Not Everyone Is Smart Enough To Study Engineering, Accounting, or Computer Science (credit, 2014)
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.
Location: In a city within a state where politicians come to get their PHDs in Corruption
2,907 posts, read 2,067,707 times
Reputation: 4478
Advertisements
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucky4life
These threads get old after a while. One does not need to get a STEM degree in order to make decent money. In fact, there are lot's of people that have a Stem degree that don't make jack****. Guess how useful a bachelors in biology, chemistry, or physics is in our current job market.
I think what a lot of you bozos don't understand is that the reason most people avoid getting a STEM degree isn't because of the hard classes, it's because 90% of those degrees lead to boring jobs that most people have no interest in. One of my best friends is an engineer. He spends 50 hours a week behind a desk figuring out how much concrete and other materials it's going to take to build parking lots and other structures. His job would totally suck for most people, and he only makes about 75k a year, so it's not as if he's loaded. My ex was a CPA manager. She makes about 90k a year, but She hates her job with a passion. She's literally waiting to retire, and she's not even 40 yet. Did either of these people do better than my neighbor that got a degree in English/criminal justice and now makes 60k a year as a state trooper and absolutely loves his job. His wife has a degree in addiction studies and makes about 40k doing what she loves as well.
The whole purpose of going to college is to pursue a career in something that you have interest in. If one's only interest is to make money, than any idiot can throw their morals out the window and work 60 hours a week at a slimy sales job that requires no education.
Hear, Hear!
While studying to be an Engineer, or an IT Professional may give you a running start, it isn't a career path that many enjoy long term. As I said once before, throughout my grad school years, I met a lot of Engineers and IT people and they were by far the most miserable people I had come across. They admit it freely.
What we need is an educated society that can move the needle. Frame and solve complex problems. Whether or not they study Mechanical Engineering or Anthropology is a secondary concern. But, if all we are doing is pushing the kids into majors that are hot right now irrespective of those kids' skills and/or interests, well you will get India. A society full of engineers, simply because it is considered prestigious.
Right.
Lots of people who have a lot of money and success did a lot of things no one else really enjoys doing.
If you think I enjoyed memorizing all the amino acids or the Kreb's cycle and how to draw them from memory, you're out of your tree.
It's a means to an end.
Most of us can't shoot some guns, turn our hats backwards, and sing about slappin' a ho and make millions of dollars.
You just can't be too picky today. Each year you delay finding a real career "soul searching" is a year of potential retirement savings gone. And as you get older you will be competing for entry level jobs with young people fresh out of college.
Retirement is a huge issue. I know people 60 years old now with not one dollar saved for their retirement. I don't know what will happen to them.
Just an FYI but there are certain graduate degrees in psychology that require very heavy stats and mathematics. The measurement techniques in structural equation modeling (for example) is based off of linear and matrix algebra so in order to understand it you have to understand linear and matrix algebra. My brother majored in mathematics and computer science and he did not even take linear algebra as an undergrad. There is also the BS version which is a lot more stats/math heavy than the BA version.
I know that is true, my ex was a sociology major and has to take stats. I am sure would avoid business due to accounting, finance and several other management courses using math. I never heard math, I just don't like calculus. Algebra is fine with me but not calculus.
You're projecting your values onto all of these humanities majors. Yeah, STEM fields can be difficult but lucrative. There are plenty of unemployed or underemployed English majors. But there are people who still pursue learning for its own sake and I'm pretty glad that they do.
You're projecting your values onto all of these humanities majors. Yeah, STEM fields can be difficult but lucrative. There are plenty of unemployed or underemployed English majors. But there are people who still pursue learning for its own sake and I'm pretty glad that they do.
But we hear about major in STEM, STEM, STEM because it is lucrative but we forget to mention that if you aren't interested AND good at it, it WON'T be lucrative. Remember, Joe Blow with a B average wont likely get the best paying STEM jobs (provided they aren't connected or have experience.) They might get the pay as the top majors in other fields or join the unemployed/underemployed English majors
There are other reasons to get a degree in underwater basket weaving. Sometimes it's sheer strategy on the part of the student. If you want to be for example, a doctor, well premed is hard. And you know a 3.9 GPA is what you need to get into medical school. You are better off getting your bachelor's in something you know you can ace easily. Yeah I agree a 3.9 GPA from people who took and aced organic chemistry and quan/qual is much more impressive... But numbers is numbers.
That's why you see people with undergrad degrees in history getting into medical school.
Then there's also any degree is better than no degree people. This can be a person's honest evaluation of their own skills and abilities. Or it can be just taking the path of least resistance particularly for the older student who is trying to balance higher education with the responsibilities of work and family. If I was in my 30's or 40's I would just get the easiest degree possible.
I had to take some non-stem classes as part of the distribution requirements of my mathematics degree. The quality of the students in the non-stem classes and the ones in my degree-related classes was night and day. Some things I noticed: The non-stem students rarely showed up to class on-time, if ever at all. They moaned and complained whenever faced with a larger than expected workload. They chatted and interrupted the professor in the middle of lecture. The worst part was the instructors seemed to encourage it (I'll never forget the anthropology professor who spent fifteen minutes ranting about how capitalism was terrible and that we shouldn't aspire to have corporate jobs). For the record, I never saw any of these types of behaviors exhibited by the students in the mathematics curriculum.
So not only were these non-stem disciplines providing their students with useless degrees, they were also nurturing and implanting horrible behavioral traits. Congratulations student: You have graduated with an impractical degree and a behavioral disposition of such a rotten nature so as to be wholly incompatible with the workplace.
Haha. I found out that the business majors and STEM majors were barely literate at times. They couldn't write a coherent paragraph. I never thought that they were necessarily "smarter" than me.
Anyway, it has nothing to do with people concentrating on certain subjects being "smarter" than others. It's a matter of what subjects for which you have a natural affinity. No amount of studying math and science was going to make me a fit for STEM subjects. My mind simply doesn't work that way. I always struggled with these subjects in school and the horrible way they are taught.
For example, my husband loves math and science. He loves the logic and the order and the clarity of these subjects. There is usually only one correct answer to questions on those subjects, and he loves that. Even when he uses a recipe for make a new dish, he can't deviate at all from the printed recipe. He even makes food like a chemist!
However, I find those subjects unbearably narrow and dull. I find STEM subjects to be torturous -- like being in prison. There is no way that I was ever going to have a career in those subjects. Arithmetic was meh, but algebra was pure torture, and as for geometry -- I'm not even going to go there. I never made it to trigonometry or calculus.
I am a naturally creative thinker. I love reading, writing, design, movies and photography. I am very visual. But I will NEVER be good at STEM subjects. If my only alternative in life had been to have a STEM career, I would have jumped off a bridge a long time ago.
There are other reasons to get a degree in underwater basket weaving. Sometimes it's sheer strategy on the part of the student. If you want to be for example, a doctor, well premed is hard. And you know a 3.9 GPA is what you need to get into medical school. You are better off getting your bachelor's in something you know you can ace easily. Yeah I agree a 3.9 GPA from people who took and aced organic chemistry and quan/qual is much more impressive... But numbers is numbers.
That's why you see people with undergrad degrees in history getting into medical school.
Then there's also any degree is better than no degree people. This can be a person's honest evaluation of their own skills and abilities. Or it can be just taking the path of least resistance particularly for the older student who is trying to balance higher education with the responsibilities of work and family. If I was in my 30's or 40's I would just get the easiest degree possible.
I do think any degree is better than none.
And not everyone can be a doctor, even if they want to. Had a guy friend in college who kept taking the MCAT over and over again, kept bombing it. He was so determined to go to med school, but at some point, he realized it wasn't going to pan out for him.
I was planning to get a second degree in something tough, but decided that with the demands of a family, I am going to go for something not so hard. And something I can complete within a year or two.
You're projecting your values onto all of these humanities majors. Yeah, STEM fields can be difficult but lucrative. There are plenty of unemployed or underemployed English majors. But there are people who still pursue learning for its own sake and I'm pretty glad that they do.
Um...
The owner of one of my contractors and I were talking the other day about his daughter. She graduated at the top 1%. Her major was non-profit business. Went to an expensive school out east. Her counselors told her she didn't need an accounting class for her degree, so she never took any. Heck, I'm a engineer and they made us take an accounting class. Anyway, she's been looking for the last 5 months and she can't even get an interview going.
All these dreamers are just wasting their parents' money by pursuing useless degrees.
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.
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.
