The Profession-al Argument
 

It might sound like I'm being a dick, but I'll say it anyways...

If you don't know what you want to do with your life, get out of school while you still can. Wasting your and your parents' money in an effort to pursue a meaningless piece of paper is hardly a credit to yourself. It's fine not knowing what you want to do with your life, it's not fine wasting an education going in the wrong direction. By my estimate some 60% of the kids in college shouldn't be where they are, mostly because they have ulterior motives in attending.

Unlike some progressive European countries, Americans do not have the luxury of attending school for as long as they can stay productive -- the last thing you want to do is tack a $40,000+ school loan on top of the expenses you'll incur as an entry-level professional. The notion that a Bachelor's degree is essential in today's world is absurd and overkill, especially considering most people pursue careers far outside their field of study.

I'm sure it's a great experience for you if you're really enjoying what you're doing now, but unless there's some sort of prospective financial reward, college becomes a superfluous and hindering 4+ years in terms of your professional development. Until tuition becomes more affordable, college will always be a recreational reservation for the upper class and an enormous financial hole for everyone else. The key is understanding whether or not that hole is worth the prospective investment towards your life.

I completely disagree with this. The notion that you have to pursue a career in the same field of study as your degree is absurd, but not the notion that you need one. You definitely need one, unless you hope to work a pay by the hour job the rest of your life. The only way I see around it is if you have massive networking skills, or you just have a friend that gets you a job (even then they will tell you to get a degree most of the time). A degree these days is little more than showing you are willing to work hard enough to get one, but it is still basically an essential.

Though I agree with you on some points -- I have to say -- education is never a waste. and today a bachelors degree is pretty darn important.

my advice would be get a degree that is useful for a career and that way you can at least be making money after graduation while you try to figure out what it is you want to do. I know there is a lot of pressure to pick the right major, but it doesn't matter that much. I think the internships you do are more important because a) you figure out a little more about what careers you do and don't like and b) you build up that resume. don't worry so much about the major -- but i'd say stick to English - its one of the most versatile majors.. but my opinion is biased 'cause I'm an English major :)


this is so poetic. and tragic.

What do you do with a BA in English?

A-fucking-men.

While I maintain that college is a great idea for those pursuing a career in the field they're studying, I agree that it's even more important to understand your career options in context with the real world and weigh that with your decision to devote time and money into something that's actually going to pay off.

I always hear about people going to school for artsy this and fartsy that, paying retarded amounts of money to do so... and ending up living in poverty because they somehow assumed that a degree is an automatic ticket to a better life, regardless of the market for their skill. While they can technically tell all their friends they have a degree in film or art or whatever else, most of the time, they're merely knowing all about what they want to know all about and it's not doing them any good.

Career planning is about long-term strategy. And it is most definitely monetary in nature. If you're not doing it for career purposes, then great... you just like doing it... but I don't want to pay your bills, nor should I. And if you don't mind working at McDonald's for your wage while you entertain this arbitrary knowledge in your head that will never get used, that's fine too. Just don't ask for my tax dollars to support your unemployment because you weren't smart enough to learn about something that actually pays.

(All "you's" in the above reply were meant generally)

I still stand by the importance of a degree. In fact, you are proving my point. The only difference is you mention that the value of liberal arts degree is generally not worth much. I do agree with that. When I mentioned the importance of a degree, that doesn't go without some forethought. Pursue a field that will actually pay off (or just accept that you will probably be a teacher). Getting a degree that doesn't attract some sort of professional attention will be basically the same as not having a degree at all. However, having a marketable degree actually will do wonders for your career prospects, as well as being the only way that can actually happen.

Or you are a networking wiz, as I mentioned earlier.

Barely anything you said makes any logical sense at all.

If you get a degree that is useful for a career, that's great... but if you're only using it as an interim job until you "figure out what you want to do", then you've successfully wasted all the time you spent on the degree for that job. Simply having "experience" isn't just work experience. It's job experience that counts towards jobs that are actually related.. not just some arbitrary factoid of having been working on "stuff" for X amount of time.

Majors do kinda matter. I guess if your parents are paying for it all, you probably don't place as much importance on it because you're not actually feeling the monetary hit... most kids I know are the same way. Those are the kids who get bad grades because they didn't have to work for the chance to even get a higher education.. I know you can change your major and internships are good for feeling out the field, but you should actually keep your major in your major career field. College isn't a 4-year-taste-test. Decide, at least generally, what you want to do for the rest of your life before you commit time and money to something you don't even have an inkling of doing.

But keeping things general at first does NOT mean to major in English. lol.. that's rather absurd.

well then what do you suggest we do? drop out and work a **** job until we decide oh **** I should have gone to college? that sounds like a waste of time to me.


also -- some people value education and don't look at it as just a means for a decent job. love for learning is a way of life. and yes I realize that doesn't require paying insane tuition costs but I think that there is a problem with the whole education system and the way we don't value education as a culture..

I'm doing something with English, so the credits won't go to waste.
Thanks though.
Exactly what I need to hear is that I'm wasting money and time.

If you're going to college "for the experience" that's fine. Just don't expect a job to compensate you well for it.

Right now the job market is shit even for technical majors, what do you think it looks like for general arts majors? I have a cousin that graduated with an amazing GPA in an English major. Right now she's working at a Starbucks from home to try and pay off her student loans until she goes back to school in the fall.

The point isn't that you shouldn't be in school, or even that you shouldn't go into liberal arts. But if you're unsure what you want to do with your life four years down the road, it's better to stay away from something that's going to end up causing you ten years' worth of headaches when you get out.

College isn't for everyone and people that make it out to be the golden highway for people who did well in high school aren't helping you at all. I'm speaking from my own perspective but there's plenty of people -- most of my friends, for example -- who have absolutely no business being anywhere near a college campus at this point in their lives.