College often not worth time, money

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ^ | Thursday, February 24, 2005 | Mike Seate

[Willie Green]

A waitress at one of my favorite Strip District restaurants last week used one of the industry's oldest cliches. She delivered a meal and reminded me that she "really didn't do this" for a living.

Waiting tables, she explained, was simply something she was doing until a well-paying job opened up in the field she studied during six years in college.

While this is rote conversation for wait staff in places like New York and Los Angeles, where everyone with a tray of linguini in their hands is waiting for a slot on NBC's "Fear Factor," it's unusual for Pittsburgh.

Or is it?

The waitress, it turns out, spent all that time and nearly $150,000 of her family's money studying social sciences, but after graduating she became disappointed with the entry-level salary of her chosen field.

"I can make, like, twice what I'd make as a social worker waiting tables," she confided, "so I'm probably going to just stay here."

[princess leah]

Right now our daughter is a senior softball player looking to get a softball/academic scholarship that will take a large chunk of her bill out for college. She plans to become an elementary school teacher, has a 2 year local community college signing inked for tuition and books, so if she doesn't get a good solid offer, she'll get her 2 years at the local level free and then she can be more picky about the college she wants to finish at. But we won't bury her under college debt before she can even get going.

[You Dirty Rats]

Well said! Americans gripe about the number of H1-B visas we issue but I can't help wondering if this correlates to the decreasing number of American students who major in hard sciences like engineering and chemistry. To many American university students would rather spend their college years pulling bong-hits while they major in "Literature of Contemporary Protest" and "Peace Studies" and leave the mechanical engineering classes filled with students named Amir, Singh and Mohammed.

You mean there is actually a logical reason we are short of American candidates for technical jobs in the sciences in this country? You mean part of it is OUR OWN FAULT? You mean to say that American education has FAILED American students? You mean that too many of our kids are spoiled brats who don't have to bust their asses studying the hard subjects when they can goof off at parental and governmental expense for four years?

Na, let's just continue to blame foreigners. It's easier.

[AD from SpringBay]

"I can make, like, twice what I'd make as a social worker waiting tables," she confided, "so I'm probably going to just stay here."

Nothing like a little short term thinking.

[coder2]

My sixteen year old high school sophmore is one of those who's otherwise bright, but hates the acedemics

Sounds like my 17-yr-old junior !!

GPA of 3.75, but doesn't like school anymore --- probably bored, but we have him in some advanced classes to prep him for college, just in case

I don't think all kids are college material. There was a guy that came to his small engine class saying that the high-end mechanics can make 100K plus, but I believe you have to be living in the right place, not a small town or area, more like a city

I'm telling my son to look into lots of different areas, he can go to college, but not major in a non-productive degree like history (no offense to any history majors), or there are tech courses, like mechanics or electricians.

He's still thinking, so I wouldn't be too worried about your son right now, sounds like he is a normal kid

[yankhater]

I was a history major as well. I am employed in the history field. I make a decent living. I pay all my bills and have enough left over to enjoy myself.

You shouldn't major in history if you want to drive around in a Mercedes-Benz. I think there is nothing wrong with wealth. I hate socialists whiny babies. I know my field doesn't pay much (supply and demand folks). If I want more money then I shall change careers. Liberal Arts careers take a certain economic sacrifice. Too many people just major in those fields to "get through" and then are surprised they don't make 6 figure salaries.

It's not too hard to get a museum job in Virginia. The degree matters, but having interned in college opened more doors for future employment.

I think the problem here is that most people go to college just to get a high paying job. I think we need more trade and technical schools for those people. To me a BA in a Liberal Arts degree should teach one a broad variety of subjects. I got through on a academic scholarship, but college in this sense is more of a luxury than necessity. Like in early America, when having a classical education was a finishing school for the mind. In my case I willingly chose a history career. I don't regret it. College made me more conservative not less. Challenging professors made my arguments stronger.

In the history field one must rely on evidence and facts to make good arguments. I had zero problems with my liberal history profs but ran into a brick wall with the English and Philosophy profs. History has more hard science to it than the average humanity.

I am debating whether to go for a Ph.D. or not. A part of me enjoys the practical side of a public history career. Another part of me wishes to infiltrate the university system. We need more conservatives willing to become professors. In a sense we need an alternative university system much like we have an alternative to the MSM.

In my case I wish to write books one day praising our Founders and thus our country. To do so, at least with a degree of credibility sad as the system is, you need that membership card (the Ph.D.). Very few good historians (there are some) are without it.

I fully understand the views of most of the posters. There are too many "pot smokers" and not enough serious scholars these days to make one be able to justify the classic liberal arts college. I wish we could remove these Ward Churchill b*stards and hippie student trash so we could reform college back to the standards of yesterday.

YH

[AnAmericanMother]

Thanks for chiming in (our posts crossed in the ether).

I am glad to hear from somebody with knowledge of the ballet world - when I was coming along, it was before the Twyla Tharpe/Barishnikov collaboration, and Ballet People and Contemporary Dance People didn't even speak to each other.

[Big Digger]

Maybe she can't find a job because she's an idiot.

Good point. It's possible that it's the student, and not the college, that is a waste of time.

[coder2]

Oh boy... And I posted a "negative" about a history major in the post right above yours !!!

No offense meant seriously !!! Just that my sister was a history major from 30 years ago, even back then she couldn't find anything.

[Betis70]

>>Actually I worked in the Archaeology/History field for over a decade. Good people who apply themselves are always employed and they can make decent money too.

Me too. Self-taught programmer who continues to study every week.

I learned to study in my "useless" MA program because we had 300 page-per-night reading assignments. And you better know the material the next day or you will be whipped in the seminar and made to look like an idiot. Also had to deal with loads of data, compile, come up with hypothesis, test them, present your findings to a room full of professors at annual meetings. I worked with every low-tech manufacturing you can think of (stone tool making, hand-formed pottery, open-air kilns) and high tech (GPS before it was widely available, GIS, database, statistical analysis programming) often within hours of each other.

Didn't make much money, but it really prepared me to be a go-getter in my present career path. Unlike others I know in the tech industry, I know I could switch careers if I had to and be successful.

[AnAmericanMother]

History jobs are pretty thin on the ground. That's why I went on to law school (not really - I always wanted to practice law, and history honed my research and writing skills). :-D

[tfecw]

Ahh cool A WPI guy. I'm an RPI guy! it's approaching 40 grand at rpi as well.

[GovernmentShrinker]

I was in love with ballet way back when, and studied at a school which sent a significant number of students on to professional careers with major companies. If she doesn't have a full scholarship to a school affiliated with a professional company by the time she's 16, with the company's directors telling you that she has a serious chance of getting into the company, she should forget about it, and just enjoy ballet as a healthy hobby. Let her find this out the hard way, if she has to. But don't waste a penny on any college program related to dance. I've never heard of a professional ballet dancer who had even briefly pursued such a degree, much less actually obtained one. Save the money for when your daughter has done her own reality check, and wants to go to college to learn something that will actually get her a job.

Even if she is one of tiny number who gets a position in a professional company, making a salary that she can get by on, that will only be for a few years. Then it will be time for college and preparation for a serious long term career. It's much better to go to college in your 30s and do it seriously, than to do it at the usual age and just waste a lot of time and money with nothing to show for it.

[newgeezer]

After reading the excerpt, I'll just say 22 years ago, I probably could have made 2X the money working as a cement-plant laborer as I did in my first year as a flunky accountant.

Didn't seem like there was much of a future at the end of a jackhammer, though.

[satchmodog9]

There are only three dots used for ellipsis points.

[CAluvdubya]

We have put two children through college. The problem with cost, as I see it, is the required courses. Both of my kids had to take classes to fulfill "diverse" and "social" credits. These classes had absolutely nothing to do with their degrees (both technical). If the University had required only classes that related to their degrees, the costs would have been much lower both in tuition and living expenses! Of course, I do live in Calif. and we MUST be diverse, doncha know!

[RexBeach]

Thank you for the very fine note.

May your tribe prosper, as the old saying goes.

You make a marvelous point: A degree in liberal arts teaches a person how to think and study and consider and draw conclusions based on evidence, etc. I think it is the best way to proceed in college because after you graduate you can do anything!

Now, what could be more fun than that?

PS: Just began the new Alexander Hamilton book by Ron Chernow. Hamilton, now there was a hard charger. Got through law school in six-months!

[Law is not justice but process]

"If she'd spent her time studying real science instead of "social science," she could have had a good job. "

Is biology a real science? I have a PhD in biology and I had to go to law school to get a decent-paying job! (depends, of course, on your definition of decent).

Recent events, though, have shown vividly the problems with academia and the general university system. It is a system built and supported by capitalism, but that despises capitalism. Marketability and supply and demand is not understood by most in academia (including, sadly, many economists). Look at Ward Churchill and the president of Harvard. Churchill says things that academia likes (i.e. capitalism=Nazism) in a way that is absolutely offensive to 90% or 95% of Americans. His right to say such offensive things is defended and he is made the poster boy for academic freedom (and could those who favor limiting academic freedom have asked for a better poster boy? this is the biggest self-inflicted wound for academia since . . . well, ever!). The president of Harvard says something that is contrary to the views of many leftist professors in the most polite way possible. Instead of standing up for his freedom of academic thought, the academic leftists want him fired first, then shot. The president of Harvard has a lot of test results to support what he said (whether you agree with his conclusion or not). Churchill cannot prove anyone in the World Trade Center had malice toward arabs or anyone else. Thank God academia is so stupid as to embrace Churchill and spurn the president of Harvard.

This is nothing new. This same sort of ideological double-standard drove me out of academia in the mid 1990s and was there from the time I entered college in the mid 1980s. Conservatives need not apply. I could no more have gotten a job at a large university than Chris Rock could get a gig as emcee at a Ku Klux Klan convention. The small schools left to me paid peanuts and were, though effective teaching institutions, backwaters from the standpoint of doing and supporting research.

So, back to the point. Academics do not take marketability into account in education. The world is full of university graduates with unmarketable degrees (I remember buying a pair of shoes at a mall in Durham and I mentioned I was in grad school at Duke - the girl selling the shoes told me "I am a Duke graduate, I majored in sociology . . . that's why I am selling shoes"). As long as they have a choice, professors will indoctrinate students to be anti-capitalist sociologists before they will encourage them to go to business school (at Duke the Fuqua School of Business and the Law School were the only colleges that turned a profit, every other one was subsidized by those two). Students have to realize that all too often, professors advising them do not have their future income in mind so much as their future ideology.

[coder2]

I guess I wouldn't have as much of an issue with a history major if they didn't keep rewriting it to suit their political agenda...

[walden]

I read your earlier post-- good thoughts there.

Your advice about staying with dance but not as a profession is also good. I gave it up quite early because my body was REALLY wrong for ballet (no such thing as a C-cup ballerina with short legs! :D) but I know two women who danced for local semi-professional companies while pursuing degrees in engineering, and both loved the experience.

[Conservatrix]

I am a voice teacher/singer, getting an MM ... I want to teach studio voice in college (my ideal situation)... I am however, planning to take the Praxis exams to teach music in high school.. you get a nice differntial if you have a master's... but I really want to teach college level students... but I found the grim reality is that wheras my type of position only required a master's 20 years ago, today is is a PhD or DMA... and then you can barely get 43 grand a year. I could make more in public schools (barf, but maybe necessary).... job security unless you get tenure is non-existent (VERY Difficult without doctorate; tenure track positions watn ABD candidates or even DMA's arready, very few accept a MM candidate)... call me stupid and naiive but if I had realized how this was going to go I really would have done something else with the lates 50 grand I spent (in student loans that I will be paying back until I am 63!!!)