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Do you have a degree?
- Thread starter Squilly
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BA, two MS degrees, doctoral work galore...and very little of the "book larnin'" of it applies to the real world.
Hmmm, you must be doing it wrong. All that book learnin' exposes you to new perspectives, new ideas, new modes of analysis. Surely that has real world relevance.
It seems that any knowledge that does not directly apply to a work situation is deemed useless.
Knowledge of literature, the arts, social sciences, and the capacity for ratiocination, logic, and critical thinking have no value.
Very sad and disquieting in terms of the future.
"Ratiocination"? If you do anything with that many syllables, you must be a damned foreign communist elitist!
Nope. Not even a GED.
I've had two of my dream jobs, decided to leave both after a while, and am now working successfully on a third.
In some fields you need an education - brain surgery, fr'instance - but for most going to college is no guarantee you'll get the job for which you attended and in so many fields you'll just come out many, many years behind.
I've had two of my dream jobs, decided to leave both after a while, and am now working successfully on a third.
In some fields you need an education - brain surgery, fr'instance - but for most going to college is no guarantee you'll get the job for which you attended and in so many fields you'll just come out many, many years behind.
Let me be a bit more specific: As a Superintendent of Schools, sporting two, count 'em two, Masters Degrees and mucho doctoral work, I was sometimes at a loss when in a meeting with a mother and her newly-determined-to-be pregnant daughter. Additionally, while in command of the pedagogy, I searched for the correct intervention tactic when dealing with parents who sexually abused their children; involving the appropriate agencies is only the first step in such matters, so one must carry the issue forward oneself at times.
In education, the relationship between teacher and learner must be the total focus. Real world relevance appears to pale in many real-time matters.
All of which is of critical importance and requires specialized training. But I find it (at least) short sighted to think that 'book learning' doesn't contribute to one's ability to successfully navigate and cope with these difficult matters. It is this type of education (beyond the study of the 'directly relevant') that facilitates easier interpersonal relations, which are critical for living in society. More narrowly, it seems the benefits would be almost obvious in this particular case.
On the other hand, I've been known to cynically exclaim such statements as your first post for the sake of wry humor and self-deprecation.
For what I do, blue collar stuff and computer repair, it's not necessary and if anything my Microsoft tech certification has applied well to the latter.
For my own enrichment and enjoyment (yup one of those nerds) I have two undergrad degrees and some grad school, mostly in business. A business degree is good training in that it covers a lot of areas (HR, general management, and entertainment management is what I specialized in) but is not what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
That being said it can't hurt in some fields like getting a BSN to be a nurse or a BS in engineering to be an engineer or BA in English to be an English high school teacher.
But I bet not only Penn State but a lot of schools have students study business and if you want to learn business theory and have the discipline of having sat through four years of course work, then a business degree is fine. Spending four years at anything consistent looks good to any employer. A business degree can get a foot in the door for a corporation but it will not automatically make you Bill Gates or some business mogul. That is largely a trait a person is born with but then has the drive to pursue.
But for many jobs out there, there is no degree required but I can't see employers holding it against you if you do decide to get a degree.
While it's easy for many of us who have a degree to say it's the same as a high school diploma, that's really not true in terms of numbers, or not for the baby boomer generation. When I was in high school, almost everybody had a high school diploma (>85%) who was of that age. However, when I got a four year college degree it was the realm of about only 22% percent of the adult populace. With a bachelor's, added with associate's degree then the number was still only 29% percent. Now two decades later it's floating around 24% percent for those with a bachelor's as highest level of education. It was a long, long time before I was born when only 22-24% percent of the adult populace had a highs school diploma as their highest educational attainment.
Maybe in 100 or 200 years the adult populace of America will have their bachelor's degree in the same ratio that they had their high school diploma in the 1980s but as long as education increases in cost faster than average income, then it will remain a relative rarity that only a fifth to a quarter of us will have.
The only way for 85-90% percent of adult America to have their bachelor's degree would be for all college tuition and books to be free like K-12 and that's not likely to happen in our political climate.
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Me? I'm a high school student. But I plan on attending the University of Idaho, or Cal-Tech if I can get heaps of scholarships. Working towards an electrical or mechanical engineering degree.
Sometimes it's really true that the employer seeks one that studied for four years being the key. If it's military or civil service, then the four years is the key. If it's about being an architect then specifically studying architecture is the key.
That being said sometimes even the most lockstep job can be by accident. Of the two NASA rocket designers I know, one headed the whole thing in the early days as chief engineer and he had only a high school diploma and the other was a software engineer with no specific training in rockets/space ship design or mechanical engineering. NASA was also considering using a pilot with only a high school diploma, Chuck Yeager, to be the first astronaut to go into space. These days many of the specialists who go up, pending funding issues, are PhDs.
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I have a zoology and med tech degree also!
I almost applied for engineering department also.
Med tech is a OK job with very little patient contact, which is one of the main reasons I picked MT degree.
I like working independently. IMO team work is overrated. I can do better by myself. Lol. Don't tell my coworkers or my boss.
Hmmm... I read that sentence as asking if we have a teaching degree.
A better wording would be "do you have a college degree?"
Still, I wouldn't consider trying to get into the job market without a college degree these days. But I'm retired so it's moot.
I went to DeVry and received an Electronics Technician Diploma (non accredited).
I'm at ITT Tech in my 2nd quarter right now and really trying to justify it. You see, I'm married with 2 kids and it's been 4 years since I had a job last more than 90 days. So I'm stuck, I need a job now, but need more education to find one.
Advice? If you're going to earn a degree, do it while you're young. At 46, it takes everything I have to motivate myself for even the simplest homework assignments.
I'm at ITT Tech in my 2nd quarter right now and really trying to justify it. You see, I'm married with 2 kids and it's been 4 years since I had a job last more than 90 days. So I'm stuck, I need a job now, but need more education to find one.
Advice? If you're going to earn a degree, do it while you're young. At 46, it takes everything I have to motivate myself for even the simplest homework assignments.
If you need money, you need to enter the job market anyway, degree or not. Being that only 20-30% percent of the work force has a degree depending where you are, and those 70-80% percent who don't simply give up and just stay at home because they don't have a piece of paper.
When I didn't have a degree, I worked, even when I was still a high school student and even before that. When I got that 4 year degree, I still worked and nothing changed. The way I see it it will stay that way until the day I die and I don't want it any other way.
You have to be either extremely rich or extremely lazy to say I won't get into the work force because I don't have a degree.
I got a BA in Computer Science. Graduated with a pretty high GPA, but finding a job in IT in this area is pretty hard and I went a year unemployed since I left my other job as a salesman once I graduated. I got a better job now, but not in IT which is sort of frustrating.
