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only during the "good life" period, of 50 years has sending your kids to college been normal expected and something that everybody did.
if you gota work for it and actually pay for it, you begin to question the price tag.
maybe if people had to pay for it, they would stop taking ethnic studies, italian 101 and body building as part of "career preparation".
most want an advanced degree and a carreer i the high end professions (w/ monster price tage and questionable placement).
I was financially responsible for my own schooling, and I didn't question the price tag. I looked at the price tag (which was fair) as the cost of taking the coursework I wanted to take, at the school I wanted to attend. I didn't trim down my courseload to the basics, I spent the money getting the education I wanted, elective courses and all. I majored in a humanities discipline, and have never been unemployed or forced to work a job outside my area of specialization or one unrelated to what I studied. No placement issues, here.
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most need a trade (low cost debt free and good pay, RN, LVN, plumber electrician lots of em).
why was it good enough for my grandfather but not good enough for my kids????
My dad is a tradesman (also has a bachelor's and master's degree, BTW). His line of work is a fine career, but one that does not interest me. That's different than it not being "good enough" for me.
First of all, Huck, I'm tired of you calling nursing a "trade". Do you know you can get a PhD in nursing? Are you familiar with nurse practitioners? Nursing is a profession and nurses are professionals.
Secondly, it's not that trades careers are not good enough for your kids. If that's what your kids want to do, fine! But the world has changed a little since your grandfather was choosing his career. One of my gfs went into farming b/c that's what everybody in that little corner of Wisconsin did. The other was a carpenter. I can assure you carpentry has changed since he worked in it, what with CAD, etc.
everything has been declared a profession. ye ol sanitation engineer bit.
you dont need a phd to be an RN or LVN.
sorry you did not like my post.
everything has been declared a profession. ye ol sanitation engineer bit.
you dont need a phd to be an RN or LVN.
sorry you did not like my post.
Even when I was in nursing school back in the 70s, nursing was considered a profession. You don't need a PhD, but you do need an AAS, and in my opinion, the entry into the profession should be a BSN. An AAS in my area requires 80 college credits; close to 3 full academic years. The state licensing boards consider an RN to be a "professional" nurse.
First of all, Huck, I'm tired of you calling nursing a "trade". Do you know you can get a PhD in nursing? Are you familiar with nurse practitioners? Nursing is a profession and nurses are professionals.
Secondly, it's not that trades careers are not good enough for your kids. If that's what your kids want to do, fine! But the world has changed a little since your grandfather was choosing his career. One of my gfs went into farming b/c that's what everybody in that little corner of Wisconsin did. The other was a carpenter. I can assure you carpentry has changed since he worked in it, what with CAD, etc.
The world hasn't changed so much that we no longer need farmers, carpenters, HVAC mechanics, auto mechanics, welders, or plumbers.
The world hasn't changed so much that we no longer need farmers, carpenters, HVAC mechanics, auto mechanics, welders, or plumbers.
We need a lot fewer farmers. You can aspire to be a farmer, but you might not be able to do it. Some of those jobs did not exist when my grandfathers were choosing their occupations. HVAC? There was no such thing as air conditioning. Autos weren't available to the 'common guy' until the later 1920s. Many people did not have indoor plumbing (including my grandfather's family) at that time, thus, no need for a plumber.
We need a lot fewer farmers. You can aspire to be a farmer, but you might not be able to do it. Some of those jobs did not exist when my grandfathers were choosing their occupations. HVAC? There was no such thing as air conditioning. Autos weren't available to the 'common guy' until the later 1920s. Many people did not have indoor plumbing (including my grandfather's family) at that time, thus, no need for a plumber.
Fewer farmers means more people starving to death. Great line of thought there. Yes, some of those jobs didn't exist before but they do exist today and have existed for about a hundred years now.
Fewer farmers means more people starving to death. Great line of thought there. Yes, some of those jobs didn't exist before but they do exist today and have existed for about a hundred years now.
New Farmers for a New Century (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2GwBvCrrdg0J:web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Newfarmer1.htm+fewer+farmers&cd=27&hl=en&ct=clnk&g l=us - broken link) In the 1890 census, forty-percent of the U.S. population still listed their occupation as farming – by far the largest of any occupation. However, a hundred years later, in 1990, the percentage of farmers in the U.S. population had dropped to less than two-percent, and the Census Bureau proposed dropping farming from the census occupation categories. The number of U.S. farms had dropped from a depression-years peak of 6.6 million in1930s to less than two million some sixty years later.
Fewer farmers means more people starving to death. Great line of thought there.
Pfffft. Are you kidding? People are absolutely NOT starving due to too few crops being grown to feed them. There is a complicated web of reasons people who are starving are starving, but it's not due to a shortage of food being produced. Get a clue.
And, few people go into farming because it is o longer financially viable in most markets unless you are basically sharecropping on your own land for a large corporation...and even then, not incredibly financially viable. I grew up in the middle of Illinois' soy and corn producing region, in a community built around agriculture/agricultural processing and agriculture-related manufacturing, shipping, and storage. I grew up there in the 70s-90s, and watched farming go from something that could support a family to a job that people had to do part time while working in trucking or factory work the rest of the time in order to pay the bills.
Well I am prepared for the attack that will be sure to follow, but I am happy to say that my teens are not given such a choice. they are going to college. Period. We can decide together what college or university will be best, What major will be appropriate, and where they want to attend. We, (and I say we because this is not a decision that a teenager should make on her own) together will choose the best college plan. It will involve going away to school and it will involve four years of college. My teens will work summers and will contribute in some way. However I feel fortunate that I am in a position to be of assistance, financially speaking, as well as in other ways.
Attendance at a four year college is pretty much requisite for entry into a middle or upper middle class life. Notice I say "life'" not "job." I do not wamt anything less for my children.
Yes there are success stories - but they are few and far between. That os why these same names are repeated over and over. They are the exception and not the rule.
Does going to college guarantee success? Of coarse not. But not going is a sure fire ticket to ignominy.
The thing is, that not going does NOT have to be a sure ticket to ignominy if we as a culture respect that not everyone needs or wants a *college* education.
I think of my cousin who was basically uninterested in anything academic, but who loved working on cars. He could have gone to trade school for automechanics or had that choice in high school, but it was not an option even back when he was in school.
I think of my own daughter who is a technical theater shop person. We spent a lot of money sending her to Carnegie Mellon for tech theater and she could have learned more right out of high school had their been internships available in her field like the one she did at Seattle Repetoire Theater. Does she make a lot of money? Nope. In her field, a college degree gets you very little. Is she good at her job? Yep. It still took her a long time to find a good job in the field that pays her insurance. She is working in a private school now.
I think of the many kids I taught in the inner city in Chicago who did not go to college, but are making it in various trades. We still need plumbers, carpenters, automechanics, etc. In fact, some of these kids make more now than the college grads who were in the liberal arts (and many make more than my own daughter who paid $18,000 a year for her education).
I love this story about Pete Rose, who was one of the rare players from his era who did not have a college degree. The press never let him forget about it either. They would get on his case by asking him Hey Pete, what college did you graduate from? And Pete would respond, I didn't go to college, but I'm thinking about buying one. Those were better days for Pete Rose!
The salient point is this: The Pete Roses of the world are rare, and most people are not Pete Rose. If your objective is to maximize your income and living standard over a lifetime, then you're still going to more oftentimes than not be better off with a degree than without one - if you have the intelligence to complete it and you make a reasonable choice as to major/school. If you don't care about that objective, then obviously you can do whatever you want...but in any case, you probably won't end up like Pete Rose.
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