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The Price of Higher Education

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Posts

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Pi-r8 wrote:
    zepherin wrote:
    Pi-r8 wrote:
    Or alternatively: deliberately get held back a year in grade school, then kick ass all through high school, using your extra year of maturity and physical development to dominate all classes plus the sport of your choice, and use your start-studded resume to get into ivy just for the name value. I don't know why parents put so much pressure on their kids to graduate early... there's no prize for racing through school extra fast. If I had a kid, I'd help them game the system like crazy.
    I am a big fan of gaming the system, still you can only dominate sports till the other kids hit maturity then it is mostly genetics and training. If your 5 ft 6 and 140 pounds, your not going to dominate football, but the extra social maturity does have an advantage if leveraged appropriately. There are other ways to game the system. Change the class schedule of your kid until he is out of the shitty asshole "I don't give As" type teachers, where they think they failed if more than a couple students do well, or the "I think students need to spend twice as much time at home as in class doing homework." So you just rig their schedules after the first orientation. Just shuffle classes around and arrange for that class during the offending teachers break. As a parent you have all sorts of control over this you just have to assert yourself in a way that will make them want to make you happy and go away.

    Well, it's the extra training. With another year as a kid, you can probably dominate all the kid's sports at your grade level, and get lots of opportunities to play and get high-level coaching. Then, as the physical gap narrows, you'll make up for it with all the extra experience. So while a short kid will probably never be a good linebacker, he could have a huge edge in a sport like baseball or soccer where it doesn't matter as much.

    I totally agree about making sure you have teachers that give high grades. No one cares that your kid got a B from a really tough teacher- they want to see a 4.0. Yes it's a stupid system, but that's what we're stuck with.

    This is an issue I ran into going to university in Ontario. They mostly just look at your high school grades.

    Which meant "Straight As" didn't mean shit half the time. I ran into people in my 1st year math classes that hadn't covered half of what I had. It was like "No wonder you got such high marks, you didn't fucking DO anything at school".

  • KistraKistra Registered User regular
    Feral wrote:
    Lawndart wrote:
    I fail to see how encouraging kids to attend a four-year state school is a racket and a scam but encouraging them to attend community college, which can also saddle them with debt and not turn out to provide them with any advantages in the job market, is a better choice.

    I don't feel that I got honest, objective insight into the benefits vs costs of the options provided to me when I was a teenager, and I have been told by many people (a few of them are in this thread) that they didn't either. It's not so much that one avenue is clearly better than all the others for everybody - if you think I'm advocating that everybody should go to a community college, you have grossly misread my post - but more that out of all the avenues available, only one avenue was supported at all (four-year university) and all other possible avenues were strongly discouraged.
    Am I the only person who went to a high school where they sat us down and told us about career paths that don't involve college?

    I also think that for anyone going into a hard science a community college is likely to be much less helpful than a four year college. Community college don't have research labs. I started doing research the second semester of my freshman year and met all the different professors in my degree program in the first two years so that I could start doing research after my sophomore year and continue to work in the same lab until I graduated and I ended up getting published on two papers. You can't do that if you don't get to the school with research labs until your junior year.

    Animal Crossing: City Folk Lissa in Filmore 3179-9580-0076
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Feral wrote:
    If the issue is that you have a job, but it doesn't make enough to pay your loans, then you can usually negotiate a different payment plan.

    FYI, you can only do this with federal loans. Private lenders will tell you to stick a pipe in your pooper and deal with it. They will also tell you to sell off all your assets and pay them whatever you can, and then still deal with it.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    I don't understand how sub-prime home loans exploded all over and suddenly it's this huge crisis. Yet I know dozens (pretty much everyone I know who has gone to college) who are just completely molested financially by the terms of their loans.

    I haven't been to college, I work a pretty crappy job, and I've always known I wanted to go back. The cost of an education is outpacing my means more rapidly each year, and so every year I just try to stay positive and think, "maybe next year".

    I can't just take out 130,000$ in loans and go full time. I have to work.

    I can't come out of school 55,000$ in debt and have a BS take me 6 years. I wont have the loan paid off until I'm in my 60s.

    The entire process seems hopeless unless something changes pretty drastically.

  • a5ehrena5ehren AtlantaRegistered User regular
    VeritasVR wrote:
    Interns in engineering and computer science get paid. Sometimes very well.

    True that. I did a co-op program and an internship, and my pay ranged from $18-$25/hr over the 5 semesters that I worked.

  • VeritasVRVeritasVR Registered User regular
    edited October 2011
    You just need more bootstraps, dispatch.o.

    Honestly, the only way I was able to go to school was through my parents who were pretty educated about the whole thing. I was lucky enough that they knew to plan for my education waaaay before I went. I eventually paid them back but for them to basically front a huge loan - deferred and zero interest - was incredible. If I had no support structure, I'd be fucked. And it was all completely out of my control.

    Also, my state school wasn't crazy expensive and I got a job immediately out that paid more than what my whole family made, so that helped.

    VeritasVR on
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    Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    VeritasVR wrote:
    You just need more bootstraps, dispatch.o.

    Honestly, the only way I was able to go to school was through my parents who were pretty educated about the whole thing. I was lucky enough that they knew to plan for my education waaaay before I went. I eventually paid them back but for them to basically front a huge loan - deferred and zero interest - was incredible. If I had no support structure, I'd be fucked. And it was all completely out of my control.

    Also, my state school wasn't crazy expensive and I got a job immediately out that paid more than what my whole family made, so that helped.

    Well, it get's old hearing how "You COULD go to school!".

    Yes, I could. If I want to come out of it an indentured servant. It's a shitty situation. I didn't go when I got out of high-school because I had no idea what I wanted to do. Now that I have some idea, I can't go.

  • adytumadytum The Inevitable Rise And FallRegistered User regular
    I just got an email that my alma matter is facing a 1/3 reduction in per-student spending by the state.

    Ouch.

  • DigitalDDigitalD Registered User regular
    Kistra wrote:
    Feral wrote:
    Lawndart wrote:
    I fail to see how encouraging kids to attend a four-year state school is a racket and a scam but encouraging them to attend community college, which can also saddle them with debt and not turn out to provide them with any advantages in the job market, is a better choice.

    I don't feel that I got honest, objective insight into the benefits vs costs of the options provided to me when I was a teenager, and I have been told by many people (a few of them are in this thread) that they didn't either. It's not so much that one avenue is clearly better than all the others for everybody - if you think I'm advocating that everybody should go to a community college, you have grossly misread my post - but more that out of all the avenues available, only one avenue was supported at all (four-year university) and all other possible avenues were strongly discouraged.
    Am I the only person who went to a high school where they sat us down and told us about career paths that don't involve college?

    They only do that for poor people in some areas, it really depends.

    For us it was "you must get a four year degree", and pretty much how our entire lives depended on it, you were a bad person if you did not, you'd be a failure and end up working at fast food for the rest of your life if you didn't. But if you get a bachelors you get hella cash right after, women, fancy cars, the world is your oyster and you are a good person.

    Of course, the more you pay for your college the more bonuses of college you get! And then the people from the college come to your school and tell you even more wonderful things about school.

    Needless to say they were full of crap. There are plenty of good jobs that require no college and some of those jobs pay more than jobs that require a degree do. And also that "dream job" they were describing, they neglect to mention that requires you know, work experience, often damn near a decade of it. And till you get that job you will just another drone. And you better hope you got your degree in the right area, or you're just another poly-sci, psychology, whatever numb nuts who basically paid for a highschool diploma++.

    I was the only person in my school that didn't go straight to college, I went into the military and was told I was ruining my life, would never get a real job, would die. Well... I'm ahead of virtually all my peers that did not become a lawyer or a doctor and I pocketed the majority of my GI bill while taking classes at a community college that all transferred over to Georgetown which work is paying for along with the money I pocketed form the GI bill. So I'll emerge with zip debt in student loans and I'm actually 4 years ahead in terms of work positions than the guys who went to school.

    Needless to say the military did not "ruin my life".

  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    DigitalD wrote:
    Kistra wrote:
    Feral wrote:
    Lawndart wrote:
    I fail to see how encouraging kids to attend a four-year state school is a racket and a scam but encouraging them to attend community college, which can also saddle them with debt and not turn out to provide them with any advantages in the job market, is a better choice.

    I don't feel that I got honest, objective insight into the benefits vs costs of the options provided to me when I was a teenager, and I have been told by many people (a few of them are in this thread) that they didn't either. It's not so much that one avenue is clearly better than all the others for everybody - if you think I'm advocating that everybody should go to a community college, you have grossly misread my post - but more that out of all the avenues available, only one avenue was supported at all (four-year university) and all other possible avenues were strongly discouraged.
    Am I the only person who went to a high school where they sat us down and told us about career paths that don't involve college?

    They only do that for poor people in some areas, it really depends.

    For us it was "you must get a four year degree", and pretty much how our entire lives depended on it, you were a bad person if you did not, you'd be a failure and end up working at fast food for the rest of your life if you didn't. But if you get a bachelors you get hella cash right after, women, fancy cars, the world is your oyster and you are a good person.

    Of course, the more you pay for your college the more bonuses of college you get! And then the people from the college come to your school and tell you even more wonderful things about school.

    Needless to say they were full of crap. There are plenty of good jobs that require no college and some of those jobs pay more than jobs that require a degree do. And also that "dream job" they were describing, they neglect to mention that requires you know, work experience, often damn near a decade of it. And till you get that job you will just another drone. And you better hope you got your degree in the right area, or you're just another poly-sci, psychology, whatever numb nuts who basically paid for a highschool diploma++.

    I was the only person in my school that didn't go straight to college, I went into the military and was told I was ruining my life, would never get a real job, would die. Well... I'm ahead of virtually all my peers that did not become a lawyer or a doctor and I pocketed the majority of my GI bill while taking classes at a community college that all transferred over to Georgetown which work is paying for along with the money I pocketed form the GI bill. So I'll emerge with zip debt in student loans and I'm actually 4 years ahead in terms of work positions than the guys who went to school.

    Needless to say the military did not "ruin my life".

    It's great that things worked out, I know lots of folks who went the military route. It's just a shame that the primary reason most of them did it was because they could not afford an education. I mean really, the military should be able to pay soldiers enough that they don't have to bait them with a GI Bill (though it's great in the current environment to have it for certain) and you shouldn't have to risk being shot at and/or killed to pay for an education if you aren't part of a small group of people who know exactly what they want to go for and have some means to pay for it.

    I'm willing to pay to go to school, but I can't pay more for school than I will make in the next 12 years of my life. Just can't.

  • DigitalDDigitalD Registered User regular
    Even still, with a combined mix of community college, working full time, and going to a cheaper state school college is affordable. There are also other jobs where you can get some money towards college for doing them. This can be done.

    The issue is that people want the expensive college that is frankly a rip off for what you get out of it, and then think it will get them a job that does not actually exist for someone with a bachelors degree and under 10 years of experience and never truly did. And so they get fucked. However high schools, colleges, the government, the people making the loans to you are all in the business of selling you on college. And they deliberately mislead people into think that going into massive debt to go to the fancier school not only will get you that job that actually requires 6-10 years of experience for it to pay well, but also if you don't go that route your a horrible person and screwing yourself over for life, and that your liberal arts degree is a perfect method of pulling this off.

    Since there is a sucker born every minuet people believe that crap and feel entitled to the made up reality that was all a lie to start with and will pay whatever that school asks. The schools know this and so they can charge whatever they want.

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    shryke wrote:
    Well, it's the extra training. With another year as a kid, you can probably dominate all the kid's sports at your grade level, and get lots of opportunities to play and get high-level coaching. Then, as the physical gap narrows, you'll make up for it with all the extra experience. So while a short kid will probably never be a good linebacker, he could have a huge edge in a sport like baseball or soccer where it doesn't matter as much.
    I did forget skill heavy sports, but even still, soccer and baseball are only skill based to the extent that if you can't run fast, that's it. Still that extra year does give an advantage because high school and college only care about how many years there.

    DigitalD wrote:
    The issue is that people want the expensive college that is frankly a rip off for what you get out of it, and then think it will get them a job that does not actually exist for someone with a bachelors degree and under 10 years of experience and never truly did. And so they get fucked. However high schools, colleges, the government, the people making the loans to you are all in the business of selling you on college. And they deliberately mislead people into think that going into massive debt to go to the fancier school not only will get you that job that actually requires 6-10 years of experience for it to pay well, but also if you don't go that route your a horrible person and screwing yourself over for life, and that your liberal arts degree is a perfect method of pulling this off.
    There is something to be said about this, but there are two things. One if you go income contingent repayment plan, after 25 years (10 if you work in public service) your loan is done no matter what you owe on it. I think this will help keep loan payments for people who have worthless degrees down. Another thing is that I understand that fancy schools will try to sell you on their school, and many of them are just a fucking scam. Sarah Lawrence College is a good school, but it is not worth $58,334 a year. Will you get a good education? probably. Will you get a decent job eventually? probably. Is it worth the 240k you'll need for a 4 year degree? maybe.

  • DigitalDDigitalD Registered User regular
    You can get an education on the cheap by combing community college + state school. It is very do-able and even affordable. However, people don't want that. They want the $$$$$$$$$$$$$ education. And short of going into say law and being able to make the business contacts there that will set you up for making bags of money, you are simply not going to get the return on it.

    But this goes back to people feeling entitled to it. "I got the grades so I deserve to get into that school" which is shortly followed by "I went to that school so I deserve that nice job", both of which are idiotic beyond belief and show a staggering amount of arrogance and lack of character along with a hilarious amount of ignorance on how the world actually works.

    The jobs that people think they are going to get require a ton of work experience, or some sort of inside hook-up, usually because someones dad or your dad owned the company (see Romney, all of his jobs were hook-ups).

    If people had more of a grasp of how the job market actually works, they wouldn't be so willing to go massively into debt to obtain something that in no way shape or form gives them that job. I see at all the time at work, your fancy ass private school degree, even from JHU, qualifies you for pouring coffee, spelling checking documents, processing travel, and tasks like that. You don't get to do actual research or that until you have the experience to back that up. And if you'd gone to a state school, you wouldn't have that sort of debt over your head. And if you didn't think you were entitled to that position you wouldn't be buying fancy ass bottle water and starbucks coffee and griping about your position. You could have had half the debt, done the same damn work for the same amount of time, landed that research job the same six years later and had work pay for your masters, and getting that masters early means dick since you.... still don't have the experience.

    I think schools should do more to teach people what a job entails and what working your way up to the fun and interesting positions actually means. One of my friends advises people to go to GW. What she doesn't mention is she spent half a decade after she got out slaving away at 35-40k before she had the experience actually land a good position and then another 2 years before she became an 80k a year jet setter in global policy. But GW presents to freshmen as "see, you to can be an 80k a year jet setter with a cool job" they leave out "and till then you'll be stuck at 35k 40k if you're lucky and pouring coffee for cranky old people" which is the reality of what that education prepared you for.

  • mrt144mrt144 King of the Numbernames Registered User regular
    DigitalD wrote:
    You can get an education on the cheap by combing community college + state school. It is very do-able and even affordable. However, people don't want that. They want the $$$$$$$$$$$$$ education. And short of going into say law and being able to make the business contacts there that will set you up for making bags of money, you are simply not going to get the return on it.

    I'd like you to think about this: What if everyone did what you're suggesting.

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    DigitalD wrote:
    You can get an education on the cheap by combing community college + state school. It is very do-able and even affordable. However, people don't want that. They want the $$$$$$$$$$$$$ education. And short of going into say law and being able to make the business contacts there that will set you up for making bags of money, you are simply not going to get the return on it.
    Law is a bad investment these days. It used to be in the 80s and early 90s that lawyers out of law school were cranking the money machine and getting paid. Then too many people entered law. With so many people being lawyers. If they had taken economics they would have known what happens when the supply of labor outstrips demand. Now lawyers are making peanuts. I see the same thing happening with nursing and that market. Nursing colleges are chalk full, and tons of people are entering nursing. Yes the demand is going to go up because of boomers and new people, however while there is some doom and gloom people I have seen a shitload of people entering nursing. There is of course a lag period. It takes a long time to become a nurse and so the people becoming nurses will not be RNs for another 3-8 years but after that I think the market will start to get flooded.
    DigitalD wrote:
    I think schools should do more to teach people what a job entails and what working your way up to the fun and interesting positions actually means. One of my friends advises people to go to GW. What she doesn't mention is she spent half a decade after she got out slaving away at 35-40k before she had the experience actually land a good position and then another 2 years before she became an 80k a year jet setter in global policy. But GW presents to freshmen as "see, you to can be an 80k a year jet setter with a cool job" they leave out "and till then you'll be stuck at 35k 40k if you're lucky and pouring coffee for cranky old people" which is the reality of what that education prepared you for.
    So you make 35-40k for 5 years after you get your degree then work another 2 years after that to get an 80k a year job, and you worked 4 years to get your degree for a total investment of 11 years for an 80k a year job. The problem is without a 4 year degree, you would have been unlikely to get that 35-40k a year starter job, and instead would have had to spend 10 years making 25-30k until you had enough experience to move to a job paying 40-45k. And in some areas your happy to have a job paying 17-20k.

  • TOGSolidTOGSolid Drunk sailor Seattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
    edited October 2011
    So you make 35-40k for 5 years after you get your degree then work another 2 years after that to get an 80k a year job, and you worked 4 years to get your degree for a total investment of 11 years for an 80k a year job. The problem is without a 4 year degree, you would have been unlikely to get that 35-40k a year starter job, and instead would have had to spend 10 years making 25-30k until you had enough experience to move to a job paying 40-45k. And in some areas your happy to have a job paying 17-20k.
    And then there are guys like me who dropped out of college and within 5 years is making 60k a year after taxes and I'm only just getting started.

    The problem with college is how incredibly overhyped it is and a disturbingly large amount of people go to get degrees in stuff they don't truly care about. This is far more indicative of the larger problem with the entire K-12 educational system being complete garbage as well. It really needs to include courses that expose students to a wide variety of different fields at a basic level so that kids can find things that really interest them and end up with a career that they'll be the most successful at. From there higher education should serve to refine skills instead of teach basic ones.

    TOGSolid on
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  • CptKemzikCptKemzik Registered User regular
    So basically you're suggesting that we go the highly specialized way of educating people a la europe, where if it turns out you don't actually enjoy what you're studying/doing, tough shit you've spent the past several years in it already and can't change gears without completely starting over. America's education system has its problems for sure, but somehow I dont think the solution is simply dumping more on the plates of adolescents and specializing the fuck out of everything. There is something to be said of studying something that has broad applications with results that aren't immediately tangible, but I guess nowadays that's translated as a "useless" degree.

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    edited October 2011
    TOGSolid wrote:
    And then there are guys like me who dropped out of college and within 5 years is making 60k a year after taxes and I'm only just getting started.
    It is possible to do well without a college degree, or any sort of technical training or school, but the set of conditions necessary for that to be feasible are not common, if they were common your wage would be depressed to 25k-30k after taxes. You have a viable skill set, and if everyone took your path your wage would drop like a stone. Since most people do not have your expertise you can bill a high rate. College is simply a method that gives an advantage over people without college. Does a 4 year degree beat 4 years of experience when you are looking for a job? That is the question. If you work part time it changes that up because the equation then becomes. Does a 4 year degree and 4 years of experience beat 4 years of experience. That answer is yes.

    zepherin on
  • TOGSolidTOGSolid Drunk sailor Seattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
    edited October 2011
    zepherin wrote:
    TOGSolid wrote:
    And then there are guys like me who dropped out of college and within 5 years is making 60k a year after taxes and I'm only just getting started.
    It is possible to do well without a college degree, or any sort of technical training or school, but the set of conditions necessary for that to be feasible are not common, if they were common your wage would be depressed to 25k-30k after taxes. You have a viable skill set, and if everyone took your path your wage would drop like a stone. Since most people do not have your expertise you can bill a high rate. College is simply a method that gives an advantage over people without college. Does a 4 year degree beat 4 years of experience when you are looking for a job? That is the question. If you work part time it changes that up because the equation then becomes. Does a 4 year degree and 4 years of experience beat 4 years of experience. That answer is yes.

    I've got some technical training...sort of. I did an apprenticeship through the SIU (took about 8 months to get into the entry level position) and started a career in marine engineering. The school is dirt cheap (and you make most of it back during the second phase when you ship out on a training ship) and open to everyone. It's actually a damned easy career to get into and pays absurdly well, the catch is that most people just aren't cut out to be sailors. You'll spend at least half the year on a ship, the divorce/break up rate is absurdly high (new guys are told to fully expect their current spouse/significant other to cut and run), and your shore life will get a little weird. Well, at least it did for me. It's hard to go out on a Friday/Saturday night and be able to relate to landlubbers when they're going out mostly just to temporarily drink away their shitty 9-5 jobs meanwhile I'm going just to drink for fun. The upside to all of this is that when you're home, you're home. You have all day to spend however you want. You're basically on "do whatever the fuck you want" vacation. The pay is damn good, the benefits are solid, and you don't have to kiss anyone's ass to move up. Once you get the needed seatime you just fill out the paperwork and take the test required for the next position. Hell, once I get 70 more days worth of seatime I'll be able to apply for my 3rd Engineer's license making me into an official engineering officer and my pay is gonna skyrocket. No brown nosing or begging required.

    Truth be told we're hurting for engineers in this field :p. If you're young enough, you may wanna consider one of the maritime academies (lol marine college). They're pretty easy to get into via one of their programs. It's a pretty sweet gig and if you enjoy doing mechanic work then go google some pictures of the badass marine engines you'll get to work on. :D

    TOGSolid on
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  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    TOGSolid wrote:
    The pay is damn good, the benefits are solid, and you don't have to kiss anyone's ass to move up. Once you get the needed seatime you just fill out the paperwork and take the test required for the next position. Hell, once I get 70 more days worth of seatime I'll be able to apply for my 3rd Engineer's license making me into an official engineering officer and my pay is gonna skyrocket. No brown nosing or begging required.
    Oh, your a marine engineer. That does pay well. Involving a boat in any profession hikes the pay up a lot. Welders get paid well. Underwater welders get paid a shit load. Same with building engineers get paid well, marine engineers get paid really well, but like I said even though your industry is looking for new people pretty bad, if there were double the amount of marine engineers your pay would go down because of competitive pressure. However it is the same reason why the Navy has more incentives to attract people than the Army. A lot of people are not cut out to be on boats.

    To be fair though, brown nosing and begging generally does not get a person a raise or promotion. It may allow someone to keep their jobs, but brown nosers generally do not move up.

  • DerrickDerrick Registered User regular
    zepherin wrote:
    TOGSolid wrote:
    The pay is damn good, the benefits are solid, and you don't have to kiss anyone's ass to move up. Once you get the needed seatime you just fill out the paperwork and take the test required for the next position. Hell, once I get 70 more days worth of seatime I'll be able to apply for my 3rd Engineer's license making me into an official engineering officer and my pay is gonna skyrocket. No brown nosing or begging required.
    Oh, your a marine engineer. That does pay well. Involving a boat in any profession hikes the pay up a lot. Welders get paid well. Underwater welders get paid a shit load. Same with building engineers get paid well, marine engineers get paid really well, but like I said even though your industry is looking for new people pretty bad, if there were double the amount of marine engineers your pay would go down because of competitive pressure. However it is the same reason why the Navy has more incentives to attract people than the Army. A lot of people are not cut out to be on boats.

    To be fair though, brown nosing and begging generally does not get a person a raise or promotion. It may allow someone to keep their jobs, but brown nosers generally do not move up.

    Brown nosers absolutely move up. There is a difference between a good brown noser and a shitty one. A good one has read "How to Make Friends and Influence People" and is friendly to everyone, happens to know his high ups hobbies and interests and knows enough to talk about them, etc.

    If we're going to be completely honest, 90% of the jobs in a corporate structure are not difficult. Most of them are just different applications of management skills. You don't really need much specialization for that, so when it comes promoting time to your boss it's not so much who can do it but who do I want to work with?.

    Steam and CFN: Enexemander
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    zepherin wrote:
    I see the same thing happening with nursing and that market. Nursing colleges are chalk full, and tons of people are entering nursing. Yes the demand is going to go up because of boomers and new people, however while there is some doom and gloom people I have seen a shitload of people entering nursing. There is of course a lag period. It takes a long time to become a nurse and so the people becoming nurses will not be RNs for another 3-8 years but after that I think the market will start to get flooded.

    Yeah, I'm a nurse, and when someone tells me that they're considering entering nursing, I now tend to ask them a little more in-depth about what their goals are in the field. Nursing, sadly like many other degrees, can be tricky to navigate if you goal is to be financially well-rewarded for your time and work. Do not, under any circumstance other than an innate desire to get a teaching position, do any post-graduate work in your nursing degree.

    The field is definitely more flooded than it has been recently, but most of that I chalk up to the national economic contraction and how that has seemed to cut back on people using healthcare resources for trivial concerns, instead opting for clinicians and urgent care centers than outright hospitals. Which I think is good overall, since hospital resource abuse is still pretty rampant, and this is one of the best ways to reduce waste and rising insurance premiums.

    It will be interesting to see how the field develops in the next 5-10 years, as I think the national need will decline but pockets of demand will still remain. I get calls and emails weekly about job opportunities in Massachusetts or Wyoming or California, and as long as those kinds of places have their situational demands (over-zealous unions, small local populations, geographic desolation), the demand will always be there.

  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    edited October 2011
    zepherin wrote:
    I see the same thing happening with nursing and that market. Nursing colleges are chalk full, and tons of people are entering nursing. Yes the demand is going to go up because of boomers and new people, however while there is some doom and gloom people I have seen a shitload of people entering nursing. There is of course a lag period. It takes a long time to become a nurse and so the people becoming nurses will not be RNs for another 3-8 years but after that I think the market will start to get flooded.

    Yeah, I'm a nurse, and when someone tells me that they're considering entering nursing, I now tend to ask them a little more in-depth about what their goals are in the field. Nursing, sadly like many other degrees, can be tricky to navigate if you goal is to be financially well-rewarded for your time and work. Do not, under any circumstance other than an innate desire to get a teaching position, do any post-graduate work in your nursing degree.

    The field is definitely more flooded than it has been recently, but most of that I chalk up to the national economic contraction and how that has seemed to cut back on people using healthcare resources for trivial concerns, instead opting for clinicians and urgent care centers than outright hospitals. Which I think is good overall, since hospital resource abuse is still pretty rampant, and this is one of the best ways to reduce waste and rising insurance premiums.

    It will be interesting to see how the field develops in the next 5-10 years, as I think the national need will decline but pockets of demand will still remain. I get calls and emails weekly about job opportunities in Massachusetts or Wyoming or California, and as long as those kinds of places have their situational demands (over-zealous unions, small local populations, geographic desolation), the demand will always be there.

    The hospital I work at now has a magnate system and part of the hospital qualifying for this "honor" is anyone above a supervisor position (pretty much all salaried employees you could consider an actual "boss) must have a minimum of a masters degree.

    It's bullshit, and the hospital is a fucking disgrace, but everyone seems to think it's prestigious.


    Edit:

    Certain fields of nursing will always be in demand. Everyone wants to deliver babies or work in rehab, no one wants to work in the terminal cancer or burn ward.

    dispatch.o on
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    dispatch.o wrote:
    zepherin wrote:
    I see the same thing happening with nursing and that market. Nursing colleges are chalk full, and tons of people are entering nursing. Yes the demand is going to go up because of boomers and new people, however while there is some doom and gloom people I have seen a shitload of people entering nursing. There is of course a lag period. It takes a long time to become a nurse and so the people becoming nurses will not be RNs for another 3-8 years but after that I think the market will start to get flooded.

    Yeah, I'm a nurse, and when someone tells me that they're considering entering nursing, I now tend to ask them a little more in-depth about what their goals are in the field. Nursing, sadly like many other degrees, can be tricky to navigate if you goal is to be financially well-rewarded for your time and work. Do not, under any circumstance other than an innate desire to get a teaching position, do any post-graduate work in your nursing degree.

    The field is definitely more flooded than it has been recently, but most of that I chalk up to the national economic contraction and how that has seemed to cut back on people using healthcare resources for trivial concerns, instead opting for clinicians and urgent care centers than outright hospitals. Which I think is good overall, since hospital resource abuse is still pretty rampant, and this is one of the best ways to reduce waste and rising insurance premiums.

    It will be interesting to see how the field develops in the next 5-10 years, as I think the national need will decline but pockets of demand will still remain. I get calls and emails weekly about job opportunities in Massachusetts or Wyoming or California, and as long as those kinds of places have their situational demands (over-zealous unions, small local populations, geographic desolation), the demand will always be there.

    The hospital I work at now has a magnate system and part of the hospital qualifying for this "honor" is anyone above a supervisor position (pretty much all salaried employees you could consider an actual "boss) must have a minimum of a masters degree.

    It's bullshit, and the hospital is a fucking disgrace, but everyone seems to think it's prestigious.

    This is one of the key things that has brought me around to support tougher regulations of private hospital systems, if not nationalized care outright.

    The Baylor Health System, which is the second-largest healthcare concern in Texas, makes a big deal about having only MSN (post-graduate) or higher in their administrator levels of hospital management, which is pants-on-head retarded, but the hospitals love to wave that feather in their cap about having so many "higher level" nurses.

    Post-graduate nursing degrees are useless for almost anything other than being collegiate professors, and hospitals shouldn't be allowed to mislead the public or their staff on just what they're getting in terms of management. Proudly clamoring over your MSN admins is like telling everyone how great their steaks are going to be because you hired a cattle rancher as head chef.

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    edited October 2011
    Derrick wrote:
    Brown nosers absolutely move up. There is a difference between a good brown noser and a shitty one. A good one has read "How to Make Friends and Influence People" and is friendly to everyone, happens to know his high ups hobbies and interests and knows enough to talk about them, etc.
    That's not been my experience, but maybe my experience is atypical. From my experience the brown nosers are kept on, but are overlooked and ignored. Although the hardest workers are also generally not used either because they are too valuable at their current position. So generally in the private companies I have worked for the ones that moved up quickly were the ones who were second or third in productivity, had a good idea when the manager is looking for someone, and is assertive enough. Of course at that company the production manager position was not worker friendly, so maybe moving up was not the most equitable arrangement.
    Post-graduate nursing degrees are useless for almost anything other than being collegiate professors, and hospitals shouldn't be allowed to mislead the public or their staff on just what they're getting in terms of management. Proudly clamoring over your MSN admins is like telling everyone how great their steaks are going to be because you hired a cattle rancher as head chef.
    I work with nurses occasionally. I'll be honest in terms of quality of care I can't tell the difference between the MSNs, LPNs and RNs, they seam to do pretty much the same shit at the same speed. I know 1 MSN who is really efficient and moves quickly, but she got her MSN through the GI bill so that may not be normal. The rest of them work at the same moderate hustle.

    zepherin on
  • TOGSolidTOGSolid Drunk sailor Seattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
    edited October 2011
    zepherin wrote:
    Same with building engineers get paid well, marine engineers get paid really well, but like I said even though your industry is looking for new people pretty bad, if there were double the amount of marine engineers your pay would go down because of competitive pressure.
    Nah, unions keep that shit in check. *braces for a potential sociopathic knee jerk right wing retort from a random forumite*


    CptKemzik wrote:
    So basically you're suggesting that we go the highly specialized way of educating people a la europe, where if it turns out you don't actually enjoy what you're studying/doing, tough shit you've spent the past several years in it already and can't change gears without completely starting over. America's education system has its problems for sure, but somehow I dont think the solution is simply dumping more on the plates of adolescents and specializing the fuck out of everything. There is something to be said of studying something that has broad applications with results that aren't immediately tangible, but I guess nowadays that's translated as a "useless" degree.
    Not to that degree because I ended up in this career precisely because I realized that I didn't want to do what I was studying for a living (computer science/networking). My suggestion is merely to expose younger students to a variety of things instead of the general topics they get right now so that they can get broader view of potential careers as they get older. I know it's more of an idealistic idea than a practical one in all honesty, but I'm sure someone out there smarter than I am could figure out how it could work. Maybe have students rotate through a semester of some sort of random skill based class that teaches the basics and gives kids a taste without getting too deep.

    Regardless this:
    So basically you're suggesting that we go the highly specialized way of educating people a la europe, where if it turns out you don't actually enjoy what you're studying/doing, tough shit you've spent the past several years in it already and can't change gears without completely starting over.
    Is still a problem here in the states albeit in a different way. A lot of adults hate their jobs and have some "I wish I had actually done this" fantasy they cling to but can't go through with simply because they've invested too much education/training into whatever it is they do. Hindsight is a bitch no matter what country you hail from.

    TOGSolid on
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  • ShadowfireShadowfire Vermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered User regular
    Kistra wrote:
    Feral wrote:
    Lawndart wrote:
    I fail to see how encouraging kids to attend a four-year state school is a racket and a scam but encouraging them to attend community college, which can also saddle them with debt and not turn out to provide them with any advantages in the job market, is a better choice.

    I don't feel that I got honest, objective insight into the benefits vs costs of the options provided to me when I was a teenager, and I have been told by many people (a few of them are in this thread) that they didn't either. It's not so much that one avenue is clearly better than all the others for everybody - if you think I'm advocating that everybody should go to a community college, you have grossly misread my post - but more that out of all the avenues available, only one avenue was supported at all (four-year university) and all other possible avenues were strongly discouraged.
    Am I the only person who went to a high school where they sat us down and told us about career paths that don't involve college?

    I also think that for anyone going into a hard science a community college is likely to be much less helpful than a four year college. Community college don't have research labs. I started doing research the second semester of my freshman year and met all the different professors in my degree program in the first two years so that I could start doing research after my sophomore year and continue to work in the same lab until I graduated and I ended up getting published on two papers. You can't do that if you don't get to the school with research labs until your junior year.

    My local CC site has a bio lab that is used for a few classes. There is at least one site for them with a chemistry lab, and one runs astronomy labs as well. They exist, but i'm betting we're an exception.

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  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    zepherin wrote:
    Post-graduate nursing degrees are useless for almost anything other than being collegiate professors, and hospitals shouldn't be allowed to mislead the public or their staff on just what they're getting in terms of management. Proudly clamoring over your MSN admins is like telling everyone how great their steaks are going to be because you hired a cattle rancher as head chef.
    I work with nurses occasionally. I'll be honest in terms of quality of care I can't tell the difference between the MSNs, LPNs and RNs, they seam to do pretty much the same shit at the same speed. I know 1 MSN who is really efficient and moves quickly, but she got her MSN through the GI bill so that may not be normal. The rest of them work at the same moderate hustle.

    An LPN, by law, can't do many of the things an RN can, so in that respect there are some major differences, but unless you were in a critical care area you probably wouldn't notice the difference.

    Otherwise, there is no clinical difference between an ADN (3-year degree) and a Ph.D. (8-year degree) nurse, which is one of the main reasons that advanced study in that field is kind of ridiculous, and probably will never pay for itself.

  • LilnoobsLilnoobs Alpha Queue Registered User regular
    There's two philosophies butting heads right now in education: college is for an education, and college is for a career.

    With that said, I really despise where this thread has gone and which philosophy has been absorbed. "A college education is only beneficial if it lands you a job." If your prime focus for schooling is career, then go to a damn career college. Stop going to a place of education and expecting them to place you in a career.

  • Pi-r8Pi-r8 Registered User regular
    Lilnoobs wrote:
    There's two philosophies butting heads right now in education: college is for an education, and college is for a career.

    With that said, I really despise where this thread has gone and which philosophy has been absorbed. "A college education is only beneficial if it lands you a job." If your prime focus for schooling is career, then go to a damn career college. Stop going to a place of education and expecting them to place you in a career.

    It should do both. Right now, it's totally failing a lot of students at the career part, and were a little upset by that.

  • RiemannLivesRiemannLives Registered User regular
    Lilnoobs wrote:
    There's two philosophies butting heads right now in education: college is for an education, and college is for a career.

    With that said, I really despise where this thread has gone and which philosophy has been absorbed. "A college education is only beneficial if it lands you a job." If your prime focus for schooling is career, then go to a damn career college. Stop going to a place of education and expecting them to place you in a career.

    College as a place for abstract learning only works if you are part of the upper classes prior to going (which, of course, is traditionally the only people who were worthy of education beyond a minimal level).

    Basicially: if you have to borrow a signifigant amount of money to go to college it had damn well better be for the purpose of landing you a job. To pretend otherwise is priveledged delusion.

    If you don't have to borrow money to go to school (eg: your parents paid for it) then you can enjoy the priveledge of learning for its own sake.

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  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    edited October 2011
    TOGSolid wrote:
    Nah, unions keep that shit in check. *braces for a potential sociopathic knee jerk right wing retort from a random forumite*
    Nah, I'm a union supporter, I may or may not be in one depending on what my job title is, but unions can only do so much. If all of the sudden your skill set is common and there is a ton of competition. Non Union shops will open up at lower wages and lower costs, and put the union shops out of business. It has happened in the past. So to keep that from happening it is in your best interest to keep your skill set and information asymmetry to your advantage. Essentially a guild system, that way all training and membership is brought into the union keeping a monopoly on labor.
    An LPN, by law, can't do many of the things an RN can, so in that respect there are some major differences, but unless you were in a critical care area you probably wouldn't notice the difference.

    Otherwise, there is no clinical difference between an ADN (3-year degree) and a Ph.D. (8-year degree) nurse, which is one of the main reasons that advanced study in that field is kind of ridiculous, and probably will never pay for itself.
    Yeah the nurses where I work don't do critical care, only day to day care (I'm not sure if that is the right term).

    zepherin on
  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    Pi-r8 wrote:
    Lilnoobs wrote:
    There's two philosophies butting heads right now in education: college is for an education, and college is for a career.

    With that said, I really despise where this thread has gone and which philosophy has been absorbed. "A college education is only beneficial if it lands you a job." If your prime focus for schooling is career, then go to a damn career college. Stop going to a place of education and expecting them to place you in a career.

    It should do both. Right now, it's totally failing a lot of students at the career part, and were a little upset by that.

    Not to mention, private schools especially are charging ridiculous amounts of money for what essentially is little more than a networking membership.

    If you're lucky enough to make those networking contacts work for you, it can be lucrative. My cousin got a bullshit degree at one of those schools but got in good with the alumni and got a job making six-figures right after graduation despite being a fairly poor student and functionally illiterate for much of his life.

    I, on the other hand, have a masters' degree from a state school that to date has earned me negative $6,000.00

  • MrMisterMrMister Jesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered User regular
    Not to mention, private schools especially are charging ridiculous amounts of money for what essentially is little more than a networking membership.

    This is not really the case. I don't know about private school per se, however, you definitely gain something in educational quality as you move up the prestige ladder (which includes many public school; see: UC Berkeley and UCLA for instance). To pick an example from philosophy: suppose you're really interested in two-dimensional modal semantics. If so, good luck finding someone at a community college, or even a typical small liberal arts college. You'd be lucky to find someone who specializes in philosophy of language at all. It's only once you start getting into the universities with major research programs that you get comprehensive coverage such that you can pretty much pick any topic in philosophy and find someone who can do it with you.

    For instance: NYU has one of the best, if not the best period, philosophy departments in the world. They have 22 regular, 4 visiting, 3 assistant, and 8 affiliated faculty. That's 37 professors. Almost all of them are all-stars. It would be simply delusional to think that you could get similar support in, or depth of, instruction at some random school (or no school at all). Similarly, because NYU has such an exceptional graduate program, the people actually in charge of the bulk of your one-on-one instruction--the graduate students--are going to be exceptionally well-qualified and themselves potentially rising stars in the field. I imagine the situation is the same with the sciences (where research universities also have the relevant lab equipment), and the social sciences (interested in the economics of feudal japan? etc.)

    People in this thread may have rightly pointed out that one need not go to a fancy school in order to get a good job, or to have a nice life, and that financial considerations may often militate against fancy schools. But it is simply wishful thinking to suppose that all schools really are equal. And the inequalities are not just in networking opportunities. They extend to the education itself: to the quality of the faculty and graduate students, the variety of courses those faculty and students are able to support, the sorts of research they can do, and so on.

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    I, on the other hand, have a masters' degree from a state school that to date has earned me negative $6,000.00
    Lucky you, my Masters degree got me laid off and -$60,000. I was able to find work that I like with it a couple of months later, but that was kind of depressing. "Hey you got an MBA, good job, we don't have any work for you after this month. So you may want to start looking now."

  • Magus`Magus` The fun has been DOUBLED! Registered User regular
    I guess I should feel lucky my Bachelors has 'only' put me at -11,000 dollars. Would be nice if I could find any job, though.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    People in this thread may have rightly pointed out that one need not go to a fancy school in order to get a good job, or to have a nice life, and that financial considerations may often militate against fancy schools. But it is simply wishful thinking to suppose that all schools really are equal. And the inequalities are not just in networking opportunities. They extend to the education itself: to the quality of the faculty and graduate students, the variety of courses those faculty and students are able to support, the sorts of research they can do, and so on.

    The sentiment that expensive schools aren't as good pops up for two reasons: 1) lower level courses are the same pretty much everywhere and what you take from them depends mostly on your motivation and the motivation of the professor, and 2) even expensive schools have middling-to-bad departments.

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  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Yeah, it's mostly silly to talk about schools when it's specific departments that are good or bad.

  • MrMisterMrMister Jesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered User regular
    edited October 2011
    shryke wrote:
    Yeah, it's mostly silly to talk about schools when it's specific departments that are good or bad.

    Yes and no. Many schools with less impressive reputations overall will nonetheless have some really top notch departments. For instance, NYU, Rutgers, and Pittsburgh are all currently ranked higher than Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton at philosophy (although there may be some movement in the rankings due out later this year). But at the same time, many people entering college do not know what they want to do (or think they want to do something they actually do not). So if one chose Rutgers over Yale on the basis that Rutgers has a better philosophy department, that is probably a mistake. Yale has a better everything-else department, so you're in much better shape there if you later change your mind (this is not a slight to Rutgers; Yale is just an excellent school).
    The sentiment that expensive schools aren't as good pops up for two reasons: 1) lower level courses are the same pretty much everywhere and what you take from them depends mostly on your motivation and the motivation of the professor, and 2) even expensive schools have middling-to-bad departments.

    Lower level courses aren't as variable as higher level courses, it's true--although even there I would expect significant differences based on both the faculty teaching and on said faculty's expectations of the students. But whatever you major in, you will presumably have to take some higher level classes. If you want to go on to do specialized work in a field, you definitely will have to take such classes. There are doors that will be closed to you--and not just on the basis of snobbery or networking--if you're unable to take higher level classes in your area of interest because they aren't offered, or if the literature you read in those classes is badly out of date because there's no professor at your school who has that as an area of concentration, or the professor who does have that AOC stopped reading and publishing some time in the 70s.

    These concerns are most highly relevant if one wants to go on in a fairly specialized way in their discipline--through academia, government research, industry, or whatever. So they may not present decisive factors to people who are not interested in that sort of specialization. It is surely not important to everyone to take a class in two-dimensional modal semantics, or to have access to a professor who could advise an honors thesis on that subject. But, what I am trying to say, is that these concerns do exist, and furthermore, they are concerns about the quality of the education. There are reasons directly related to the quality of the education, and not merely to networking or the old boys' club, which point one towards the big-name research universities.

    I don't even take that category--'big-name research university'--to be equivalent to, say, 'Ivy League.' CalTech and CMU are probably as good or better than any Ivy League school if one wants to be on the bleeding edge of new research in engineering, computer science, or robotics. My point is not to draw a halo around the already-sainted schools of our culture, though, of course, they do generally have the money and social capital to draw very good faculty and thus offer very good courses. My point is just that there are real concerns about faculty quality and research profile which discriminate among schools: they're very much not all basically interchangeable.

    MrMister on
  • CptKemzikCptKemzik Registered User regular
    Yeah MrMister brings up good points. With just my brief experience in the professional world of academia one of my art history professors got her phd at rutgers, which does have a very good department there, however it is very Italian-centric; if you're looking to do advanced work in anything other than medieval to early-modern with a geographic emphasis of Italy/the mediterranean, you're out of luck. The department has a breadth of professors with various fields/interests, but the fact remains that the majority of their grad students go there for medieval/renaissance italian art history which is a ridiculously glutted field, and one I have no interest in studying at the grad level.

    Meanwhile my other professor got his phd at Brown, which while it has a good amount of resources available (being an ivy league and all), there is still a stigma of a brown phd (in art history at least) where it is not suitable for a teaching position at a department with a major graduate/research program; which was not a concern of my professor's. The ivy leagues aren't always the golden ticket depending on what you want to do.

    Personal rant on my experience thus far with The University
    Granted in my case, while I love studying (art/) history and have a desire to pursue it to an advanced level, the problem is traditional programs treat the phd as a pseudo-vocational degree where you're only going into it with the expectation of being a professor or maybe become part of a think-tank or a museum curator if the institution is on the larger/more lucrative side. This is partially because most of the professors in the humanities have only had experience in academia, but it is also telling of the university system as a whole that they're not addressing this issue directly and continue to ignore it, while phd grads continue to face bleak job prospects in academia. I've been doing my homework on ways people utilize being a humanities phd outside of the more traditional fields, and am lucky enough to have some out-of-college entry level education work experience that involves working outside the box, however I would have to make a very strong case for myself as to why a phd program should accept me if I outright state I have no desire towards becoming a professor. Honestly I don't know if that is a hassle that is worth dealing with, or if I'll eventually find an alternative route that allows me to fulfill my professional interests.

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