Anyone else fall for this scam ?

[crankcall]

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At some point even the people that went to university for the experience of school and to enrich their lives with historical fine art, romance literature and such need to pay the rent.
Lots of employer's (me) get 100 resumes for 1 job so you make three piles on the desk, degrees, after a quick scan maybe good candidate, and nope probably not working here. Its lines in the sand.
None of my university grad friends are working in a field even remotely related to their studies , but it got them a first interview.

For what its worth I have 9 guys on my team at work with degrees, one multiple. I was thrown out of high school. It works out differently for everyone. I wish I had gone to school so i would know what the hell they are talking about in the reports they send me......

 

[FiReSTaRT]

I don't know where people got the idea that university is supposed to be job training that leads to material wealth. It was never like that, it wasn't like that during the Renaissanse or the Enlightenment, it isn't like that now.

The problem is that the earlier stages of education - elementary/high school and propaganda (mass media) spend a lot of time convincing people that they need a university degree in order to succeed in the job market. Then you attend the propaganda sessions that your guidance councilor sent you to and you get sold on the fantasy until you graduate and (generalization, but accurate for most) end up waiting tables or making sandwiches.

Because it's been drilled into our heads since we were in kindergarten that employers will hire university grads over people without degrees.

Exactly.. Actually, some jobs, even low-end, will give you a leg up if you have the piece of paper, but not enough of a leg up to pay off for 4-5 years of lost income in addition to the monetary costs.

Thats not really untrue though. Afterall, many many CEOs of huge companies are just liberal arts degrees... Jamie Dimon has a Psych degree. I just don't think that material wealth should be the only reason why people want to learn what they learn.

Yes, but those degrees came backed with some tight family connections and/or a quite bit of luck in addition to actual ability. Those guys succeeded despite their degrees. I agree with you on the other point, but at the same time, these aren't the 70's when young people saw a boom ahead. The hard reality is that the North American and Western European middle class is on its way down to equalize with China's, Sometimes you have to make compromises or outright sacrifices in order to have the luxuries like food and shelter. In this day and age of too many university grads flipping burgers and picking orders, unless you're in a professional program like engineering or law, or well connected, statistically, university is a waste of 8% of your life.

Signed: Proud UofT Alum

P.S. My OAC courses did a lot more for my professional advancement than anything I did in university.

 

[backmarkerducati]

I don't know where people got the idea that university is supposed to be job training that leads to material wealth. It was never like that, it wasn't like that during the Renaissanse or the Enlightenment, it isn't like that now.

Gallieo wasn't rich, neither was Mozart.
John Locke didn't get rich off his philosphies, nor is that why we know of him, but there is no doubt that human existence as a whole was enriched by all of them.

People don't graduate from Harvard with the highest incomes, they never have and they never will. If you want to just get a job, go to MIT.

That is one of the problems, today's education is expensive for the student but they are still only paying a fraction of the actual cost. The rest is subsidized by the government and is never seen as a cost to the student (most have no idea that actual "tuition" costs are much higher than their paid tuition).

So the tax payer is paying for personal enlightenment, and that IMO is wrong in today's world. The library is full of books to enlighten at a much lower cost to the taxpayer. Want enlightenment pay full flight, want to contribute to the future tax base of the country, get subsidized.

 

[AngelEyez]

People don't graduate from Harvard with the highest incomes, they never have and they never will.

Are you sure about this? I think in reality people who graduate from these "top echelon U.S. schools" do actually on average earn an exponentially higher income.

I didn't study only the law subjects that had to do with my job at the end of the day. I took constitutional law, family, tax, criminal, none of which I use in my every day work. but I wanted to learn it, so I did.

You wanted to learn them and thats why you took them? Hmmm... not convinced... half of them are mandatory, the other half are on the bar exam... nice try.

 

[NealT]

I agree with OpenGambit problem is that many/most Universities now have lowered their standards and in many cases are bowing to private industry. An example is in my area(IT/CompSci) where base courses are being taught in specific languages that are promoted by a single vendor. Good for the vendor for software sales but bad for students who will not have a good general education on the core basics of Comp Sci that will serve them in their careers regardless of the language/s they work with.
I won't even talk about written and general communication skills in students these days....even ten years ago I have seen essays written in point form from 3rd year uni students...

 

[OpenGambit]

Are you sure about this? I think in reality people who graduate from these "top echelon U.S. schools" do actually on average earn an exponentially higher income.



You wanted to learn them and thats why you took them? Hmmm... not convinced... half of them are mandatory, the other half are on the bar exam... nice try.

Most recent studies suggest that harvard grads are 37th in the country when it comes to incomes coming out of school.


Secondly, If you think anyone takes a course for the bar exam in this country, you have no idea what the (95% pass rate) ontario bar exam is like. Its a stupid idea and completely unnecessary.

And I wasn't takling about the mandatory 1st year level course in constitutional and crim. I did the innocence project, criminal moots, and aced crim pro, none of which are mandatory. Nice try.

lastly I don't care whether you are convinced or not. your opinion on what I did with my life means nothing to me.

 

[OpenGambit]

Yes, but those degrees came backed with some tight family connections and/or a quite bit of luck in addition to actual ability. Those guys succeeded despite their degrees. I agree with you on the other point, but at the same time, these aren't the 70's when young people saw a boom ahead. The hard reality is that the North American and Western European middle class is on its way down to equalize with China's, Sometimes you have to make compromises or outright sacrifices in order to have the luxuries like food and shelter. In this day and age of too many university grads flipping burgers and picking orders, unless you're in a professional program like engineering or law, or well connected, statistically, university is a waste of 8% of your life.

Signed: Proud UofT Alum

P.S. My OAC courses did a lot more for my professional advancement than anything I did in university.

My first job I got offered out of undergrad liberal arts degree was $65,000. Its not a lot but its a decent amount of money for a guy with 1 degree straight out of school.

And actually I see China coming up a lot faster than we are going down.

And in the words of someone way more awesome and fictional than I am... "Never tell me the odds."

 

[AngelEyez]

many/most Universities now have lowered their standards and in many cases are bowing to private industry.

This has been happening for a while... labs are "funded/sponsored" for students to do research for the big pharms.

A lot of profs and departments partner with industry to provide "expertise" in the field and churn out literature that is industry beneficial in exchange for millions in grant money... I've seen it countless times...

When I was in post grad, in one class I took, my prof openly told us that he was writing a book and we would each be assigned paper research topics which would serve for his research for the book.

 

[knowledge]

To be fair, having a degree & getting a job wasn't as difficult a generation ago. It seems like it's just a cycle. Back then, a university degree was more likely than a college diploma to have you living large. It was also much harder to come up with tuition and OSAP wasn't as easy to get.

Fast forward to today and the previous generation are all under the impression that university is the way to go. The kids listen to their parents, and coupled with heavier subsidization + ease of OSAP, higher minimum wage, + it being the "proper path", etc. and you have way more kids going to university. The result is an over-saturated market full of degrees...while the people in college are getting all the jobs because of placements (definitely the case now. I know a ******** of people with degrees going back to college and finding a job right out of it. Same goes for people avoiding university altogether and just going straight to college).

I think about a year or 2 down the road and everyone's gonna be flooding to college. Then once that's oversaturated, it's back to uni. Just like anything else, it seems to just be about playing the market.

My first job I got offered out of undergrad liberal arts degree was $65,000. Its not a lot but its a decent amount of money for a guy with 1 degree straight out of school.

Now you gotta look at it as objectively as possible and ask yourself whether you were lucky, or if that's actually the case for a fair amount of people. If it's the former, then it really doesn't seem to make much of a point. I've been offered some amazing opportunities and I don't think I can cite that for everyone as a norm.

I am curious, though. 65k isn't bad at all to start, especially since offers right out of uni seem to be around the 35-40k mark.

 

[OpenGambit]

Now you gotta look at it as objectively as possible and ask yourself whether you were lucky, or if that's actually the case for a fair amount of people. If it's the former, then it really doesn't seem to make much of a point. I've been offered some amazing opportunities and I don't think I can cite that for everyone as a norm.

I am curious, though. 65k isn't bad at all to start, especially since offers right out of uni seem to be around the 35-40k mark.

I am not sure why I have to look at it objectively, I am just repeating my experience. I didn't say thats what people leave university with on a regular basis, and in my view, thats not really my problem.
I had a plan, my plan included a liberal arts degree and a law degree, i executed that plan, and it worked out pretty close to what I expected.

 

[FiReSTaRT]

You are one unique, anecdotal example. It's not impossible to come out of school with a liberal arts degree and be offered $65K, but it's not as common as it was before. Bottom line: Our industry has been largely exported to China, services to India and there are more people fighting for the same jobs, which drives down the wages. Having job-specific training raises one's price. 5 years of work experience on the job trumps a liberal arts degree and making money for those 5 years trumps getting in debt for those 5 years.

 

[OpenGambit]

You are one unique, anecdotal example. It's not impossible to come out of school with a liberal arts degree and be offered $65K, but it's not as common as it was before. Bottom line: Our industry has been largely exported to China, services to India and there are more people fighting for the same jobs, which drives down the wages. Having job-specific training raises one's price. 5 years of work experience on the job trumps a liberal arts degree and making money for those 5 years trumps getting in debt for those 5 years.

one unique, anecdotal example is all I need to answer people that say that you can't get a good job with a liberal arts degree. Thats why generalization is bad.

My point is simply that:

1. universities aren't geared towards getting rich
2. getting rich isn't the only thing that human beings should strive for
3. the arts have enriched the human race
4. lastly but most important, liberal arts can be just as useful as any other degree if it is part of a well thought out plan. If someone went and got a psycho degree and ended up nowhere, thats not the psych degree's fault, thats the person's fault.

 

[fastar1]

I just went back to school after 20 years in the workforce. I have no degree and I did alright, but I'm at the point where I want to acheive more and I don't feel that I'm marketable any further without a degree. I had tried college because I was told to, and it didn't work. Now I'm getting an education because I decided it's right for me. Who knows if it will lead to a great job in the end, only time will tell. But I can already tell that I will have no regrets when I'm done, even if I wind up washing dishes.

The 20 year old student body helps.

I wish I had gone to school so i would know what the hell they are talking about in the reports they send me......

I like your humility.

I just don't think that material wealth should be the only reason why people want to learn what they learn. People here take riding courses, they aren't related to your job, they are related to things you are interested in outside of work.

To add some nuance to this, I think it's fine if people only get a degree so they can get rich. It's also fine if people just go to university to follow their passions. So education can be either one; an investment in yourself or a lifelong financial investment. If you invest in a philosophy degree, then it's a poor financial investment. Don't expect to rich, and don't complain that you can't find a related job. And I'm not hearing anyone with vocational degrees complaining about the lack of jobs.

My advice; do it for love or money (or both), otherwise get the hell outta school.

 

[FiReSTaRT]

one unique, anecdotal example is all I need to answer people that say that you can't get a good job with a liberal arts degree. Thats why generalization is bad.

My point is simply that:

1. universities aren't geared towards getting rich
2. getting rich isn't the only thing that human beings should strive for
3. the arts have enriched the human race
4. lastly but most important, liberal arts can be just as useful as any other degree if it is part of a well thought out plan. If someone went and got a psycho degree and ended up nowhere, thats not the psych degree's fault, thats the person's fault.

How about just getting a middle class lifestyle? The universities are also complicit in pushing their useless programs as a good way to enter the job market. What they don't tell their prospective students is that they're more likely to end up flipping burgers than shopping for houses unless they do grad school as well and even then they're not guaranteed not to be flipping burgers once they graduate.

If you think you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (the real cost of a university education) on personal enrichment, all the power to you. However, if you have to make an honest living, in a majority of cases, a college will be a much better choice.

 

[OpenGambit]

Sure I guess, I see ads for penis pills too, doesn't mean I believe that stuff.

we are still in a capitalist society so I say let the buyer beware, if you are paying for something, I hope you think its worth it.

It was worth it for me because it was part of my plan. I didn't enroll in school as a stalling tactic for figuring out what I want to do with my life, it was a step in the process.

Lastly, I am not so convinced that universities are really pushing for more enrollment for the liberal arts...

 

[FiReSTaRT]

They're pushing for more enrollment in all programs as they get more government funding, more tuition dollars and more alumni to solicit donations from. That's why they are still advertising how many fine careers can stem from their fine arts programs. The advertising held true until 15-20 years ago and many still cling to the belief even though it's a thing of the past, so they fall for the advertising. At least it's becoming more obvious in mass media that for most people, universities are becoming more of a luxury for the rich than a legitimate career path for most.

 

[OpenGambit]

They're pushing for more enrollment in all programs as they get more government funding, more tuition dollars and more alumni to solicit donations from. That's why they are still advertising how many fine careers can stem from their fine arts programs. The advertising held true until 15-20 years ago and many still cling to the belief even though it's a thing of the past, so they fall for the advertising. At least it's becoming more obvious in mass media that for most people, universities are becoming more of a luxury for the rich than a legitimate career path for most.

I don't see UofT advertising their psych degree..., my impression was that they get way way way more money off having good researchers and corporate dollars than they do raising enrollment.

 

[FiReSTaRT]

I don't see UofT advertising their psych degree..., my impression was that they get way way way more money off having good researchers and corporate dollars than they do raising enrollment.

Brochures for their university programs include (or used to include but I don't see them stopping the practice) with a bunch of possible careers that the degree will lead them to. All your typical hormonal adolescent sees are job prospects and most parents are still stuck in the past where education used to count for something in the job market.

 

[Stewart]

don't trust anyone...anymore, bottom line.

 

[AngelEyez]

If you think you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (the real cost of a university education) on personal enrichment, all the power to you.

Most of the people who are going into debt to fund their education do not fall into this category. Most of them are "hoping" (perhaps misguidedly so), for a good return on the investment, meaning getting a job or career that is better then the one they would have been able to get otherwise.

Education is big business .... they market their products/services "degrees", count their profits "tuition" and compete with each other for consumers "students" like any other industry.

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