Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Education > Colleges and Universities
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 04-10-2014, 01:25 PM
 
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
41,940 posts, read 36,703,214 times
Reputation: 40634

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chemistry_Guy View Post
I'm with golfgal here. Over half of the first year science majors I advise say that they want to be a medical doctor. Their opinions of medicine are based on TV and their parents' pressure. When they realize the scope of material they need to learn just to get into medical school, the herd is thinned dramatically. We often joke that pre-med is the upper middle class version of the 'undecided' major.

I saw that myself. Probably a third didn't make it through bio1/2 and chem1/2... more than half didn't make it through organic chemistry. I think you're spot on.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 04-10-2014, 01:25 PM
 
Location: Palo Alto, CA
151 posts, read 422,816 times
Reputation: 180
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer View Post
More like - Dream big at first, but then cut and run when the going gets tough.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chemistry_Guy View Post
I'm with golfgal here. Over half of the first year science majors I advise say that they want to be a medical doctor. Their opinions of medicine are based on TV and their parents' pressure. When they realize the scope of material they need to learn just to get into medical school, the herd is thinned dramatically. We often joke that pre-med is the upper middle class version of the 'undecided' major.
I'm gonna have to go with B.C.D. on this one.

I think some people just pick whatever has the highest salary. Only to find out that their ambitions of making money were stronger than their dedication.

They thought they deserved more money than they were willing to work for. It's a big part of the entitlement generation.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 04-14-2014, 03:11 PM
 
260 posts, read 603,627 times
Reputation: 300
Quote:
Originally Posted by Twinkle Toes View Post
Why do people go to college when they don't even know what they want to do?


Because, it's like Uncle Rico said in the movie Napoleon Dynamite: "You might as well do something while you're doing nothing!"
This is the best answer in the thread so far. People go to college because it sounds like a good way to spend years 18-22 of their life. Simply being a "college student" gives a young adult all sorts of rights and privileges in society. The government is "investing" in you. Cell phone companies give you discounts. Your ego really gets pumped up by society. And there's the whole mystique about "college life" that the media perpetuates with movies like Animal House, Old School, Superbad, etc.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 04-15-2014, 09:37 PM
 
905 posts, read 782,922 times
Reputation: 1293
I didn't know what I wanted to do at 18 but I damn sure knew I didn't want a crappy, low-paying job in my hometown. So 4 years in college was a good way to kill some time getting a liberal arts degree. I still don't know what I want to do and that was 25 years ago, but no regrets on the degree and it's not like I probably would have gone to a different school for a different major had I waited a few years.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 04-18-2014, 10:27 PM
 
25,556 posts, read 23,809,039 times
Reputation: 10119
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavelength View Post
I got my degree because I had specific career goals in mind. I didn't go to college straight out of high school because I didn't know what I wanted to do at the time. It took me a few years to figure it out.

The purpose of a degree is to prove formal education relating to certain subjects. Most people need it as a stepping stone into their career.

So why would someone go to school when they don't even have a career in mind, and then try to match up jobs with their degree after they graduate? That makes about as much sense as going out and buying a tool for which you have no use for. And then wandering aimlessly around the house trying to find something to fix that requires that tool. It's just non-sense.

Don't tell me it's because they just want to get "educated" or "enlightened". It doesn't take tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life to audit courses or go to the library.

And don't tell me it's because employers are looking for just any degree. The kinds of jobs requiring an arbitrary degree are just more of the same crappy ones you already have access to without a degree.
Because their parents and society put pressure on them to go to college. Nothing more and nothing less. But with the lowering quality of jobs you get as the number of college graduates increased, you finally now have declining college enrollments for reasons cited in your last sentence. If you're going to have access to the same kinds of crappy jobs, you could have gone to work straight out of high school. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 04-18-2014, 10:29 PM
 
25,556 posts, read 23,809,039 times
Reputation: 10119
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryManback View Post
This is the best answer in the thread so far. People go to college because it sounds like a good way to spend years 18-22 of their life. Simply being a "college student" gives a young adult all sorts of rights and privileges in society. The government is "investing" in you. Cell phone companies give you discounts. Your ego really gets pumped up by society. And there's the whole mystique about "college life" that the media perpetuates with movies like Animal House, Old School, Superbad, etc.
Repped. Good point!
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 04-21-2014, 11:20 AM
 
5,644 posts, read 13,172,949 times
Reputation: 14170
Quote:
Originally Posted by NyWriterdude View Post
Because their parents and society put pressure on them to go to college. Nothing more and nothing less. But with the lowering quality of jobs you get as the number of college graduates increased, you finally now have declining college enrollments for reasons cited in your last sentence. If you're going to have access to the same kinds of crappy jobs, you could have gone to work straight out of high school. And there's nothing wrong with that.
1. There is no data to suggest a correlation between "lowering(sic) quality of jobs and increased number of college graduates."

2. Not even sure what you mean by "lowering quality of jobs" or how those would classified or quantified.

3. Declining college enrollments are multi factorial and when one looks at the pool of available applicants with number of applying students as a percentage its not even clear there is a decline.

4. The number one reason for "declining enrollments" that has been looked at is the crackdown and slow down in enrollments at for profit institutions

5. Going back to your first point please try and prove that the alleged decline in enrollment has anything to do with the alleged lowering quality of jobs available.

Garbage in garbage out
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-02-2014, 01:14 AM
 
Location: Eugene, Oregon
1,391 posts, read 1,487,183 times
Reputation: 1176
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewJerseyMemories View Post
Not everyone knows what they want to do at 18.
I think this is the majority by far. If you know what you want to do and have the aptitude for it and it happens to lead to a lucrative profession you're fortunate.

In the case of a major like engineering, that's already closed to you on the first day of your freshman year if you were a math feeb (like me) in public school. I hadn't had second year algebra or trig, let alone HS calculus, so I definitely couldn't have handled the rigorous calculus track for STEM-bound college freshmen. It was too bad; there were many aspects about engineering and natural science that I found very intriguing, but with my math skill at the time, I wasn't going to get any closer to any of that than reading National Geographic or Time-Life books (this was back when they published good stuff). Belatedly, around the age of 28 or so, I finally began to get abstract math in a way that I never had before. I was grateful for it, but I don't think it would have done me any good to have waited until I was 28 to start my college career.

Obviously, I majored in something else, but it worked out in the end.

For many students, what majors you don't choose has already been set in stone long before you graduate from HS.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-03-2014, 12:28 AM
 
Location: Eugene, Oregon
1,391 posts, read 1,487,183 times
Reputation: 1176
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavelength View Post
And don't tell me it's because employers are looking for just any degree. The kinds of jobs requiring an arbitrary degree are just more of the same crappy ones you already have access to without a degree.
Maybe it's more accurate to say the same crappy jobs that require an arbitrary degree today, are the ones that one was able to get a generation ago with just a HS diploma. The people today who have only HS or less have been pushed further down the scale of jobs and wages.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-03-2014, 12:45 AM
 
Location: Eugene, Oregon
1,391 posts, read 1,487,183 times
Reputation: 1176
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chemistry_Guy View Post
I'm with golfgal here. Over half of the first year science majors I advise say that they want to be a medical doctor. Their opinions of medicine are based on TV and their parents' pressure. When they realize the scope of material they need to learn just to get into medical school, the herd is thinned dramatically. We often joke that pre-med is the upper middle class version of the 'undecided' major.
Pre-med used to be like pre-law (no personal experience here, just recounting what they used to say about this to all undergraduates in the 1970s and 80s). You'd think they'd advise the aspiring med student to major in bio or physiology or perhaps biochemistry, but no. They used to tell you to major in anything at all that you can do well in. Philosophy, history, English--whatever; it didn't matter because you'd be learning all the science you needed when you were actually in medical school.

So evidently that's not true these days.

Seriously, today you hear about little ones needing the right kind of preschool in order to be ready for "the rigors of kindergarten". I kid you not, I actually read those very words in an article somewhere, not so long ago.

We didn't have rigorous kindergartens back in 1963. We had blocks and toys, songs led by the teacher as she strummed the autoharp, and naps. I'm pretty sure there was no reading yet, other than the teacher reading to us. Back then I think the point was that we got to know the kids we'd be going through the next six or eight grades with.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Education > Colleges and Universities

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top