Post College Disillusionment - a rant

[The Forms]

I graduated from college a few months back with a liberal arts degree. Turns out it's near impossible to get a job with it.

This makes me really disdain what we're told about education our whole lives. We're told that we should study and be smart. Sharpen the mind and the wit. All that jazz. Education will make you marketable after graduation because employers want educated employees.

Then when you try to use this pricey education to get a job, it turns out it was all a sham. It doesn't matter if you are smart. Having a degree, it seems, doesn't matter much at all. If you majored in something specific to an industry like engineering or finance then you're doing OK , but the rest of us don't really have options.

Everyone pays lip service to the value of education, but education doesn't seem like it's valued in the marketplace. I can understand where the employers are coming from on one hand, because, let's face it, chances are it won't help this corporation at all much that I can translate Caesar's "Commentary on the Gallic Wars" from Latin to English, or that I can tell someone all about how Plato accidentally created the modern novel.

However, with this being the case, why do employers care for anyone to have an education in the first place? If knowledge that isn't directly applicable to the industry is valueless, why does everyone pretend education is valueable in of itself? Why don't we all just go to industry specific trade schools after high school? Leave college education to the academics?

Does anyone here on the boards have a liberal arts degree who can maybe give a little advice?

 

[backbreaker]

Sharpen the mind and the wit. All that jazz. Education will make you marketable after graduation because employers want educated employees.

you are absolutely correct.. however finishing college doesn't mean you are educated.. it means you know how to show up on time and take out a loan.

Who says you have to go to college to educate yourself?

just throwing it out there for food for thought.

College is Big, HUGE business. It's their job to get you to pay 10k a semester and FEEL GOOD about it. it's how they stay in business.

with that said.. there are things one should go to college for.. some I feel is a waste of time. When I had my computer company, I didn't hire one person with college degree to actually build and fix computers, or do website troublshooting and maintence.... i put a pc in front of them and said "fix it" and if they could in ample time.. they were hired... as far aswebwork.. "show me what you can do"

the problem with college for the most part.. and I am speaking from the Comuters/Web Work sector which I have experience in...as you mentioned. College students think that the peice of paper will bring guys knocking down their doors. We used to oursouce all of our web design work (not maintence) to India.. not becuase it was cheaper.. I actually would have perferred for the most part to find a company or persons in the US to do the work.. eaiser on my time schedule and no language barrier... BUT THEY WERE BETTER THEN THE DUMWITS WE HAVE OVER HERE!!.

half these mother****ers that have college degrees Think Python is a snake (it is but you know what i mean), couldn't design a birthday card in photoshop, and think they should be paid 50k because of it. They don't learn anything. They went to college, have degrees, but aren't educated. Shame on them.

My old oneitis sent me a text about 2 weeks ago, frustrated because she just walked the stage and is still working for 9 bucks an hour. However, she just knew because she was "hot" people would come scooping her up. they might want to **** you.. I'm sure they do.. but that doesn't mean they will hire you.

I have said it time and time again about the computer/web design work. if you know how to actually do web design, and espically programming languages... you can literary write your own check and not work for anyone. I would KILL for a US Based programmer.. and wouldn't have had a problem paying him more. I don't have to stay up to 3 in the morning to have an email exchange in the programmers broken English.

I can't tell you about Liberal arts, I was a computers guy... and until they make a handicapping degree I don't have much to offer.

 

[comic_relief]

Backbreaker,

I could not agree with you more. A college degree is worthless without a working knowledge. That is why I laugh at all the people that take a degree because of the money or they think that it will somehow make them a better person.

Calvin Coolidge once said, "Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

Even back then, Coolidge realized that education and genius did NOT gaurentee a good job or salary.

IMO people should go to college for a few reasons, either to get specialized (teacher, doctor, lawyer, or specialized jobs) or to actually go to LEARN about different things. Nothing like it in the world in my opinion to speak with an EDUCATED person, unfortuanately most people in college I wouldn't trust with a chicken sandwich because all they do is party, drink, and have sex (nothing wrong with these activities but that is all they do).

I go to college to learn because that is what I want to do, plus I want to make connections.

comic_relief

 

[Kev07]

You just have a college degree?

No prior internship experience, no portfolio, nothing to show what you did in college?

Did you even bother asking yourself what you would do with a liberal arts degree in the first place?

 

[Apollo_Jordan]

my finance degree has equaled 0 job opps in 3 years.. I got a crummy marketing job and taught english..basically my degree is waste paper.. everyone and their grandma has an MBA now though.. my friend does and he makes $11 an hour........an mba just makes u another drone.. note: he had no work experience before...

anyways I'm either gonna be a cop (lapd gives u nice salary to work in a warzone haha)or navy... maybe teach... haha I feel kinda like upward movement in pay is not exactly the easy thing it is made out to be.. I know people who have good jobs.. but thats cause daddy is a VP at some company and got her in....

 

[speakeasy]

I'm actually in the web design/multimedia field, do flash, CSS, and all that stuff. I'm trying to get more into the development side with database so I'm studying MySQL and PHP(and hopefully soon ASP)at home. I did go to college and majored in art with a focus on graphic design. Even though it helped, I could've learned all that stuff without college. I went to a state school and graduated before tuitions went through the stratosphere and never took out a single student loan. I think for some college is just figuring out what the hell you want to do. When I went in, I had no clue what I wanted to major in. At first I wanted to be an English professor, so I thought about English as my major, then I wanted to go into the atmospheric science, then wanted to go into computer science, then I wanted to go into art and design and that's where I left off. You can go into college with a plan of studying this or that, but most students completely change course by the time they're out.

 

[Obsidian]

Having a college degree is useful (see Spence Signalling Theory) even if you don't learn anything from school. Nonetheless, if you made mediocre grades or didn't plan ahead what you wanted to do with your degree/major, then you kinda shot yourself in the foot.

Majoring in Classical Studies is for people who want to be preachers or work for the History Channel. Also, it can set you up for grad school -- which you might want to consider if you didn't learn anything marketable in undergrad.

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

I hate to say this, but once kids stopped working their way through college they lessened their marketability. Actually work experience (in damn near anything) can help immensely.

 

[backbreaker]

lol, the best school going right now are the ebook torrents on mininova.org

I'm not in computers anymore.. but i use them to keep up with the new **** that's out. I self taught myself AJAX using nothing but a downloaded torrent form mininova

the best way to learn graphic work is just to open photoshop and **** up **** until you figure out what you are doing and what does and doesn't work.

 

[Bible_Belt]

I graduated ... from The University of Tampa, a supposed exclusive, "liberal arts" school

lol, me too

 

[comic_relief]

I hate to say this, but once kids stopped working their way through college they lessened their marketability. Actually work experience (in damn near anything) can help immensely.

Although, I highly doubt that I will need to worry about this with my career path, but I have a question for everyone. I once heard that if you have no job experience but lots of volunteer experience then it would cancel it out. Is that true?

comic_relief

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Although, I highly doubt that I will need to worry about this with my career path, but I have a question for everyone. I once heard that if you have no job experience but lots of volunteer experience then it would cancel it out. Is that true?

comic_relief

Volunteer work can be benificial in lue of paid work experience. It really depends on the experience itself. Volunteering to do janitorial work holds a different merit than volunteer work where you coordinated activities. It's not that it's lesser, just different. None the less, doing something in addition to just going to class can be used to enhance your marketability.

 

[Zerix]

lol, the best school going right now are the ebook torrents on mininova.org

I'm not in computers anymore.. but i use them to keep up with the new **** that's out. I self taught myself AJAX using nothing but a downloaded torrent form mininova

the best way to learn graphic work is just to open photoshop and **** up **** until you figure out what you are doing and what does and doesn't work.

haha, +1

I was interested in design and programming a while ago, then I really saw how much time it took to really get good at it and how complicated it became. Needless to say I stopped.

I'm gonna focus on Exercise Science & Sports Nutrition because that's pretty much my passion. I love that stuff.

 

[Zerix]

By the way, anyone here majored in Business (or Business Management)? How'd that turn out?

 

[backbreaker]

Business Management is the equivalent of a GED (Good Enough Diploma)

 

[speakeasy]

lol, the best school going right now are the ebook torrents on mininova.org

I'm not in computers anymore.. but i use them to keep up with the new **** that's out. I self taught myself AJAX using nothing but a downloaded torrent form mininova

the best way to learn graphic work is just to open photoshop and **** up **** until you figure out what you are doing and what does and doesn't work.

That's what I did, I just opened up Photoshop and played around with it. Never read a book. Flash however is pretty complex, especially when you get into object-oriented actionscript programming. You HAVE to read the book for that one.

Graphic work though is only part learning the tools(photoshop, flash, AJAX, etc), it's also about knowing how to design. I can always tell a geek site from an artist site in fraction of a second. The artist knows how to use these tools with refinement and beauty, the geek just throws as many bells and whistles into a page as he can just to show off that he can do it.

 

[Zerix]

Business Management is the equivalent of a GED (Good Enough Diploma)

Lol, I take it that's a bad thing? Man, that's my current major, and yes I did test out of high school early; took a profiency exam (similar to GED not quiet though).

 

[backbreaker]

i mean it's an accomplishment, however everyone has one.

Go to college not just to go, go if you are specializing in something.

 

[Serialized3]

Yeah, it seems the only bachelor's degrees that are worth anything anymore are in engineering or chemistry.

 

[Suicide]

Sorry, but I think you're all high. Undergrad degrees are useful, but your success depends on the quality of your internships. And that depends on your GPA and academic performance. You can't just expect a degree alone to help you. If you don't get the requisite experience to go along with it, you've screwed yourself.