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I know plenty of people who didn't go or didn't finish college and have good, high paying jobs. And I know plenty of people who went to college and got worthless degrees and live off handouts from their parents and would be lucky to get a job at starbucks.
And I know plenty of college-educated people who make over $250K/year and high school graduates who are unemployed or working at Walmart. See how these sort of examples can play to both sides?
It amazes me to see the force of anti-intellectual, anti-higher education sentiment in this thread. I have to suspect this has a lot do to with selection bias.
It amazes me to see the force of anti-intellectual, anti-higher education sentiment in this thread. I have to suspect this has a lot do to with selection bias.
See you people with higher I.Q.s are the problem because you lack the most important trait mankind possesses....good common sense...also your one step from genuis to insanity. Do not come to Appalachia with your elitism...
Calling them stupid or lazy because they didn't want to go to college makes no sense. I can tell you from experience teaching college brats that some of them are the dumbest and laziest that I've encountered.
My daughter had a roommate at Fordham University last year who wanted to know if banana peels go into the recycling bin.
By the time in had graduated from high school, I was pretty much burnt out on doing homework and studying and just the whole academia thing. I had no way to pay for college anyway, so I was looking for my alternatives. A good one at that time was to work in a shop, doing menial jobs at first, but then learning some of the more skilled trades, apprenticing, and eventually becoming a full-blown master of that trade. Or, enlisting in the military.
For many of the kids I knew, working in a shop was their career, and for many of them it worked out extremely well. I happened to graduate just as these shops were starting to experience a downturn in their business, so those menial entry-level jobs pretty much dried up. So, I opted to join the military. While I was waiting for an opening, before I could enlist, I got a response to a job opening I had applied for at a bank for an entry-level position. I decided to go for it, instead of the military, since they would pay for any college courses as long as I enrolled in a matriculating degree program. So I enrolled at the local university as a part-time commuter student in the school of Computer Science.
I worked during the day and on weekends, and took some night classes. Part of the problem at first was that I was paying for classes that were just re-hashing much of what I had already learned in high school. Some classes were great, and others seem to require an inordinate amount of time outside of class doing reading, research, homework, or writing papers. Working full-time as I was, it was hard to find the time to be in the library or to do lab work or work as part of a project group.
Anyway, as time went on, I was doing more and more at work, moving up into more technically-oriented positions, and school was becoming less and less of a priority. I was starting to dislike the concept of not having any free time to pursue other interests. It was work, school, homework, go to bed, get up the next day and do it again. The subjects became more complex (like Calculus - arg!) or irrelevent to me (English Lit?). So, I reached a point where I decided that it wasn't worth my time to continue on, and I dropped out.
I continued to work my way up through the ranks in my job, learned everything I could, sought out mentors, and have continued along that same career path, including positions in management, up through today. My lack of a degree has never been questioned, nor has it ever been an issue. My work experience and real-world abilities have always trumped that as an issue.
Now that I'm older, and have more free time, I might go back to school and pursue a two-year degree, possibly in history or some other field I have an interest in that's outside of what I do in my job.
See you people with higher I.Q.s are the problem because you lack the most important trait mankind possesses....good common sense...also your one step from genuis to insanity. Do not come to Appalachia with your elitism...
Um...thanks for calling me a high-IQ "genuis", but I really don't know how my IQ stacks up against yours or anyone's in Appalachia. I would say, though, that my common sense is probably decently intact since I am a married adult who lives quite well and is a productive member of society.
What's most important is a High School diploma and a solid work ethic. Whether you apply that work ethic to a business right away or take those smarts to college is your choice.
For some careers, college is the only option. A 4 year Liberal Arts degree? That's a bit tougher to justify imo.
Either way, no matter how many degrees you have or don't have, if you don't have real life smarts and a desire to better yourself through hard work then you won't get far in life.
It amazes me to see the force of anti-intellectual, anti-higher education sentiment in this thread. I have to suspect this has a lot do to with selection bias.
I don't have a problem with intelligent people--but intelligence and education have nothing in common.
You can take two individuals that graduated high school--one's the valedictorian, the other's a D-student. Just squeaked by--or was promoted by his teachers just to get him out of the grade.
They are obviously not at the same level of intelligence.
Likewise, just because you went to college, it doesn't mean you actually bothered studying or learning anything. Learning is on the shoulders of the individual--not thier instructors.
The best thing about college for me is the experience I received while working in the library on campus. That's what opened the door for my current job, not the college degree that I hold.
I did get pushed into a higher pay grade by having a college degree, but that doesn't offset the thousands of dollars I spent on my education. If I had to do it all over again I would've majored in something more practical.
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