To go or not go to College that is the question?

[jedishrfu]

I think the thread has run its course and perhaps should be closed now.

 

[homeomorphic]

Following one's passion must be one's career. One cannot use one's 'day job' to finance this passion.

I don't think everyone is assuming that. I never did when I chose to get my PhD.

One's career must narrowly match one's college major. In particular, a STEM major should not sully one's hands with the wheels of commerce.

It must qualify you for a job, if you are not very good at doing that yourself. That doesn't mean that that's the only thing it should do. This only applies to people who are bad at selling themselves. If you are bad at selling yourself, you should get the most marketable degree for which you like the subject. If you are an ace at selling yourself, or even if you know someone else who is an ace at selling you, feel free to get any major you want. Or if you are a career masochist, you can also feel free to get whatever degree you want.

By virtue of graduating from college, the world owes me a job in my chosen field.

Straw man. That's not what I think the world owes me, personally. What I do think the world owed me was for someone to tell me how complicated it was going to be to get a job from the beginning, so that I wouldn't have made the mistakes that I did. And that is exactly what I am now doing for other people on here, now that it is too late for myself. I really could care less what job I get. I'd frankly be content to be a janitor, but the only reason I don't go out and be a janitor is because I was under the impression that it IS possible for me to find something better with PhD, and because I might want to finance my passions that I can pursue aside from my day job, and being a janitor would probably only pay enough to get by.

 

[homeomorphic]

Actually, the world owing us a job is not as outlandish a request as it may seem when put in those terms. Is it a good idea for us as a society to waste the resource of people who were smart and hardworking enough to get a degree in math or physics, and instead, just make them work at pizza places? I would argue that that is not a good use of our resources as a society. And there may be money to be made here, so there is actually a financial case to be made for this. The point is that these people are undervalued. So, there could be profit to be made by placing them. And we do see headhunters and the like actually putting this principle to work. If you invest in a commodity that is about to go up way up in value, you make money. The problem is that employers tend to be so risk-averse that they don't want to make the investment.

If I were more of a business type, maybe I'd be inspired to go out there and make money off of this myself, but since I'm not the only thing I can promise is that, if someone helps me out and helps me get a job, I'm going to pay it forward and help every damn person I can get a job. THAT is my one of my passions, now. So, to hell with this every man for himself, every man for himself and life is just tough and unfair crap.

 

[symbolipoint]

I don't think everyone is assuming that. I never did when I chose to get my PhD.




It must qualify you for a job, if you are not very good at doing that yourself. That doesn't mean that that's the only thing it should do. This only applies to people who are bad at selling themselves. If you are bad at selling yourself, you should get the most marketable degree for which you like the subject. If you are an ace at selling yourself, or even if you know someone else who is an ace at selling you, feel free to get any major you want. Or if you are a career masochist, you can also feel free to get whatever degree you want.




Straw man. That's not what I think the world owes me, personally. What I do think the world owed me was for someone to tell me how complicated it was going to be to get a job from the beginning, so that I wouldn't have made the mistakes that I did. And that is exactly what I am now doing for other people on here, now that it is too late for myself. I really could care less what job I get. I'd frankly be content to be a janitor, but the only reason I don't go out and be a janitor is because I was under the impression that it IS possible for me to find something better with PhD, and because I might want to finance my passions that I can pursue aside from my day job, and being a janitor would probably only pay enough to get by.

The H.R. people will still try to put a label on you and say that you are supposed to do what your label says you are. Sometimes a person is lucky and finds open minded administrators, or sometimes the head meet you on one of your good days and you impress them really well.

 

[homeomorphic]

You can't have it both ways (i.e. you shouldn't care about your major, as far as getting a job, but the employers, on the other hand, have a very special, God-given right to care about your major because, after all, they don't owe you anything). That's just a recipe for disaster. One could almost imagine the creator of this recipe for disaster celebrating when the unemployment rate for new grads goes up because it shows how they were all pursuing their Puritanical educational duty to sacrifice their careers for the sake of a better education.