The Trump administration past: just about everybody in this administration has a college degree from an ivy league university, but it’s ok because we’re the ruling elite. It’s time we took those academic “elitists” down a peg or 2
The Trump administration present: You can wipe your ass with that degree and get a job working in a factory, like many of your parents did.
The Trump administration near future: The economy is still shit because we wrecked it, automated or outsourced everything we could, and put all our eggs into one shitty AI basket that didn’t pan out. Now there are way too many people with degrees competing for the few remaining jobs, most of which don’t require a degree.
Resources are becoming scarce, disease is rampant, American children are dying at an unprecedented rate, disasters can’t be prepared for because we fired all the people that did that, and we keep pushing policies that increase unplanned pregnancies. In short, shit sucks but is mostly just going according to the original plan.
All the immigrants have been rounded up and trafficked to El Salvador, so, who is left to act as the scapegoat for the ruling elite?
You know why things are so bad in the very near future, America?
“It’s because the educated elite were rewarded for so long for being fiscally irresponsible and went into debt over useless college degrees. Now they’re taking all the American jobs, they’re eating the cats and the dogs, and they are milking this once great country for all its worth.”
Now there are way too many people with degrees competing for the few remaining jobs
That’s honestly not the future I see going forward. The future I see is one where colleges begin to close en mass, foreign students stop coming to the US for high quality education, and educated professionals leave the country for lower cost of living and better amenities abroad.
Education, as an institution, becomes a series of high end social clubs on the high end and a bunch of debt-trap MLMs on the low end. Increasingly little is actually taught at any of these schools, and the only real purpose of the campuses is to organize upper-middle class failkids into the various regionalized ideological cults.
Meanwhile, the demand for real labor continues to decline with the falling birthrate and the enormous volume of legacy infrastructure that continues to need support. Efforts to extract labor by force, rather than by promise of higher quality of life, only result in deteriorating work quality. We become even more addicted to imports as our position as global financial hegemony melts away. And eventually, we go into the same kind of debt crisis that plagued Germany after WW1 and Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
All the immigrants have been rounded up and trafficked to El Salvador, so, who is left to act as the scapegoat for the ruling elite?
You’re never going to get “all the immigrants” because we’re a nation of immigrants.
The War on Immigration has better parallels with the War on Drugs. Lots of moving goalposts. Lots of propaganda as a stand in for policy. Lots of big splashy media pieces on how we’re “Losing” or “Winning” in dramatic fashion.
But the economic incentives don’t change. Consumer behaviors don’t really change. And mostly we create a giant Make Work system for thugs to harass people of color.
Sounds like you’re thinking of a way future. I’m not entirely sure we make it that far.
Thanks for those who commented and did not right off start bashing the humanities. I get it the sciences are better paying ( or they use to be) but the humanities have a roll in creating well rounded and thoughtful people. If this was on reddit is would be nothing but shitting on art majors.
For many jobs it doesn’t really matter what degree you have.
A degree can show that you are able to put in the work and have the skills its takes to earn a degree in the first place.I get it the sciences are better paying ( or they use to be) but the humanities have a roll in creating well rounded and thoughtful people.
Plenty of people who graduate with a humanities degree make money. Sales and Marketing make tons of money. Lawyers make money. Linguists make money. PR and other Communications make money. Art and Design make money. Anyone who works for a sufficiently wealthy (and not particularly thrifty) client can make a ton of money in the humanities.
Unfortunately, the humanities majors who make the most money are often leveraging their skills for nefarious ends. Not unlike STEM in that regard.
but the humanities have a roll in creating well rounded and thoughtful people.
Definitely. I would have love do arts and humanities. But to be blunt, it would be hard to get a well paying job if one graduated with humanities degree.
Liberal arts and humanities initially started to provide well-rounded education to the privileged back then, to prepare and groom them as potential future leaders who need to be broadly knowledgeable and make well-informed and wise decision. And unfortunately that’s the key word there: privileged. Education was reserved for the privileged and those who could pay. However, from what I can see, as education became more available to the public, the arts and humanities education lost its goal. Education as a whole really became a way to indoctrinate and condition children and young people on how to be obedient workers in the current capitalist system. Doing homework and projects after school, is really training for young people to bring their work to home when they finally enter the workforce.
Historically yes. I was hoping we could provide a soild education to the peasantry but here we are. I am still proud of being a poor kid who pushed himself beyond his upbringing.
I got a BS in a STEM field and a BA in the humanities. I think I was substantially benefited by both.
Even when I teach STEM - being able to draw on knowledge of Greek history and philosophy makes my lessons on the Pythagorean theorem more effective. When I talk about chemical equilibrium, I talk about the impact of climate changes on communities. When I talk about Newton’s laws, I talk about Newton context in scientific publishing of the time and some of his weird ideas about alchemy.
The illusion of equal opportunity, dut dut doooo
Everyone’s experience is different, and things ARE absolutely more difficult in recent decades than many decades ago.
That said, I remember around the time I was graduating and how it felt like the vast majority of everyone I knew was baffled by my willingness to move far away (for the job), and how many of them refused to move away from home (where there weren’t many job options for degrees).
There’s also choices to make to do projects or a thesis around real productive ideas to build something to show off to employers. There’s opportunities to practice interviewing, shadow careers, and make yourself presentable and stand out for your field, and again I just remember very few who actually put in the effort and wanted to appear well-rounded amd with a portfolio of sorts to distinguish themselves. Most of my classmates seemed to just want to check boxes and expect a career to happen.
Some people in my personal experience seem unwilling to do what’s necessary to make their degree worthwhile.
Yeah you may be able to get [insert degree] at [random local college], but a lot of the good careers are not going to be where you got the degree, amd you really have to find ways to convince employers why you’re different.
Then on top of all of that, there’s just some luck as well. And I know in some ways I also just got lucky in landing a job.
Meanwhile, ever since I moved and started a career, I have been surrounded by incredible degree-wielding people from all over the world. So clearly lots of people do find success and they are doing great jobs.
Great jobs? Doing what? Licking boots?
Uprooting your entire life, saying goodbye to all of your friends, family, community, home, all for the pursuit of some dollars, that’s insanity. Only in a sick world where money is our master is that viewed otherwise.
Uprooting for adventure is one thing, uprooting for work is not the same.
Your comment sounds like some AI generated LinkedIn status and it makes me feel sick.
I needed to live and pay bills and take care of a family. I tried to write it in a sensitive way and it still wasn’t good enough for your entitled, priviliged, and judgmental stance.
Some of us literally have no ability to just entertain “adventure.” We needed to just survive. And I was simply stating that I think some people need to be a bit more willing to make hard choices to better their lives, such as moving where their particular jobs are more likely to be.
It has nothing to do with licking boot. It has to do with reality and survival. But a secondary benefit was that I found joy in my career and what I do since it’s a public service type of career as well. I also became a productive member of society and can now help others a bit in various ways.
I’ll also add that while the goal at the time was not to do anything I wanted, but to do what I needed, I wound up in a degree and field that is still interesting (I didnt study what I wanted, I studied what I thought might pay well and which I was good at). Moving for jobs was significant to changing my life and giving some new perspective and adventure in the simple sense that I got away from where I grew up and saw a different place and have met and worked with tons of great people from all over the world who also moved here. It was not my original purpose, and it’s not the same as travel for adventure or leisure which was not something I could ever entertain for the majority of my life, but it has in a way given me adventure I wasn’t seeking.
I will also note the original move for a job itself was never simple. We literally slept on floors for the first few weeks.
I don’t regret any of it. Our lives are immensely better today for making hard but smart moves for the better. Others should also do the same if they have options to better their lives.
Boot licking is chosing to stay home and making a pittance at one of the few dead end jobs available when the outward move could have been expontially better and resulted in you moving back with your family, with more resources, later on when possible.
You’re basically judging / telling people to get stuck because in your ideal world they wouldnt have had to.
In case you haven’t noticed, this ain’t that.
I’m judging/telling people what to do?
Did you not read the post I responded to?
Most of my classmates seemed to just want to check boxes and expect a career to happen.
Some people in my personal experience seem unwilling to do what’s necessary to make their degree worthwhile.
you really have to find ways to convince employers why you’re different.
I said in a sick world where money is our master would moving in the pursuit of dollars be insanity. Moving for other reasons is not what this post is about. So what do you think I was implying by that? It is normal, sometimes even necessary, for people to do this, what do you think I’m trying to say about the world?
Boot licking is chasing the shareholders/masters in the hope that they’ll treat you right and give you a few more dollars per hour than you would working in your home town. A few more dollars than your peers. Boot licking is defending this sick fucking system that we live under where Trumps, Zuckerbergs, and Musks rule the world because money is our master.
Seeing more of your responses, it is clear you spend too much time online in anti-capitalist groups and expect people to just magically accomplish your ideals.
Good luck to you and your bitterness. The rest of us have actual lives to live and bills to pay. It’s not as binary as you see it.
Far as I can tell you’re not really making any point.
Learning to live as a stranger and reintegrate into a community is a fun experience for many of us though. When we have the flexibility to travel to work we gain a huge competitive advantage. I think OP brings up the most important point though, many people are too lazy or on cruise control to make themselves interesting.
Doing things slightly outside your comfort zone and outside your expertise makes you standout. Employers want to hire interesting people as well. It’s not “boot licking” to create a diverse portfolio of skills.
I picked up Portuguese as a hobby, then later in life my job had a business partner in Brazil, so they paid for me to take classes on company time, sent me to Brazil, then let me act as our liaison with them.
I didn’t do anything to hunt down money. I traveled for work and have never stopped learning. I never wanted to stay in my small town. This allowed me to create an interesting story and I rarely open at an interview with my qualifications, but they always remember who I am.
“I never wanted to stay in my small town”
“Uprooting for adventure is one thing”
Y’alls reading comprehension is pish.
And bitching about a lack of opportunities in your hometown ignores thousands of years of human evolution. When resources became sparse we migrated, evolved, or died.
What’s with moronic comments I am seeing lately such as yours in Lemmy?
Uprooting your entire life, saying goodbye to all of your friends, family, community, home, all for the pursuit of some dollars, that’s insanity
Or, maybe they just hate their life/family/community and want to get out of a dead end town with no opportunities?
I moved 7 hours away for a job and I’ve never been happier. Met my chosen family and have made a decent life for myself.
If my grandmother had wheels she would be a bike.
Yeah, and if her wheels were like your argumentation, she wouldn’t make it to the end of the block.
Just because you don’t agree with people doesn’t make it insanity, and saying it does shows how small minded you are.
Blah blah blah. Despite my original comment, I wasn’t looking to leave and was planning on returning, but I’m glad I left and I don’t want to go back after experiencing something better.
Keep looking for any excuse to not understand viewpoints you disagree with/reinforcing your existing beliefs, it really helps your (lack of) argumentation style.
But I’m done with this discussion, as it’s a waste of my time and energy. Good day.
There’s more to careers than just money. The distribution of jobs in different industry sectors, job specialties, etc. aren’t going to be uniform throughout the world, so many types of jobs will require people to move.
It’s not even about money. It’s about wanting to work in something specific that isn’t as easily available in the town you happened to be born in.
that’s insanity
makes me feel sick
That’s a pretty strong reaction to the simple idea that maybe living your entire life within a 30 minute drive of where you were born isn’t the best way to experience this life. You don’t have to want it, but is it that much to ask to simply understand that some other people want it?
My hometown is, like, fine. I could’ve stayed. But its state government is insane, the dominant local industries and companies don’t really fit my moral framework, and the social aspect pushes people into a car-based lifestyle that I’m not particularly interested in. I left for a job, but I also was just looking for a reason to leave.
You were looking for a reason to leave. I covered that in my comment, “Uprooting for adventure is one thing”.
OP’s comment reads like sigma male bullshit, essentially saying “I worked harder and smarter than everyone else, they just didn’t have the work ethic I do”. It’s wank. It repulses me, therefore the phrase “makes me feel sick”.
It’s not about work ethic. It’s an openness to new things, and a willingness to coordinate and plan things.
And seeing “moving away” as a huge sacrifice, to where you’d tend to describe it as “uprooting your life,” is a particular worldview that you’re entitled to, but one you should be aware that many other people don’t share.
You’re attributing a lot of unspoken values in that comment that I don’t really think are there, and I suspect it’s because you place a much higher value in staying close to home than the typical person does, and because you seem to elevate the purpose of a career to primarily be maximizing one’s own money.
So take a step back. Reread that comment with the revisited assumption that some people choose careers for reasons completely different from money, and that people don’t feel a strong need to stay in the same city where they grew up. It’s just career advice at that point.
Mate, you got so much patience and empathy to be able to respond and explain. Love who you are and who you have become. I absolutely would have walked away from a negative comment and you are so capable to reiterate points to a random internet comment.
College was always intended for the kids of rich folks to get cushy high paying jobs doing nothing
Honestly it took war with Russia for people to see scientists as valuable despite them underpinning basically everything in modern society
The GI Bill allowed soldiers that fought Hitler the opportunity to obtain the same level of education previously reserved for generations of the ruling class.
That was the first real instance of DEI in America, and the ruling class has been doing everything in their power to take back their exclusive club ever since by dividing and conquering.
I know people think Russia is trying to infiltrate the U.S. because the cold war never really ended, but I’m pretty sure we’ve been thinking about it backwards. I’m starting to believe that our elite knew they couldn’t topple American democracy to regain power from within without making it too obvious, so they purchased/privatized post Soviet Russia so they wouldn’t have to say the quiet parts out loud.
I know your intentions were to inform but reading that has made me hate the Heritage Foundation three times harder than I was just an hour ago, and that’s been enough to make me want to bite through a broom handle
I put myself through community college, got 2 AAS degrees. I’m doing pretty good for myself. Before college, I usually worked around minimum wage and hated every single soul sucking job I had just to barely scrape by. This was early 2000s… we had real dollar menu meals and $5 footlong subs, ya’ll who be out there surviving these days you’re built different and you have my respect.
Anywho, if I hadn’t gone to college and did something with my life, I promise you I would have ended myself. That’s not hyperbole, I had 2 failed attempts before college already.
I wish people would stop demonizing college. Especially in the US, we have more and more uneducated people because you have people on the internet (mostly on video format) telling people, “Oh yeah, college was a scam, I dropped out and I make millions, and speaking of millions, this video is brought to you by…”
It saddens me to see terrible advice like this meme, implying college was a waste. Or that hundreds of people upvoted it.
And yes, I know, college is fucking expensive in the US. It was expensive when I went and we were arguing about it then and I know it’s gotten worse. But we shouldn’t be celebrating ignorance, we should be fighting to get our education back.
Yeah college is only a waste if you don’t have a game plan for what you’re doing with it. People who say it was a waste either didn’t plan, didn’t realize they weren’t interested in what they thought, or overpaid.
I see it differently. Plenty of people do non training subjects and employers are rarely interested in that. Loads of people plan and do everything right but buy a product which is little use in the job market
Yeah that’s fair
See I love lemmy, we have different perspectives and we just exchange ideas and that’s that. On reddit it would be nasty.
People say that because going to college is becoming exponentially expensive. It gets meaningfully worse year over year
Education is great, learning is more then half of the joy of life. The education system in our country is absolutely broken. Both these things are true
You can still come out on top in a broken system. I did. I have no regrets, no debt. But as a whole, it’s just getting worse all the time
Here’s the thing… I remember some years back that (I think it was) Denmark had the best educated population or the most college degrees or some such, so your cashier or barista could very easily have a college degree.
The difference is that they get paid far better than retail in the US, get all the benefits of social policy, and from unionization. Vacation time, health care, maternity leave, etc. that retail positions in the US would be highly unlikely to have. I’m sure there’s some social stratification to blue collar positions vs white collar in such a country, but I’m sure it takes a lot of the sting out of it when you’re taking your two weeks vacation on the mediterranean coast.
I live in Austria, where it’s not even quite as nice (well, similar benefits, but no federal minimum wage). It’s deeply engrained in our culture that education doesn’t have to be prep for a job. I personally know many people who pursue or have completed uni education that’s completely unrelated to their like of work. Some have degrees in other areas, some don’t. We have some pretty ‘bad’ statistics for how long People take to finish their degrees because people are, like, full time kindergarten teachers and taking 10 years to do a political science degree on the side purely because it interests them. People value education for its own sake and I love it. Unfortunately though, capitalism has this culture on the decline, and not even that long after education became open to most people.
No minimum wage, but we do have collective bargaining, for anyone who’s interested.
Yes, thanks for adding :) but there’s industries where the minimum wage is still under 10€.
Yeah, it’s not exactly a worker’s utopia here, for sure, but at least there’s some raise every year that my employer wouldn’t otherwise give me if not for collective bargaining.
I would rather have a citizens income than a minimum wage and would prefer a maximum wage (highest paid cannot be more than 100x lowest paid)
Yup I can relate with N4 100%. Not only a degree, but two years experience in the field. And yet here I am, with a customer service role. I’ve been searching for work for two years now. It sucks
Yes it’s an arts degree, and yes the arts are in dire straits right now, but uhhh I at least feel fulfilled having tried to make the most of my passion— which I recognize doesn’t pay the bills, but made me feel validated and boosted my self-esteem, which I don’t think any job would’ve ever done for me nearly as much.
…so anyways, how’s that reset going, is your machine back up and running? Great. Thanks for calling tech support have a nice day.
Just wanting to point out the irony of making fun of artists’ life choices… below a comic.
Those corrupted morals of exploiting other humans and living things need to get justified somehow. Have a little compassion. ;)
Sorry, I should clarify those were my own choices I was referring to. I’m the one who has a film degree and now works in tech support.
I meant to be empathizing more than making fun of op.
I think anyone not looking for reasons to be angry could read you were speaking about yourself, don’t mind them!
If it makes you feel any better, my STEM degree hasn’t done me a lick of good, either.
Turns out, specializing in the thing academics do after they burn out of, or can’t properly get into, the academic system… not a great path to go down, yeah.
It was a passion degree as well.
Society prizes art above all else (its like 90% of what we remember about ancient cultures if you count stories as art) but hates artists with a passion.
As evidenced by the efforts of AI Bros to make them obsolete
Which is great until a couple years pass and art gets incredibly stale because the AI can’t innovate and has no new training data.
I wish we lived in a society where all basic human needs were provided, to give people an opportunity to just engage in culture instead of being so focused on the future of consumption
I agree that our society could deal with less of a focus on consumerism, but the problem that wishing that all basic needs were magically provided is that you cannot get around the fact that someone needs to do the providing.
I think that the most realistic way forward to get some of the same benefits is for us to start reducing the length of the work week, certainly to 4 days and possibly even to 3 days.
I remember working retail and having angry customers tell me to go to college and do something with my life when they didn’t get their way. Little did they know that I, like a majority of the workers there my age, were in college and just working a summer job. Some people are just dicks and my experience in retail has shown me that anyone 50+ yrs old is most likely to be an asshole for no reason. Idk why but the older generation here in the US is full of self-centered cunks.
They are probably full of regret around their younger years and just projecting their own bullshit onto others.
Lead poisoning damage to their brains has made them genuine psychopaths.
I too believe this is a major reason for the downfall of society
Cool story. Which degree?
Surely you didn’t spend all that money on some degree that is unemployable, would you?
Meanwhile everyone are begging for electricians, plumbers, math teachers, chemists etc etc etc.
Not my neck of the woods. Seems like everybody’s a plumber or an electrician. Also, who would want to be a teacher in America? The market is so flooded. It also seems like corporate America is trying to capitalize on this as well. So a lot of these people just work like gig workers. No workers protection, no long term strategy. It’s crazy that the Catholic Church wants to take public funds and steal from the taxpayer so they can do their sun whorshipping Christian ideology. It’s fucking madness in this country. The separation of church and state is no longer the case. It seems Christian Sharia law reigns supreme nowadays. It’s all about me me me me me me no worker solidarity, just everybody trying to push their agenda on other people while failing to see who is the real problem, which is Wall Street and the capitalist, and the war mongering imperialist and the two political parties. And if you look at how much capital is floating in our system, it’s not a lot. If you look at the recent expenditures of the federal government, it is all going to the military industrial complex and the pigglets which is supported by the neo-liberal or the liberals or even the progressives and the populist right-wing hogs as well as the neo cons., which tells me that the beatings will continue until the morale improves. There’s also a lot of data that shows a lot of the mass shootings in our country are due to fiscal realities inter personal relationship issues. I mean, just look on YouTube and type in murder suicide. This is a Yankee problem… It is not guns themselves, but the capitalist structure that causes so much fucking chaos in this country. The guns don’t help, but if you’re a libturd, thinking that banning guns is going to change anything here, well, please share the crack but also, if you’re some kind of libertarian right-wing cuck thinking that your guns keep you safe, statistically speaking, the guns are used either on your family or on yourself via suicide. You’re also too stupid to have a revolution. All you do is lick the boots of tyranny… But yet, you will look at me as an unhinged person who is poorly educated and that you are superior possibly. If you live in a nation of idiots who Whorship Idols., well it’s like platos “the allegory of the cave”. I recommend not going back into the cave. For it is pearls before swine. If you are a young person on the internet, learn a second language and learn how to escape America because we are a sinking ship. Don’t get caught with your pants down like me. I knew there were problems, but I was an optimist. But there is something culturally wrong with these people. So just give up and create an exit strategy. I have been to Europe. America is very individualistic and unique. It is not like this around the world. I don’t need a plumber. I can fix my own toilet. I can install my own sinks. I can install my own garbage disposal. I can fix my own dishwasher which all these things I have done already. I can fix my own refrigerator. I unclog my own toilets and maintain my own drains… Shit, I can even fix a garage door… I don’t need your service economy. I need a real job with a real future. I need unions. I need politicians that serve the people and not special interest groups. I need rich people who don’t follow the rules to actually go to jail. I need presidents that get impeached, that also go to jail. And I need a population that can tell the difference between a leader and a self-benefiter. I need a society that’s not just running off of fumes, turning all young people into gig workers as they siphon out the generational wealth by praying on boomers who are also hateful and ignorant.
Yeah, and does it seem like the plumbers and electricians are without work? Do they often need to work a double shift at McDonalds?
Mine was cheap as hell for pharmacology/biochem at one of the best universities in Mexico. Maybe this is meant for non-USians?
The meme is definitely by americans, for americans.
electricians, plumbers
Doesn’t require a college degree. May require trade school or an apprenticeship.
math teachers
Requires multiple degrees but they are extremely underpaid and while I do think the US could use more and better teachers, the funding of the public school system does not reflect that.
chemists
Probably ok prospects right now but the job market in general kinda sucks right now so you still might have trouble.
etc etc etc.
Computer science was an extremely desirable degree from an employment perspective up until a couple years ago, but now the computer science bubble is popping. But also in general the job market is awful right now. A lot of people I know with “practical” degrees like computer science, business, physics, and engineering are struggling to get jobs in the fields they majored in. And that’s not even getting into how awful the US system for becoming a doctor is…
Doesn’t require a college degree. May require trade school or an apprenticeship
No shit sherlock. That’s the point. They are, however, employable, with pretty good pay.
but now the computer science bubble is popping
It’s more of an anti-bubble where companies are keeping salaries down in an unsustainable way. Software development still has at least a decade of good salaries to go.
It’s not the first time this happened.
“These jobs are below me! They should belong to the peasants!”
I firmly believe we all should take turns doing the shit jobs so that some are spared from having to do it all the time.
The CEO should spend a few hours a week scrubbing toilets. Citizens should go on say, a two-year tour of duty in their young years to do the stuff depicted in the comic. A benefit is that they’ll treat service workers better later in life.
And more importantly, we should question how much of this is actually necessary. It seems all most of it does is make a couple people rich beyond morality.
100%. Same reasoning I have for mandatory civil service (instead of military). Even just a shared memory of how doing it sucked balls could do wonders for social cohesion.
Or. You could just pay them more. Which would be politically way easier.
Discomfort pay. I think doing disgusting or hard jobs should carry EXTRA pay.
“Those lazy peasants! They are hardly working!”
More that these jobs do not pay enough to pay for the degree, or even enough to simply afford a place to live without a second job.
US millennials were told growing up that literally all you had to do was get a bachelors, because that’s how it worked in previous generations. We had to take out ridiculous loans to pay for this, because even in-state tuitions have been out of control for about two decades now. Now, the job market is shit (and really has been since we entered the job market.) It doesn’t matter how smart or capable you are. The US doesn’t want smart or capable right now.
I remember getting my first check as a teacher. When I calculated the amount of time I spent working, and my pay bump from being a fast food supervisor to yah know, a degreed professional expected to work 80+ hour weeks didn’t mean jack or shit, especially when I had to buy my own supplies.
It’s fucked up.
These people are the “peasants” or close enough the distinction doesn’t matter. We were all told the way to move up was to go to college pay all that tuition and you’ll more than make it up longterm. If you end up working min wage stuff anyway it’s better to just do it out of high-school. The warehouse guy probably makes decent but is also working shit hours and slowly destroying his body, again something college is supposed to help you avoid.
Yeah but a degree is not a get-out-of-shit-job-free card… We all have to take what the market offers, or get creative, start a business, etc.
And it’s not like people without degrees don’t put effort into improving their skills.
As long as the majority of people can just forget unpleasant jobs exists and leave them to the less fortunate, the incentive to make them less shitty is weak.
But when you’re choosing your potential college paths as a 16 year old child, how exactly are you supposed to make a solid prediction of the job market in 7 years?
Normalize being able to fuck around enjoying life in your teens and 20s and not needing to make serious life changing decisions until you’re ready. We live too long to rush things and too short to spend it miserable and regretful.
succinctly put, and relevant username.
I hate the idea of considering college/uni as just job training. Seriously, why can’t our society just encourage people to go learn just to LEARN. Oh yea because wage slavery.
Oh, for real! I went to school for pharmacobiology/biochemistry (very affordable in my country) and it changed my outlook on life, my thought process, my ideas, my horizons, etc. Even if I don’t use any of it at my current job, I don’t regret it one bit. Life is too big to live it in ignorance is my motto.
Speaking of learning… *yeah, not yea or nay. It isn’t a vote.
The primary goal of a university is teaching the next generation of academics. That’s it. The entire goal is teaching and research.
But like everything else in this society, it must become a profit-driven endeavour and if it doesn’t contribute with the revenue of some company, it’s not worth it.
My age group in Canada was indoctrinated to think anything less than a university degree was signing your own death warrant job wise. That evolved into younger generations doing the same with masters and PhD programs. Now it’s even worse than it was then. I hope my kids choose wisely.
That’s a bit OTT IMO. You don’t need to become an academic for knowledge of the world, the ability to digest information, and the ability to effectively communicate, to be useful. I think it’s valuable just as, like, life enrichment, too. Not to mention that spending the first few years of your independent adult life around people going through that same transition has other value - socialising, shared experiences, it’s not unusual to make many friends for life.
You’re absolutely correct - but what you’re describing is a learning institution in general, not a university. That’s the fundamental issue.
Universities have a very specific purpose and it’s academic. Unfortunately, our society not only shoves a bunch of commercial values in the mix, but also eliminates most of the other learning opportunities, which turned universities in this weird mix of conflicting interests and unrealistic expectations.
Is this some American usage of the word University as opposed to College that I’m too British to understand? I don’t think I quite followed your second paragraph; unless you mean that a university that doesn’t support genuine academia over conflicting interests is undeserving of the name, in which case I agree with that much… But I would say that as far as value goes, it should also have those same benefits I mentioned for those as attend it.
If I’m going to spend a few years of my life in full time study, I’d expect there to be a payoff in terms of future income.
Learning for the sake of learning is good fun, sure, but life is expensive.
That’s exactly their point. The pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge should be encouraged. Whats considered mankind’s greatest societies all encouraged the pursuit of knowledge not only for financial gain but because it’s important for society as a whole
This is dense. College degrees are still very profitable. They aren’t working in any of these roles in mass.
Absolutely made up propaganda for those without the ability to verify the simplest of facts.
Seems you’ve upset a lot of people without a college degree, or a lot of people doing nothing with their degree.
It’s a bummer people downvote facts when it hurts their feelings. Pretty much a page out of the conservative playbook.
What’s your threshold of ‘in mass’? Because it was 1/9 recent college graduates working low wage jobs as of mid-2023.
In June 2023, about 11.2 percent of recent college graduates were working in low-wage jobs in the United States. This is a slight increase from June 2021, when 10.8 percent of recent college graduates were working low-wage jobs.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York classifies low-wage jobs as those that tend to pay around 25,000 U.S. dollars or less. Recent college graduates are defined as those aged 22 to 27 with a bachelor’s degree or higher and not enrolled in further study.
11% of recent graduates with degrees working low wage jobs feels like they’re actually working these roles en masse after all.
11% is certainly not nothing, but the vast majority are not working these jobs.
I’m not really sure how you can look at 11% and say “yes, they are working these jobs en masse”. A bit disingenuous.
Edit: Post OP and others continue to downvote - yet can’t counter. I’m sorry college didn’t have the outcome you expected, it’s definitely no longer the golden ticket it once was. But to claim it isn’t a benefit at all, or indicate that most college grads are unable to use their degrees is at best misleading and at worst disinformation. There are a lot of variables, including the major you choose, and how much you spend to complete the degree.
Post OP and others continue to downvote - yet can’t counter.
Personally, I was turned off by you saying that the other commenter was being “A bit disingenuous.” just because you disagreed with them, despite the fact that I otherwise agree with your point.
I stand by that. It is a bit disingenuous (purposefully or ignorantly) to call 11% “en masse”.
So you genuinely think that the commenter was being insincere by making that remark?
I don’t attribute it to malice. A misleading claim is just that, misleading, whatever their intentions.
It’s alright if we disagree.
The problem is that the word “disingenuous” does not mean “misleading”, it means “insincere”. So when you say that someone is being “a bit disingenuous”, you are necessarily commenting on their character, not just their claim.
Bad bot.
“Blah blah blah, I am just as bad at accepting facts as trump” - you
removed by mod
I thought I was a bot? You’re the one insulting an trolling 🤷♂️.
Attacking a typo and calling me names because I pointed out a fact. Good Lord 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.
Wow, nothing drives home “I’m not mad, you didn’t get to me!” quite like five emojis.
Anyways, this was fun, but since “toodles” didn’t get the point across, now I get to block you and retire from this exchange as king. Buh-bye! 🤙
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 naw emojis are just triggering for the users here. Real good way to separate those who want to have a conversation and folks like you who are just concerned with toeing the line.
I’m not sure why the above comment was down voted so hard. This community should encourage insightful comments.
It seems like overall college degrees are still a worthwhile financial investment on average.
If you disagree, dialogue.
Compared to the average high school graduate, the earnings premiums were:
$495,000 over a lifetime for people who completed an associate’s degree; $1 million for those who completed a bachelor’s degree; and $1.7 million for those with a graduate degree.https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2021/data-on-display/education-pays.htm
For example, workers with a bachelor’s degree had median weekly earnings of $1,305 in 2020, compared with $781 for workers with a high school diploma. And the unemployment rate for bachelor’s-level workers was 5.5 percent, compared with 9.0 percent for those whose highest level of education was a high school diploma.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/18/median-return-on-investment-for-a-college-degree.html
the typical college graduate can expect a median 12.5% return on their investment in higher education
I’m not sure why the above comment was down voted so hard. This community should encourage insightful comments.
I do not consider the sentence, “Absolutely made up propaganda for those without the ability to verify the simplest of facts,” to be an example of brilliant insight; I suspect that the vote count would have been different if it had not been present.
Averages and outdated statistics only tell some of the story… It’s not the boomer age anymore…
More pros and cons: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/work/5-reasons-whyyour-new-bachelors-degree-is-worthless.html
Realistically the situation keeps getting much worse, not better. Not just for students but also for faculty, et al.
I graduated 20 years ago with a really good mark from a really good uni and shitloads of extra curricular stuff. It was worth nothing then and I deeply regret doing it.
My degree has sorta paid off but I still sorta wish I would have gotten an associates and started working and saving earlier.
A lot of people have no business getting degrees imo. I watched a lot of people be academically successful, but absolutely fail at learning anything. Which translated to being useless and unemployable. I have an MS in mechanical engineering and saw people graduating who couldn’t physically understand basic loading but still got their degree.
Same happened to my roommates. 1 had to get new completely degrees, second forced to get phd, and other works at local grocery. Took 6 years for my SO to find a job paying decent and its still pretty low.
I’m really not surprised. Random degrees getting you work is a myth nowadays
