I had no postsecondary interests, but my parents were the embodiment of this, yep yep.
Turns out taking random subjects you have no interest in doesn’t result in success. Crazy. What did I want to do? Nothing. Still don’t. Unioned Plant Operator it is.
Luckily that was in 2010 Canada. Wasn’t much debt, just a waste of 3 years.
This is how it went down for me:
My senior year, they herded us into the auditorium for a 45 minute presentation on how you would be a total failure and will be scrubbing toilets for all of your days if you didn’t sign up for college RIGHT NOW. After that, you were put in line for the recruiter where you’d pick your school and your major. When it came my turn, I told them that I wasn’t sure and was thinking of trade school. The recruiter said “oh.” and sent me back to class. The school seemed to care a lot less about my academic well being after that exchange. The Military recruiters were VERY interested in how I was doing though. Being a teen during the 00’s was wild.
I didn’t have that experience, but it was a given for anyone in honors/AP classes that you’d head to college–they didn’t ask if you wanted to. My grades weren’t that great, but weighted my GPA was still alright. My guidance counselor asked if I wanted in state or out of state; public or private; small, medium, or large; and what I’d like to major in. After I said in state, she talked about a state-funded scholarship that was really easy to get 75% of my tuition covered. So, I went to the local university and majored in the first thing I blabbed about in that meeting. I basically signed my name in a couple of places and I was off to college. Ended up fine for me, but it could have gone much worse if I was a few years younger.
Very controlling and didn’t care about what we wanted in my experience. Wanted to be an aerospace engineer. Got a great scholarship to the school I wanted to go to, told me they’d disown me and not help if I moved out of state and ever failed. Showed where all income was coming from as it was Kettering University so with the scholarship and their program was set up for co-op, so you’d do school and internships (they help set you up with them too) back and forth through till you finish your degree. Nope.
Instead just wanted to put doubts in my mind and force me to go to a local University with the promise they would help me pay for it instead. Told me if I joined the Marines or such to get school paid for they would be pissed as well, my Uncle told my mother that a lot of people do well working after getting out of the military as they often get first dibs on positions, my mother didn’t talk to her brother for months.
They never paid a dime to the school they wanted me to go to, I never liked their programs… and when I did finally graduate had between $30-40,000 in debt… no internship experience and just kept trying to work in IT with the experience I had built without a degree. (No one accepted applications in other fields)
Maybe someone has agreed to hire me for having a degree, but really all of them have seemed to hire me because I had years of experience working and suppoting the software/hardware they needed/had. After all, the experience they want isn’t taught in any class I took to get the degree.
My school didn’t talk to me at all. They deemed me as having a learning disability, a lost cause and let me rot in the remedial classes. When I tried to get my education back on track, they stonewalled anything that could be considered risky, which was everything.
I was livid when they hand out guides during senior year on what colleges actually look for. Things that you should have been doing since freshman year. At that point, no one in my family had gone to a four year college, so the school was my only source of info on the topic. I should have walked out of the school that day.
Flipping burgers for us. There were only the two options. That or college. And a few minutes spent on talking to creditors if you can’t pay the loan but DON’T WORRY ABOUT THAT YET just go to school the bills will take care of themselves.
20 years and 50k in as of yet unpaid student debt later for a piece of paper I never and will never use, I ended up going to trade school and getting it paid for by my employer entirely.
Now I have a better job, union representation, and almost no petty office bullshit. Had I entered the field after high school I’d be one of the most knowledgeable people in my field. But, it was college or burgers, they spent a lot of money to send that message as often as possible.
That was similar to my experience. If your parents weren’t providing coaching for what constituted a “good” school or what might be a “good” major you were basically playing roulette.
Jokes on them, not even the state school wanted me because I was such a slacker in highschool. Working a dead end job, waking up after a year, and enrolling in community college was the best thing that could have happened to me.
Calls from a recruiter literally every week and a monthly drop by because apparently that’s an ok thing to do.
The way the military straight up prey on HS kids naivete is pretty wild.
Also:
- Don’t rush having children, get some financial stability first!
- Don’t rush having children, get some financial stability first!
- Don’t rush having children, get some financial stability first!
- Don’t rush having children, get some financial stability first!
- Don’t rush having children, get some financial stability first!
- Don’t rush having children, get some financial stability first!
- Don’t rush having children, get some financial stability first!
- Don’t rush having children, get some financial stability first!
- Don’t rush having children, get some financial stability first!
- By the way, this rule only applied to people of color. By the age of 30, you supposed to have at least 4 children. Now tell me where are my grandchildren?
Also something something you’re not really gay
Where is my financial stability?
You can have it at a later date darling, maybe you have to share a room with the baby in a single room apartment, or can’t afford to buy an Air Jordan or an iPhone for your children, but children are wonderful. Biological clock is ticking away rapidly, but financial success can wait. With Trump coming, your job likely can finally afford to give you a raise after a few tax cuts.
- boomers
Why don’t you have financial stability yet? Go get some financial stability
How did you get upvotes, you forgot you’re /s. Unless this is a rasict comment.
Never felt so targeted in my fucking life.
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“Go to college” can be good advice. It really depends where you go to school (in state University vs private or out of state for costs) and what you major in (growing fields, salaries of people with that major, etc). Unfortunately, many of us didn’t get any advice on the second bit.
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As a corollary, go to college for something commercially viable. If your degree is in medieval Estonian poetry, you are going to have a hard time getting a job with that that pays off the debt. Recent history aside, there were very few people who went into things like electrical engineering or medical science that could not find employment.
The global economy has terrible, antisocial priorities as far as humanity goes.
You say that as if humanity is better off having more MBAs and accountants maximizing productivity and economic metasisis, that thing that is ending the temperate, predictable global climate we once enjoyed, and less artists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and teachers, the professions that propagate what makes life worth living at all, learning and experiencing, and passing down those lessons and experiences to others. Without that, we should just go extinct, there’s no point to us without valuing that.
Those with your mindset of, “well, are they dedicating their life to increasinging GDP?” are winning to be sure, and it’s making a terrible, desperate, disaffected world few want to bring children into because they know how horrible it is, cold and greed worshipping, a hell of Neverending competition.
Congratulations.
Meanwhile, nepos of people destroying their own species for private profit can and do get degrees in the humanities you describe, to sit on “charity” boards drawing six figure+ salaries due to their nepo connections and those like you have nothing to say about them getting a degree in culture they care about because their parents cut down a rainforest, strip mined nature, fracked mountains, or murdered customers in a healthcare con.
Those with your mindset of, “well, are they dedicating their life to increasinging GDP?” are winning to be sure, and it’s making a terrible, desperate, disaffected world few want to bring children into because they know how horrible it is, cold and greed worshipping, a hell of Neverending competition.
Whoa whoa whoa, I’m not arguing that the world is better off if people avoid the social sciences… actually, I think if we as a society prioritized that more, we’d be better off overall. I’m just saying purely from the standpoint of if one looks at college as an investment in one’s own career/employ-ability then you are better off in a more rigorous and conventional field.
I am not saying the humanities has no value.
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Discouraging or hindsighting people either before or after college for choosing a prosocial degree is contributing to shifting the culture against the humanities.
We should actively discourage people from getting degrees on the basis of “well how much will I get paid?” Look at the world, people who choose that path almost always become the worst people society has to offer, selfish, individualistic opportunists. College should be a last gasp attempt to dissuade as many as possible from seeking capital as it’s own end and not social contribution in an area of passion. Every MBA and modern “start from unregulated capitalism is perfect and defend from there” economist is a defeat for humanity. Those that make a vocation out of trying to quantify and extract maximum value from other people as the entire point. It’s perverse they are the most rewarded in society by education. And it largely isn’t pushed for their individual interests, but for expectations of economic growth, something we have to abandon fucking decades ago if we want a future for our species at all.
That is so out of touch that I feel like I am having a stroke.
There is a lot of qualified people with “commercially viable” degrees that can’t find a job, or the job they find pay like shit.
Companies want over qualified people for shit pay, and they want you to go through 5 interviews because that’s what the cool companies do, and get offended when their ridiculous offer gets rightly rejected.
They aren’t trying to “be like the cool companies”, they want their labor markets to feel saturated and laborers desperate for work so they accept lower pay.
There is a lot of qualified people with “commercially viable” degrees that can’t find a job, or the job they find pay like shit.
Sure, but the point is, however bad this problem is for the more ‘viable’ degrees, it’s 50x worse for the social sciences, arts, etc. I have a belief EVENTUALLY the job market will turn around for engineers, but I do not ever think it will turn around for history majors.
That was good advice 40 years ago. Now your costly degree will just exclude you from service jobs and mean nothing in the field you studied.
If you want to get into a trade, find someone to apprentice with. Your degree will get you an unpaid internship at best.
If you want to get into a trade, find someone to apprentice with
This is great advice.
recent history aside
Man this would be great advice if I could just stop taking part in recent history
There is an ebb and flow to the employment market. If you are lucky enough to have walked this wonderful planet for decades, you will have survived through a few of these all ready. All this will pass. I am confident in saying over the time of a lifespan an engineering degree will make more money than it costs. I do not think that is a controversial take, but you can feel differently.
Not only that, but they neutered secondary education to being basically just be college prep. It’s almost impossible to just live comfortably on a HS education from the past ~25 years because of how useless the information is to real life.
We have YouTube now.
What was neutered? The job market left a HS education behind a long time ago, and that’s not because of the high school curriculum, that’s because of the job market
the curriculum did not adapt to the job market
It’s coming around in my area. In my day, the schools partnered with the local colleges for students to get college credit while still in high school.
Now, the local high schools in my area are also partnered with several vocational schools, including automotive, welding, industrial maintenance, veterinary, cosmetology, and about a dozen more. There is a work-study program where students are getting high school credit for on-the-job training from certain local employers.
The kids in these programs are graduating with two years experience in technical fields, while their college-bound peers might have worked a couple years flipping burgers.
You had some really good points until:
while their college-bound peers might have worked a couple years flipping burgers.
This is you being judgmental, not a reflection of reality.
No its sadly a reflection of reality for many. Kids who don’t know any better sign the dotted line on a 20k$ loan for a political science or liberal arts degree then wonder why their 4 year education didnt translate into marketable skills for a well paying job.
So they enter their early 20s living paycheck to paycheck on an entry level job barely making enough to pay off their student loans, this months rent, and have enough left over to afford food. This makes them rightfully pessimistic about the system so they go on lemmy to rant about capitalism while hoping it all burns down along with their loans. Its a predictable cliche.
I agree about everything else, but I thoght lemmy people were mostly employed (usually in tech sector), and are in their 30s~40s.
It depends on which communities of lemmy you frequent. If your on c/programmerhumor or c/Linux memes this demographic is fairly accurate, if your visiting c/solarpunk.climate, c/fuckcars, c/fuckcapitalism or c/leftism type communities its more likely to have the younger disillusioned political minded types buried in debt. If I were to put some rough numbers based on my time in lemmy its roughly 30% computer geek IT types, 30% political/ecological activists, 30% LGBQT+, 10% everyone else
That’s a completely different issue than what I was talking about though
This is true. I even know some people with STEM degrees in this situation.
I think you’re reading more into than I actually said.
Minors are generally prohibited from using powered equipment as employees. They can’t use packaging equipment, cardboard compactors, deep fryers, powered pallet jacks, drills, let alone machining equipment.
The “college-bound peers” I’m talking about are not participating in these vocational programs. If they are working, (which they might not be) their status as minors is effectively limiting them to unskilled trades, like retail and food service.
The kids in these vocational programs are considered students, not employees. Where an AP student is not allowed to use a ladder or a cordless drill at work, the vocational student at their work-study program can use a manual lathe capable of ripping them in two at the torso. They can gain experience with pretty much any equipment in their program that an adult would be allowed to use on the job.
These vocational students are graduating with two years experience in industrial work that the AP students were legally prohibited from performing.
The curriculum is cumulative. In order for it to adapt, kids would have to learn more advanced subjects earlier than they have in years past. There are lots of kids doing this in Advanced Placement classes, but most kids are not ready to progress that quickly.
And many colleges adapted to AP classes by…not accepting them
That wasn’t my experience as a millennial
Did you attend every college?
Where are they not accepting CLEP tests?
we could also just allow kids to go to college for free instead of killing them with interest rates :p
No argument here!
over-gay
Aka extra big ass gay
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Don’t diminish yourself! You’re beautiful the way you are.
College degrees still have better lifetime earnings on average.
I’m pretty tired of this broad anti-college brush that all the social media tools are spreading around. If someone is cluelessly going to college and can’t figure out that a 6-figure degree for a $45k/yr job is a bad idea they should probably try a junior college economics class, first.
Now, before someone gets all bent out of shape: NO, college is not for everyone. Don’t go to a $100k college for a job that earns $45k/yr, people don’t need to go to UC San Diego, one of the most expensive colleges, to major in being a veterinary assistant. Nobody cares if someone went to a cheap college after their first job experiance. Yes, people should go to a trade school if that is the direction they’d rather go. If people don’t have a direction in life that would be improved by a degree or trade, then good luck to them. No, the vast, vast majority are not going to be a rich influencer or youtuber, either, where they get to post how great not going to college was.
Imagine still thinking college is only $100K.
Imagine assuming that 100k was anything other than a random example. Don’t insult me by assuming I don’t know what colleges can cost, or yourself by leaping to hyperbole.
The extra kick in the teeth is for those that for whatever reason couldn’t/didn’t go to college! All that messaging of “go to college or you’re going to be worthless” just so happens to have the affect of making you feel completely worthless for not having a degree! All those years on online dating I’d pass on people that were educated and/or had good jobs because “why the hell would they be interested in a worthless uneducated factory worker.” It’s fun!
I have no debt, nor a house though, but I do have tons and tons of depression and self loathing!
I too am exactly like you except I own a few homes.
I decided to pretend to go to college in a different country. Seems to be working fine for my career since I started doing that. It didn’t fix the self loathing tho.
What shall we light on fire first? Or who?
Yeah, I admit I fell for it too
For us we had a big trade school you could go to for the last two years of high school. Normal school academic classes for one half of the day, the program of your choice for the other.
They had IT stuff, welding, auto repair, culinary etc. I went for EMS/Fire.
I still went to college. It’s a cool social experience but holy fuck it’s a bad financial move for most people. I’m glad I graduated debt free
Colleges and universities started jacking up their tuition around 1980, when they realized they could charge far more without losing enrollment. So, being the businesses they are, they kept jacking it up. And the beauty of it is that nobody’s blaming them, it’s all boomers’ fault for encouraging education. Win-win!
In the case of at least one school, the state was also cutting back funding.
I would love for this chart to have two extra lines: the cost of tuition and an inflation adjusted cost of tuition. Without those numbers this chart could simply be “the school spent more while getting constant state funding and made the difference up with tuition”. That wasn’t actually the case here, but the chart doesn’t make it obvious.
Aid has decreased while tuition has increased because the oligarchy presses government to cut everything that doesn’t benefit them personally. Society values education and knowledge. Oligarchs value well educated workers they can make money off but didn’t have to pay to educate. So they import foreign workers, saying Americans are underqualified.
Oligarchs also value an indebted workforce.
Exactly - people with fewer options make less trouble. The only tricky part is not knowing where the end of their rope is, like with that Mangione guy.
college tuition is the only thing that rose faster than CEO pay for the last 40 yrs
As if it wasn’t boomers running the colleges.
In the 1980s, boomers were in their 30s/early 40s, so no they were not likely to be senior leadership in colleges at the time.
I was a kid then and people my parent’s aged were converting from hippies to yuppies, making greed good, and elected Regan.
It’s not all their fault, but their generation was the biggest during the era when unions were weakened or eliminated, taxes were cut, and hedge funds and holding companies were invented.
Well I don’t run a college. You might as well say, “As if black people don’t commit armed robbery.”
You’re 100℅ right and it’s sad to see how bad some people’s logic is.
College admins are a subset of boomers. This isn’t about boomers. This is about colleges.
The world is easier to process when people think in simple memes and see every issue as binary Extreme Good vs Extreme Evil. They can take in minimal info, make a moral judgement at a glance that agrees with the rest of their echo chamber, feel the angelic glow and scroll on to the next item in the feed. It’s super efficient once you realize the so-called “gray areas” are just disingenuous shilling for the Wrong Side.
All the people down voting this comments are the ones who u ironically NEEDED to go to college to learn critical thinking, interpersonal communication, how to debate, and how to prove/disprove rationally.
I get the feeling a lot of lemmy users are high school sophomores who would upvote anyone who calls mom a bitch for taking them to the dentist.
