College can be an extremely useful tool for success if you use it right. I needed it (and my degree -- often considered one of the "useless" ones) to get where I wanted to be professionally.

But I agree that a lot of kids are fooling themselves that college will automatically help them coast into their dream jobs -- and that, because they went to college, that they "deserve" their dream jobs. Unfortunately, most schools are trying to fool them as well.

I question why any field requires a degree to get ahead "professionally." Years of experience and apprenticeships are much better preparation for a profession than college.

Amy, I don't think engineers are doing very well either. Check out their average wages and their unemployment rate.

Wherever government meddles, the economic and social lives of citizens will suffer.

The statistics about college graduates earning a lot more than non-graduates were always misleading. They were skewed by the doctors, dentists, pharmacists and lawyers who had professional degrees and tended to be highly compensated relative to the average college grad. Engineers, as noted, also tended to make decent salaries. Exclude those, and the premium for a college degree is not nearly as large.

That didn't matter when, dating myself, one could go to the state school for $200 a semester and graduate with no debt. Now, students pay ridiculous amounts for degrees that get them nothing. It's a nice racket for the schools, not so much for the kids.

Sunday's paper just had a woe-is-me story from a waitress with a Master's in Public Policy. She might, someday, get a job in her field. She will, however, pay those loans unless she dies.

I have a couple of college degrees that have helped me get jobs in the field I wanted. However, I didn't have what apparently people think of as a typical college experience where mommy and daddy fund me being a total loser asshat for four, or six, or ten years of adulthood. I come from a community where most people don’t go to college so I understand that college education does NOT equal smart person. Now I sometimes run into PhD level jerks in work situations that think that if you are a smart person then magic elves buy you a college degree, therefore anyone without a college degree is a bumbling idiot that can’t find their ass with both hands. I find this super frustrating to say the least.

I think that in many industries, degrees are neccessary to get hired... not because they make you qualified, but because the HR person reviewing resumes won't even consider you if you don't have a BA or BS. Unfortunately, since you NEED a degree to even get a foot into anything white-collar, everyone gets one, so it doesn't really make you that competitive.

And I do agree that young people are completely unrealistic about where their degrees will take them, but it's part of the "you're my extra-special shining jewel" upbringing they've had.

Our friend's fiance graduated last year with a degree in fashion merchandising. She was convinced that she was going to be either a buyer or a manager of a large retailer right out of college. Imagine her shock when after months of searching, the only offer she got was for sales on the lingerie floor at Neiman Marcus, making under $10/hr. All the other sales people at NM had degrees, too- and sometimes years of high-end retail experience.

You are SO right about this one. Iam very glad more and more people are questioning the utterly nonsensical assumption that everyone has to go to college, these days. It is a bubble, and it is going to have to burst these days. Borrowing so much money that basically turns out, in so many cases, to purchase something worthless, is not something a successful economy should be doing.

What people forget is that the whole idea of universities goes back ssix or seven hundred years, to a time when people did not even have easy access to writing materials, never mind computers. Information was hard to get, and most easily disseminated by a person, in a room. Not so now.

And the stupid justifications one hears- "it's for the experience of living with lots of other young people!" Um, living in Austin, Texas doing pretty much anything solves that one! The entire downtown is heaving with eighteen to twentysomethings.

In the UK, where universities are about to increase their fees to a flat 9,000 GBP a year, the bubble is about to pop. Plenty of small unimpressive colleges simply will not get takers anymore and have to close (because of the government-imposed flat rate). The resultant social change re. how young people learn and get into work will be interesting to see.

Meanwhile, our continuing conflation of "learning stuff: and "attending a big building with humans speaking to large groups in person" and "living close to lots of other people your own age" cannot be prolonged indefinitely. It really is another money bubble waiting to burst.

Academics are already losing their own career ladders and security. It will get much worse when people start selling fast cheap and useful education programs online, as they already are. See "Rich happy and hot b-school" by Marie Forleo. At $2000, cheaper than an MBA. Those who scoff are missing the point.

My son is a junior in high school. He will be hireable right out of high school. He already has employment prospects lined up. Including some that will pay for his college.

No, he is not an honor roll student. No, he doesn't ace the standardized tests.

He is a student at a tech high school in the diesel mechanics program. He'll run a wrench but the place he just interned offered him $13/hour part time right after he graduates high school and they will pay the tuition and expenses to get a 2 year degree at the local college in diesel technology.

He's already had other job offers, too. He just turned 17.

He's feeling confident he made the right choice to make the effort and get accepted into the tech school. It is already opening doors for him.

Sorry in advance. Some of these comments may be ill-informed. I don't watch internet video in the morning (mostly, never - takes too much time compared to reading - but definitely not until I'm done with breakfast and coffee).

There's also a scary bit about how the college loan market has been taken over by the government and how taxpayers will, at a very low rate of interest, be paying for all the useless college educations (mirroring the Fannie and Freddie debacle).

Hasn't the government always been the backstop for these loans? I though the point was of this legislation was to save money by cutting out the originators, who made money issuing loans that the federal government guaranteed anyway. I'm not sure the guarantee of student loans is a good thing, but this doesn't seem a takeover in the traditional sense.

Meanwhile, college kids (except maybe those who studied engineering) are graduating right and left to jobs in coffee shops and grocery stores... Some of the thinkers I respect (Matt Welch, Wendy McElroy) did not go to school or did not finish school.

In the world of tech startups where I work, you do occasionally encounter entrepreneurs who have not finished school. Most have, but a few haven't. School doesn't make you smart, or capable.

When hiring, degrees don't guarantee anything. But degree can serve as a useful filter. If someone has completed a rigorous program of study at a good school, you can infer a certain amount about his discipline and intellect. Strong work performance in past jobs (where you can trust the references, which isn't always the case) is a better indicator, but the degree is important in its absence.

It also matters a great deal what comes with that degree beyond the knowledge and problem-solving skills. If you want to end up in an ultra-competitive industry in a major world city, your road will be a lot tougher if you don't attend a top-tier school. Not impossible, but tougher. Connections and pedigree matter no matter where you go, but so does context. If you want to find a job in your home state, a good choice is to go to the best public university in your home state, which provides connections and pedigree relevant to where you live. Most state universities offer direct admissions to community college grads, which makes them a good career choice and affordable.

Where I think people go wrong – and I've got a friend doing this right now – is spending huge loan dollars to get degrees from second or third-tier schools. I don't think these degrees help people very much, even if the learning is good (which I'm sure varies quite a lot from place to place). If your degree is from a place no one has heard of, and you lack relevant experience, you're probably never going to get an interview. For every decent job posted publicly, employers get dozens, if not hundreds of resumes. We have to filter somehow.

Yes there are plenty of liberal arts graduates waiting tables, but on the other hand I'm a finance major, and this summer (going into my senior year) I'm interning at a major investment bank making $22/hr plus housing. That seems to be the going rate among most business majors I know (although I did interview for a credit card company that pays $35/hr). And most engineering majors that I know were making that LAST summer as rising juniors--this year it's more like $28-30. So that translates to $40,000-$70,000 a year without even having the degree yet. Compare that to the median US household income of $31,000 and I'd say the degree is worth it.

Um, living in Austin, Texas doing pretty much anything solves that one! The entire downtown is heaving with eighteen to twentysomethings.

lol I live in Austin. I'm 27, and this city makes me feel like an old. Damn kids get off my lawn.

Christopher..."If someone has completed a rigorous program of study at a good school, you can infer a certain amount about his discipline and intellect"

The problem is that most people doing hiring don't really have a good understanding of how rigorous or non-rigorous the programs are at various schools, and there is really no good source for that information. So they tend to rely on the college's "brand," which in reality may reflect what that college was 30 years ago rather than what it is today.

Also, at some colleges with high-profile brands it is very hard to get in, but not all that hard to stay in. We as a society have delegated immense power to the admissions officers of a few "elite" institutions without knowing very much about who these people are or what their values might be.

Those are good points, David. We are a small company, and are very careful with hiring decisions - a bad hire can really hurt us. It isn't terribly hard to figure out what degrees require real work to complete, and which ones allow students to skate by. Big companies with HR departments made up of people who lack sophistication about education might be weaker about making these judgments, but with a little effort, it's straightforward to find out if someone had to do real math, science, and produce coherent writing while in school.

The College as service problem is a big one, but what do you expect, a private college will cost you, what, about 40k a year now is it? And that's not necessarily Harvard... Lil Librelle Artse School of Kentuclahoma will cost you the same. So of course people expect to be spoonfed info, they're paying for it!

Problem is, being spoonfed isn't the best way to learn.

There's also a scary bit about how the college loan market has been taken over by the government and how taxpayers will, at a very low rate of interest, be paying for all the useless college educations (mirroring the Fannie and Freddie debacle).

The taxpayers will not have a "very low rate of interest." There will be a big cost when this bubble collapses.

I spent 5 years working in the processing and collection side of student loans.

It's a circular firing squad.

====================

The original student loan program used a federal subsidy and guarantee of repayment to encourage banks to lend money to students at 4-year colleges. The interest rates were low so the graduate was not unduly burdened with debt. The banks were happy because the graduate then started his working life with a relationship with that bank (good for selling him car loans, mortgages, credit cards, etc.).

The government subsidized up to half the interest, allowing lenders to offer student loans at considerable discounts. The government also guaranteed repayment, removing risk to lenders. State agencies acted as the first-level guarantors, giving the states a cut of the money.

====================

Then, the politicians got involved.

====================

SLMA ("Sallie Mae") was formed to buy the student loans, freeing up bank money to make more of them (much like "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" in the housing markets).

Claiming that allowing only 4-year colleges into the program discriminated against the poor, Congress extended the accepted programs to 2-year community colleges and proprietary trade schools.

This gave rise to fly-by-night trade schools that ran students through a one-semester program that just happened to cost exactly as much as the one-semester limit on student loans. Often the schools closed after a short time, just ahead of fraud investigations, and re-opened under a new name shortly afterward. Seldom did these schools actually prepare their students for a career in their chosen occupation.

"Recruiters" for these schools fanned out across poor areas, signing up people who simply wanted to better themselves but didn't understand they were being taken for a ride.

The application process for these schools always included a student loan application. Student loan applicants can request the money be paid to them or directly to the school. The fraudulent trade schools required the applying student to check the box that paid the money directly to the school.

Even if the student drops out before the semester begins, the school may keep a "processing" fee. So, the school makes money no matter what.

The fact that most "graduates" of these schools could not find jobs in their chosen occupations left those graduates unable to pay their loans. The default rate began to rise.

====================

The law of supply and demand also had an impact on student loans.

As student loans became more common and money to pay tuitions was readily available, tuitions starting rising. And student loan amounts rose to keep up. People blamed the schools. But the ready availability of a supply of money to pay higher tuition meant schools met little to no resistance to increasing tuition rates.

Schools started setting their tuition artificially high and used a combination of fellowships and grants to bring it down for students who couldn't meet the higher levels. Federal student loan limits were based on the stated (higher) tuition rate.

So, in a vicious cycle, tuition rates rose, student loan amounts were increased, and tuition rose again.

Students found themselves graduating with higher debt than they were prepared to pay. So, they stopped paying and defaulted their loans.

====================

For a while, the government simply paid the lenders or guarantors (usually state agencies or federally chartered agencies like SLMA) and did little or nothing to collect from the original applicant.

When the default rate passed 50% (driven primarily by the inclusion of proprietary trades schools, but also by escalating debt levels for new graduates), the government began collection measures. But they were mostly ineffective (blood from a stone).

A record budget deficit in the '80s (little did they know), led to agitation to "fix" the out-of-control student loan program.

"Fixing" the student loan program started with the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act. The Act required that an expense item be entered into the budget for expected defaults in student loans. Prior to that, student loan defaults were an "unexpected" expense and were not budgeted.

Ted Kennedy (and company) realized that if all student loans were in the budget as outstanding loans owed to the government, then they were assets (accounts receivable) and were a positive item in the budget, instead of a negative expense item (accounts payable).

So, they began advocating direct lending of student loans, elmininating the "greedy" middlemen lenders.

====================

I think that in many industries, degrees are neccessary to get hired... not because they make you qualified, but because the HR person reviewing resumes won't even consider you if you don't have a BA or BS.

HR, in most organizations, seems to function under the principle that the person least skilled in the operations of the organization should be the one making hiring decisions.

The sort of credentialism that we're seeing nowadays seems to be resulting in a manifestation of the Peter Principle, on a social scale. Many of the degrees that have been created over the past ten or fifteen years do not arise from academic disciplines. They're effectively professional and vocational certifications wrapped in a sheep skin. These address skills that a competent practitioner should possess, or be able to learn on their own. But many of the people who are obtaining these degrees do so because they aren't able to master the skill set without direct instruction. They either don't have the experience and/or the aptitude. Many of these programs seems to acknowledge this fact by lowering their requirements and prolonging the course of study. So what you end up with is degrees going to people who really aren't competent in the subject in which they've been credentialed. When they're then placed in a position of authority, due to these credentials, all sorts of problems can arise. Because they're typically overseeing people who are actually more competent in the subject at hand.

@sofar: I'm 30 and live in Austin, and I only feel really old when I'm on Guadalupe near campus... but I live West/Central around a bunch of other "old" people, and rarely go south of the river or east of 35.

ahw touched on this, but I'd like to reiterate...
I work for a Fortune 50ish mostly engineering firm...

And you wont get in the front door without a degree in something. If you are good and have experience, you don't always have to have a degree in the field you want a job in, but when times are tight you do. I guarantee that BrassRing puts your resume down the memory hole if you don't have a degree.

I've heard an unfortunate opinion, but I can't attribute it... "College is the new High School"

A LOT of HR people in this alphabet soup Monster.com world of hiring filter on this and other things, and if you don't come back on a search that way, you don't exist to them...

Naturally, that's a corporate level thing... if you work for smaller companies, you might be able to get your foot in the door.

P.S. about that student debt... a wrinkle is that it is not discargable in bankruptcy... so if you go under, yes the Fed may have to buy it, but they will get you in the end, and that's a whole 'nother issue.

Well, there are simply too many people walking around relative to the number of available jobs.

Having a degree makes it more likely that you will be one of the people walking around WITH a job, as opposed to without one, because a degree makes it easier to get past the pesky trolls in HR.

However, a degree is no guarantee, and if you've saddled yourself with crushing debt to get the degree, you're going to be even worse off than if you hadn't gone to college at all.

I like the way LauraGr's son is doing it. He's getting the skills needed to earn a living, and it's good to get that established early. Because face it, we all need to eat, and LauraGr probably doesn't want him living in her basement when he's thirty-five. If he wants to get a four-degree in something else someday, there is absolutely nothing stopping him.

So what you end up with is degrees going to people who really aren't competent in the subject in which they've been credentialed. When they're then placed in a position of authority, due to these credentials, all sorts of problems can arise.

I had a business school professor who used to tell a similar story.

He was working for a small chain of discount stores in the midwest. The chain wanted upgrade its image and become more professional. So, it hired a slew of newly-minted Ivy League MBA graduates (not experienced professionals with MBAs, new graduates).

The new managers were to take over in corporate management (no Ivy League graduate would willingly work as a store manager).

None of them had ever worked retail for an entire year.

Seeing inefficiencies in the company's logistics, the new "professional" management team implemented steps to streamline the supply chain. For instance, they created a more efficient inventory system that didn't stockpile inventory in the latter half of the year.

Meeting resistance to their proposals, they dismissed the naysayers as stuck in the "old ways" and plowed forward with streamlining the system.

When Christmas rolled around the stores had inventory problems and were sold out of many of the most popular items. Apparently, the new management was unaware that non-food retailers do more than half their annual business in the six weeks before Christmas (and usually start stockpiling inventory in early October).

The chain failed to recover from its attempt to "professionalize" its management and was soon bought out by another chain.

I don't know if this story is true or was simply intended to teach a class of soon-to-be MBAs that we should not dismiss the experienced, but less-credentialed, folks just because we have all this shiny new knowledge.

On the other hand, it is more difficult to get a good job without at least a BA. Case in point: used to be in California you could become a paralegal (aka legal assistant in many law firms) by getting a lower level position in a firm and work your way up by learning the legal skills and acquiring the experience and knowledge necessary for the job.

Now by California state law, you need at least a BA (or a certificate in Paralegal Studies from a college or university) to work as a paralegal.

Plus many employers use not having a degree as a means of filtering out prospective employees.

I do not remember a single thing of substance I learned in College. As a working adult, I use Jr. High algebra far more often than I do anything I learned in college.Finished in three years because I absolutely detested the liberal non-think that pervades campuses and wanted to get the hell into law school already. My poor child (5 months in utero right now!) is going to have a verrry tough time selling her father on the "college experience."

Law school was the exact opposite. Loved it and learned a ton. There really should be an accelerated path for students who know what they want to do.

You can look up "Griggs vs Duke Power" if you want to know why a four year degree has replaced an aptitude test for many jobs. It's not the evil or lazy or incompetent HR department at fault. It is the evil, lazy, incompetent HR department keeping the corporation from being sued.

Life is unfair. Four years and many thousands later, it is still unfair. Once you get by HR, you still have to deal with me. I'll give you an hour to convince me that you are willing and able to do the job. If I hire you, and you turn out to be lazy or incompetent or reckless, then I fail. I don't intend to fail.

Lets think about some of the degrees one can get at a university, and have a serious conversation with our children about what they can do with those degrees.

Women's studies. Seriously? What the hell can someone do with that except teach women's studies? There may be a slender few jobs out there that look for that specialization, but probably fewer than one per graduate. And worse...well lets face it, if I'm a small employer, I'm already going to be hesitant to hire a woman, I see women's studies, and I can't shred resume fast enough.

Theater. Now I'm sure this is great for someone who wants to be an actor...but c'mon, I was reading in SLATE about a kid who went to an ivy league school for that degree, and ended up over 100,000 in the hole and working as a barista in a coffee bar. He could have gone to community college and gotten the same knowledge. Who would sign off on this loan? And why would his idiot parents have encouraged it???

Liberal Arts. The subject speaks for itself, you might come away "well rounded" in general knowledge, but in no way prepared to hold any job.

Philosophy. What can you get from the class, that you cant get from a philosophy reading list found on Amazon.com?

The list goes on. College should prep people for careers, not hobbies. And that is what so many degrees and courses are now, worth little more than hobbies of intellectual interest and curiosity, with little relevance to real world application.

There is no reason college shouldn't prepare people for hobbies, as well as careers, but students should understand the difference.

A former co-worker's husband got a liberal arts degree from a very expensive college and raved about how much he enjoyed his literature classes. Well, fine, I like literature too, but it doesn't cost me $14,000. That is what he spent on his literature classes ALONE. Couldn't he have simply read the books, joined local reading groups, and read critical analysis online? If he still thought it was worth it to spend that kind of money on a hobby, recognize it as an expensive hobby. And probably one that is beyond the means of someone making $23,000 a year.

I was always more of the mindset that first you learn to support yourself and get free of debt, and then spent whatever leftover money you have on hobbies.

On treating the university student like a customer:
This is a big controversy in Higher Ed. in TX right now. There are some groups trying to "reform" the state universities using measures that "include separating research and teaching budgets and providing professors large cash rewards based solely on student evaluations..." claiming that it "will deliver better educational results more efficiently."

http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/higher-education/a-tale-of-two-texas-university-system-chancellors/

So, they want to bonus professors based on popularity contests and make learning more "efficent."

Unless you are completely independent you will be getting interviewed by sheep at some point and engaging the idiotic corporate culture born of the industrialized education system.

Your favorite search engine company is all "younger" people - and a job-seeking friend of mine, very experienced and educated, was actually asked by their feckless interviewer "What's your GPA?".

She's 40 years old. GPA? Really? This is the American corporate mindset?

My suggestion: move to India, blow through one of their diploma mills, then come back a triple-PhD...

Gog, I'm only 26 and I'm still pissed they want SAT scores. That is ridiculous.

There is a huge problem with kids not getting realistic information about what various careers are like and what is required in order to pursue them. TV programs focus on a few job type: lawyer, doctor, cop, criminal..and usually aren't very realistic even about these. Counselors are usually clueless. College professors, even when meaning well, have a natural tendency to oversell their own fields. Books on the subject are typically rehashes of BLS data which is dubious to start with. Parents often have little knowledge of careers outside their own experience and general received wisdom, which isn't always so wise. Etc.

Listening to the stories my high school-age daughter tells makes me wonder if attitudes aren't changing just a little bit. She said that a girl in one of her classes announced that she planned to major in English. The students around her chimed in with "Ooh, debt!" One of the things that's happening is that my daughter's classmates are seeing their older brothers and sisters bring home degrees in communications and political science, and managing to find jobs in Target or Starbucks. It's not an attractive looking future to them.

For her part, my daughter's been talking about learning a trade, and leveraging earnings from that into college later.

"Theater. Now I'm sure this is great for someone who wants to be an actor...but c'mon, I was reading in SLATE about a kid who went to an ivy league school for that degree, and ended up over 100,000 in the hole and working as a barista in a coffee bar."

My high school boyfriend got his B.A. in musical theater. In high school he took an aptitude test and was told to avoid the sciences, as his interests didn't lie there. Fast forward a couple of years. He's living a Chicago, poor as the proverbial church mouse, with a baby on the way. He went back to school for a year or two to become a respiratory therapist, graduated first in his class, and now makes such a comfortable living that he has to work only part-time. Real life eventually teaches us, one way or another.

The health professions are one of the best bets, as the population is aging. That's what I'm doing back in school. My high school aptitude test also said the sciences weren't my interest, yet I got 100 in my current chemistry course and on the final. Funny how interested you get when you're sufficiently motivated.

College educations are now mostly demanded by culture, not by any measure of productivity.

Consider the fallacy of "being there". Schools enroll young adults at a time of growing independence and exploration. We expect that these people will learn and change in four years. They do this while they are in school, but I think the school should get little credit for being there at the time this happens.

Consider the fallacy of "it's worth it". The school presents a program of learning which requires large fees and almost full-time attendance. It certainly "is worth it" as compared to learning nothing, but that is a contrived comparison. There would be other options in a freer market for training and education.

There is no reason to allow this cultural monopoly to continue. Let employers do the testing that they need to select able people.

A hat tip to MarkD (11:20 AM). Currently, employers are restricted by employment law, by the theory of Disparate Impact.

Employers are assumed to be closet racists when they give aptitude tests. They avoid costly lawsuits by going with the grades and degrees which the schools hand out.

Schools give aptitude tests when admitting students. They are excluded from any restrictions because they are guided by higher motives (cough) and are not trying to make a grubby profit (cough). Tests are fine when judging who will become a student, but they are assumed to be racist when used to hire someone.

Support a system of incremental education and testing that does not require years of resident study, unless there is a proven need (eg. medical education). Allow for experiment and validation of approaches that deliver to students (of any age) the knowledge they need, in the subjects they want, in the amounts they need, with testing and validation.

College is an Expensive IQ Test
easyopinions.blogspot.com/2008/07/college-is-expensive-iq-test.html

@ahw lol I live south, and I'm just starting to figure out places in this city where I can go and NOT get asked, "So, what's your major?"

he said that a girl in one of her classes announced that she planned to major in English. The students around her chimed in with "Ooh, debt!"

This is nothing new. I majored in English, and friends/family/new acquaintances all said the same thing. Turns out, a wide variety of fields want my skill set, and I've been gainfully employed since before even graduating from college. And now, everyone who made fun of my major is asking me to help them edit their grad school essays, resumes and cover letters. I'd charge them per hour, but they're unemployed, and I'd feel bad. :)

Your favorite search engine company is all "younger" people

If you're referring to Google, they're notorious for being very snotty about this sort of thing. It's my understanding that they've been making an effort to tone it down though, because it's not warranted and affects their ability to recruit. It's becoming evident that much of their rep is gloss and hype and that they need to get back to actually innovating, and not just preening themselves.

sofar: would you mind sharing some of the fields you've worked in?

I majored in English so I could teach but it didn't work out. It really feels at times that my degree is useless. The only other fields I can think of are writing/editing or HR, but all those positions want experience (that I don't have.) Any insight you can give would be much appreciated. I currently work as a law clerk, but I only got that job because the supervisor I was temping under was impressed by my work ethic and wanted to keep me permanantly.

This is a subject near and dear to my heart, because I don't have a college degree. When I was growing up, it was measure of success.

My mother finished a two year business school paid for by our government after the local shoe plant went to Mexico. I was in Middle School and I saw that it opened absolutely no doors for her. Her college degree was worthless. (I could in Middle School complete her coursework with little difficulty)

My parents had nothing to contribute to school: the year I graduated High School, they declared bankruptcy and lost our family home. I got married, instead, My husband makes too much money for us to get any financial aide for tuition. He has since I was nineteen years old. I can't justify a loan for more money than all my assets combined so I "may" have a better chance at getting a "good" job.

"If you are a smart person then magic elves buy you a college degree, therefore anyone without a college degree is a bumbling idiot that can’t find their ass with both hands," describes too many of HR personnel right now.

david foster said: "There is a huge problem with kids not getting realistic information about what various careers are like and what is required in order to pursue them. TV programs focus on a few job type: lawyer, doctor, cop, criminal..and usually aren't very realistic even about these. Counselors are usually clueless. College professors, even when meaning well, have a natural tendency to oversell their own fields. Books on the subject are typically rehashes of BLS data which is dubious to start with. Parents often have little knowledge of careers outside their own experience and general received wisdom, which isn't always so wise. Etc."

I re-printed this because it mirrors what college was sold to me as when I was in high school. You can be anything! ... but you have to get a degree from college to get it!

But when I would ask questions ("what do I do?" "what jobs are available to someone with suchandsuch degree?" and "seriously, what the hell do I do to get a JOB?"), counselors were USELESS. I was handed a reading list of books at the local Barnes & Noble. I stumped a counselor when I asked how to become a librarian. No one could help me do anything other than pick a course to take for the next semester.

And my parents were just as delusional. I could've gone to college for Advanced Sheepfarming, and they would've cheered me on because it was *COLLEGE* and that's what you do to get by in life.

I'm going to encourage my kids to be mechanics and plumbers and electricians. Because those people are in high demand and those jobs have practical training courses where you learn real skills.

College seems to me to be a bit of a sham unless you're going for a professional degree (doctor, lawayer, etc).

I'm going to encourage my kids to be mechanics and plumbers and electricians. Because those people are in high demand and those jobs have practical training courses where you learn real skills.

I'd also encourage them to take a finance class or two, a statistics class, and perhaps an economics class along the way.

Skills imparted by classes like those can come in handy when running one's own business, discussing the next election, or deciding whether to chew Trident gum.

Your favorite search engine company is all "younger" people.

That was a big fad during the dot-com bubble. The "new economy" folks assumed the "old economy" folks were too old or simply didn't understand what the new paradigm was all about.

The "new guys" sneered when the "old guys" asked "what're you actually selling?"

Work was no longer a job, it was college with a paycheck. And the "old economy" guys simply "didn't get it."

Workers in the "new paradigm" would come and go all day, play pool during the afternoon, play basketball on the company court, and drink the company fridge dry at 5:00pm and be back at their desks by 8:00pm to pull yet another all-nighter.

Then the venture capitalists asked, "when are you going to make a profit?"

Turns out, business is about making a profit ... or at least making enough money to pay the bills.

And old or new economy, if you don't have a way to make money (or even an actual product or service to sell), you're going to fail.

Venture capitalists had gotten tired of rushing to invest in the latest fad, only to find that the potential profitability was more than 10 years off, if it existed at all (peapod or grocery works anyone?)

Suddenly, the "new economy" started hiring "old economy" folks - someone had actually put out a product and "made a budget."

@in debt for a hobby

It might seem hopeless, but I think it's awesome that you're working to pay the bills and trying for better. My first job that I started just before graduating SUCKED -- but paid the bills and the loans. But then things got better -- and those jobs led to other jobs. And I hope my post didn't come off as braggy -- I kinda reacted emotionally to someone assuming that all English majors are doomed to unemployment/debt, because it's something we hear a lot and is NOT true. Yeah, the pay is lower -- but if you live frugally, not a problem.

I have worked in publishing, journalism (for a tiny magazine and a larger newspaper), and now I work as an editor for a finance website. I know several people who landed paid writing gigs by starting blogs and covering things they're passionate about (or their own cities). Boom--instant portfolio to show potential employers.

And...if you need a lesson in branding yourself, building an engaged audience and showcasing your work, look no further than this very site! :)

I know of a guy who majored in English, taught high school for a while, accidentally stumbled into doing some systems analysis and consulting for the defense department, etc. Now he is one of the screenwriters for a current major motion picture. From his earliest memories he was a story teller.

My son flunked out of an Ivy League school because of undiagnosed ADHD and worked part time in a job, that he learned in high school, for a few years plus some hours manning the front desk because they felt sorry for him. From before puberty he was learning computer programming and system administration, self taught. He held one really good job for about a year, then he was laid off when the company dumped about 19,000 employees worldwide in October 2001 (a large part of their customer base was the airline industry.) He tried to find something but was unable until recently, several months after he finally went back to school and finished his degree in physics. Ultimately the company he ended up with, at a very good job, was because one of his friends who worked there handed his resume to a recruiter and said "we really want this guy working on our project." I don't think they would have even looked at his resume without the degree. He should have majored in computer science, I still don't know why he didn't.

The lesson is, do what you do because you cannot not do it. If you need a degree to do that, take the cheapest most expedient course to get it.

Women's Studies, African American Studies, etc. is basically an English degree where you read a certain type of literature, or a history degree where you focus on a certain part of history. Most liberal arts degrees fall into the same category... you're reading books, analyzing them, and writing papers... what changes is the subject matter of the books.

So they all kind of fall into the same category skills-wise.

The sciences are something else.

The thing about teaching real-world job skills is that isn't really the job of colleges. This is the problem.

Here in Switzerland most people don't go to the University. Most people get apprenticeships and go to a commerce school or trade school. My cousin, for example, just finished a hotel school where she learned to make beds, cook fancy dinner, do the accounts, clean, advertise, market, etc. Basically everything you need to know to run a fancy hotel. Many of her classmates are getting jobs right away. She's decided to go on to more studies, but that's her choice.

Here, the University is mostly taxpayer funded. But about half the kids get kicked out (because why should our taxes pay for slackers?). So the kids are all very motivated to work hard so they can stay in.

I graduate from nursing school in two days (YESSSS!!!!) and continue to meet students from all the programs in the area (my hospital is a big magnet for students). There's a private nursing college here in town that costs $45,000 for a BSN. I have my ADN for $7,000. When I point out that I've interviewed for the same residency program that they have, and will be a candidate for the same job that they are but without the debt, the blood usually drains from their face and they need to sit down.

Re Google's hiring practices, check out this link.

It's a perfect storm of several things coming together:

1. The takeover of the academy by the Left. Leftists disdain pretty much any field that has practical application; they turn their noses up at business and finance ("greedy capitalists") and they positively hate science and technology people ("evil polluters"). They love fields where you can bullshit your way through and get cred for hanging with the right crowd, while doing very little actual work. Hence their love of the XYZ Studies degrees, which are just about 100% political indoctrination and political tribal identification. (Here's a tip: If you have a degree in an XYZ Studies program, by all means omit it from your resume. It's a red flag to employers.) Even in more rigorous fields, the quality of the education does not match up to 50 or even 25 years ago. I'm in the engineering field, and I see a lot of newly-minted college graduate hires. A lot of them come out of school without learning all of the basic principles that apply in their chosen fields -- stuff that was second nature to the self-taught engineers of their parents' generation.

2. The growth of government and its intrusion into the private sector. Part of the problem that universities do run into when advising students is that most of the good private-sector jobs are being regulated out of existence. Consider integrated circuit design and manufacturing, very little of which takes place in the U.S. today. Getting the permits for an IC fab, assuming you can even do so anymore, takes so long that by the time the plant is up and running, it's already obsolete and the Hong Kong fabs are two generations ahead of you. And guess what? The designers want to be near the fab. They don't want to have to fly 7000 miles every time they want to do a test run of a new part. So if you've got the fab in Hong Kong, why not hire designers there? Why would you even mess with hiring anyone in the U.S.? Both the blue collar and the white collar lose out.

3. The jobs-as-entitlement mentality. This is a problem that the academy helped create, but it's a much bigger problem than just the university itself. A lot of these kids are being taught that there is something like the magical mythical Social Security lockbox: that a job has been reserved for them and is just waiting for them to go through the proper growing-up rituals so they can claim it. The principle of supply and demand in employment catches them by surprise; they're stunned to learn that there aren't an infinite number of openings available for graduates in Recreational and Leisure Studies.

Another contributing factor is that we have people teaching university level classes that have never done anything in their lives outside of a classroom.

We do not have actual engineers with actual engineering experience teaching engineering. In fact, the academics look down their noses at people with real world experience teaching.

Self-perpetuating mediocrity cycle, there.

Cousin Dave...re the fab story: the idea that Americans will do the "creative" work of design and marketing and financial services while outsourcing the "routine" work of manufacturing was sold heavily for at least a couple of decades, and it should now be obvious that there were always some serious holes in the theory:

1)As you point out, there are real advantages in having design and manufacturing in reasonable proximity to one another
2)There was always something a little bit ethnocentric in assuming that Asians (for example) could do the "routine" manufacturing but couldn't do design.
3)There is in reality quite a bit of creative work involved in setting up and running a manufacturing plant, and there are plenty of highly un-creative jobs involved in "services" industries.

I've seen a few cases of "(S)he was a great candidate but didn't have a degree, ergo no deal."

Stupid, lazy thinking.

@david foster,

How arrogant! Smart people know that any idiot can design something, it's the resourceful types who figure out how to make it. [/sarcasm]

Schwinn threw themselves under the bus by outsourcing and teaching the Chinese how to make bicycles.

I still remember, from college, the smarmy fuck with the collar pin from [major aerospace company] who saw my GPA (I'm smart but was a lousy student) and told me I couldn't be a design engineer but could probably be a manufacturing engineer.

It's best to cooperate to design something that can be made well and at low cost. It goes without saying, so I just said it.

I know a company that built a plant to make a certain type of compressor. They could build them, they just couldn't build ones that worked at any aceptable rate. They are buying them from somebody else now.

DaveG knows of what he writes. It happens.

Does anybody recall (pun intended) the Chevy Monza that needed to have the engine dropped to change a certain spark plug?

MarkD, I do remember that Monza, in addition to some other GM disasters of the period like the Oldsmobile diesel and the Cadillac 4-6-8 engine. And DaveG, I've probably met that guy...

A funny thing is happening with outsourcing. Some of the people who started doing it back in the '90s have become acquainted, the hard way, with Heinlein's Law. I'm seeing that happen in the software industry; people who outsource software to the cheapest possible source are finding that they get what the pay for, and bad software can cripple your business and turn into a money pit for maintenance. That's not to say that people in India can't do software -- but the ones who can do it right don't cost significantly less than comparable talent in the U.S.