"Return for Investment" attiude towards higher education is just WRONG! (skill, degrees)

[ilovemycomputer90]

Sorry, but the reality is that we need to put roofs over our heads and food on the table. I can study my favorite liberal art subjects for free at the library.

My current job is sweeping floors and cleaning toilets. I'm not complaining, but I know it's not something I want to be doing out of necessity when I'm 60.

[Glucorious]

Originally Posted by ilovemycomputer90

Sorry, but the reality is that we need to put roofs over our heads and food on the table. I can study my favorite liberal art subjects for free at the library.

My current job is sweeping floors and cleaning toilets. I'm not complaining, but I know it's not something I want to be doing out of necessity when I'm 60.

You can also study electrical engineering, computer science, math, physics etc. at the library. You can study anything at the library.. yourself.

[brightdoglover]

I have never understood why people don't read and think and discuss while auditing liberal arts courses. Why are you paying money? To get the credits to the degree. If you really want to learn, you can just learn.
I imagine people wouldn't learn engineering, etc., "at the library" because there is more involved, plus, they likely are studying it to get the credentials to work in the field- not so with Ancient French Poetry.

[ilovemycomputer90]

Originally Posted by Glucorious

You can also study electrical engineering, computer science, math, physics etc. at the library. You can study anything at the library.. yourself.

Maybe to an extent. But if you're able to teach yourself calculus III at the library, then you're a genius. The science and math courses are far more complex. But anyone can read about the American Revolution or British literature in the library.

[Tex?Il?]

As long as one has really good people, networking skills, and is very flexible and opportunistic, then you get by. Sometimes employers, just want to see that you had the commitment to see something through to the end.

Bottom line, if you have people skills, you know what you are getting into and have a real plan for after school you can go to school for anything and still be successful.

[sheena12]

I am in no way deriding people who love Engineering and Science. Or Math or Medicine.
I am currently assisting my niece and sister to find such a school. My niece has a paassion and a talent for such things. She should study this!

On this forum, and IRL, I have heard of students who do not have these interests, derided and practically called fools! There is also a huge double standard when it comes to universities and their expectation of Engineering students vs. Liberal Arts Students. At many universities, the course load of liberal arts classes is greatly reduced and watered down! So that they can study what they are really good at. Where their heart lies. Certainly, Engineering students might need to take a Survey of Lit class, or an art history course but no one is going to force them to actually write a readable story, or produce a work of art. That would be silly now, wouldn't it?

However, liberal arts and social science students are not just asked to learn ABOUT SCIENCE and MATH, they are expected to perform mathematical problems! Not ones that will be needed for their field, but ones that they will be frustrated by. Things that will bore them to tears! Sure, all college educated students should want to know why their colleagues at university who are studying engineering are studying higher math forms. And not wanting to know is anti-intellectual. Not wanting to do, is not. But I have digressed.

Can anyone concede the truth? The purpose of a university education is not the finding of gainful employment. I have seen SO MANY PEOPLE pushed into fields that do not excite or even interest them ...just so they can get a job. And spending money ten years later to re-educate them selves in a field that they actually love. Their true vocation.

If that is all that truly interests you, attaining a job, perhaps you should check out a vocational program! If you do not want to read the sonnets of Shakespeare, the works of Conrad, Hardy or Elliot, the thoughts of Freud, Jung, or Maslow concerning human behavior, motivation, emotion and development. If you are just fine not knowing why I deplore Descartes, but love Schopenhauer or Kierkegaard, - or why someone else might feel the opposite, if you do not know the place John Maynard Keynes plays in Capitalism or want to be able to argue a point with alacrity against a historical revisionist,or a person who denies that the Holocaust ever took place, and furthermore you do not see the danger in such a line of thought. IF none of this maters or interests you, there is a good chance that a university education may not be right for you.

Your university will teach you way more than you care to know, and it will all be wasted on you.
Perhaps THAT is the bad investment!

[Charles]

Originally Posted by sheena12

Lately I have been hearing this phrase on this board - "return for investment" when applied to a university education. It sickens me. It is indicative of a total misunderstanding of a beauty and power of a liberal arts education.

By this logic, perhaps we should just send our children to trade schools,or community colleges, ban the learning of literature, philosophy, theology and the arts!

Even the social sciences have come under attack here! When does it end? When we turn all of our kids into electrical engineers or majors in medical fields?

My cousin just returned from visiting several North Eastern liberal arts universities (highly competitive) and a few hard science oriented institutions. She was disturbed to hear this odious phrase bandied about at two schools.
It turned her off. It turned her daughter off. She will not be applying their.

They had never heard this foolish phrase before. Sadly, I had. It reflects an intrenched anti-intellectuality, and not only a disdain for learning, but a misunderstanding of it!

It is particularly disturbing when it is applied to "older" students with respect to "how long they will live in order to recoup their expenses"

Knowledge is priceless!

And with that, I have decided that I will formally seek to learn more and to accrue yet another degree. There will be no spread sheets involved and the ratio of expense vs. life span will not play a part in this.

Those of you forcing your children to study subjects because they are "hot" right now? I feel sorry for you. More so for your child.

There is nothing more expensive than the futile attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole.

My son will begin studies by following his bliss - a BFA in Art. I am excited to see where this passion leads him.How exciting to have a child with a passion other than money, especially in this day and age!

What line of work is your husband in?

[rock_chalk]

Originally Posted by sheena12

On this forum, and IRL, I have heard of students who do not have these interests, derided and practically called fools! There is also a huge double standard when it comes to universities and their expectation of Engineering students vs. Liberal Arts Students. At many universities, the course load of liberal arts classes is greatly reduced and watered down! So that they can study what they are really good at. Where their heart lies. Certainly, Engineering students might need to take a Survey of Lit class, or an art history course but no one is going to force them to actually write a readable story, or produce a work of art. That would be silly now, wouldn't it?

However, liberal arts and social science students are not just asked to learn ABOUT SCIENCE and MATH, they are expected to perform mathematical problems! Not ones that will be needed for their field, but ones that they will be frustrated by. Things that will bore them to tears! Sure, all college educated students should want to know why their colleagues at university who are studying engineering are studying higher math forms. And not wanting to know is anti-intellectual. Not wanting to do, is not. But I have digressed.

Actually, you are very wrong. The computational problems in required university math classes (ie calculus I) are no more reflective of serious mathematics than are intro art history readings reflective of artistic creation.

Originally Posted by sheena12

Can anyone concede the truth? The purpose of a university education is not the finding of gainful employment. I have seen SO MANY PEOPLE pushed into fields that do not excite or even interest them ...just so they can get a job. And spending money ten years later to re-educate them selves in a field that they actually love. Their true vocation.

IF none of this maters or interests you, there is a good chance that a university education may not be right for you.

Your posts are not a stirring endorsement of the liberal arts education as a broadening experience. That claim is not the truth; it is your opinion. A perfectly defensible opinion, to be sure, but not a statement of fact.

[sheena12]

Originally Posted by Charles

What line of work is your husband in?

That's a strange question. What does my husband do for a living? Quaint.

[hsw]

Need to achieve economic freedom before can truly achieve intellectual freedom

Don't need to attend any bricks and mortar, formal educational setting to learn

Many who spent yrs doing well at leading colleges in rigorous quant majors will argue it's just a union card to enter lucrative careers and competitive industries where most learning occurs in competition against the best in one's chosen industry (and one often needs to "delearn" useless/misleading theoretic stuff from one's formal education)

Any clever kid can self-teach anything and at any age...and relevant learning is ever-evolving (and largely self-taught) in real world of life...and doesn't start or stop just because one doesn't "need" a diploma or GPA or paycheck anymore