OT: The Future of Continued Education
The post on South Carolina State and the impending two year shutdown of the school is something that is unfortunate, and maybe not directly related to this post. I think we can undoubtedly say that college is good, and that education recieved at college in extremely valuable (whether that education is directly a result of the classes taken or more focused on developing as a young adult in the real world, a little more nebulous).
The reality is the system for continued education in the United States is one that is not sustainable, and I think we will see more and more colleges start to disappear. According to a (most definitely biased) report by McKinsey & Company along with Chegg, 45% of college graduates feel they do not need a degree in their current role. Over 50% of graduates would have chosen a different major or a different school (some, both) if given the option to go back.
In 1993, the average student left college with roughly $10,000 in student loan debts, as of December of last year, that number has nearly tripled to $29,400. Only 20% of those loans (in 2014) came from the private sector. Addditionally, students who were the recipient of a Pell Grant (usually coming from families earning $40,000 or less annually) were much more likely to borrow more, averaging almost $5,000 more in debt than those who were never the recipient of a Pell Grant.
With the increase of online accredited universities, I think we are going to see a period of more college graduates who feel underprepared or feel like they spent a significant amount of money with little return (when you remove the campus environment from the student, you also start to remove some of the nebulous "life skills" development).
Without delving into politics (whether or not there should be federal student loans, how much money should be allocated to universities/colleges by the government), I was just hoping for some other opinions. As someone who bounced around a little bit during college, and someone who majored in English and is now (going to be) working in software development, I certainly understand how a degree is becoming less of an important step in life and more of a commodity.
EDIT: Link to McKinsey/Chegg Report
Link to Student Loan data
February 11th, 2015 at 9:06 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 9:12 AM ^
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February 11th, 2015 at 9:14 AM ^
Enjoy your Flagyl (metronidazole).
February 11th, 2015 at 9:42 AM ^
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February 11th, 2015 at 2:04 PM ^
Not that you would in your current condition, but don't even think about having a drink (also, avoid mouthwash with alcohol). Unless you wanna be the sickest you've ever been in your life.
February 11th, 2015 at 6:27 PM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 9:07 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 9:19 AM ^
Certain professions dont require a degree and others do. Its all about the profession and future you see yourself in. The proffession im in requires a college degree and I was able to find employment immediately after college.
For people who are worried about finding a job right out of college I would suggest you go to job fairs and make yourself available for companies to talk to you before you graduate. Be assertive and market yourself, dont sit back and wait because thats what will get you burnt.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:37 AM ^
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February 11th, 2015 at 9:41 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 9:58 AM ^
I was given some advice that really seems true the longer I've known it. A teacher once told me, "A degree doesn't prove that you know something. A degree represents that you are able to learn something." I think the whole educational system is set up or should be set up to prepare you on how to learn and gain knowledge. Probably less than 5% of people are actually applying the textbook fundamentals from school in their daily job. It's more vital that an individual be able to continuously learn and adapt to be successful in their job. That, hopefully, is what you are able to do after going through college and getting a degree.
February 11th, 2015 at 10:18 AM ^
This is it exactly. I say all the time college taught me how to learn. It was excellent for that: time management, priorities, hard work, impossible deadlines (at times), stress, working with others in teams, and above all taking something you know very little or nothing about, learning it, and using/applying it (test or paper)... these are all great preps for the workplace. The actual knowledge gained and applied is very dependent on degree and the job ultimately chosen.
February 11th, 2015 at 10:19 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 10:36 AM ^
How else is this stranger to know? If you've gone to UofM, graduated, and maybe even done so with honors, it tells the potential employer many things: you survived the hard work, you have time mgt skills, you can work with others, etc. (all that stuff I included above), and that you did all of this against and with a peer group that's one of the best in the country/world. It says an awful lot before you even meet them. Did you have jobs during this time, and what type? Says even more.
Did you go to a "lower" tier school (i.e. Central, UofD, Oakland)? Did you graduate at the top of your class? The best of the best at the lower tier schools are still outstanding and great hires, they've competed to be at the top and did all the things the students at top schools did.
Did you go to a lower tier school and just get by? Sorry, that says a lot about the person as well. It's not difficult to go to Western and survive in the middle. Certainly worthy of a good job if the fit is right in the interview, but to paying jobs can and will look for more.
February 11th, 2015 at 11:10 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 11:51 AM ^
Shortly before I graduated I had a deep discussion with my cousin who was daily high level at Ford. He told me, "All your diploma will get you is the interview. The interview and everything after depends on you"
Also, for many employers a degree is merely a way to insure the people they hire can read, write, and proves information at a 12th grade or higher level.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:12 PM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 9:09 AM ^
I'm luckily working in a profession that had to do with my degree, but a lot of my friends are not. There were also plenty of classes I was forced to pay for and take that I had no interest in, and remember nothing from.
As far as preparation for the real world, college in no way prepared me for a phone call with a client who was diagnosed with cancer 2 weeks after his wife died and proceeded to curse me out on the phone.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:35 AM ^
College isn't supposed to provide you with the appropriate response to every possible scenario that could arise in every job that you might hold years later. A good college teaches people to think, listen, communicate, empathize, create, scrutinize, etc. If you want technical training, there are programs for that, and if you want training in the very particulars of a job, that's on your employer. My guess is that your college experience - if it was a good one - helped you with that phone call, even if it was in ways that aren't obvious to you.
I, too, was forced to take undergraduate classes that I didn't have any interest in at the time. Some of them became the foundation of my college major and careers (which I never would have guessed), others planted seeds for future hobbies, and, yeah, a few are just weird footnotes in my life (hello: linguistics). But I like that. I needed time to explore different fields when I was 18 years old, and I'm glad that a lot of good schools encourage that kind of exploration.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:40 AM ^
Exactly. Like many areas of today's society, this debate has started to focus entirely on immediate returns rather than longterm benefits to society. It's disturbing to me that so many people view undergraduate education as "job training." It's not. Its value instead is in creating members of society who think critically, have diversity of experience, and are interested in learning.
In many ways, the debate reminds me of debate surrounding scientific reserach that does not immediately show value. "What's the value in going to the moon?", they ask. Well, the value may not be immediately obvious, but the returns in what we learn are eventually enormous. So it goes with undergraduate education.
February 11th, 2015 at 10:11 AM ^
This post, and the one that precedes it, are perfectly articulated and very important. Thanks. Undergraduate college != specific job training, nor should it.
February 11th, 2015 at 10:39 AM ^
It's disturbing to me that so many people view undergraduate education as "job training." It's not. Its value instead is in creating members of society who think critically, have diversity of experience, and are interested in learning.
It's unsustainable to have people spending $100K each to go learn how to think better. That's insane and a burden many people can't bear if there's no immediate income-boost associated with that following their degree.
Find me someone with $50K in college loan debt without a job and ask them if they thought it was all worth it so they could have a diversity of experience.
February 11th, 2015 at 10:48 AM ^
My point was not that everyone should go to college, or that everyone will find the experience valuable. For some people, it won't pay off.
Instead, my point was that it's difficult to quantify much of what is learned in college, and if we turn the focus purely to "job training," we're going to miss out on important education that drives societal progress.
February 11th, 2015 at 10:57 AM ^
Here's an example. I like reading MGoBlog. Part of what I enjoy about it is teasing apart various arguments and trying to pick out what is persuasive, and what is not. That's a skill I learned at Michigan. I learned it in philosophy classes that were totally irrelevant to my planned career at the time. I learned it in midnight drunken debates about religion in South Quad. I don't think I would have learned it as well if my education was similar to my on-the-job training.
That skill I learned is worth some dollars to me, regardless of whether it will translate to more dollars that I make in my job (though I suspect it will help there too).
February 11th, 2015 at 12:02 PM ^
Yeah I agree I picked up a lot of skills and experiences in college that are far more useful to me in my adult job than fluid mechanics ever will be, but you need to have the income-boost as some type of baseline in order to make the massive expense of college worth it.
February 11th, 2015 at 12:48 PM ^
I agree that you must consider both. What I take issue with is the many people around here who suggest that the University experience is "broken" and a waste of time because it doesn't spoonfeed you concrete job-specific skills you will use on day 1 in your first job after graduation. That's never what it was meant to do.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:45 AM ^
I wasn't blaming college for not preparing me for every life scenario. I'm just saying preparation for the real world only came in a very small amount.
Actually getting out into the real world is the only thing that taught me that I have no idea what's going on in a person's life on the other end of the phone, and that I needed a thicker skin.
Looking back on it, I really wish the system was set up to where real world experience is received right out of high school with some sort of internship. At least if I hated it I would know it was a field that I could cross off the list. When I was 18 I had no clue what I wanted to do, and ended up moving laterally because of it.
Not that I was immature, but personally I think I would have been more prepared to use college as a tool if I started when I was 20 after having some sort of internship.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:57 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 10:16 AM ^
Two points:
1. Did you really need to take physics and chem? Perhaps you could have taken other classes to fill, what I assume, was a natural science requirement. Did you really need to take an ancient and modern history class? Or could you have filled that requirement with something more to your interests? Accounting sounds pretty important to any major.
2. Taking science is part of beign a well-rounded individual that can think critically, that can understand what is and isn't scientifically sound. Reading and writing critically are important parts of any job - and most history classes indirectly teach that (the subject matter is just that - subject matter). Understanding accounting, in your example, is crucial. Do you want to always be just a marketing salesman? Do you eventually want to move up the chain at your company? Run your own business? Hell, I'm a teacher and I wish I took a few accounting classes.
February 12th, 2015 at 10:07 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 9:11 AM ^
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February 11th, 2015 at 9:29 AM ^
"I feel that these are best suited for people who have experienced the world a bit."
As a 39 year old student taking online classes, I would agree with this statement. The students who are younger in my cohort, are most times the ones who fall behind and who I dread having in my group for projects.
My wife finished her degree online after the struggle to keep up with family, work, and the commute to and from campus became too much for her. She works in the field of her study and recently received a promotion at work.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:40 AM ^
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February 11th, 2015 at 5:28 PM ^
it amazes me that the older people would dare to complain about the youth these days.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:28 AM ^
It has always been the case that undergraduate education does not, in the vast majority of fields, directly train individuals for their eventual jobs. Its true value--giving young adults an opportunity to learn how to read, write, think, and be members of a community--has also not changed.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:38 AM ^
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February 11th, 2015 at 9:55 AM ^
Agree with the first part, disagree with the second part to some extent. Learning how to read, write, or think is not necessarily a benefit to the student or society if the way students are taught to read, write, or think is wrong. Reading/writing/thinking are tools that can be used for good, ill, or somewhere in between, and I think the way many secondary educators are teaching students to use those tools today is fundamentally flawed. But that's a debate for outside of a message board.
February 11th, 2015 at 10:19 AM ^
Reading/writing/thinking are tools that can be used for good, ill, or somewhere in between, and I think the way many secondary educators are teaching students to use those tools today is fundamentally flawed.
Come on now, you can't really make a statement like that and not give any basis for it. Do you mean post-secondary (since we're discussing college), or high school? Do you have any specifics to this assertion?
February 11th, 2015 at 9:12 AM ^
like (S.H.I.T.) South Hampton Institute of Technology. Barteleby had it right all along.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:54 AM ^
Ask me about my wiener!
February 11th, 2015 at 9:14 AM ^
is that the government realizes there's a problem. The bad news is that it will come at a price. Its ridiculous how expensive college has gotten and the unfortunate part of this is when you change one variable, another or more than one variable will be affected. If you've ever installed a tile floor, you know that moving one end will change how the other end and its proximity to the next tile. A wonky comparision, I realize.
I saw this article yesterday which provides a 30,000 foot level view of the problem, written for the masses obviously. But maybe gives some perspective:
February 11th, 2015 at 11:22 AM ^
The banking and govt allowed everyone to borrow a large amount of money at 1% teaser rates in oder to go out and bid up the prices on a home. A couple making $50,000 here in SoCal could buy a $450,000 (basic home) at the 1% rate. Once the rate went up to 6-8% and their payment quadrupled they were living in a house worth $300,000 and qucikly foreclosed on.
Same bubble with education, here son here is your big loan, you dont have to pay until you are working to go bid up the price of education. Once out and making $50,000 you realize you have an education worth half of what you paid and now owe (in some cases of course). The point is it is the supply of money that is driving the price, not the true value of the education.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:15 AM ^
I tend to agree that we're going to see schools close as the tuition increases are completely unsustainable in the long term.
When I graduated in the mid 90's a full year of tuition at Michigan cost about 5k. A hardworking kid could basically pay for their degree by working their way through school. My daughter will be attending in a couple years and the costs have more than tripled since then.
In addition, I think that so many people have degrees now that they have been significantly devalued. The four degree is now the functional equivalent of a HS education 30 years ago. All it does is get you in the door.
Corporate priorities have also changed significantly. Companies used to value a liberal arts education, now not so much. Now instead of hiring intelligent, hardworking people and training them themselves, most businesses only want employees that can come in and do a specific job on day one. So instead of a degree giving a graduate multiple career options, often times it seems to lock you onto a specific career track.
February 11th, 2015 at 9:21 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 9:23 AM ^
I am in the trades. I make a good amount of money. Many of my friends who went to college not have degrees qustion my they went to school.
I'm not saying it is for everyone. But when I was in school, I didn't see why I have to sit through classes that I already know the information or it didn't pertain to what I was going for.
It seem to me, all the money kids are forking out, is going to the people at the top and not the future of the world.
February 11th, 2015 at 10:00 AM ^
As a contractor in the construction trades we are seeing less and less high school kids wanting to get into the field. They are being bombarded with the "you must go to college" mantra that the schools are peddling. Not everyone can be engineers or salespeople or techies.
I've got employees who are netting 50-60k a year. That aint a terrible living by any standards.
February 11th, 2015 at 10:26 AM ^
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February 11th, 2015 at 11:34 AM ^
masters has growth potential for you!
I get frustrated as hell. I get invited to local high schools to give "pep talks" to the kids about hard work and owning a business and what it's like in the real world. I know the second I leave the teachers are back to "go to college! Take all the classes and get all the degress!!111!" That's not always the answer. In fact, a lot of times it isn't the answer.
February 11th, 2015 at 11:53 AM ^