To parents with kids about to go to college?

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Em_in_FL said:
Oh I agree wholeheartedly (said the electrical engineer with a minor in mathematics!)… 😃

And not to bash the second group of majors you listed… but really, besides staying in academia your entire life - WHAT TYPE OF JOB WOULD YOU GET with those majors? That always boggled my mind. 🤷
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There’s law school and the civil service, for example. And employers outside the sciences are more interested in how you learn new skills, and even a sociology degree is evidence of you ability to do so. Excepting things like Women’s studies, or Queer Studies, naturally, as the subject matter is too narrow unless you somehow make it to the State Department.
 
Em_in_FL said:
Oh I agree wholeheartedly (said the electrical engineer with a minor in mathematics!)… 😃

And not to bash the second group of majors you listed… but really, besides staying in academia your entire life - WHAT TYPE OF JOB WOULD YOU GET with those majors? That always boggled my mind. 🤷
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I’ve decided to major in medical laboratory technology…probably concentrating on microbiology.
Lots and lots of lab hours.

My personal opinion about BAs is it depends on how much money you are planning on spending on your education.
I just can’t see a feasible argument for dropping one hundred thousand dollars in loans (or more) for an undergrad, only to turn around and drop another eighty to one hundred thousand dollars in loans for a masters that you supposedly “need” in order to work.

Most BSs…in sciences, engineering and mathematics will get you employed in your field…quickly and without the need to go after a masters degree.

But that is if you need to take out lots of loans. If you have a way to pay for college…be it mom and dad, scholarships, the military, pennies in a jar you started saving as a child (don’t laugh too hard, my uncle saved change for 15 years or so to partially pay for his engineering degree).
If you can do that…then major in whatever your heart’s desire is. Seriously.

I’m in the military and I know so many kids going through college for free. One girl was teased because she was going for an anthropology degree and a lot of people teased her for it saying “so, your gonna have a career at staples?”
I backed her up saying she’s not paying for it…so she could have a career at staples and have a house. She’s not going to be bogged down with really expensive loans.
 
Except for very specialized areas of study, I’ve known very few people who actually ended up with a career in their major filed of college studies.

I had a B.A. Degree with majors in English, Philosophy, and Biology. Afterward I ended up working first in a hospital as a central service technician, then in the USAF as a missile specialist, then a stockbroker, then a banker, then in civil service as a loan underwriter, loan servicer, property manager, and appraiser, along with a few other categories.

My co-worker got a degree in History. He ended up as a real estate appraiser. My brother got a degree in Marketing. He installs T-1 lines and fiber optic lines for AT&T. Another guy got a degree in Accounting. He is now a priest. Another has three degrees, in Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Philosophy. He is now in major seminary.

My nephew on the other hand, got a computer science degree and got a job right out of college for a major tech company. But it still involves a lot of on the job training because computer science doesn’t stay the same for long. My niece got an Education degree, and immediately got a job teaching high school. But after her first child, she decided she’d rather stay home and be a mom. But she still keeps her certifications current.

There’s no rule that you have to keep doing what you start out doing. It’s almost impossible not to change careers six or seven times in a lifetime. And for that a humanities degree is useful. But there’s no point in dropping a $100K or going into lifetime debt for it, when there are less expensive education options available.

And the current GI bill is pretty generous. If I were starting out now, I’d try to go into the military directly out of high school, and use the GI bill to pay for college later, gaining both experience and education.
 
Em_in_FL said:
Oh I agree wholeheartedly (said the electrical engineer with a minor in mathematics!)… 😃

And not to bash the second group of majors you listed… but really, besides staying in academia your entire life - WHAT TYPE OF JOB WOULD YOU GET with those majors? That always boggled my mind. 🤷
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OT but … Any company looking to hire for for entry-level management positions looks to Liberal Arts majors. The skills they need are good time management, abilty to absorb and apply large amounts of information and team experience - all things that LA majors have demonstrated. Many of them eventurally go on to get business degrees, often with the company footing the bill. Other areas that hire liberal arts majors are private schools, banks, and (oddly) commission sales. A lot of psyvchology/sociology/anthropology majors pursue work in such areas as the non-attorney law related jobs, social service or local government.

There are also the professional schools. Medical schools prefer LA majors to hard science majors, law schools mostly take LA majors due to the reading and critical thinking component and MBA programs are a very good fit for some areas such as Psychology or Sociology.
 
QUOTE=Fairwinds;10841442]excellent website.

a related, and important critique on the declining value of a college degree is Hipsters on food stamps

I run into these types all the time. :banghead:
 
Julianna said:
You can’t lock your kids in a cave or put them in a fish bowl for the rest of their lives. Once they graduate from college and get jobs…who do you think is going to be there co-workers, their customers, their clients, their patients, their managers, their next door neighbors? Yep, you guessed, liberals, atheists, homosexuals, libertarians, agnostics, Baptists, Lutherans, Jews, Muslims…etc. etc…
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Why do you include that one like being libertarian and Catholic are mutually exclusive?
 
Lorelei12 said:
Well…as a graduate as one of these majors (yes I am employed), there are jobs in human resources, state and federal government, the justice system, market research, social science research, public relations…as well as community and social service positions. Admittedly, I did need a graduate degree in order to do what I wanted, but I do know many people who graduated with me who are doing quite well in some of the positions I just listed.
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Contra_Mundum said:
It is about transferable skills and ability to learn and adapt to new circumstances. I know many people who went on to work in very different sectors, all with social science degrees. What people end up doing often has little to do with their degrees.
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Corki said:
OT but … Any company looking to hire for for entry-level management positions looks to Liberal Arts majors. The skills they need are good time management, abilty to absorb and apply large amounts of information and team experience - all things that LA majors have demonstrated. Many of them eventurally go on to get business degrees, often with the company footing the bill. Other areas that hire liberal arts majors are private schools, banks, and (oddly) commission sales. A lot of psyvchology/sociology/anthropology majors pursue work in such areas as the non-attorney law related jobs, social service or local government.

There are also the professional schools. Medical schools prefer LA majors to hard science majors, law schools mostly take LA majors due to the reading and critical thinking component and MBA programs are a very good fit for some areas such as Psychology or Sociology.
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👍 Very interesting - thanks, guys! 😃 I guess I just never thought about all those options!
 
JimG said:
In those days the draft was not random. The only way to avoid it was to age out by staying in school and getting a deferment. So they stayed in school. Groups like the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) were neither democratic nor non-violent. They took over buildings, set fire to schools, caused property damage, and then stayed in school to become professors and get tenure. But if a group of right wing students engaged in similar tactics today, they would find the administration (composed of those former student leftists) much less accommodating. The National Guard would be called out to toss them out without delay.

I recommend Greg Lukianoff’s book; he’s a leftist himself, but finds the loss of student civil and speech rights at universities to be something worth fighting against.
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Yeah exactly! Lots of hippies in the 60s were violent thugs, and NO ONE brings it up today. Weather Underground, Chicago Seven, etc…
 
PaleoConCatlick said:
Yeah exactly! Lots of hippies in the 60s were violent thugs, and NO ONE brings it up today. Weather Underground, Chicago Seven, etc…
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Well, some of them mellowed out, some joined the establishment. But some of them remained leftist thugs and became the new establishment!
 
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