be able to do what you love. The difference is that doing what you love isn't the means to get to the destination. It is the destination in itself, provided that you have the means.
Myth 3: Get a college degree, get a middle class job, make six figures.
Reality: A college degree's worth is determined by its scarcity. The college degree worths much less when more people have it, even less when your degree doesn't have much marketable skills. The expansion of college education enriched wealthy university administrators, produced an army of hopeless phds and adjunct labor they have become, and fed the loans industry.
Myth 4: Educate more people, and jobs will come (build it and they will come)
Reality: Jobs are created when demand for products and services increases. The number of jobs is unrelated to the number of college degrees. More college education has led to more college-educated unemployed people, who have college-educated expectations and the reluctance to do jobs they see beneath them.
Myth 5: The more you know...
Reality: It is true that the more you know, the more you, duh, know. But it's just that. It doesn't necessarily make you more employeable, doesn't give you better salaries. You must possess marketable skills in order to get that career and salary you want. This means you should not simply "know more." You must identify what it is you must know in order to achieve your career and life goals. You must pick and choose among many subject matters to focus on those that are most efficiently at helping your career success. There are way too many subjects. A broad 4-year education without a focus is a disaster for most people without trust funds. It has neither the breadth nor the depth. Many degrees tend to be this way. They are merely a collection of a few classes on A, one class on B, and little snippets of subjects that hardly product any type of robust marketability. In the short period of seeking employment and starting a life, most people simply do not have the time to waste on being distracted and unfocused.
Having only attended college in my younger days for under a year total {partied my way out} you have put into words What I believed college to have morphed into. I have a daughter who just became a freshmen at a state university,a public college. She is very intelligent and has already made reference to "working" the system and the instructors. Don't get me wrong she studies hard and does the requested work,but she also realizes that a lot of it is "pleasing" the instructor.
I always looked upon a college degree as not so much a sign of increased intelligence........... just a sign of being able to grin and bear the BS for four years.
When you talk to some young people in this country, it makes you wonder how they formed their world views, their perceptions of reality, and how unprepared they are for the global economy. It makes you wonder how they will face the obstacles in life, what kind of life they will have.
Young people have been lied to. It is partly parenting styles, partly school education, and partly the media. Let's quickly run through some of the myths they were taught to believe in and reality they face in the future. I would like the peers here to add on to this list of Myths and Reality.
Myth 1: Everyone gets a reward. There is no first place and last place.
Reality: There is always a first place and last place. Rewards are often given to people who have the merit, background, social network, smart/dominant personality, and sometimes luck. Rewards are not reversely related to how much you have.
Myth 2: You can do what you love.
Reality: It has never been truly possible to simply do what you love. Humans must work to provide shelter, food, and medicine for themselves and their family. The financial concerns trumps most other things. People need means to survive. A much better strategy is to do what makes money for work, and then take that money to do what you love outside work. As you generate more finnacial security, eventually even independence, the ratio between work and life changes. You work more when you are young, and you live more when you are older. Eventually, you will be able to do what you love. The difference is that doing what you love isn't the means to get to the destination. It is the destination in itself, provided that you have the means.
Myth 3: Get a college degree, get a middle class job, make six figures.
Reality: A college degree's worth is determined by its scarcity. The college degree worths much less when more people have it, even less when your degree doesn't have much marketable skills. The expansion of college education enriched wealthy university administrators, produced an army of hopeless phds and adjunct labor they have become, and fed the loans industry.
Myth 4: Educate more people, and jobs will come (build it and they will come)
Reality: Jobs are created when demand for products and services increases. The number of jobs is unrelated to the number of college degrees. More college education has led to more college-educated unemployed people, who have college-educated expectations and the reluctance to do jobs they see beneath them.
Myth 5: The more you know...
Reality: It is true that the more you know, the more you, duh, know. But it's just that. It doesn't necessarily make you more employeable, doesn't give you better salaries. You must possess marketable skills in order to get that career and salary you want. This means you should not simply "know more." You must identify what it is you must know in order to achieve your career and life goals. You must pick and choose among many subject matters to focus on those that are most efficiently at helping your career success. There are way too many subjects. A broad 4-year education without a focus is a disaster for most people without trust funds. It has neither the breadth nor the depth. Many degrees tend to be this way. They are merely a collection of a few classes on A, one class on B, and little snippets of subjects that hardly product any type of robust marketability. In the short period of seeking employment and starting a life, most people simply do not have the time to waste on being distracted and unfocused.
This list basically says do what you have to do for money.
My question is this: why are we even ok with that?
I know the common conservative argument for this is that it's just human nature but it's not. That's BS and arrogant. The thing is, the system was intentionally built to sustain itself and it's causing problems. Development of high quality products has fallen. The very existence of something like 'planned obsolescence' means the system is ****ing evil.
Basically every economist in the 20th century predicted we'd all be working 15 hour work weeks and still have enough abundance to live comfortably. This didn't happen purely to sustain a system that is obsolete. We don't need that anymore. But there's the arrogance in assuming the way it's currently done is just human nature, which anyone who studies... anything... any intellectual will disagree on that. It's cultural at best, but it's not human nature. Humans crave security and the "realities" you point out are not the only way to achieve that. It once was the most practical method, but we now have the technology to dismantle that system. But we don't because the people who benefit from this system don't want that. This is why companies like Apple can get away with creating products that are designed to be significantly less efficient only a few years after release. The average lifespan of a computer is 3-5 years. If products like that were sold 90 years ago, people would be rioting. That was once completely unacceptable, but now it's perfectly fine. All because of some warped vision of capitalism.
What you say may be 'reality' but it's not natural. It can be changed, we just have to be pissed off enough to change it. But if we just lazily blow it off as 'the way it is' humanity will be stuck in this rigged system forever.
Having only attended college in my younger days for under a year total {partied my way out} you have put into words What I believed college to have morphed into. I have a daughter who just became a freshmen at a state university,a public college. She is very intelligent and has already made reference to "working" the system and the instructors. Don't get me wrong she studies hard and does the requested work,but she also realizes that a lot of it is "pleasing" the instructor.
I always looked upon a college degree as not so much a sign of increased intelligence........... just a sign of being able to grin and bear the BS for four years.
You have to learn what the professor wants you to learn, even if it's wrong. I took a World Religion course taught by a Christian minister. He kept emphasizing how the other religions made no sense. You had to pretend to agree with his view to do well in the class.
Not just arts and criminal justice. There are many other degrees that poorly prepare students.
Women and Gender Studies
Social Justice Studies
Civic Engagement
Diversity Studies
Ethnic Studies
Religious Studies
Urban Studies
Latino Studies
Many in the creative fields without applications
These degrees are great to get into the old white racist shakedown racket.
All Fortune 500 companies and local state and federal governments have need for diversity managers.
Universities need indoctrinators to reveal the need for these studies to the next generation.
This list basically says do what you have to do for money.
My question is this: why are we even ok with that?
I know the common conservative argument for this is that it's just human nature but it's not. That's BS and arrogant. The thing is, the system was intentionally built to sustain itself and it's causing problems. Development of high quality products has fallen. The very existence of something like 'planned obsolescence' means the system is ****ing evil.
Basically every economist in the 20th century predicted we'd all be working 15 hour work weeks and still have enough abundance to live comfortably. This didn't happen purely to sustain a system that is obsolete. We don't need that anymore. But there's the arrogance in assuming the way it's currently done is just human nature, which anyone who studies... anything... any intellectual will disagree on that. It's cultural at best, but it's not human nature. Humans crave security and the "realities" you point out are not the only way to achieve that. It once was the most practical method, but we now have the technology to dismantle that system. But we don't because the people who benefit from this system don't want that. This is why companies like Apple can get away with creating products that are designed to be significantly less efficient only a few years after release. The average lifespan of a computer is 3-5 years. If products like that were sold 90 years ago, people would be rioting. That was once completely unacceptable, but now it's perfectly fine. All because of some warped vision of capitalism.
What you say may be 'reality' but it's not natural. It can be changed, we just have to be pissed off enough to change it. But if we just lazily blow it off as 'the way it is' humanity will be stuck in this rigged system forever.
what you wrote is nothing natural. it's a set of rules that you seem to have in mind and want to impose on people. the reality has been this way for a very long time, tested by the long history of human evolution and time. i didn't even claim it to be natural, and yet you claimed your artificial system to be natural? i can't get over the irony that you want to "change" the system to "natural."
you want to talk about natural? the scientific evidence of evolution. evolution is what's natural.
These degrees are great to get into the old white racist shakedown racket.
All Fortune 500 companies and local state and federal governments have need for diversity managers.
Universities need indoctrinators to reveal the need for these studies to the next generation.
Great pay.
Many of these studies will close down due to budget and reorganization.
The indoctrinators are creating the new generation of baristas with a bachelor's degree and lowly paid adjuncts with a phd. The indoctrinators themselves are well paid perhaps, as the few winners of a class structure in the ivy tower.
Not just arts and criminal justice. There are many other degrees that poorly prepare students.
Women and Gender Studies
Social Justice Studies
Civic Engagement
Diversity Studies
Ethnic Studies
Religious Studies
Urban Studies
Latino Studies
Many in the creative fields without applications
A solid liberal arts education gives you good verbal communication, writing and critical thinking skills. Those things are very valuable in the workplace. Not to mention that a BA degree is excellent preparation for an MBA, Law School, a PhD and a host of other graduate degrees. There's a lot more political science and history majors in top law schools and MBA programs than there are engineers.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
