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I did not know what I wanted to do with my life until I was 26. When I was 18-25, I had no effing clue. Who the heck does have it together at that age? I was in the military for some of those years, worked some crap jobs afterwards, was in and out of college.
Once I figured out what I wanted to do & had a clear plan, it was not that hard. College is great if you have a plan. It is not so great if you're kind of floating through life because of the costs associated with it. What needs to stop is people thinking they "have" to go to college right after high school. If you don't know what you want your degree to accomplish, I suggest you do not need a degree. Go look for jobs in that case with the skills you have and see what happens. If you find out you need college to get where you want to be, THEN go to college.
There was once a day when a degree automatically signaled you were employable at a mid-range level out of the gate. Those were the days when only 8-15% of the population had a college degree of any kind including 2-year degrees. Those days are LONG gone... they were gone by the late 1970s. Now, more than double that proportion of the population has a college degree, so it's not as powerful signal for employers that it used to be. That does not make it useless, however.
Even the so-called "useless" liberal arts degrees can be leveraged into a job if you have a plan for how to use it. If you want to be a history teacher, getting a history degree is probably a good way to go about it. You'll improve your chances if you minor in kinesiology and get some experience volunteer coaching something at the Boys & Girls club or whatever. But if you major in history just because.... well, you liked one class, got an A, so majored in it,then it's probably not going to work out well. It is not because you have a "useless" degree. It's because you have no goal, are not focused, are not specific about what you want out of it. The college did what you paid it to do - offer classes to complete your degree majoring in [X].
I did not know what I wanted to do with my life until I was 26. When I was 18-25, I had no effing clue. Who the heck does have it together at that age? I was in the military for some of those years, worked some crap jobs afterwards, was in and out of college.
Once I figured out what I wanted to do & had a clear plan, it was not that hard. College is great if you have a plan. It is not so great if you're kind of floating through life because of the costs associated with it. What needs to stop is people thinking they "have" to go to college right after high school. If you don't know what you want your degree to accomplish, I suggest you do not need a degree. Go look for jobs in that case with the skills you have and see what happens. If you find out you need college to get where you want to be, THEN go to college.
There was once a day when a degree automatically signaled you were employable at a mid-range level out of the gate. Those were the days when only 8-15% of the population had a college degree of any kind including 2-year degrees. Those days are LONG gone... they were gone by the late 1970s. Now, more than double that proportion of the population has a college degree, so it's not as powerful signal for employers that it used to be. That does not make it useless, however.
Even the so-called "useless" liberal arts degrees can be leveraged into a job if you have a plan for how to use it. If you want to be a history teacher, getting a history degree is probably a good way to go about it. You'll improve your chances if you minor in kinesiology and get some experience volunteer coaching something at the Boys & Girls club or whatever. But if you major in history just because.... well, you liked one class, got an A, so majored in it,then it's probably not going to work out well. It is not because you have a "useless" degree. It's because you have no goal, are not focused, are not specific about what you want out of it. The college did what you paid it to do - offer classes to complete your degree majoring in [X].
There has never been a time when a degree was an automatic mid-range level job, and the problem with kids these days especially, is they actually still think that. I've had college grads come right out and say "I have a degree, I should be able to get a management job"...um, nope, you can get the entry level job your degree leads to and hard work and production at work will get you that management job.
-1 only because I know for a fact that you don't need to coach to be a history teacher.
But it helps improve the odds of getting hired
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