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Lastly, you can run your own business regardless of any degree. Find something you like doing, that others think you are good at, and then find someone who will pay you for it. You don't need to build the next Facebook or Google to make a decent living running your own business. You need a few local clients. Treat them well, provide value, and you'll make money.
Owning your own business don't require a degree, it just requires capital. Most people close businesses because their capital dried up and they aren't turning a profit. I say it is worth if it is an unmet demand that makes it worth it (it's not worth buying a lawn mower to start a lawn care business in say Arizona) AND you have a passion for it
May an "old head" (fifties) put her two cents in here? I have a MSW (Master of Social Work). Even though it doesn't pay as well as the STEM fields, there are many jobs in the field, especially with the aging population. Some social workers even work in private practice. I will never make six figures, but I will retire with a decent pension. I was never good in math or science. I foolishly enrolled in a pre-med course and failed miserably. I remember once I received a grade of 10 on an organic chemistry sign. This was a ten out of a possible 100 points! I just wasn't medical school material, and believed me, I studied and studied and studied. Not everyone is cut out for a job in a STEM field, and that doesn't mean they are stupid or lazy. We all hear that the STEM fields are the way to go, but some people just don't have any aptitude for math or science. That doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you have a different kind of intelligence.
Yes. Liberal Arts profs can be bad. I had one idiot babble one about how wonderful he thought graffiti was, but you bet if someone came and "'tagged" his house in his nice suburban neighborhood, he would have fits. These profs always go starry eyed about Sweden, Norway, and the other socialist democracies in Europe, forgetting that they pay huge taxes on everything. And one reason why Norway is so affluent is because they have tons of oil lying in the North Sea.
Also, my sister graduated in a STEM field and although she makes good money, she absolutely hates it! She is in her fifties now, a few years younger than me, and has spent most of her working life doing something she despises. What's the point in that? All degrees require some measure of work. I am not going to ridicule someone with a degree in history or liberal arts or what are called "soft" degrees.
I say do what you like and are comfortable with, just realize that you probably are not going to make as much as your engineer friends do!
May an "old head" (fifties) put her two cents in here? I have a MSW (Master of Social Work). Even though it doesn't pay as well as the STEM fields, there are many jobs in the field, especially with the aging population. Some social workers even work in private practice. I will never make six figures, but I will retire with a decent pension. I was never good in math or science. I foolishly enrolled in a pre-med course and failed miserably. I remember once I received a grade of 10 on an organic chemistry sign. This was a ten out of a possible 100 points! I just wasn't medical school material, and believed me, I studied and studied and studied. Not everyone is cut out for a job in a STEM field, and that doesn't mean they are stupid or lazy. We all hear that the STEM fields are the way to go, but some people just don't have any aptitude for math or science. That doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you have a different kind of intelligence.
Yes. Liberal Arts profs can be bad. I had one idiot babble one about how wonderful he thought graffiti was, but you bet if someone came and "'tagged" his house in his nice suburban neighborhood, he would have fits. These profs always go starry eyed about Sweden, Norway, and the other socialist democracies in Europe, forgetting that they pay huge taxes on everything. And one reason why Norway is so affluent is because they have tons of oil lying in the North Sea.
Also, my sister graduated in a STEM field and although she makes good money, she absolutely hates it! She is in her fifties now, a few years younger than me, and has spent most of her working life doing something she despises. What's the point in that? All degrees require some measure of work. I am not going to ridicule someone with a degree in history or liberal arts or what are called "soft" degrees.
I say do what you like and are comfortable with, just realize that you probably are not going to make as much as your engineer friends do!
I think that you have to constantly reinvent yourself and align your passions. It's cool to get an engineering job you don't like in the beginning of your career to make some money....but then quickly exict when you get the chance.
As a social worker, you could start a health care business or just do the social work on the side. Dr. Phil and other people make millions off social work. I think it's just a little bit of changing the trajectory.
Nonsense. This is not true for all bachelors degrees. Sure, if you get a bachelors degree from a diploma mill like Penn State University, that pumps out thousands of uneducated graduates every year, sure. However, bachelors degree from a decent university program will take you much farther than a HS diploma.
Rutgers grad, perhaps?
Notwithstanding stereotypes about student-athletes, I'm sure PSU, Rutgers and all state schools do a good job overall in educating people pursuing career-oriented degrees. In fact, I'd say that between the popularity of many state schools' athletic departments and the favorable cost/benefit for in-state students, that State College, New Brunswick, Austin, Columbus etc. are a great value.
As far as finding a job with a "useless" degree...there's always banking, especially at the retail level. It's sales to some degree, even at the (rapidly automating) teller level. But if you put your time in and show initiative, I'd say that chances are good that one can advance to branch manager in as little as ten years.
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.
The fact that people in America do not appreciate the arts at all is not anyone's fault but the media who promotes garbage non stop. When was the last time you opened people magazine and saw talk about people of value? like ballet dancers? classic music concert musicians and not some garage band, and so forth? Making jokes and fun about arts, and how useless these degrees are only shows an INSANE amount of IGNORANCE and DISRESPECT towards valuable things that need to be learned, respected and preserved!
I completely agree with that anthropology professor. "Corporations" should not be someone's "goal"; they are the most predatory bodies in existence who show no care or concern for their workers! What happens now, and WHY those degrees you're talking about are not taken seriously is this: some IT mathematician guy, who got that math related degree so he can get paid over $50k, moonlights as a photographer and lowers a photographer's value. I could name other professions in the same boat. These "smart mathematicians" have no desire to do that math thing of theirs, and buy cameras and then charge "nothing" for their "services" putting those of us with arts degrees out of work. There is no respect, and they do that because they know we can't return the favor.
YES, Some people do not enjoy math, some do not understand math, and after what I'm seeing from my 3rd grader's teacher, a LOT of these teachers that are supposedly "TEACHING MATH" are only teaching because of the vacation time during the summer months, and have no desire to make sure the kids in their classes UNDERSTAND the material. They speak like machine guns where nobody can follow what their saying, so there is no wonder a lot of people have zero understanding in math and it's applications, and end up with art related degrees. THAT however, is not a reason nor should be used an an excuse NOT to hire someone.
Also remember, if people are "blah" & show no apparent interest or "excitement" is most likely because they are forced to do a job they hate. People will be a lot more productive in their work if they'd enjoy it!
It's not a matter of being smart enough, math can be learned by anyone given they have a GOOD TEACHER. There are very few exceptions where you'll find some math genius prodigy, most math can be learned so it is not a matter of being "smart", it is a matter of showing "interest" in it enough to study it.
Notwithstanding stereotypes about student-athletes, I'm sure PSU, Rutgers and all state schools do a good job overall in educating people pursuing career-oriented degrees. In fact, I'd say that between the popularity of many state schools' athletic departments and the favorable cost/benefit for in-state students, that State College, New Brunswick, Austin, Columbus etc. are a great value.
As far as finding a job with a "useless" degree...there's always banking, especially at the retail level. It's sales to some degree, even at the (rapidly automating) teller level. But if you put your time in and show initiative, I'd say that chances are good that one can advance to branch manager in as little as ten years.
I think he is Princeton. He is one of those that believes that you are wasting your time if you aren't at a top 10 school and lives in a world where all undergrads are publishing in top tier journals and running research labs.
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Originally Posted by Nema98
Being smart is not the only factor, people choose majors as part of interest and passion. Why study those if you don't like it? Makes no sense.
Yup, my sister and I are smarter (in a cognitive ability sense) than my brother and we both chose psychology while he chose computer science (this isn't to infer he isn't smart, just comparatively we are smarter and in fact my sister is probably the smartest).
"The reason ITT and Devry are legacy for-profit schools. I personally don't have experience with ITT but Devry has worked especially for computer repairs and IT majors like my brother (then again, he took that seriously.) Those schools have existed from the late 1980's/1990's, I remember commercials for them when I was home from school watching ABC in the morning. I am not saying these schools are great but they work for some just like other options. Trade schools maybe the best for any but by the time people realize they should learn a trade it is typically to late and they are saddled in debt from public, private or for-profit institutions and would have to pay off two different schools. To tie back to an earlier post deriding college education, I think the issue with the trades is this. Because college is pushed in high schools and the trades aren't even pushed as a viable option, it is often discovered too late."
Well sometimes with that it reminds me of the late 1990's when A+ for a bit seemed hot. The pc prices dropped like a rock and hardly anyone really repairs one. If you couldn't upload or backup you are screwed but that's so much easier now with Google products.
Where I graduated there were some classes required to meeting speaking intensive and writing intensive needs. Speech classes are not bad I remember a few even on the graduate level that could not talk in front of people. As for writing I remember some MBA's dropping the graduate 501 class I was in. Sometimes being able to sell and present can be just as important as getting that information.
It's not easy, however, it's not worth it. My husband went to DeVry, got kicked out (long story) and every day he thanks his lucky stars that the school kicked him out early. He didn't owe much money.
He paid it all off easily, while his colleagues went on to graduate with degrees in Programming, $60k+ in debt and having a terrible time finding jobs, because most of the programming jobs goes to India or China.
A good thing about DeVry though is that some of its classes DO transfer to state university so he got some credits. Now he's going for ThermoDynamics/Physics... don't really know but he wants to study Energy. One of his dreams is to create a sustainable energy source that doesn't hurt the environment and is applicable to anything from cars to planes to microwaves to computers, etc.
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