I'm a senior in college for my Bachelor's and I think I have a pretty mature outlook on a good deal of issues compared to some of my peers I see each day. Not to sound like someone who's full of myself by any means, but hopefully you understand what I mean. I have been thinking about this a lot lately and sometimes I wish I had gone into a trade because I'm just not even interested in school (I've done well and have a good high 3 range gpa) and could never work a desk job. I need to work with my hands to be happy but the problem is I never got to learn a lot of diy stuff like vehicle repairs, installing electrical house items, etc so I'm slowly going to learn on my own so I have to rely on people less. Now I clearly know myself and I know what I have to do to pay off my college debt when I graduate. I'm going to have to play the game and go for the money for a while even though it isn't what I want to do. I've kept my debt fairly low, have my Class B CDL (got at 19 through work) and work 2 jobs to support my truck/modding, expenses and school.

My point is this: My school is a well respected state University. I commute and pay around 9000 a year taking 4 classes each semester. So say around $40000 including books and all the fun stuff for 4 years (I will spillover into 4.5 years and take a few extra classes this year to graduate next fall) So not too bad and I get a "good" education. If I am doing this myself and come out of school with around 15-18k in debt, and that's considered good, what the hell are the kids paying 40-50k a year going to do? I brought this point up in class today. Say most kids will have 50k+ in debt and take 10-20 years to pay it off. If you graduate at 21-23, that's in your 30s. Many get married by then and are thinking of having kids. So take the college debt, stack it on food bills, rent/house payments, and then MORE school debt for their own kids? There's just no way that's possible. With slow job growth, inflation that cancels out gains in pay, I really don't see college educations being as prominent as they are currently. Their rate of increase in cost is beserk. For some perspective, my dad put himself through Northeastern University in the 70s on his own... now it's 48-50k a year. Talk about inflation. Just my opinions, what do you think?

 

And just to add this, entirely my own opinion so I'm not pushing it on anyone. College educations offer some benefit, but I have yet to see any real benefit to date other than to give the qualification that I can say I have a 4 year degree and get jobs kids with less can't. I think it's become a phony standard that we as people are sucked into paying. What I think should occur is a 4 year program. 2 years trades, 2 years academics. Too many people (including myself) are getting degrees that serve us little to no purpose other than more debt that becomes a black hole.

 

we're a world wide economy, have been since the internet started. If you depend only on your local economy then your income will suffer. Local economy gets hurt by alot of things, lack of high income earners, income being spent elsewhere, income being earned locally and sent to another country, income being spent at big box stores where less than 6% of what is spent goes back into the local economy, etc.

 

So this is kind of long but it's my story of how I got where I am without a college education. Don't care for my story, then skip the first 3 paragraphs.

I'm now 22 years old. I graduated from high school 6 months early and was 18 at that time. 1 week after graduating from high school I started College. I was going to start with a 2 yr degree in Software Design from a technical college and see where that got me. I would go for a 4 yr if I needed it for a job. During the first semester I was working in the corporate office of another university down the street from where I was going to school so I only had to commute 6 blocks from school to work. That job went south a month after school started. I wound up working in an accounting office doing basic data entry stuff at that point because I had a truck that I had to pay for. After a summer in the accounting thing I left because I couldn't stand being in an office all day. I had a newer truck with some lawnmowers and I liked working outside so I started cutting grass. I also got into helping out a guy who flipped houses. Had my own little business making $15 an hour. It wasn't a whole lot, but it was enough to pay the bills and have a little bit extra.

I did this along with snow removal in the winter through my second semester of school. I got bored quickly with school and dropped out after that second semester. I was good at the software design portion, but the general academic stuff was the same crap I had done in high school and was boring. So after spending the next few months doing just about any labor work that I could find to get paid for I got a bit of a hookup from one of my Father's coworkers. They have a trucking company but also do some expedited hotshot stuff. At 20 yrs old it would be hard for their insurance to let me in, but they told me to get a CDL and they would see what their insurance could do. So I went and spent the money and month at a CDL school and came home with my CDL A. I liked driving quite a bit, so I figured a job like this would work out because it's something I already enjoy. Unfortunately their insurance refused to let them hire me. They couldn't afford the insurance to let it happen so they couldn't give me the job. So now I was 20 yrs old with a $5k license and no job. No trucking companies would hire me because you can't drive interstate until you're 21. Couldn't even find a dump truck locally because it was the beginning of December and there wasn't much construction going on. So after 2 weeks of sitting home with no job my Dad got me a job working in a steel stamping factory. Started out at $12 an hour and worked my way up to $17 by the time I left a year later when I turned 21. Applied to one of the big carriers and have now been here for almost a year.

There is no law saying you need a college degree to make it in this world. Both of my parents didn't go to school. Both of them make a very good living. They have worked their entire lives to get where they are because they come from families that didn't have enough money to send them to school. My mom owns her own business. She bought out the previous owner when he retired after working for him for 20 years. No formal education, but still successful.



I don't have a fancy piece of paper from a college. I don't have 20-40k in school loans. I make a decent living and get to see the entire country. I don't think I will ever get a college degree because there is nothing that I want to do that requires one. I truly enjoy my job and it required a month of school to get it.

College is not for everybody. Yes, we do need people in the corporate offices with their business degrees, but we also need people to get their hands dirty and work hard. If you enjoy working with your hands then do that. I enjoy my job greatly and as such don't mind working long hours away from home.

I think that people should do what they want. Don't spend a pile of money and put your self in debt for the next 30 years just because society says that's what you need to do. Don't get a degree and then spend the next 40 years of your life sitting in a cubicle wondering what could have been if you had just taken a chance at doing what you enjoyed. If you like working with your hands but don't have the knowledge or ability at this time go to a technical school and see if they offer something to teach you.

I think that the people who go to school because they are told they should but don't really want to are just being set up for failure. They aren't enjoying it and as such aren't as likely to put forth a full effort. Then when they fail at something they were forced into they wind up with a bunch of debt and nothing to show for it.

I think this kind of applies to the subject here. Just my story and opinions.

 

At one point in our history college was only for the wealthy. During that time high school was only for the well off. Higher education wasn't always for the masses. Somewhere along the line someone figured out that if the wealthy are doing it, then it must be needed to become wealthy. That started the push to get everyone into college. Unfortunately, as you seem to have figured out, colleges started lowering their standards. That was the only way they could afford to educate the masses. It has come to a period in our history where the laws of economics are catching up. The prices of a college education has to go up, because there are more people trying to go to college. It is the law of supply and demand, that according to some doesn't work.

I think what people are missing is the fact that just possessing the degree does not set you up for success. It is the personal interactions you have while attending college. The friends you make and hang with and the network you start building, that is most important. The sheepskin I have on my wall, means little to me. The reason is, I attended much of the coursework through work. Most of the classes I actually attended on my own were very wrong in their theories. I had seen the theories tried again and again. They failed over an over. I had to sit through the classes, learn the material, regurgitate it, then forget it because it didn't work. Since I obtained the degree I can directly relate it to a $50 per month pay raise that went away when I left that particular job. This degree that I paid roughly 10k for has earned me about $900.

The truth is you really don't need the degree to do most work. It will take you longer to get to an equivalent level though without one and you will hit a glass ceiling eventually unless you own the company. The majority of college graduates do not work in their major field study. I think, generally the point of the degree is two fold. First many managers believe you must have it to be able to perform adequately. I think this is a left over from the times when a degree was reserved for the wealthy. Kind of a "good ol' boys club," that once your a member doors open for you. Second, in fields that don't really need any specific degree it shows you can complete something you started.

My last thought on degrees is colleges are nothing more than a business. They are there to make money. That is their primary goal. If they help you out along the way great. If not, fine. They are trying to sell you a degree. You can get degrees in some of the most useless fields, but you will get your degree and not have a job. You can also get very complex degrees in fields that are over represented and wind up having a good degree that has no jobs. Conversely, you can get your degree in some of the most mundane fields that nobody wants to study and set yourself up very nicely. When I went to school the first two years in college were mostly the core classes that you would need for all degrees. I hated it, but now that I look back it makes sense. Your last two years were primarily all your major and elective courses. This meant that from the time you started investing a lot of money in your major, you only had about two years from start to finish. The job market shouldn't change too much in that time period.

 

Often times, the primary benefit of a college degree in this day and age is that it allows you to meet the minimum educational threshold of so many good career paths. For example, in the job I have held for the past 16 years, I rarely, if ever, use the skills that I gained in college. However, the opportunity to even apply for this position would not have been available to me if I had not had the sheet of paper that said I completed my four year degree. So, while I have no doubt that a person can become successful without a degree, having one tends to open many doors in terms of career choices that might otherwise be closed to you.

Incidentally, the one bit of advice I would give a young kid is to not get caught up in the hype of spending obscene amounts of money to go to a certain type of school thinking that it's going pay-off in the future. When I look around at the people I know, the ones who make the most money actually went to fairly non-descript state schools that offered a good education at a reasonable price. The ones I know who went to the prestigious "glamour" institutions aren't awarded any extra income because of their choice in schools as far as I can tell.

 

I agree great responses so far but ddwello, you prove my point. A degree should not decide what job you can apply for in many situations. Its a false requirement IMO and I have seen countless situations where a job is decided on the degree and the person without the degree is more qualified. I just feel that unless your going into a highly specialized field a full degree should not be necessary. However by today's standards, it is.

 

I am the director of operations for an IT Company. I am directly responsible for the hiring of our staff. I can tell you that I hire experience and certifications over degrees any day. In another industry the degree may be more relevant but I am sure I could argue anyone that it is still worthless. I will caveat that statement with the exception of things like Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and education which are industries of study if you will. I believe the degree is imperative in those fields because of the nature of the work. The skills and knowledge of those professions need to be learned in the classroom and fortified with real life experience. I have one and I don't use it! See for the rest of us paper pushers, drivers and nerds, college degrees are a waste of money. If you are just looking for a paycheck so you will have the means to live the life you wish to live, go to a trade school. Get your experience in the real world in that field. I wish I had done that. It would have saved me a ton of money. Another user posted that a college is just a type of business and I couldn't agree more. At a state school you are forced to re-take AND PAY FOR all of the courses you passed when you graduated high school! WTF is that all about? You can say its to weed out those not fit for college and if that is the truth then shame on those who would take the money of those unfit for college and let them fall to the wayside. College is something you need to be educated and informed about before you make the financial commitment. Public school diminishes the importance of vocational studies in favor of a college track. Ironically this directly negates the ideology of "no child left behind". As I used to tell my students when I taught public school, "Don't get down on yourself because you think college is not for you." Understand that the the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the lights we turn on and the water we pull from our faucet come from the hands of skilled tradesman, not the pages of books and words of professors. Be proud of your contribution for you are no less than the one with the degree. And you can bet your *** there are many with a degree that will be breaking out their check book when they need you to fix the very things they depend on for their existence. Case in point, my industry. The people that work for me are specialists. They insure the communications infrastructure people depend on is working all of the time. This is a lucrative field with lots of money and reward that does NOT require a college degree. It affords those who pursue it a lot of freedom that many college graduates will never have. College can be a wonderful place and I truly enjoyed my college experience. I must reiterate, that if I knew then what I knew now, I would have done it differently. I still would have partied my *** off LOL, but I wouldn't have any debt!

 

Some of the dumbest people I know have degrees. Colleges teach no common sense. I live very close to SDSU here in San Diego and I can tell you, most of the professors are teaching Liberal crap to these kids. Telling them that they are "educated", what ever the hell that means. Just having conversations with some of these seniors is very scary. They have no clue how the world works.................and they all have their noses up Obamas azz...............

 

It's would be great to have a degree and a trade but common sense as stated is not taught in school. So many people I've met over the year are book smart but dumb in every other aspect of life. So many people even with college degrees can't manage the money they make and end up even deeper in debt. I regret not finishing college back in the late '60's because I left to go in the Air National Guard for 6 yrs when I had the chance. I worked for a major oil company for 17 yrs and another company for almost 23 yrs untill I retired last year but the lack of a degree kind of held me back from climbing the corporate ladder. Wife always worked and with our two salaries we managed to put both of our daughter's through college. My oldest is an insurance agent and has her own office building and has my wife and my other daughter working for her. One of my son in law's is a naval architect and has a degree from Va Tech. Just about all of my cousins are college grad's but I can still kick their butt's in a trivia pursuit game! In all college is not for everyone but self educating themselves should be! You'll be suprised how it can help in the workplace.

 

I agree that many people are getting degrees that serve little purpose, and I believe that is mainly because lots of high school graduates don't really know what they want to do, so they go get something like a business degree and hope it takes them somewhere. I think that trade school would leave a lot of folks better off unless they have a good plan of where to get a job or go into a field that has a high demand for workers. I was considering doing a trade such as welding, but a large nuclear plant close to me (Plant Vogtle) has a new reactor scheduled to be done around the time I will graduate college (approx. 4-5 yrs), so I am going for a mechanical engineering degree and hopefully work at Vogtle. If that doesn't work out, then I should be able to get a job at SRS, which is about the same distance from me as Vogtle.

 

A college degree does not confer or even indicate the presence of intelligence. The process of attaining a degree DOES expose a person to new ways of seeing things, and that process provides a theoretical background that may make understanding of future activities easier. If a person participates in co-op or similar programs during the process, it can provide experience that improves his or her value in future life.

Does one need a degree to be successful? Of course not. We have many examples of highly successful, un-degreed people in society, just as we have many examples of over educated idiots.

Does a degree open opportunities? Yes, and lack of a degree may unfairly close off opportunities to deserving people.

Does all this make the concept of a college education bad? Absolutely not, in my opinion. To me, the whole idea of education and lifelong learning is a priceless gift that we should take full advantage of, in whatever way we can.

- Jack

 

I think that having gone trough the process of earning a degree would be a help to my resume. I'm a tradesman, but a degree would give me more cred in certain circles.

I can understand why young people might question the reason for having a degree. Being young seems like it takes forever to get through, but being old lasts a long time. My point is, if you get as much education as you can when you're young, you have many years to apply it. You will be able to hone your skills, and will have choices in the direction you go.

I think that it would be good if more people who want to go to college could. It's too expensive. People who are paying off student loans for years and years should be getting on the colleges case about how much money they spend on professors, their pensions, their infrastructure, and any other expense that makes college so expensive.

Opportunities will return someday. We'll all be alright, someday. Sooner than later would be good.

 

Census data shows that you can earn about $1M more in your lifetime with a bachelors vs. just a HS diploma.

Here you go:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpsta...pinc04_000.htm

 

While it may be false, it's reality, which is where I prefer to dwell -- thus I invested the time and effort to get my degree. While a degree may not be a direct indicator of intelligence or capability, the statistics show than a degreed individual, on average, will earn far more than someone who is not. With facts like that, I would say you're crazy not to pursue one in this day and age if you have the ability and intellect to do so.