4yrs of College = $10/hr IT support
ABC had a show on the other night called 'What are you worth?"
One of the topics they covered was the value of a 4yr college degree these days.
One guy interviewed talks about how he got his 4yr degree and the best job he could find was doing IT Support for $10/hr. He basically calls college a scam.
Supposedly there's a saying out there that says college graduates make on ave $1,000,000 more than someone who didn't go to college. WTH? Where did that come from?
Opinions?
One of the topics they covered was the value of a 4yr college degree these days.
One guy interviewed talks about how he got his 4yr degree and the best job he could find was doing IT Support for $10/hr. He basically calls college a scam.
Supposedly there's a saying out there that says college graduates make on ave $1,000,000 more than someone who didn't go to college. WTH? Where did that come from?
Opinions?
Comments
Colleges are there to make money, period.
But anyone who thinks they will graduate from college and start making 60k/yr is fooling themselves. Sure, it happens to some people, but few. You still have to start at the bottom and work your way up. It's also still "who" you know, not "what" you know. It may not be right, but that's the way it works.
Over a lifetime, I suppose the average grad might make 1 mil more than the non-grad. But big deal. (And who knows if it''s really true or not ... perhaps the number should be bigger!)
I just wish that the government and "everybody" else would quit talking like a college degree is "necessary" to "make it"! Why not just force kids to get a real education in high school... they could easily graduate from high-school ready to start an entry-level IT job (among others)... then on the job training, and start working one's way up in a company or career field.
Yes, college will always be necessary for some fields (Law and Medicine come to mind) but certainly not for many. But colleges are trying to make money... the more students they can talk into giving them money (or student's parents) the more $$ they make. And if they can talk banks and the government into making loans without collateral (student loans), then they can charge that much more for tuition.
Another way to look at it is that the media can't be trusted. It's impossible to say if this reported story is at all commonplace, and in all likelihood it is not.
Most of what I have done to earn an income was not taught in college. What I learnt at college was not so much the subject matter but how to organise my time and organise my approach to doing projects, learning, etc.
I am originally from a country which practices racial preference for who gets to go to national universities. Believe it or not, this racial preference prefers the majority ethnic group, I am in the minority. So for people in my situation (say 10% to 20% of us not in the majority ethnic group) college outside the country (US, UK, Australia) was absolutely essential.
All said, I had a bad experience in college in terms of enjoying my time, I can see what I learnt from it but I was totally down the wrong academic path wanting to be a doctor (medicine). After my "pre-med" bachelors degree I went on to do web design and development. Luckily in my degree I minored in Computer Science (1st and 2nd year subjects, a few 3rd year database subjects).
Life can be very varied.
FuturePastNow, what is the standard of the college and the degree you are doing? Can you transfer to a better college? That said, the US education system has some serious flaws. I mean, the amount to pay for private top-class (eg. Ivy League) colleges in the US is just massive.
With the credit crunch are student loans difficult to get?
The real crime is compulsory schooling, which is slavery. The only reason we don't call it slavery is because it doesn't directly benefit any particular master or group of masters, except those who want youth to be secluded from the rest of society until they are properly broken.
I am not joking.
Oh and I almost forget myself, I didn't graduate at all and I have a manufacturing job making ~19/hr.
That will allow my kids to have a competitive advantage in the job market. Education isn't everything but it is a foundational element. If you didn't learn how to learn in college then I hope you drank and got laid a lot, otherwise you wasted 4-6 years of your life.
Important reasons for college:
1) Members of the opposite sex
2) Beer
3) Drunken members of the opposite sex
4) Meeting friends that last a lifetime
5) Learning how to learn
6) Learning foundational information in your major
#4 will get you more jobs than #6 unless you don't have #6. In which case your friends aren't likely to recommend you because they will look like idiots. If you don't learn #5 from somewhere you're simply fucked in a information/tech/service economy. College is more likely than anywhere else to learn this skill.
Worth every dime of the costs if you can afford it. Especially #1-#4.
One of my #4s got me my current job and it pays a hell of a lot more than $10/hr.
If you picked a major that doesn't have much of a use, well, the outcome is pretty obvious.
Yes, please don't send your kids to college and you should drop out if you are in college to avoid the scam. You should definitely avoid the highly flawed US higher education system.
That will allow my kids to have a competitive advantage in the job market.
You took "highly flawed US education system" from my post and inserted "higher education." Tell me these things aren't the case:
- US Public schools students test worse than those in other developed and developing nations despite the larger amount of funding.
- Public and private US colleges show tuition costs rising far faster than inflation.
Combine these two and you have a system where unqualified kids enter college, pay too much, and likely leave the system unqualified. If your kids can score a top school, then good for them, they have the option of being way ahead if they choose the right major OR pay more in various grad schooling. But if not, either you or they will pay a lot of money for an education that would have been better delivered by a trade-school.
I wonder what people really expect out of college? If you think you're going to go there and fart around for 4 years and then leave and get a good job then ... prepare do be disappointed. More than likely you're going to fart around at your job and never move up. One the flip side if you look for opportunities that expand your experience and you apply for internships and whatnot then ... get ready to move up in the world.
Certainly it could be the individual and not the college. I'm a better person for having gone and not just because I learned a technical field.
Does the person making $10/h have a degree that is useless or ... are they useless?
Sebastian
That's true if you want a higher starting salary on your first job but in the end an education is what YOU make of it.
I recommend for many getting the cheapest degree you can. Certainly do your undergrad as cheaply as possible. Today you need more schooling so be wise about your tuition. And realize you may hate your major and have to go back. Keep expenses low.
It depends on what you major in, and what kind of economic environment you graduate in. My computer science B.Sc. has paid for itself many times over, because I graduated in 1990 - right before a long boom.
In 1991, there was a recession so MY comp Sci degree was useless and I couldn't get a programming job so I ended up in IT Tech Support (aka 1st level garbage).
Windows 3.11, IBM AT's (aka the finger slicers because of their metal make-up)
Does the person making $10/h have a degree that is useless or ... are they useless?
The sad thing about these one hour specials is that one hour isn't enough time to discuss these topics.
One of the college grads they talked to, her major was something like folklore or something like that and she couldn't get a job in her field for 3 years. They made her out to be the victim of the "college scam" but she looked to me to be in idiot for not changing her plan on what she was going to do to be successful.
"Trump went to college." And Trump also had a million dollars handed to him by Papa Trump when he started his rise to fame and fortune.
I also believe college is a scam. When I was in school I thought it was a joke that I needed only 30 credits in my major and 90 credits it non-major related courses.
Colleges are there to make money, period.
College may be a scam for general business majors, but it sure as hell isn't for the applied sciences or areas where it does require far more than self-study to achieve competency in and a level of skills giving one the well deserved title of professional.
I sure as hell won't hire any self-taught person who grabbed a few engineering books and proclaim themselves mechanical, electrical, material science, chemical, civil, structural, aeronautical, biomechanical, etc., engineers.
Colleges aren't non-profit entities. Therefore, they have to make money. I agree that the justification for the price hikes is a scam and not justified.
However, the house that cost $200k in 1993 and now costs $750k isn't justified either. It has nothing to do with supply and demand, so much as it has to do with an entire industry agreeing to adjust their values from the materials level, to the laborer, to all professionals, to more that always keep ahead of the inflating salaries.
The buying power of today's salary is pathetic compared to the $31k starting wage for a Mechanical Engineer in 1972. The average cost of a university is 10x what it cost then as well. The quality of education, in many respects, has dropped as well.
If a system doesn't periodically get re-evaluated it will eventually implode. The education system is no different, no matter how much money you throw at it to push kids through the system.
In 1991, there was a recession so MY comp Sci degree was useless and I couldn't get a programming job so I ended up in IT Tech Support (aka 1st level garbage).
Windows 3.11, IBM AT's (aka the finger slicers because of their metal make-up)
My 1993 M.E. degree was equally useless as over 5,000 seasoned mechanical engineers flooded the market after downsizing in the military complexes taking entry level jobs away from myself and others.
In 1992, everyone of my friends didn't even have to hunt for a job--they were hired on the spot. In 1993 Boeing didn't even bother to send a representative to visit.
Timing is everything and busting your nut to be left with adversity is something they should impress on everyone as they move through their lives.
I ended up back getting a second degree in CS and now back to combining both to get my own business going.
There isn't a lack of engineering talents in the US, no matter what Bill Gates and the like proclaim while begging for more H1B visas.
There are thousands unemployed or eaking out other livelihoods while they adjusted to the non-predictable approach to national economics this country decided to persue after Reagan entered into office. Thanks to Carter being such a POS in matters of Domestic Tranquility and having no concept of politics and business we have been living on futures fumes for decades.
There isn't a lack of engineering talents in the US, no matter what Bill Gates and the like proclaim while begging for more H1B visas.
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Man that burned my hide when he whined about talent. This coming from a college dropout. There are a thousand engineers that would put Gates technical knowledge to shame.
I once talked to a Sun Microsystems engineer and asked about the talent from India and elsewhere and he said "they're just another worker"
It depends on what you major in, and what kind of economic environment you graduate in. My computer science B.Sc. has paid for itself many times over, because I graduated in 1990 - right before a long boom.
I graduated in Dec 1999 from Australia, threw most of the Biology books from my degree in the trash, and managed to go to San Francisco and catch the very tail end of the dotcom boom from 2000-2002 doing web design and development on $60k a year. I spent the first six months of 2000 looking for work in LA and SF. My dad lent me $5000 during this time, when I was travelling between LA, SF, Australia sorting out work visas, and luckily in SF I stayed with an old school friend for a while waiting for employers to get back to me.
I consider myself very, very lucky.
The $60k a year job itself was a stroke of fortune, but I also had a $40k a year offer from a guy that graduated from my college (University of Melbourne, Australia) that did his PhD at Stanford and opened his biotech/bioinformatics startup company.
That said, my 4 years at college in Australia, I did some Computer Science on electives, I learnt Photoshop by myself, I entered a few competitions, I did a Biotech research internship, I went to a small Biotech conference where I met the founder of that startup company. Basically a whole bunch of stuff I did at college which unfortunately did not involve me getting laid.
Again, I don't know, I was lucky, but also, I had two big dreams in my teenage years. One was being an astronaut. Once I threw that idea out the window (since my plan was to become a doctor first then get into aviation/space somehow...), the other was to see Silicon Valley and the "birthplace" of multimedia.
I had a wretched time in High School. Because I was considered not so much as geeky but as being arrogant and having lofty ambitions. Bitter vindication.
That said, I am also lucky that the Australian education system in the 90's was more affordable than nowadays. Basically a loan from the government (for permanent residents and citizens) for study expenses and some cash allowance for living expenses (for citizens).
I remember a time in 1998 when I was in an undergrad Science lab class (I was doing a kind of a "pre-med" degree) and I realised, I'd never make it to John Hopkins to do medicine (crazy lofty ambition, right)... cost would be US $100,000 tuition alone. It's probably double that or something nowadays...
My parents made some major sacrifices and spent several hundred thousand to send my brother and myself to some of the top universities in the English-speaking world (again, thankfully Australia was nearby to us). I really don't know if I could ever do that for my kids, my parents spent at least half of their lifetime earnings to pull this off for my brother and I.
Colleges aren't non-profit entities....
There was a time, and there are still examples, of successful colleges which are non-profit (ie state and government run) ... around the world. In the US though, the public K-12 education system is seems to be bordering on 3rd world standards... so I don't know how you guys are addressing deficiencies in the college system.