If you didn't go to college do you now regret it? (stepfather, step-dad)
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A lot of people I know never went to college, made millions of dollars, live the good life, happy ever after and didn't lose 4+ years out of their life and a lot of wasted money.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nicet4
Since this thread was bumped from a long time ago I am curious to know exactly what are these "critical thinking skills" that someone learns in college these days?
...but it put me close to people that had the money and wherewithal to help me find my career.
College is a very wimpy place to learn "Critical Thinking Skills", tho there is a lot of emphasis (advertisement) of that in Business and MBA programs. Academically you can get the knowledge, but knowing how to apply / and surviving BAD decisions brings the WISDOM. Sometimes you can get really fortunate and meet great minds while in academia
I have been on the 'interview team' of 4 recent college hires... (technical engineering grads, only top 5% of school class may apply).
Quite sad, that most students today have only 'attended' college. AND they are terrible at demonstrating the confidence that they can apply the concepts. We are a supplier facing organization. Our suppliers are 'dumb-founded' that these are the 'replacement staff' they will have to work for / with.
(7 exiting employees in the last 2 yrs = 150 yrs combined experience), replacement staff has never participated in the mechanical skills to support our industry. (Many of us 'ex-' were farm kids / knew about metals, welding , car and tractor repair, and building stuff before High School, as well as 4-H projects which taught resource / profit / cash management).
Basically the replacement generation has been staring at a video game or a cell phone for 15 yrs.
Interpersonal skills, Critical Thinking (i.e. in the details of REAL business and life are lacking). Innovation / dreaming is strong (and useful). but... Rubber-meets-the-road 'decisiveness'
OT... I enjoyed, but was disappointed in my last college program (Post age 50, just a few yrs ago). Definitely not a "Value" for the HIGH tuition costs and time sink. I can't imagine the loss of 4-6 YRS!!!. (I worked FT through 4 degree programs, usually night shift in a factory so I could do 'Day School'... better class choices)
I've always regretted not going to college. But, I got pregnant at 17 & ended up married. It didn't last for more than a couple of years & then I worked & raised my son.
I didn't even realize that I was smart until I passed a civil service test at #2. I was mad at myself because I wasn't #1, lol.
I never had problems getting jobs, until after I was laid off at 55 during the recession.
Back to the question. My greatest love is reading & words. I so wanted/want to be a writer but there are still so many words I don't know, sentence structure I don't understand & nouns/verbs sometimes escape me.
I have had a few poems published but I often wonder what I could have done if I had only had a good teacher.
I have a Masters degree and one of my closest friends did not go to college and I think we pretty much ended up at retirement in much the same place. He went off to Vietnam and then later was pretty much a low-level engineer tech in the defense industry but took advantage of every opportunity and was not afraid to take laterals from one program to another. He got his hands dirty on a lot of top secret projects and learned from each one. He is brilliant at any kind of mechanical problem solving. I think college would have been a waste of four years regarding his career. Now...he has pretty narrow interests and he doesn't know much about history or literature or some of the basics one would learn in college but he didn't need that. We talk about this quite often and he seems to think he missed something by not going to college. He did fine without it.
A lot of people I know never went to college, made millions of dollars, live the good life, happy ever after and didn't lose 4+ years out of their life and a lot of wasted money.
I too know many people who achieved success in various careers that never pursued either a college education or vocational training beyond high school. But these are not the doctors that are performing our surgeries, the teachers who are educating our children, or the master electrician who is wiring our house because we the consumer of the services provided by these individuals demand they have a level of education and training that confirms to us they have achieved a level of competency to deliver those services in a safe and competent manner. And if those services are not delivered in a safe and competent manner and the outcome results in either harm to our person or property, we make our way to a lawyer who spent 7 years in higher education to obtain that JD which confirms to us the consumer of their services that they have achieved a level of competency to represent us in the court of law in an attempt to recoup compensation from the damages we sustained from services delivered to us in an incompetent and unsafe manner.
There are many reasons why people do not pursue higher education, and some of those reasons range from lack of opportunity and funding to going into a business or profession that does not require formal higher education. But I think most will agree that the doctor who spent 10+ years pursuing higher education and training that enables them to perform a procedure on us that saves our life to the master electrician that fixes the faulty wiring in our home that prevented a fire that could have resulted in loss of life and or property did not waste their time and money in pursuing higher educations that enabled them to provide their very valuable services to us the consumer.
I got an AA majoring in history, and a Certificate with computer programming. I had a job offer before I finished the semester. But I was too budy to go back for history, then got married and then had other things... never got to do that. I really really wish I had since I love history so much and would have considered it worthy of my time even if it didn't bring money.
I miss being able to have deep discussion about historical times and their peoples with others who also know enough detail to come up with their own conclusions.
I definitely regret it but at the time I just wanted out of the family home so I took the first full time job that I could 4 days after high school. I had wanted to be a nurse but my H.S. grades were terrible in chemistry & geometry so back then, that disqualified me. However I could have picked a different major but women without a lot of money didn't have a lot of career options in 1972, at least none that I was aware of being raised in a very strict home where women were nurses or teachers.
I see women in my job capacity that are dental hygienists make $50-$100K a year and I want to kick myself for not going to college and getting a better education so that at my age (62) I wouldn't be working for $12 an hour after 45 years (on and off) in the working world.
I definitely regret it but at the time I just wanted out of the family home so I took the first full time job that I could 4 days after high school. I had wanted to be a nurse but my H.S. grades were terrible in chemistry & geometry so back then, that disqualified me. However I could have picked a different major but women without a lot of money didn't have a lot of career options in 1972, at least none that I was aware of being raised in a very strict home where women were nurses or teachers.
I see women in my job capacity that are dental hygienists make $50-$100K a year and I want to kick myself for not going to college and getting a better education so that at my age (62) I wouldn't be working for $12 an hour after 45 years (on and off) in the working world.
In many ways it is more critical for women to get a college degree so they can stay away from minimum wage jobs. Men can do more manual labor jobs that pay much better and advance in those fields. Hard for a woman to do that. I know it can be done I'm just saying it is harder. Anything in the medical field is excellent choice for woman. Better pay and more opportunities.
I've always regretted not going to college. But, I got pregnant at 17 & ended up married. It didn't last for more than a couple of years & then I worked & raised my son.
I didn't even realize that I was smart until I passed a civil service test at #2. I was mad at myself because I wasn't #1, lol.
I never had problems getting jobs, until after I was laid off at 55 during the recession.
Back to the question. My greatest love is reading & words. I so wanted/want to be a writer but there are still so many words I don't know, sentence structure I don't understand & nouns/verbs sometimes escape me.
I have had a few poems published but I often wonder what I could have done if I had only had a good teacher.
Mary
It is never too late! You have the talent and the desire. Remember all the people who never got started till in their last years....... you also can achieve what you wish.
A lot of people I know never went to college, made millions of dollars, live the good life, happy ever after and didn't lose 4+ years out of their life and a lot of wasted money.
Anybody who feels that their college experience was a "loss" of 4+ years out of their life is a pathetic case. Education is about a lot more than making money. I'll not repeat my previous post in this thread - it will either be worth it to you to find it (if you want to understand my point of view) or not.
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