College is Overrated

[Pointedstick]

This whole thread is a great discussion.  Thanks to all for the sincere and insightful comments.  I've been reading attentively.

I have a good friend with a daughter due to start college next year.  The girl is as sharp as can be and can pass any class.  She likes the arts, but also shows up for math and science and just does the work and uninterestedly gets good grades.  She is going to go to college because her mom tells her that she should.

Argh!!!!

I'm tempted to sponsor her education, but it goes against everything that I believe.  I think we are still on the cusp of a college degree being required as the proof of intellect for any high paying job.  But... I *really* wish it weren't so.  I'm hoping to convince the girl to get an AA in radiology or something before pursuing a degree.  But... who are we (us old farts) to second guess the folks that will have to live with their decisions...

This really bothers me.

Mark, your example is a perfect illustration of the problem today. 

My answer for someone who likes the arts is that arts (or music, etc.) make wonderful hobbies.  Something you do for enjoyment in your spare time. Seriously. 

+100. I think this idea that you have to find a job you love is a terrible one. Every job becomes drudgery after a while, even awesome ones. I used to be obsessed with computers, but 6 years working for a tech firm has dried up most of my interest in the subject outside of work. I used to be interested in 3D printing, but running a 3D printing business full-time for two years burned me out on that, too. When you keep something as a hobby, it can remain pleasurable for as long as you want it to. I look forward to retiring so I can concentrate on keeping my hobbies as hobbies, and not having to monetize them and take on all the pressure that entails.

This is to say nothing of the fact that there aren't really any jobs in "the arts." Most artists have to be entrepreneurs; almost nobody goes out and hires some artists standing at the unemployment counter. You take art classes in college to become a better artist, not to qualify you from some job out there that's waiting for you.

[Pointedstick]

In other words, I thing there is a lot going for working a job for the money, and using that money to finance your real passions. The two best ways to do this seem to be finding a well-enough-paying job you can envision doing for decades, or bust your butt on something really really well-paying, save most of your money, and then tone it down to intermittent part-time work or even ERE.

Come to think of it, most of the happiest working people I know are folks who have found day jobs or careers they liked well enough but maybe weren't super passionate about, but who spend their free time on creative pursuits that may or may not result in sales and income, but there's no pressure to do so. As an example, the father of one of my wife's good friends was a night manager at a supermarket for 35 years. No college degree, no debt, nothing. Apparently he saved a decent amount of his pay and even has a moderate pension. Now at 55 he's basically able to do whatever he wants until he dies. All that time, his real passions were playing his guitar and snowmobiling.

[MachineGhost]

This really bothers me.

Not sure what the issue is.  Steer her to a engineeering field, preferably one involving software and AI.  After all, someone will have to maintain the robots as Overlord.  There is no better job security than that.

[Greg]

This really bothers me.

Not sure what the issue is.  Steer her to a engineeering field, preferably one involving software and AI.  After all, someone will have to maintain the robots as Overlord.  There is no better job security than that.

+1

Robots will eventually become our masters (the singularity is coming), so play nice with them and learn how to work well with them.

[MachineGhost]

My answer for someone who likes the arts is that arts (or music, etc.) make wonderful hobbies.  Something you do for enjoyment in your spare time. Seriously. 

Yep, DO NOT ever turn a hobby into a job.

So far I haven't seen anyone bring up what the major point of college is: the networking.  That's what gets you a cushy job in the future, not your degree.  And it's worth paying the huge premium for Ivy League just for that aspect.  It's not worth paying a huge premium to go into a second or third-tier college because the networking won't be top notch and the premium won't be recouped in the future.  In such a case you might as well just get the same degree online for a lot less cost.  Of course, I'm ignoring the social growth aspects of getting away from your parents and going through the school of hard knocks.  That's undoubtedly invaluable, but its an expensive way to get life experience.

[Tyler]

So far I haven't seen anyone bring up what the major point of college is: the networking.  That's what gets you a cushy job in the future, not your degree. 

If you're really just there for the networking, why not cut out the administrative middle man and just show up at the parties with a keg?  Better yet, make a small business out of throwing parties and give guest lectures at the business school to debt-laden finance majors who still can't balance their own checkbook.  Put on some hipster glasses and you'll probably get invited to do a TED talk. 

[Mountaineer]

....  Every job becomes drudgery after a while, even awesome ones. I used to be obsessed with computers, but 6 years working for a tech firm has dried up most of my interest in the subject outside of work. I used to be interested in 3D printing, but running a 3D printing business full-time for two years burned me out on that, too.....

I may be the really odd duck here because I really enjoyed my career - note that during my career with a Fortune 50 company I had many "jobs", 14 formally with title changes if my memory serves me correctly plus all the various dozens of training/development sessions several times a year (ballpark 10% of my time) which helped keep me energized.  I had a variety of technical and managerial assignments.  So, in one sense, I can see how you could burn out of a "job" if it were the same old, same old for 40 years, but I have a hard time seeing how a career you really enjoy would not be the desired vision when picking a college major.  I do see how you could "let" your career become stale if you had crappy bosses that would not let you do the job the way you wanted, or if there were no opportunities to stay on top of the game via training and development, try new things and new technologies, etc. 

Back to the topic of what to take in school - for me, it was Chemical Engineering, but the main things I learned were how to think critically, how to evaluate different situations, how to interact with others to get a task completed, how to conduct experiments (physical and thought) to determine the best course of action, and such.  The actual math, chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, kinetics, design, process control, and all the other stuff was really secondary to learning how to think critically and objectively.  Just my experience, but I still maintain it is far better to have a career that you enjoy rather than just the pursuit of money.  After all, you do spend a third or fourth of your working life involved in that career so you better enjoy what you do if at all possible - I have known people who had "job burnout" that spilled into their home life and ended up having affairs, taking it out on the kids, getting divorced, and worse.  Like I said to begin, maybe I'm the odd duck.

... Mountaineeer

[barrett]

My answer for someone who likes the arts is that arts (or music, etc.) make wonderful hobbies.  Something you do for enjoyment in your spare time. Seriously. 

Yep, DO NOT ever turn a hobby into a job.

So far I haven't seen anyone bring up what the major point of college is: the networking.  That's what gets you a cushy job in the future, not your degree.  And it's worth paying the huge premium for Ivy League just for that aspect.  It's not worth paying a huge premium to go into a second or third-tier college because the networking won't be top notch and the premium won't be recouped in the future.  In such a case you might as well just get the same degree online for a lot less cost.  Of course, I'm ignoring the social growth aspects of getting away from your parents and going through the school of hard knocks.  That's undoubtedly invaluable, but its an expensive way to get life experience.

Agreed on the networking being huge. Also, I think that can be viewed as an extension of PS's non-PC idea of going to a high-powered school to meet and marry into success. The connections end up being super valuable even without the sex.

"The arts" are not totally without merit as a career although performing artists are getting squeezed out by the rapid cultural shift away from humans and toward machines. This process has accelerated dramatically in the last ten years. For a long time a lot of creative people were able to make a good living selling their art. The tricky thing was that most creative types usually stunk at marketing (good product, lack of business sense), and the marketing types were just not that creative (lots of hustling but nothing great to sell).

Sounds like Mountaineer hit the magic balance between career satisfaction and money.

[Pointedstick]

For a long time a lot of creative people were able to make a good living selling their art. The tricky thing was that most creative types usually stunk at marketing (good product, lack of business sense), and the marketing types were just not that creative (lots of hustling but nothing great to sell).

My personal experience having married into a family with a lot of artists in it (and a lot of artist friends) is that this is precisely the problem. It's why middlemen like publishers and record labels and movie studios and agents exist in the first place; to intermediate between people with artistic talent but no mind for money, and the people who want to consume their art.

My impression is that there was never any golden age, though. For most of human history, artists needed to find rich patrons, and those who couldn't weren't able to pursue art professionally. After that, the rise of middlemen led to total exploitation of artists by giving them like 5% of the profits; hey, they weren't going to complain, right? They're a bunch of moonbats, said the middlemen. Now the internet makes it incredibly easy for artists with entrepreneurial talent to leverage it themselves, but this is maybe 10% of them. The rest of the artists are no better off than they were before, and maybe worse off due to more competition that comes from living in a totally media-saturated society.

As always, you need to do everything yourself if you want to avoid getting exploited by others.

[stone]

I don't know whether it counts as "art" but people do work doing the art work for computer games. A neighbour of my parents does that and always seemed to be on a recruiting drive to get hold of more employees to do that work. He came to the UK from Spain following his wife (who I think was an academic) and just fell into doing it because there are a lot of computer game producers in that part of the UK and he had been to art college.

[Tyler]

Here's all the data you could ever want for trying to decide on the payoff of a certain degree.

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/u ... Report.pdf

[Mark Leavy]

Here's all the data you could ever want for trying to decide on the payoff of a certain degree.

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/u ... Report.pdf

Outstanding.
Much appreciated,

Mark

[MachineGhost]

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/u ... Report.pdf

So, looks like Electrical Engineering is the highest paying job for a recent college graduate ($62K) and Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Sciences & Administration for an experienced college graduate ($114K).

Excluding engineering, the high paying jobs for an experienced college graduate are:

Business Economics
Finance
Management, Info Systems & Statistics (MBA?)
Computer Science
Information Sciences
Physics
Pharmacy, etc.
Economics

How would one maximize as many of these fields as possible in a degree?

[WiseOne]

Seriously, I wouldn't pick a career based solely on expected remuneration.  However long you spend at a career, it's way too much time to be unhappy.  I've got plenty of gripes about mine, but at the end of the day my job is amazingly rewarding and it more than makes up for the fact that my buddies in private practice earn twice my salary.  They don't have dilemmas like this:  I got invited to give two talks overseas, and have travel funding only for one...do I go to Prague in July or Australia (Melbourne) in August?  (I'm leaning toward Prague.)

I think this thread is arguing only that diving into a vat of student loans should be reserved for careers that can be counted on to pay those loans off.  And that very rewarding careers can be shaped without a college degree.  Further, taking on massive student loan debt means you're now locked into that high paying career and can't change your mind without seriously compromising your future.  Scary risky.

[Tyler]

Further, taking on massive student loan debt means you're now locked into that high paying career and can't change your mind without seriously compromising your future.  Scary risky.

Good point.  Red-plated debt handcuffs can be pretty brutal when they chain you to a career that causes you distress.  The tricky thing is that it's hard to know that ahead of time for a naive 18-year-old picking a major. 

I'd recommend:
1) Make a list of careers you're pretty sure you may find intrinsically rewarding in some way other than the pay
2) Establish an income/debt baseline to eliminate options that very likely make no financial sense.  Feel free to pursue them as hobbies.
3) With the rest of the list, make a final decision only after interviewing people in those careers right now.  Ask about both the good and the bad.
4) Look for inexpensive alternatives to achieve your goal that preserve your future flexibility.

[MachineGhost]

1) Make a list of careers you're pretty sure you may find intrinsically rewarding in some way other than the pay

But isn't the built-in implication here that you will find at least one career from the list that is intrinsically rewarding.  What if you don't?  That never goes answered because the factory line system and higher education industrial complex would both screech to a halt.

I'm long past 17 or 18 but when I look at that list of high-paying jobs, I don't want to turn any of them into a career kowtowing to some boss or evil corporation doing stupid, boring work I rather not being doing, instead of keeping them a profitable hobby.  So, what's the answer?

i should mention it here because it is tremendously useful even if I can't be bothered to actually do the work, but What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles is now in its (firing up Windows calculator)...  45th yearly printing.  If you can manage to get through it, you surely will know what your excellency is job or career-wise.  I think any 17 or 18 year old deserves a gift copy at a bare minimum (yeah, I didn't do it back then either!).

[l82start]

  Some kids get a lot of career guidance (and even management) from parents and friends, but I think that circle is still probably too small to rely on for such an important decision.

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.

Benjamin: Yes, sir.

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Benjamin: Yes, I am.

Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?

[I Shrugged]

Many if not most college grads don't stay in the field of their degree.  On the one hand, that allows for someone to get an art degree.  On the other, I still say get something that will at least shuttle you into a career start.

[Tyler]

But isn't the built-in implication here that you will find at least one career from the list that is intrinsically rewarding.  What if you don't?  (yeah, I didn't do it back then either!).

Many if not most college grads don't stay in the field of their degree.  On the one hand, that allows for someone to get an art degree.  On the other, I still say get something that will at least shuttle you into a career start.

I see these as related.  My DW has never really had a particular career calling, but she picked a major she knew would open lots of doors (mechanical engineering) and graduated with no debt.  She found over time that people skills & management was more her thing than heavy technical stuff, and had the foundation and flexibility to make things happen. 

[Libertarian666]

Having a daughter who is a junior in high school, I am finding this thread very sobering. I myself didn't learn well in a school environment and am also of the autodidact bent, though not so accomplished as some on here.

Our daughter seems to learn a lot when she has a teacher who is skilled at putting stuff across in an interesting way. She learns virtually nothing from books on her own. I think that is probably normal but what to do about college and the shrinking pool of decent jobs? Anyone else on here have kids that are close in age to ours? Though we have some savings for her education, I am really at a loss as to how to advise her beyond the terribly generic "work hard." When I look toward the future I don't see a land of possibilities. Argh!

...
Then there's option 4, which is politically incorrect and possibly offensive so I hesitate to mention it, but it's the truth: option 4 is to go to the highest powered school possible with the hope of snagging a mate with good career possibilities. An attractive, intelligent asian-american young woman is bound to be borderline irresistible to hormonal young men in a mostly unsupervised, highly sexualized, alcohol-rich environment (what, you didn't think that's what college was? ). If placed in a situation where the young men are more likely than not to have successful lives, she could have a real possibility of hitching her wagon to a winner. This was after all traditionally why young women were sent to college in the first place--to hobnob with go-getter men who would make good husband material. For all the feminism being thrown around on campus, I can personally attest that this phenomenon is alive and well.

I did say it was politically incorrect, no?

Perhaps, but not politically incorrect enough to stop a woman from writing essentially the same thing as a letter to the editor of the "Daily Princetonian":
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-pat ... 88154.html

[Libertarian666]

Anyway, for HS students these days, I agree with previous posters that college makes the most sense for those pursuing a defined, decent-paying career path.  Just off the top of my head, those paths include:  Medicine, Engineering, Accounting, and Sales.  There are no salespeople on this forum, so we can cross that one off the list.  Accounting is a really good field, in my opinion.  It's pretty challenging, but not as difficult as Engineering or Medicine.  The only MBA that's worth much is one from a top 5 program.  You need to be an extrovert to do well in those programs, so again we can probably cross that off the list for most forum posters and their children.

Finance in general, I would say. My sister was recently dating a fellow who's good at math and decided he wanted to be rich, so he's currently studying to be an actuary. He attended an in-state school and is brilliant, so he got a free ride. He has already gotten a paid internship at a major financial firm where on a monthly basis he made almost as much money as I do. Actuary Science is probably better for your mental health too than most of the prospects in that industry, since you'd be doing more of the "calculating when old men will die" than the "scamming old men out of their life savings."

That's how I started out right after college, lo these many years ago. Unfortunately it was fairly boring; I found the programming part much more interesting than the actuarial science part, so I switched careers.

Wait a minute: he wants to be rich so he is studying to be an actuary? Hmm, somehow I don't think that adds up. How much do actuaries make these days? It's hard to believe they get "rich". Reasonably well-paid, sure, but "rich" seems a bit much.

[Libertarian666]

Option 3 is the path we have been planning on more or less, positioning assets and jumping through other hoops... just playing the damn game the way it is set up. But the kid still needs to be employable when she graduates, right?

Right. Even if she gets a free ride at a good school, if she doesn't learn anything that makes her employable in the elite world she'll have become accustomed to in a selective school, she'll be disappointed and embittered, even if she's not crushed by debt. Nobody ever mentions this; once you've experienced 4 years surrounded by intellectually stimulating potential future elites, you're not going to want move back to a small town, so to speak.

I can say I've never been surrounded by so many smart people as I was at college. But it hasn't made me bitter; rather, I'm grateful that I had that experience at least once in my life.

[Libertarian666]

On a slightly related note, I think it'd be interesting if college tuition rates were largely dependent on what society needed. So if we needed more Nurses in the U.S. or a particular geographic area of the school, then the tuition rate would lower to entice more people to go into nursing. Same would go for those that wanted a major that wasn't needed as much by society (or not a lot of jobs currently for them), so tuition would be higher.

Granted this is then a double-whammy for those desiring to pursue a degree that doesn't have as much job prospects (less jobs available after graduating plus high tuition for that degree), but it would help out those trying to get degrees in stuff society needs.

This however is social engineering and not sure if this could take off or not.

That would happen automatically if the government wasn't subsidizing, penalizing, and generally interfering in the labor and education markets. That's because "What society needs", if it means anything, means "What individuals are willing to pay for out of their own resources".

[Libertarian666]

Thanks for your input, PS & WiseOne!

WiseOne, I like the idea of internships and am trying to push our daughter in that direction for this summer (the one between her junior and senior years of high school).

PS, I'll go with options 1,3 & 4! I love the idea of gap years and think they can also be beneficial just in terms of a kid getting a break in their studies. And getting real world experience can only be a plus.

Option 3 is the path we have been planning on more or less, positioning assets and jumping through other hoops... just playing the damn game the way it is set up. But the kid still needs to be employable when she graduates, right?

Being Chinese my wife talks openly about all kinds of things that are not necessarily PC, and option 4 is one that she has put out there many times. Whether male or female, a person has better odds of meeting a future high earner at a high-powered school. Of course high-earning women don't tend to latch onto low-earning men, but we are not worried here about how the world maybe should work!

Men don't find high-earning women more desirable as mates. Women do find high-earning men more desirable as mates.
This is due to basic biology and will never change, although of course the details depend on societal organization.

[Libertarian666]

Isn't there some happy medium between not blundering into becoming debt ridden and unemployable, and yet at the same time not having your life course dictated by scurrying around seeking money? It sort of saddens me to think of an 18 year old choosing a career path based on the hope that it pays well. If someone finds finance fun then great and then the great pay is a bonus. But otherwise why spend a massive chunk of your life on something just because the pay is good? Surely all that matters is to do what you love and to be able to live OK from it? What's so special about being rich?

The concept may be increasingly coming under technological assault, but high pay is still a marker for high utility to others, and money is still required to enjoy the luxuries of modernity, that's why. Nearly all the people I know who are wealthy work exceptionally hard and provide a lot of positive value to others. And by contrast, of the people I know who are very poor, almost none of them provide a great deal of much of economic value to others. For example I am friends with some artists who create art that nobody likes, or that people might like if they would bother to try and sell it, and they make most of their spending money working menial jobs that do not require college degrees. Because these people produce very little value to others, they suffer the ill effects of poverty, and are unable to dig themselves out from the mountain of student loan debt they have accumulated.

I agree with you for the most part (no surprise there) but I know of a few exceptions, where people who perform services with a significant value to the potential recipients but are paid almost nothing.

I'm thinking in particular of two science fiction writers who have been hamstrung in the past by an archaic, hideously inefficient publishing system. The result is that they have readers clamoring for new books (or even reprints of old works) and no way of fulfilling those demands. Of course we now have Kindle self-publishing, so this shouldn't be a problem in the future to nearly the same extent.

I've tried to do something about this in the past with one of the victims of this system, but unfortunately he was so embittered by his previous experience that he wanted nothing to remind him of it.

Anyway, the point is that it is possible for people to be able to do something of value but be thwarted by technical details of business organization, e.g., the makeup and behavior of the publishing industry.