Posted on 03/24/2012 6:55:44 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
RE: Outside of math, science, and engineering, the typical college degree today has little or no real value.
Is Business and Finance useless too?
I'll let Rodney Dangerfield answer that
Pay attention to modifiers, e.g. “typical.” You can occasionally find liberal arts programs that are excellent, but they are relatively rare. Finance degrees are generally a good bet. Business courses are being watered down. Still, a business degree is, in general, better than “studies”, education, or most liberal arts degrees. Remember - it isn’t 20 years ago. The fields that I mentioned are the ones that are least affected by the gradual deterioration of standards that has occurred sonce the end of the 60s.
Is Business and Finance useless too?
Want to learn business and finance? Get a good book on the subject and read it. No “hands on” experience is required to understand it. Engineering and the other disciplines on the other hand require “hands on” experience taught in the classroom and lab.
Normally a BA degree is only a ticket that allows you to join the “college club” at your employer’s business and nothing more.
Believe me. I’ve owned a manufacturing business since the 70’s and have many “graduates” had a problem finding the restroom with all of the great teachings they walked through the door with. Worse yet, instead of starting at the bottom and learning exactly what the business is, does, and produces, they wanted to start in the middle and earn middle of the business salary too...even though they would have to be trained to do the job they were placed in.
In businesses “other than pencil and paper pushing” a prospective entry level manager or supervisor MUST actually be on the floor with the workers and spend at least 6 months working at those jobs before even being considered for management. Otherwise, they have absolutely no idea of the business operation below their station.
How many of you have experienced something like this example:
Your job is to assemble widgets that utilize 50 screws to hold it together. You have to build 100 of these widgets for shipment to your most important customer in 2 days. You run out of screws and send procurement a request to the purchasing agent (PA) for 5,000 screws. Next thing you know the PA wants to know why you want the screws and to justify your request. Worse yet, the PA does one of two really stupid things: The PA asks you if you could use only 25 because they come in packs of 25. The other thing is that the PA shops around for the best deal (remember the 2 day turnaround?) and orders them; however they were bought on the cheap and will be shipped from China next month.
Well, I wonder what the cost of a good high volume customer would amount to.
In the business of business you must first graduate from the school of hard knocks and then listen to those who live in a bubble away from reality so you will know what to retain and what to call bullshit.
Borrowed the money for an education in a 'for profit' fake-ass 'college'.
School closed down before I could finish my degree in 'electronics'. They were teaching old component level crap (soldering in resistors and the like) while multi-level boards and surface mount technology was the norm.
I was doing this to expand my horizons and improve my 'marketability'. So much for that sh*t. I was an app programmer at the time and wanted to branch out into networking and such.
To top that off my software gigs got effin 'outsourced' to some H1-B immigrant F**K who doesn't give a rats-ass bout the the country I spent 11 years of my life defending against enemies foreign and domestic.
It's been 12 years (when I made good money I made good on the debt) since then and they have tacked more than double the original loan amount in interest and 'fees' on me.
I'm the farthest thing from an OWS puke, but I ain't paying a dime back on that.
You can say I 'should have made better choices' but that school was the only 'opportunity' at the time. Hindsight and all that...
Note also that the entire debt is forgiven if they are employed in the government or a secular non-profit for 10 years, and make all their payments, thus ensuring the gov. will be full of college educated liberals, as about 90% of colleges are.
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