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Just who did you think is rigging it and for what purpose? You think colleges are paying off corporations to require degrees? Come on, nothing is rigged.
Yeah, it is rigged--even when those involved in the "rigging" are not explicitly coordinated. Education is an industry that works, primary, to maintain itself. It's a "giant, self-licking ice cream cone," caught in the grip of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
The education industry unceasingly, unswervingly pushes "a college degree is necessary." This is pushed upon parents before children are born and it's pushed on children from K-12. We have school districts that actually require elementary students to declare college majors.
I would bet there is not a single high school counselor in the nation today who would ever advise any 10th grader, "You might be best served by a vocational program rather than a college prep program."
Banks go along with this, heartily. Government goes along with it. Policies like "No Child Left Behind" actually penalized schools that had vocational programs. Between banks and government, student loan programs have become Mafia-like in their operation (why can't a student loan be discharged by bankruptcy, for instance?).
Yet, the reality is that this society doesn't really need more than 10 or 20% of people to have a bachelor's degree alone, because there aren't more than that percentage of jobs that really need what a bachelor's degree alone provides.
There are professions that validly require advanced degrees, and thus require a bachelor's degree as a stepping stone.
There are many, many more lines of work that require advanced technical training--and not necessarily a bachelor's degree at all.
There aren't that many in which a person is "set up for success" with just a bachelor's degree.
I'm not sure that folks from outside the state understand the wide swings in economy within the state. For example, I live in a smaller city where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a PhD. The folks in this town have very high expectations for their kids and the school system. Just a county over, it's highly agricultural and those parents have a very different expectation on what their kids are going to do and what they will study in high school. I've gone around on this several times in the Education forum with folks who can't understand that huge difference in outlook and expectations.
Nashville and Murfreesboro are absolutely booming, some of the fastest growing areas in the country. Middle and upper middle class going up all over the place. But you don't have to get too far out of town to worry about hearing banjo music.
I have to be honest here and say graduating ETSU probably didn't help. We looked at it and toured it when our daughter was looking at college. Between being in state and scholarships, she would have attended for basically free. Yet we decided it was better for her to go out of state to a better school. It's a case of even "free" would have been too expensive when considering the post college employment. Tennessee and east Tennessee is just too insular for major opportunities.
You see some of that cultural difference here, just between the counties and on a much smaller scale. I grew up in Kingsport and attended the Sullivan County schools. Very blue collar, industrial, Rust Belt type place. I'd say maybe a fifth to a quarter of our school had kids whose parents were college educated, had professional jobs, and pushed their kids. The education wasn't as good as the city schools, but it was adequate. You could put the lower two-thirds of my high school class in the best public school systems and it wouldn't have mattered - their "culture" was to get a job as soon as they turned 18.
Today, Sullivan County is losing what educated population it had, and the younger professional couples with kids are moving to Washington County and Johnson City. Johnson City schools are excellent, Washington is improving, Sullivan is declining. There's no way I'd send my kids to Sullivan County schools today. Twenty years ago, it was viable.
When I graduated high school in 2004, the local economy was pretty good. Companies were hiring and expanding, though I'm sure nothing like major metros. The bottom line is that most people could count on finding something other than flipping burgers or working in a call center after college. Finance/economics was a reasonable major then.
The bottom fell out in 2008/2009. Hiring pipelines completely seized up. Finance and business school majors got slaughtered, as that's where the heaviest losses were. Combine that with our geographic isolation, lack of major companies, etc., you were doing well to find anything at all.
I don't think ETSU is the problem. How different is it than any other regional state U? The problem is that it is so isolated and there are so few companies that connect to it that new grads are basically forced to compete in the Charlotte/Raleigh/Atlanta/Nashville job markets. Those markets have similar state U's much closer to their local area.
It's easy for us to sit here and armchair quarterback decisions we made fifteen years ago in a completely different economic context. Given where the economy was then and the information I had available to me at the time, I think I made a reasonable decision.
Agree. Many employers require that degree no matter what the job is. No degree, no job. Therefore, having at least a Bachelor's degree becomes indispensable if you want to work a white collar job.
It often feels that the bachelor's degree and or master's degree is highly overrated and doesn't open up great opportunities in a lot of cases.
I would agree with that assessment.
I'm 44 years old and make $100k. All I have is a GED. I never went to college because honestly I just didn't want to put forth the effort because I was never all that crazy about going to school.
I graduated high school in 1993 and got a job working in a manufacturing facility doing manual labor stuff like buffing parts making $13k a year. The position was in low COL Florida.
I've steadily went up the last 25 years going from manual labor to the skilled trade work and now I'm in high COL Washington state. My field is CNC machining. I started CNC work in 2002 because I was always good with computers and my boss at the time thought it would be a good fit.
It was.
I know people with college degrees who don't make half of what I do.
Maybe I got lucky. I love what I do. I've done work for both the aerospace industry and fishing industry here.
It's easy for us to sit here and armchair quarterback decisions we made fifteen years ago in a completely different economic context. Given where the economy was then and the information I had available to me at the time, I think I made a reasonable decision.
Absolutely.
No one really knew just how crazy companies where going to get, and stay, when it came to hiring.
It is a completely different game today than before the great recession.
Lots would make different choices, but we didn't have the information we have today so it isn't realistic.
I'm 44 years old and make $100k. All I have is a GED. I never went to college because honestly I just didn't want to put forth the effort because I was never all that crazy about going to school.
I graduated high school in 1993 and got a job working in a manufacturing facility doing manual labor stuff like buffing parts making $13k a year. The position was in low COL Florida.
I've steadily went up the last 25 years going from manual labor to the skilled trade work and now I'm in high COL Washington state. My field is CNC machining. I started CNC work in 2002 because I was always good with computers and my boss at the time thought it would be a good fit.
It was.
I know people with college degrees who don't make half of what I do.
Maybe I got lucky. I love what I do. I've done work for both the aerospace industry and fishing industry here.
Not many companies are willing to take a bottom level employee today and train them into better positions etc....
Aside from STEM degrees is anyone very disappointed or even angered that their bachelor's or master's degree from a public university did not open doorways to great workplaces?
Many of us worked hard to earn good grades for classes that would be applicable for workplaces but once hired of course after going on a tedious job search the workplace turns out to offer low pay for the overload of disorganized work projects and poor management that one has to deal with.
It often feels that the bachelor's degree and or master's degree is highly overrated and doesn't open up great opportunities in a lot of cases.
First off I understand how you could be frustrated. I presume you feel betrayed by the system. You'd think a STEM degree would widen your scope of potential employment industries.
Students may not have been guided by peers, parents, that they should focus their studies on a target industry and tailor the courses they opt for.
For your friends, the reality is that bachelor degrees are thought of as a generic college degree whether you worked hard for it or not. Unfair but true.
There is a misconception by students they will get into the job of their dreams right out of college. You can expect to start at entry level. Employers want to start you out there and gauge your performance before sending you into more rewarding positions.
At this point you do not have significant references from similar industries to jump into a good paying position right off the bat.
And finally there is no shame in taking less prestigious jobs. Chalk up experience and written references from each boss for your portfolio,
Good luck. You'll make it. Look at what you achieved.
First off I understand how you could be frustrated. I presume you feel betrayed by the system. You'd think a STEM degree would widen your scope of potential employment industries.
Students may not have been guided by peers, parents, that they should focus their studies on a target industry and tailor the courses they opt for.
For your friends, the reality is that bachelor degrees are thought of as a generic college degree whether you worked hard for it or not. Unfair but true.
There is a misconception by students they will get into the job of their dreams right out of college. You can expect to start at entry level. Employers want to start you out there and gauge your performance before sending you into more rewarding positions.
At this point you do not have significant references from similar industries to jump into a good paying position right off the bat.
And finally there is no shame in taking less prestigious jobs. Chalk up experience and written references from each boss for your portfolio,
Good luck. You'll make it. Look at what you achieved.
The whole high wage dream job is simply not true. All graduates want is an entry level job in their field of study. Entry level, that is all.
Not many companies are willing to take a bottom level employee today and train them into better positions etc....
Your path is closed off mostly now.
You shouldnt require much training unless you are entry level. You accumulate experience to get better. Employers hire you to make them money, not to train you for free.
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