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I don't know a single person who is in college for an advanced degree right now 'just to put off having to go out in the world and start their adult life' quite frankly. I just finished undergrad in May and I don't use my degree at all and neither do most of my friends. I'm lucky in that I worked outside of school to teach myself web programming/development so I work for myself and make a great income compared to my friends. Most of my recently graduated friends are waiters, interns, salesmen, bank tellers, or pretty much any job they had while in school. That's what is available to them. I have plenty of friends still in school, for undergrad and grad level. My grad level friends are mostly people who are actually wanting to do a job that requires the extra training: teacher, professor, doctor, therapist, etc. I don't know anyone who went into the grad level solely to put off being out of school because they are ALL taking on a ton more debt to go through those programs and they know that. Staying in grad school is the dumbest cop-out ever (for whoever is doing that) because you're just taking on more debt in the future instead of at least getting a basic job somewhere.
I just don't want generations before mine to look down on everyone my age. The vast majority of us are doing the best that we can with what options are available to us.
Pretty much same story with me. Yes I have friends back in school but they are back in school because the career they want requires specific schooling , that is physical therapist , professor, 2nd degree in accounting etc...
That being said i am sure there are people that are "hiding out" , hunkering down in grad school till the economy improves . Though I think this is a somewhat risky strategy , if the BA degree does not yield you great job opportunity will a masters in the same field really be any better? For example does a masters in American studies really open up more opportunity than a bachelors in American studies?
... if the BA degree does not yield you great job opportunity will a masters in the same field really be any better? For example does a masters in American studies really open up more opportunity than a bachelors in American studies?
There's a few different ways you could spin it.
1) Your Masters degree will put you above other applicants when you finish it, and give you a leg up.
2) You picked a decent field but the economy is slow. So, when it picks up, and you are able to get a job, you'll have the Masters done. Meaning you won't have to do it nights and weekends, which is a royal pain in the a@@, as I would know.
1) Your Masters degree will put you above other applicants when you finish it, and give you a leg up.
2) You picked a decent field but the economy is slow. So, when it picks up, and you are able to get a job, you'll have the Masters done. Meaning you won't have to do it nights and weekends, which is a royal pain in the a@@, as I would know.
I understand your points especially number 2 but I wonder if your bachelor degree in the employers eyes is viewed as "not as viable, weak" or "well actually we are looking primarily for people who studied X"- and lets say you studied Y, will a Masters make you anymore competitive? For example lets say the guy with a BA in Fine Arts wants to work at Johnson and Johnson and he applied with his BA in Fine Arts and no luck, would getting a Masters in Fine Arts give him a leg up if he again applied for the same position at Johnson and Johnson?
I understand your points especially number 2 but I wonder if your bachelor degree in the employers eyes is viewed as "not as viable, weak" or "well actually we are looking primarily for people who studied X"- and lets say you studied Y, will a Masters make you anymore competitive? For example lets say the guy with a BA in Fine Arts wants to work at Johnson and Johnson and he applied with his BA in Fine Arts and no luck, would getting a Masters in Fine Arts give him a leg up if he again applied for the same position at Johnson and Johnson?
No, it won't. If someone is applying for a position with the "wrong" degree, any more advanced degrees in a wrong field will probably just make the applicant even more undesirable, with the reasoning that the person will leave as soon as something better comes along.
No, it won't. If someone is applying for a position with the "wrong" degree, any more advanced degrees in a wrong field will probably just make the applicant even more undesirable, with the reasoning that the person will leave as soon as something better comes along.
So in that case if the fine art major went back to school he would then study what the employer considers as the "right" degree
The perpetual students. I have known a few of those. I actually know a brother and sister. Their parents were wealthy and well educated. The guy finally completed his PhD and the girl got pregnant while she was finishing one of her many bachelors.
I don't much care for the inference that people are going to college expressly to avoid work. This implies people are shunning responsibility and someone who is willing to invest the considerable time and funds to get a graduate degree is not lazy. People attend college primarily as a tool for job qualification. Since you're retired, you grew up in an era where a four-year degree was a "leg up" in the labor force. Today, many basic jobs that would have formerly required no college at all or an associate's can now require a four-year degree, and a graduate degree is the leg up the bachelor's used to have been due to a surplus of labor. Employers can be far more discriminatory now than perhaps at any other time in modern history.
The reason many more people are getting graduate degrees is because they think it will assist them in career growth, with a few going back for the classical pursuit of learning. It is not because of a deferral of responsbility.
I don't care for the inference either, and it is tiresome to see "anti-education" comments like this one on a forum devoted to education.
The purpose of a liberal arts education is to educate young adults and to inspire intellectual curiosity. I am a life long learner, and I am glad that all of my children share that approach.
They don't refer to graduation as "when I get out".
They are not going to college in order to learn a trade. That would be a trade school.
Many people today return to college to obtain additional education because a they need to update skills or to obtain a master's degree with a professional focus.
There is rampant age discrimination out there, and there is a job market that is very competitive.
And yes, some people go back to school for the pleasure of learning with no intention of obtaining a full time job. That's their business, not mine.
The idea that any individual will be working at a profession even remotely related to what he chose Freshman year, when he is forty or fifty, is remote.
That's why I laugh when I hear parents bragging that their child, who just graduated from high school is "going to be an electrical engineer" or a "physician's assistant". Are the psychic?
No. Actually, they are going to study that in college and they may or may not do well in it. They might do well enough to graduate, but detest the work.
This pretty much sums up why I am a huge fan of a liberal arts education.
Specialization at such an early age frequently does not have the desired outcome.
The OP seems to think that students are useless and lazy and avoiding life, which she distills into "having a job".
I find that thought to be offensive to students of all ages.
Obviously, this is an opinion question with no right or wrong answer. It could have been the same 20 -30 years ago, too, but what percentage would you guess go on for an advanced degree just to put off having to go out in the world and start their adult life?
I did painting in the construction field after I got out of the military. Actually, the easiest job I ever had was doing security work in the Marine Corps.
I entered college late in life. In my view college just at the undergraduate level is more work in some ways than working in some field of construction or working in some occupations of the U.S. military.
Frankly, I get tired of h some of the anti-academic rhetoric and caricatures popular in the U.S. and U.K. about those that are either students or teachers in colleges and universities.
I did hot, tar flat roofing for a short time. Hated every day of the 4 or so months I did that job. You know how often the roofers would go to launch and come back intoxicated working on the job site? Frequently. Some would bring beer on the job in their launch pale. And you'd go home not having to worry about home work consisting of reading assignments, papers to compose, online quizzes to do, and exams to study for. No "work shops" for rough drafts between yourself, fellow students, and your TA.
Graduate students put in their work I'm sure. And increasingly a bachelor degree is yesterday's high school diploma, so, grad or professional schooling are increasingly more important now.
But what irks me more about these "righteous" views that are "judgmental" is that we live in an era where no one is supposed to "judge" a feminist woman on any of her choices nor lesbians or homosexuals. The word "adult" is a meaningless, subjective term. It means as much to me as a the word "fetus" does to a feminist.
I have a lot of admiration for many (not all) of the young kids I see in college. Joining the military, going into blue collar labor, or not furthering your education past a bachelor degree are forms of escape too, in their own ways. All these choices have their burdens and eases too. And just about all of them are better than going out to rob a bank and ending up in prison for a decade or so. You're still an adult in prison. You're one if you're confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life, paralyzed from the neck down.
You could achieve an advanced level in karate, in 2 or 3 years, if you lived in a small Okinawan village in the 1800s where you spent 6 hours a day or more, everyday, training under your neighbor that lives no more than 2 minutes away from you.
Now... you'll spend hours traveling on buses to get to your training facility and then you'll only train a couple hours for maybe 3 nights a week. It will take you many years to achieve an level regarded as advanced.
So, it might take 1 man 4 years to achieve an advanced level in jujitsu or playing the piano or writing stage plays. It may take another man 10 years to achieve the same level in any of those. Their roads need not be the same.
If some 20 year old guy marries some 19 year old woman, impregnates her, becomes a machinist and takes on the responsibility of leading his mosque in prayer, is he more or less an adult than the homosexual that doesn't date women, dates many men, and finally at age 27 has a serious boyfriend that he met while in grad school?
The only difference between now and when I was younger is that when I was younger I actually knew people who did it. But nowadays there could actually be less people doing it for that reason because of the cost. I don't know. That's why I asked.
I could have also asked how many woman go to college to find a husband. Probably more true in my day than now.
I knew guys who "hid out" in grad school when I was in college back in the 1970s, too. They didn't want to get sent to Vietnam
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I did painting in the construction field after I got out of the military. Actually, the easiest job I ever had was doing security work in the Marine Corps. 
