Judge Smails: "Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too."
Posted on 07/08/2006 1:33:47 PM PDT by lauriehelds
"If I take a class and never study, I can still get a B," said Scott Daniels, a 22-year-old at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "I know that if I'd applied myself more, I would have had better grades."
On each campus, many young men concluded that the easy B was good enough .. At Greensboro, where more than two-thirds of the students are female, and about one in five is black, many young men say they are torn between wanting quick money and seeking the long-term rewards of education.
"A lot of my friends made good money working in high school, in construction or as electricians, and they didn't go to college, but they're doing very well now," said Mr. Daniels, the Greensboro student, who works 25 to 30 hours a week. "One of my best friends, he's making $70,000, he's got his own truck and health benefits. The honest truth is, I feel weird being a college student and having no money."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yeah!
For the overwhelming majority of jobs a 4.0 GPA or even close is a useless statistic.
If you aren't going on to Medical or Law school, what does a high GPA give you?
I read about half of this, stopped at the point that they made it anti-female to be concerned about the lack of men in colleges, and figured that the FReepers would have a lot better insight into this? Anyone?
Our son is NOT motivated (and about halfway through college) and also thinks he could be making $70K in the trades. And if all the books they are reading are written by women, that is STUPID. And will drive the men away even more. Maybe it has more to do with being willing to listen to lecture after lecture and to do the (often tedious) work. He did talk about professors bloviating on about themselves and being a captive audience (at a very top school...).
Any thots??
"If you aren't going on to Medical or Law school, what does a high GPA give you?"
It provides another measure of what one can accomplish when he/she puts significant effort toward accomplishing a goal.
You are absolutely right. The students who get the best job offers out of college are well-rounded. They have a decent GPA, but more importantly from employers perspective, they are seen as well-rounded with good social skills. They have internships and work experience and campus involvement in clubs.
A 3.0 charasmatic person who can sell ice to eskimos will get a job over a 4.0 bookworm with no social skills any day of the week.
Exactly. Mediocrity is the wave of the future as Americans feel entitled to wealth, even if they don't produce higher quality than elsewhere. It's sad to see such a slide occur, but I suppose republics inevitably decline.
College is not for everyone, and as they have tried to make it thus, it has become poor quality for all. What's wrong with the trades?
What is wrong with working in the trades? Frankly, I think higher education is a waste of money for most people who shouldn't belong in college at all. Why get into $100k worth of debt for a useless degree that you're never going to use?
$70K a year is damn good money in our new economy. In the future, most jobs will be service related in one way or another. Everything else will be outsourced on the cheap to third world countries. But construction, plumbers, auto mechanics, and electricians will never be outsourced to China or India.
In other words, Brown slapped down more deserving women over less deserving men just to get the numbers up.
...until the age discrimination kicks in and his skills are out of date and he's replaced by a young, low-paid pup right out of school with the latest technology skills.
Not very good math skills there...could be that only well qualified men applied, but women of lower quality were willing to apply.
BTW, this nugget negates your measuring stick: At Harvard, 55 percent of the women graduated with honors this spring, compared with barely half the men.
Did you catch it? At HARVARD more than half of the graduates achieved honors. Because of this I will never use GPA as a measure of what someone can do, with a decently written resume and an interview I can tell exactly what the individual is capable of.
You and I are in 100% agreement.
Good point!
With a few exceptions, a high GPA is only worth the report card it's printed on. A college degree opens doors for job interviews, but other than that it's meaningless, and schools do a very poor job of preparing students for the competitive private world. I slid my way through a good university with a 3.0 average, took a corporate job in my field after graduation, and then decided to start my own business in the same field after a couple years on the cubicle farm. I look back on my college years as 4 years of partying interrupted a couple times a day by boring lectures and exams. I learned everything I need to know about the "real world" from "real work."
I think you are being a little bit too pessimistic toward my statement. Mediocre grades, tell you the person is fully capable of completing required work. Additionally they tell you the person has a life, which is exactly what I want my peers and subordinates to have. You may want something else, but my bank accounts are fat, my clients are happy, and we're profitable and growing. What more could we ask for?
My response may not have been clear re: what I intended. I'm not defending GPA as a measuring stick for 3rd parties to utilize when judging someone. Instead, I'm saying that in response to a kid downplaying the importance of getting good grades, he/she should be encouraged to perform to the best of his/her ability, and his/her GPA is one measure of that.
If I pay $50k per year to send my kids to college, I have no intention of tolerating an attitude of "My grades are good enough" as opposed to "I did as well as I could".
The fact that the B is easy suggests either that Scott is very bright, or that the course work is exceptionally easy. Having spent some time in college in more recent years, I'd venture to say that the latter is definitely true in many courses of study. Scott may or may not be very bright as well.
I may be going out on a limb here, but I'd say that today's 2-year associate's degree is academically equal to the high school diploma of 30 years ago. Grade inflation is the problem.
The alternative is often taking that 4-year degree and applying it to managing a McDonalds for $35-50K per year. And that's a pace that can't be kept up forever either.
I'm not saying that college is bad, but there are plenty of degreed idiots roaming around, no smarter than the electricians and plumbers and such that never bothered to head off to college. And many of those degreed individuals can barely change a light bulb, let alone change a light fixture or a faucet.
It is reasonable to be concerned about the men; especially if women on the whole expect the men in their lives to make as much or more financially than they do.
The trades will pay well, but he hasn't been learning about them. He also needs to worry about being easily replaced by another who will work harder, for less. When you work in more creative or specialized areas, this is much less of a concern.
I will also offer this: He may need to see the real world to fully comprehend the truth of this matter.
It will be hard for you to stomach, but it may be the best lesson.
Let me check my beeber and get back to you.
Possibly, or the men that applied had higher average credentials and were therefore admitted at a higher precentage. However, I suspect that your suspicions are true.
Spot on. The liberal arts are only good for, well, teaching in the liberal arts. Your resume is only as good as your job experience. Yes, a BA helps with getting a better white-collar entry-level position, but I'd take a hard-working Associate-degreed Vocational School grad (read: tradesman) over your average lazy bozo with an English Lit degree.
Few people wind up working in their "major", anyway. All a University degree teaches, in the long run, is critical-thinking skills and, perhaps, being able to shift pedagogical contexts. Other than that, follow your bliss.
For a lot of things college is a waste of time. If he goes into the trades you should insist that he knows how the laws and financial systems work, and he can likely get that info at a community college and save mega bucks.
Nurses and teachers don't get paid as well as the trades.
Doctors and lawyers do in some instances but you are selling your soul to get there. 7-10 years of college and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt and your reward is stressful 70-80 hour weeks...
Most lawyers hate their jobs. And plenty of doctors do too with all the medical malpractice and insurance BS they have to deal with. It's not nearly as lucrative as it once was.
Again something to consider is the community college. If you pick your courses right you should get most of them to transfer to just about any four-year school in the country, which means you end up with a degree from a prestigious school at 60 percent of the cost you would otherwise pay.
I had a 2.1 GPA in college as a CS major and got more interviews than the majority of my classmates.
Why? Because I knew a specific system and sent out sample applications on a floppy with the few jobs that I applied for. It just totally perplexed the other people when they were all complaining about the tough job market and the hundreds of resumes they sent out. I'd sent out 4 resumes, got 3 interviews, and 3 offers.
It's all about satisfying a need.
Judge Smails: "Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too."
Lots of jobs in the medical field are "lucky finds"..like ultrasonagrapher or CT/MRI techs. Just have to wander around and look for the jobs.
I'd be interested in the types of these "tradesman" jobs are really pretty high paying jobs in the technical arena. I consider medicine a tech arena with the ability to read and interpret data as well as managing technology.
It's interesting how the one shool was turned around by emphasizing science, sports, starting an engineering school, and deemphasizing socializing. But maybe it's just sexist if guys aren't interested in going to get a degree in "women sitting around talking about their feelings" at a school that advertises how many sold-out performances of the Vagina Monologues they've had, but are more interested in fields that are actually intellectually stimulating and/or offer a chance to make a living after school. What kind of a job can someone who has a triple major in Women's studies, African studies, and gender issues and a MS in gender representation get, anyway?
I liked how they quoted mostly women. They were probably 290 pound, 5-foot tall lesbians preparing for the "take back the night" rally.
It helps if you are trying to become an engineer...
we need those too remember....
In the case of the hard sciences and engineering, I must disagree. You simply can't do such jobs without sweating out the math classes.
-ccm
I am right with yall here. My daughter spent her final high school year goofing off. Not really her fault, it was mainly the lousy academic standards our crummy school system has, trying so hard to teach the *unteachable* and leaving the bright kids in the dust.
This Fall she will have 18 credits. Yeah, it will be boring, but it will beat 'Do you want fries with that?', hehe
As my Dad says, *Playtimes over! Real work now! lol
Well then, I propose we kill two birds with one stone, and close down the law schools.
-ccm
Actually, the issue that no one is talking about is 1. the elementary and high schools are run by WOMEN who don't know how to educate young men and 2. MINORITY women go to college at a considerably higher rate than men of color.
You are going to have to qualify the term engineer, I have interviewed and selected 10 EEs in the last 3 years. Like I said in my post above, GPA never even came into the picture.
Maybe EEs are different from what you are referring to as engineers. But when my firm has an engineer opening an EE is what we're looking for.
2.51 GPA in my Major and 4.0 in drinking! Did my career no harm at all (though my health probably took a beating).
I'm sorry - I overgeneralized. Most students to which I've been exposed were in the liberal arts, not the hard sciences.
BS vs. BA
Engineers and hard scientists tend to come to the top before they even go off to post-secondary ed, anyway. Some folks are just wired that way. God Bless 'em.
There is, however, a weird undercurrent lacking in secondary ed (high school, etc.) and that's mathematics. We're falling behind!
Since the invention of the birth control pill the more intelligent a woman is the less children she will probably pass her genes on to. Female intelligence has become a self limiting genetic trait. In general, with many exceptions, males have a 10 to 15% brain size advantage over females and this will only increase, especially now that C-section births are common. I don't think the envy driven cultural change to spend more of our limited educational resources on women to level the playing field is sustainable long term.
Ah, in this Politically Correct world do you think that's the case... in these government and liberal driven environments, women and minority would be under any Affirmative Action program...
I know of no Affirmative Action or preference program in the country for white males...
By definition any time a white males is shown any preference over a Women (or non white male), it's discrimination and illegal... any time a Women (or non white male),is shown preference over a white male it's "Affirmative Action", government encourage, and in many cases, legally required....
The reality is that "Women" (not Men) are legal a "distanvanage minority" in this country and would get any and all advantage the government could or would provide over any and all men... no matter what the real world number that resulted....
Just look over any collage or government web site under "Diversity" or "Affirmative Action" program to see reality...
check out the SBA for one...
A lot of small business men now put the wife as 51% owner of the business just so they can compete for special programs, loans, and government set aside contracts offer to every one that a "minority" (minority=any one but white men)
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