Posted on 08/20/2012 6:47:45 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If you or anyone close to you is grappling with the decision of whether to commence or continue college or graduate studies, there are several important facts of life you should know about—facts that colleges themselves aren’t likely to mention. These are a few of the uncomfortable truths they won’t tell you:
1) “Far more people earn degrees in many liberal arts majors than can be employed in those fields.”
Consider the following statistics: More than half of Americans under the age of 25 who have a bachelor’s degree are either unemployed or underemployed. According to The Christian Science Monitor, nearly 1 percent of bartenders and 14 percent of parking lot attendants have a bachelor’s degree.
Adding additional degrees is no guarantee of employment either. According to a recent Urban Institute report, nearly 300,000 Americans with master’s degrees and over 30,000 with doctorates are on public relief.
President Obama said in this year’s State of the Union Address that he wanted larger numbers of people to attend college, but the grim fact is that colleges and universities continue to crank out too many degrees for which there is no need. Every year we award diplomas in economics, sociology, political science, English, history, law, etc., far beyond the market demand for those degrees.
Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the field of psychology, which is perennially one of the most popular undergraduate majors. In a recent year, over 80,000 Americans received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and slightly over 100,000 received a B.A. in education. Preparing 100,000 new teachers a year seems plausible, but does the U.S. job market really need four people trained in psychology for every five trained to be teachers?
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Truer words were never spoken. ANYONE can graduate from college and get a degree. I have always thought that the best lesson I ever got out of college was learning how to effectively concentrate my focus to finding answers to questions.
I also think my military experience taught me far more useful things than my college degree, but have alwasys felt that they complemented each other perfectly.
Bottom Line: If I ever have to choose a candidate for a job, and am given the choice between a 10 year Marine Corps veteran and a college graduate, I am choosing the USMC every time, all other things being equal.
Fingas, that flash of genius seems to ellude so many “students” in this age—actually looking at the output before expending the input. Yet it should be common sense.
Agreed, the school should just hand out unemployment forms in lieu of diplomas.
A young (23 years old) visiting nurse (LVN) who came to our house did one year of full time study to get her certificate. She was one of 14 to finish the course after 32 started it. She found work right away, and started at $20/hour. She’s at $26.50 now.
Because her school (a private one) had a reputation for being tough to get through, students were recruited before they graduated. This is very different from other private outfits that try to graduate everyone.
I know someone with two technical degrees working at a Wal-Mart in the northeast. Of course he blames Republicans for creating such a bad economy but that's another story.
Years ago I was looking forward to taking a class in semiconductor electronics from a professor who was using his own recently published textbook.
I'm not a good note-taker and appreciate having a well-written textbook that follows the coursework.
Unfortunately, the professor was working on a new textbook with the emphasis on MOSFETs and fed us with a stream of photo-copied notes. What a disappointment. I still have the textbook but haven't a clue what happened to all his photo-copied notes.
With a bit of foresight, anyone can avoid majoring in a useless subject.
I love the French language. I also love science. No doubt, it would have been far easier to go for a bachelor’s then a Ph.D. in French, but I considered the employment opportunities for each major, and decided to go for science instead.
While life scientist PhDs do not have the lowest unemployment rate, their unemployment rate is only slightly higher than the lowest, less than 2%. A life sciences PhD is meant to prepare a student for academia and/or research, but there are plenty of non-research job opportunities. I cannot complain about my choice of majors, or about the time I spent in college.
Part II of the series:
Following your lead, here is what Prof. Hendrickson tells us in PART II of the article:
4) “College is not an investment.”
5) “Going deeply into debt for some degrees can ruin your life.”
6) “It is now a buyer’s market at all but the top colleges.”
7) “You don’t have to be in a classroom or on a campus to learn what you need to learn.”
CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK (see post 28 ) for the detailed explanation.
“...a degree in Peace and Environmental Studies.”
Great Cesar’s ghost, WHAT kind of degree is that? Any degree that sounds so dumb has got to be worthless (as the young woman found to her dismay).
For what it's worth, I chose the USMC over college. In the nearly 30 years I've been out, I've never been unemployed. Ever. Every single job interview I ever went on resulted in an offer.
Now that I'm in position to hire people, those with military backgrounds always go straight to the top of the pile.
While there are exceptions, people with military background tend to be more dependable, have better work ethic and work well under pressure.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.