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Do you ever find yourself putting down, or having absolutely no respect for certain college degrees?
On the flip side, do some majors make you step back and think this person is a little smarter than I was lead to believe or initially thought?
For me, every time I hear someone (usually my date for the night sitting across the table) mention they have a degree in psychology...like nails on a chalkboard. To me, I immediately think of why would you waist your money on something so utterly useless and stupid? From my perspective, I think this person has absolutely no comprehension of or grasp on the future.
If I'm going to date someone long term, I want to date someone who is rational about their life and money. Investing in an Engineering/Nursing degree is money well spent. Art History...not so much so.
At some point you have to rationalize between what you like and what there are jobs for. Nobody knows, but I have an unhealthy fascination for all things Baroque...doesn't mean I major in it!
Just saying, useless major/education and you're seeing the door. My guess is $60,000 in college debt, you have $8/hr job, mmmmm...who would be paying for this if this went long term....ME!
Haha! You sound like a lot of conservative and 'sensible' fathers out there. Maybe you've got good sense about paying a mortgage, mowing the lawn, buying a boat, etc, but may not be very interesting to hang out with.
I figure you only live once. Do what you love, not what earns the best paycheck. If I majored in accounting, I'd probably be making a good paycheck right now, but I may be contemplating suicide on the way to the office every day. Also, I don't know that I want a good paycheck just so I can worry about 'keeping up with the Joneses' for the rest of my life like a lot of people do. Many of these people major in something 'sensible', only to prepare themselves for a long life of running on that little hamster wheel.
Other people, the type you seem to despise, do what's interesting to them and don't worry so much about how many cars or boats they have. They learn to live within their means, and enjoy their little house, books, and the simpler things in general. I say to each his own, and try not to be so judgemental.
I think academic major is more important than where one went to college, at least to a significant degree. A math degree from a 3rd tier school is more impressive than American studies from a 1st tier university.
Not all "useless" college majors are easy. Philosophy is a very hard degree by nature; philosophy majors as a group are among the top scorers of college majors on any of the GRE/MCAT/GMAT/LSAT/MAT exams.
Conversely, business majors have among the lowest scores of all on grad school entrance exams, because advanced cognitive skills aren't required to earn such degrees.
You couldnt be more right. I admire people who can get degrees in philosophy I took an Intro to philosophy course and it was too hard for me.
Do you ever find yourself putting down, or having absolutely no respect for certain college degrees?
On the flip side, do some majors make you step back and think this person is a little smarter than I was lead to believe or initially thought?
For me, every time I hear someone (usually my date for the night sitting across the table) mention they have a degree in psychology...like nails on a chalkboard. To me, I immediately think of why would you waist your money on something so utterly useless and stupid? From my perspective, I think this person has absolutely no comprehension of or grasp on the future.
If I'm going to date someone long term, I want to date someone who is rational about their life and money. Investing in an Engineering/Nursing degree is money well spent. Art History...not so much so.
Wow, are you my ex? He thought the exact same thing and he also "didn't like art unless it's famous". Talk about uncultured and closed minded. Needless to say, he is my ex for a reason.
The very fact that you think a person can only make decent money with certain degrees (you do realize people can make good money without ANY degree, right?) says more about you than it does about these people and their majors.
Quote:
At some point you have to rationalize between what you like and what there are jobs for. Nobody knows, but I have an unhealthy fascination for all things Baroque...doesn't mean I major in it!
I'd much rather be with someone who enjoys their job and has a passion for what they do than be with someone who has lots of money and is miserable.
It's not about getting a degree in UFOlogy and going on to start a million dollar business selling shovels or whatever. Who cares? We have six pages of people just regurgitating this fact.
Does anyone else have yet another story of how they built themselves up in something completely unrelated to their degree? Cmon, I think we can squeak another two pages out.
The point is junking away $100,000 in school costs/debt for something that is never going to be used to pay said debt off. If you're interested in it, take a course or two in it, don't major in it.
The jobs out there for it are available to just about EVERYONE. I thought college was suppose to give you a step up in an area or field. At the very least, a nitch that you can leverage against EVERYONE ELSE.
All these jobs that pysch majors can get can also be obtained by everyone else with a degree...and all too often, by someone with no degree at all. Not much leverage is it?
Good read here:
The Psychology Major: A Bloated Minor? (http://www.fireflysun.com/book/psychology_major_career.php - broken link)
Quote from the website:
"The median annual income for psychology dead-enders was fairly dismal (even by 1992 standards) at $20,000. (Incidentally, only 322 of 3,104 psychology departments responded to an APA request for the names of its living dead for the survey. And of the 11,000 plus names acquired, the APA settled on a random sample of only 2,500, and of these, only 250 indicated a willingness to participate. I think we have a hidden contract of repression among dead-enders, psychology departments, and yes, even the APA, who waited until 1991 to perform the survey and 2002 to post any results)."
Sounds like a "would you like fries with that" degree to me.
The point is junking away $100,000 in school costs/debt for something that is never going to be used to pay said debt off. If you're interested in it, take a course or two in it, don't major in it.
If that is what makes that person HAPPY, why shouldn't they do it? Fair enough if you don't want to date someone like this, it's your right to have a preference in who you date. But it sounds like you're putting your nose where it doesn't belong - outside dating, why do you care how people live their lives?
I once thought that was a good thing. I thought yeah, I married an engineer, while my degree in Wildlife/fisheries science was much less respctable. Throughout the marriage I advanced in my career with the same company always earning a higher salary than the stbx while he went from job to job (most often getting fired, laid off or quit because he got mad) making less, but was able to pay off his big student loan because I paid our mortgage and other bills. Currently, I just got a raise, he is still laid off and his unemployment ends in Oct. Whoop de doo for the big engineering degree.
As far a psycology, I know several people making good money with those "worthless" degrees.
It has nothing to do with the degree and its marketability. It has more to do with the kind of person who tends more towards those degrees (type A)...I don't much find computer major-types attractive...
Do you ever find yourself putting down, or having absolutely no respect for certain college degrees?
On the flip side, do some majors make you step back and think this person is a little smarter than I was lead to believe or initially thought?
For me, every time I hear someone (usually my date for the night sitting across the table) mention they have a degree in psychology...like nails on a chalkboard. To me, I immediately think of why would you waist your money on something so utterly useless and stupid? From my perspective, I think this person has absolutely no comprehension of or grasp on the future.
If I'm going to date someone long term, I want to date someone who is rational about their life and money. Investing in an Engineering/Nursing degree is money well spent. Art History...not so much so.
At some point you have to rationalize between what you like and what there are jobs for. Nobody knows, but I have an unhealthy fascination for all things Baroque...doesn't mean I major in it!
Just saying, useless major/education and you're seeing the door. My guess is $60,000 in college debt, you have $8/hr job, mmmmm...who would be paying for this if this went long term....ME!
That is a very unintellectual approach to education -- and that in fact, would be a turn-off for me. I do agree on psychology majors with you there, but not for the same reasons you do: mainly, I am suspicious of that major because it's such a draw for people who don't have well-defined academic interests. An education isn't just a stepping stone to a high income. I understand how you yourself may incorporate practical considerations into your choice of a major, but practicality and denying the non-monetary value of education are two different things. Not everyone can afford to go into studying Classical Philosophy full-time. But saying that Classical Philosophy is useless simply because there is no money in it, that studying it is a waste of time, and that people who do study it are dimwits or egomaniacs is something else entirely. Same thing with with having no interest in a subject and devaluing it as something worth studying by others. I have no interest in learning Sanskrit, for example -- but that's a long cry from making a sweeping statement that studying Sanskrit is a waste of time and money.
Some people have academic interests, rather than pecuniary ones -- and I am mystified by the fact that so many others somehow find it a cause for scorn or ridicule.
Society needs capitalists, but it also needs scholars. Without scholars, the world would be a dark, uninformed place. And personally, I've always had a weakness for scholars, people who undertake a serious academic discipline simply because they like it, not because it pays the bills.
The point is junking away $100,000 in school costs/debt for something that is never going to be used to pay said debt off. If you're interested in it, take a course or two in it, don't major in it.
If I recall correctly, the point of the thread was about what majors turn you on, and turn you off. Somewhere along the line, you tried to turn this into something about debt.
What turns me on (mentally, not sexually) is a woman who has intellectual curiousity and can open my eyes to something interesting and new. I could not care less if her interests are in demand in the American labor market.
If you're just looking for a practical partner who works hard, manages money and gets the bills paid, then good for you. Go for it. But there's no need to denigrate the preferences of others.
Although it is completely off topic, I will grant you that 6-figure debt and an $8/hour job implies that the person is probably more irresponsible than I would like to deal with.
Do you ever find yourself putting down, or having absolutely no respect for certain college degrees?
On the flip side, do some majors make you step back and think this person is a little smarter than I was lead to believe or initially thought?
For me, every time I hear someone (usually my date for the night sitting across the table) mention they have a degree in psychology...like nails on a chalkboard. To me, I immediately think of why would you waist your money on something so utterly useless and stupid? From my perspective, I think this person has absolutely no comprehension of or grasp on the future.
If I'm going to date someone long term, I want to date someone who is rational about their life and money. Investing in an Engineering/Nursing degree is money well spent. Art History...not so much so.
At some point you have to rationalize between what you like and what there are jobs for. Nobody knows, but I have an unhealthy fascination for all things Baroque...doesn't mean I major in it!
Just saying, useless major/education and you're seeing the door. My guess is $60,000 in college debt, you have $8/hr job, mmmmm...who would be paying for this if this went long term....ME!
I couldn't decide whether you are a troll or not. Then, I decided that people like you really exist. So, Hans, assuming that you're just young and immature, let me just go down the list of fatuities in your post one by one.
1) Earning Potential Is The Measure Of A Person's Quality. Okay, that's really dumb. You're just going to have to trust me on this.
2) Your Degree Decides What You're Going To Earn. Wrong. AT&T did a long-term study on this subject several years ago. What did they learn? While those with technical degrees did better straight out of college, those with humanities degrees did better salary-wise in the long run. Their findings? Those with liberal arts degrees proved more capable of taking great amounts of abstract information and synthesizing it into useful principles. In other words, while the average engineer starts out making the big coin, his earning potential won't rise greatly over the course of his career unless he makes the investment in another degree such as an MBA.
For the record, I earned my degree in English. After a slow start, I quickly started moving up the food chain and worked my way into an executive position. I started my own biz and sold it after ten years. I'm now semi-retired at 47 with a consultancy that performs strategic planning for healthcare organizations, banks, and manufacturers. Funny, when I walk into a client meeting for the first time and open my mouth, nobody ever seems to ask me what my degree was in. Meanwhile, there are a lot of engineers (And I do know quite a few) who are still plodding along, hoping for a 3% raise at the end of the year and--in an economy like this--praying to God that they don't get laid off.
3) Passion Matters. It's very simple. No matter what you study, if you're really passionate about it, you'll be good at it. If you're really good at it, the money will follow. I went to school with music majors who are now record producers, art majors who now do national illustration work, theater majors who make a handsome sum in the movies and voiceover work, and a dance major who heads up his own touring dance company. Ask any of these people how they're doing in life, and they'll say they're loving almost every minute of it.
On the other hand, you seem to endorse getting involved with somebody who simply majors in something to get them a job out of school. I can't tell you how many deeply unhappy accountants, engineers, and lawyers there are out there--people who sit in the parking lot outside of their office buildings every morning at 7:55 and force themselves to walk in the door. People with that degree of unhappiness are not people that you want to be with over the long haul, for their unhappiness will seep through to every other part of their lives, including your relationship.
So, instead of looking down on the art history major, or the comparative literature major, try thinking about it from another angle. They're the ones with the guts to follow their passion in life, rather than somebody like you who is so desperate to earn a great salary immediately, that you will be willing to endure a career poring over blueprints, writing code, or using a ten-key calculator--all of which, by the way, can now pretty much be outsourced to some faceless guy in Mumbai. Hey, if it's your passion to it, that's one thing. For I know guys in those fields who love their jobs. But nothing is worse that a person who is trapped in a career they hate. For whether they're a lawyer, an engineer, or an accountant, they are all clichés.
One other thing. Going to college is not tantamount to amassing large amounts of debt. Most state colleges are very good and very affordable, even today.
Last edited by cpg35223; 07-29-2009 at 03:12 PM..
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