On Sunday I set out to answer the following reader email:
I need some advice on how to advise my 17 year old daughter. Like so many kids her age, they have heard that going to college and getting a degree is the path to personal and professional success.
As events in the last few years have shown, that approach may or may not be true as it was in the past. I have tried to make her see that plans to delve into other areas is worthwhile and maybe necessary.
What would be your advice to a 17 year old girl right now? What would you recommend for her goals in the next 3 – 5 years?
No pressure or anything. But it’s a fair question: where can concerned parents get honest answers, ones not distributed by colleges hungry for their tuition dollars?
I sure didn’t want to be one of those “I’ve got mine” PhDs. In the tech industry and on Facebook, I personally know a lot of people doing just fine without college degrees — but I also know these people are intelligent, hard-working, reliable, and socially competent. A non-degreed, antisocial slacker isn’t going to do nearly as well. Neither is an antisocial slacker with a degree, unless that degree is the kind that includes a pricey dose of alumni nepotism and (let’s face it) familial financial stability.
With that in mind I wrote my answer.
Dear Reader,
Well, you’re asking a pretty serious question and I don’t know your daughter so I can only speak generally.
Some studies suggest the brain isn’t finished developing until age 25; asking even 18-year-olds to formulate life goals is, perhaps, an unfortunate and unreasonable side effect of our modern world. If a person doesn’t know what they want — and frankly, most of my students didn’t — the best solution is to try a lot of things and “fail cheaply” as entrepreneurs would say.
So. If a student doesn’t actually know why they’re going to college, I’d say they shouldn’t go full time, and they certainly shouldn’t spend a lot of money on it. I’m a big fan of community college, part-time and maybe combined with work, for kids who don’t have a lot of direction.
Even if if they do have a sense of why they’re in college, and it’s to “be successful,” here’s the rub: a degree is still expected in many realms, but means less and less because so many people have a degree and not a lick of sense to show for it. This is why a solid working history and a good set of references are equally if not more important than the degree itself, as is a network of people who can get you a job. That’s where bigger name schools can be valuable, they tend to have alumni networks and such. (Fact: some of my smartest students at Vandy had gotten as many cheap credit hours as they could at community colleges, then transferred for the fancy name.) So, yes, please do emphasize to your daughter that just having the piece of paper is no guarantee of anything.
Tech is one field where you don’t need a degree, at least in certain realms. So if your daughter’s into programming that’s a different story. Even there, though, some college looks better than no college, and you need a network to find a job. And the rest of the STEM fields, which are definitely very lucrative fields for women, do require degrees.
Finally, on the matter of “doing what you love.” IMHO, most people aren’t going to find their vocation until later in life. In the meantime, I think it’s more realistic to promote the sense that a job can be something not-too-objectionable — and preferably, paying enough to live. No saving puppies for free, no romantic starving artist BS. I know a lot of happy artists and musicians here in Austin, and most of them are glad that they’ve learned HTML.
I suspect that, when one finds one’s vocation, one will know it. And even then a day job doesn’t hurt. And it takes most people a long time to figure out what they really want from life. So I’ve included some articles on the meaning of college, career, and life. I hope you or your daughter might find them useful.
I hope this helps, and best of luck to both of you.
Sincerely,
Amanda
Peanut gallery, this is a good question: what should we tell kids about college these days?
A college education may or may not make sense for you, but at the age of 17, you’re not in a good position to know. So if you’re not sure, don’t do it. It’ll still be there when you are sure.
I tried college right out of high school and soon realized that a) I didn’t want to be there; and b) I was wasting a lot of professors’ time and my money. So I left.
Twelve years later, when I’d been around a few blocks and gained some experience with “life,” I knew a lot more about myself and the kind of life I wanted. A college education was, I realized, a crucial component of that life. So I went.
BUT: If I’d had another set of experiences just out of high school, I might have taken a different path and decided that college wasn’t necessary for the kind of life I wanted. I could just as easily have decided never to go.
In either case, I was able to make an informed decision because by then I knew a LOT more about what kind of life I wanted.
The bonus: The education I finally got was the one I wanted and needed, and certainly a better one than I’dve ended up had I just stumbled through college right out of high school.
Thanks for your insight, Maureen. I feel a little odd answering the question since I did go straight to college, still didn’t know exactly why I was there, and then ended up going to grad school because it seemed like the logical conclusion to what I’d been doing. Wouldn’t recommend it, obviously. So now, twelve years later, I’m discovering what most people discover very early on, that the subject matter of my BA (and even PhD) has no bearing on my ability to get a job; it’s my real-world teaching and learning experience that has allowed me to transition.
If you don’t know what you are doing or want to do, at 17, I’d suggest undertaking some people-based occupation first; that gives you a grounding in how to handle yourself, if you don’t already know, and also offers you (depending to a degree on your own temperament, of course) a chance to garner some compassion and more importantly insight into others and crucially yourself. I would get a job (paid) asap, and move around – travel is another great eye-opener after people because, well, you get to me even more people, that is, ones that might be able to provide even more realisations and perspectives than hobnobbing with folk in your home town as to what you might be suited to do or study.
I don’t think it harms to wait until you start a degree, especially if you can earn while you consider it. I began in my early 20s, as a so-called ‘mature’ student but the hunger that I had by then built up served me well: I was simply more ambitious than my fellow students, and knew a bit more about managing my time once in academe. It sort of worked for me.
You are very right, people skills are invaluable in any arena, so acquiring them early on is a great idea, especially if you’re just not sure what you’re doing to do with your life.
When I left high school, I was more focused on getting out of my hometown than figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I went directly into college without a clue, much less a direction. College gave me exposure to different fields through a variety of classes, which is how I finally found my niche in the Liberal Arts. (For a while there, I wanted to be a palentologist, until a couple of college courses convinced me that I’m horrible at the finer aspects of science.)
Plus, college is generally a “safe” environment where you’re allowed to make mistakes — in fact, it’s expected. And (for me, at least) the time away from my family, my hometown, and being forced to meet / interact with people from different backgrounds and get along with them was part of growing up.
I think time “out of the nest” is the most important thing a person can do straight out of high school, whether it’s working in another town, travelling abroad, etc. For those who don’t have much of a direction, a few years in college will at least provide them with exposure to different fields. At the very worst, they’ll be able to narrow down what they DON’T want to do as a career.
You make a good point. Leaving the nest is definitely an important part of growing up — and I do see the value of having people live in dorms, i.e. not totally on their own at first. But the class issue does arise here. Unless you can afford room and board, at a college large enough to have dorms, you’re going to be living at home or sharing an apartment with other people. To my mind, the latter is just as viable as the traditional college experience — and yeah, it’s a little more “risky” I guess, in that it’s not as controlled an environment, but again, it’s what many people from my high school ended up doing. And in that environment, people still hang out, just as they would at college, so I don’t see a huge social difference.
When I was attending private school, then working on my MA, I was fully in charge of financing my education myself. I was always jealous of my fellow students who did not have to work and whose parent took care of their loans so they “did not have to graduate with any debt.” Even if she goes straight on to school, WORK. Now I have a job, while many of my peers do not because I had work experience in addition to the education. Something I formally loathed is now the reason why I am gainfully employed in this economy.
Yes, I can see how that would be a benefit in today’s job market. The only catch is that I would say that in college, as in life, there needs to be a genuine balance. I’ve had students who worked full-time and were trying to go to college full-time, and it wasn’t a good idea. Worse yet, many colleges penalize students who aren’t full time, basically forcing them to take too many classes, even if they are working. As with real life, the key is to find an actual balance that allows you to focus on classes as well as making some money.
Going to college isn’t about getting a job. if you want a job, go to trade school and become a plumber, or an electrician, or a welder, or an IT drone, or any other “blue collar job.” You’ll make a nice lower- to middle-class wage, and life will be good–decent car, OK house, occasional trip to Mexico to drink inexpensive booze. Throw in a spouse/partner who makes a little bank, and you can join the great mass of Americans. Heck, you might want to join the military and see the world and get your fill of excitement by going to war .
Going to college is about learning to learn, “living the life of the mind,” and seeing the openings to doors of opportunities that will allow you to change career at age 30, 40, 50, or whatever, when you’re really sick of what you chose to do when you were 18 or 30 or 40. WoPro, I find your anti-intellectual bias, especially from an expert in your particular field of study, strange. Yes, there are douchebags in academia — they are everywhere (god, try spending 20 years as an officer in the military). You, not them, have to find the internal validation for what you do.
So, of course the subject matter of your BA has had very little to do with your ability to get a job, but the process of learning, thinking, and performing at intellectual and creative levels has had EVERYTHING to do with you being able to have a career, to walk away from academe like you did, to churn out this blog (which I love) and to dabble as a public intellectual and commentator on all things FUBAR in academe. Without your PhD and the privileged life you led in A2 & Texas, and then as a scholar at Vandy, you’d be another faceless drone in the hive. I cannot express how grateful I am for my education. My BA/MA/PhD (yep I got one of them too, and have done the book thing [twice] and won the prizes) left me with the skills, connections, and most importance confidence to walk away from a very successful career in the military to follow my own path, a path that has given me 1) intellectual fulfillment and 2) boatloads of money. So, instead of writing off college (perhaps I overstate your position) as a waste, I think the best advice we can tell people about college is that the 10/80/10 rule applies. About 10% of students and professors are excellent, 80% make up the great unwashed masses who it really doesn’t matter if they go to college or not, and 10% are total morons. College isn’t for all, but it does offer, if the student does the work instead of joining a sorority and wasting her time get smashed every weekend, the best chance for living a life beyond 7:30-5:30 M-F until age 68. Education equates to money, and money is freedom.
Yes, actually, for most people college IS about getting a job. If you don’t know that, I assume you’ve never had to worry much about money. Sincere congratulations.
Maybe most people go to college to get a good job but education is what John described. This differrence does not bode well for us. People should go to college to be educated not trained. Teaching them the meaning of education is the answer and not allowing generation after generation to be ripped off by settling for training rather than education.
As someone who educated students for ten years, I disagree wholeheartedly. There is absolutely no need for learning to be separate from real life. Sadly, those who think it does have been running universities for several centuries and have had the luxury of deciding what “real” education looks like, much to the detriment of today’s universities.
WoPro — a very snappish response. I thought you could do better. Alas, I have indeed had to worry a great deal about money at times in my life, but now I don’t. Why? Because I have all those letters after my name and because of the skills I learned in “college.” My point (again) is: if you want a job, go learn a trade and you’ll make more money, and sooner, than if you go to college. I know it must have been terribly hard on you having to go to U of M and then off to grad school, and then to teach those gender courses at Vandy, and it must be terribly difficult, right up there with working in a coal mine, or on a construction job in the baking sun, or slugging chow at the local diner, to write this blog. But ou get to do this because of your BA/MA/PhD. Take away your PhD and you’re just another cynic on the internet. The only thing that gives you the slighest credibility is your education. So, to tell people to turn away from the university because you had a bad experience is pretty lame. Be careful on your drive back to La-La Land.
I’d call it snappy myself.
Amanda,
While it’s natural for older folks to make linear projections drawing on their experiences, now is the time to be cognizant of the great (forced) accommodation now underway in the modern world. In short, we’ve reached the physical limits to growth, first because of the peak in worldwide oil production, and on its heels 1) shortages of other natural resources like water and 2) the costs of all the polluting and ecological devastation we’ve done in the name of progress. The crisis we’re in now is not a recession but a sustainability crisis causing the economy to contract. This contraction is a natural and unstoppable phenomenon, our reactions to it are political/economic. This has profound implications for not just higher education but our entire form of social organization. Today’s youth can create a new sustainable world if they have ecological knowledge. The fundamental choice or social organization is elitism/hierarchy/totalitarianism versus communitarianism, egalitarianism. I’l leave it at that.
I think you’re asking just a tad much of a seventeen-year-old. But that’s just my opinion.
Ye,s it’s a great deal to “ask” of a 17 year old, especially when most parents will themselves cringe at the thought of no more economic growth and the end of our national mythology. That’s where parenting has to go, though. Otherwise, we set our kids up for greater disappointment and even tragedy. First, however, a parent has to ask if what I’ve suggested is accurate or not. I’m (perhaps patronizingly) trying to get folks to connect their personal lives to larger issues unfolding -another traditional goal of higher education in my view. In short, what “the fall of the Berlin Wall was for the East Germans reaching the Limits to Growth will be for Americans.
I think (following the very, very bleak comment left by Dan) that it’s important that you, at 17, have an idea about what you like, are interested in, and would like to pursue in college. My parents were very supportive of my interests, and we were encouraged to explore (although I was practically coerced into a “practical” degree). I would say that she should either have experience working/living before she goes to college, be it this year or in five years. I was lucky; I had worked as a lifeguard, a coach, and a writer before I went to college, so I knew that I worked well with people, loved to write, and enjoyed teaching.
Live a little. And not just the sanitized experiences that the upper-class are buying for their kids in order to pad their college applications. Take advantage of whatever cheap/affordable/paying opportunities you can find. Network. Talk to your friends’ parents or even the friends of your friends’ parents, in case they do anything you might be interested in doing. Get on Twitter and follow people who do what you might like to do.
I think you need to make sure that you’re there for the right reasons, and that you’re not afraid to step away if things don’t go as planned. Because they never do.
Yeah, I agree. As I’ve noted above, I know plenty of people who took a more meandering route to a degree, starting at community college, taking time off, doing things that allowed them to understand how the world really works before leaping into the ultra-controlled college environment.
Great advice, Lee. I was hoping that readers would share their own stories!
Use what brain you have developed; it’s your choice. With two daughters, one top high school class female, no college degree and the other, summa cum in university computer science (with computer companies claiming they Can’t FIND qualified personnel!?) neither has scored gainful employment. I blame BushCObama.
Well, hiring inequality is its own problem. But still, it’s true that it’s ultimately a student’s choice whether to use their brain or not. A teacher can only so much.
Many people do want to rob the time that young people have to intellectually, politically, and creatively express and explore themselves and the world at college, by making them become employed selling sweatshop consumer products and otherwise enter the socially unjust “job market” instead of working to change the system where guess what, everyone will have their rights to a job with benefits and living wage realized. Tutition should be free, and students should receive a stipend.
“Should” is a dangerous word. The Ivory Tower is full “should”-ridden idealism, and it just doesn’t work. The plain fact is that most people are going to need jobs. I agree that young people should be allowed to be young people but there’s a certain reality that needs to be addressed in the current job market.
My B.A. was not at all practical (it was voted “least marketable degree” at a high school reunion once), but it was invaluable because it taught me to think critically and express myself in writing to a variety of audiences. And yes, the piece of paper did help me garner employment, though of course it had nothing to do with what I had studied (because what I had studied was an amalgamation of English lit, philosophy, history, and theatre, and those jobs don’t exist). Even my B.S. (yes, I have two undergrad degrees) has only recently become relevant to my career path. But there’s more to life than a job, and my undergraduate experiences unquestionably enriched my life. Now, that doesn’t mean my path would work for everyone, or even necessarily most people. But if the 17 year old (or anyone) enjoys intellectual stimulation of the sort you get in college, I think that in and of itself is a reason to go.
P.S. And for the record, yes, I realize my privilege is showing.
Yes, your privilege is showing, but at least you admit it. Certainly college CAN teach critical thinking and expression — skills that I absolutely agree will help you in the real world — but not every student can learn them. In my experience the older the student, the more likely they have the will to at least try, though.
Sure, there’s more to life than a job, but as someone who spent a good ten years in financially uncertain positions, I’ve concluded that Maslow was right, and basic financial security is actually essential for getting to those higher levels of fulfillment.
I went back to college at 22 when after I discovered my true passion, philosophy and religion as it turned out. Compared to the other decisions made after that point (ahem, gradschool) I found that it was the best decision I ever made. Granted, finances dictated more of my decision than anything else, and I’m still the only member of my family with a degree, so take that into consideration. However, I was actually passionate about my subject and I know I would never have discovered philosophy or those dear Greeks without first taking that waiting period. Perhaps waiting until 22 puts one at a disadvantage but I don’t think most kids at 18 are really sure what they’re doing and, as Amanda noted, it’s good to earn cash and job experience while you do this.
I’m not discounting the value of studying something you truly love and obviously, one of the things I push for is making sure that learning about dead Greeks is very obviously relevant to modern life, and teaching in ways that ensure the students see this. But, as you say, the decision came to you a little later in life. I think that’s actually the norm, and I’m not even kidding when I say that 18 is too young to send people to college unless they really do have some idea where they’re going with it.
Certainly agree with the idea of 18 being too young to run off to college. I especially get annoyed at the cultural myth that college is a place to hang out, party, and find yourself. My answer to that has always been that I got drunk quite a bit for much cheaper than a college tuition.
I’m not sure that whether someone has already said this but there’s also the Great Unmentionable Factor for going to college, and it’s got nothing to do with school. It’s class. Before the 1970s a businessman would marry his minimally-educated secretary or a stewardess or whatever. Not anymore. One of the biggest unforeseen outcomes of feminism’s success is that massive increase in class distinctions. A woman or man with a college degree only marries someone without one in exceptional circumstances these days, and I’m guessing that’s only going to get worse.
So there are two reasons to go to college. First, to find a life mate; second, to park yourself for those four perilous years from 18-22 where a single irresponsible night can lead to pregnancy. If that happens and if, for whatever reason, you don’t look to abortion to solve the problem, you’re better off with the other person you’re now entangled with for life being on the college path and from the same middle to upper-middle class you hope to stay in.
Class is the great unsaid that you presuppose, WoPro, in your reply. College doesn’t guarantee you’ll get into or stay middle class, but it’s a simple matter of playing the odds. This was patently obvious to my father twenty years ago, but even now I see a lot of people who haven’t even considered it.
I think you’re the one making some class assumptions here. There are a lot of ways to find a life mate outside college — I have seen it with my own eyes — and a lot of ways to get pregnant even while you’re in college, and plenty of people who’ve had kids way too early and decided, rightly, they’d be better off without the dude in question. Finally, why are you assuming marriage is a given at all? That’s certainly telling.
At any rate, if you’re suggesting that people go to college merely to avoid pregnancy and get hitched, I’m suggesting that you might as well make it a social club and stop asking professors to participate/care. It would definitely be cheaper that way.
I am definitely making class assumptions myself; I meant to, and so happily plead guilty as charged. I did not say or mean to imply that marriage was necessarily part of the outcome; only that, if you don’t abort the baby, you’re still bound to the man or woman for the rest of your life, whether you keep in close contact or not. At a minimum there’s a legal arrangement for 18 years anyway, and in reality a connection for long beyond that. So I plead not guilty on that one.
Of course it’s true, as you say, that you can find a life mate outside college. But you’re less likely to find a college-educated one there. And of course it’s true that you can get pregnant or get someone pregnant in college; and in that event it’s more likely that the other person will be college-educated.
This isn’t meant to say that college is purely a social club. But it does have definite non-educational advantages to going, if that’s your sort of thing. And conversations with a lot of people suggest that yes, being or having your kids be in the middle class is definitely a desirable thing.
Building on what AnotherFather is saying, it’s also true that the route in this country to a middle to upper-middle class life is typically through college. The one exception is the tech industry, and this is changing as the technology matures. You can argue that this is flawed, and I think that argument has a lot of validity — but as long as we’re continuing to gut our labor unions, and as long as we don’t have very many viable vocational/tech schools — in other words, as long as culturally we don’t value so-called “blue collar” occupations, this will be true.
That said, the education I alluded to earlier was at a public university in Louisiana — tuition was relatively cheap, and I received a full scholarship (for the first degree, anyway). There are cultural and class obstacles to going to a university that have nothing to do with the actual cost, of course.
Good points; and this is a good chance to bring up another thought I just had while running an errand:
Everyone debates the value of a college degree when held singly, i.e., whether it’s good or bad for you as an individual to go to college. What about the value of a college degree when held in tandem with another college degree?, i.e. by marriage or its de facto equivalents. It seems like there’s a real chance for some interesting social research here.
My completely unscientific guess is that a college degree is the single biggest predictor of marrying someone with a college degree today, much as the single biggest predictor of committing a crime is a prior criminal arrest. And my related, equally unscientific guess, is that two college degrees held in tandem is the best way of guaranteeing a solid middle class life in modern America, a far greater guarantee than a single college degree; but that either option offers you greater chances of a middle class life than either being married (or its equivalent) or being single without a college degree.
Fun guesses; does anyone actually know?
“Typically” meaning historically – but how long will the past continue to be a valid predictor of the future? What I see is more and more kids discovering that college is not a bridge to entering a higher class; it is, in fact, the provenance of those already in the upper-middle-to-upper class. You can find bargains, true, but the historical truth that it’s a good investment is increasingly problematic as the middle class shrinks — drowning in debt certainly won’t improve your class and as the degree oversupply worsens, the degree itself will mean less and less on the job market, and therefore less of a financial advantage. I’m already starting to see managers frustrated with incompetent degree-holders — and that too reflects a cultural shift away from valuing formal education. It’s always dodgy to predict the future, but I think it’s especially dangerous to assume the past model will continue to work here.
“I think it’s especially dangerous to assume the past model will continue to work here.”
You’re probably right. What I can’t figure out is where the hell all the tuition money is going. It isn’t to me (chump humanities prof.), our admins, our physical plant, or even free parking (it costs me a grand a year for that privilege). I’d love to blame athletics, but I think they actually bring in more money overall than they bleed away, or so they claim (and I guess I have to believe them). I do know that the scientists are routinely offered a million bucks+ to set up a lab when they’re offered a job, but the deal flips right back on them because if they don’t start bringing in way more money than that in external grants, they get the boot.
Is it really administrators’ salaries? Really? They’re an easy target but it seems hard to believe, and the most overpaid ones are there by student demand anyway (mental health experts, advising deans, diversity deans, and so on). I do rankle when I see our gym offers free personal fitness trainers, but that turns out to be students on work-study anyway, so seems like a win/win.
So where the hell is all the money going?
Well, yeah, I do think admin is where the money’s going; people have cited actual studies at me (not that I’ve looked them up) pointing to admin costs as the thing most responsible for tuition increases. Granted it’s particularly egregious here in TX — a random $200,000/yr “special advisor”? Really?? And I’d throw in profiteering ed “consultants” too. And a lot of other big-ticket items….I know of one PR prof who left their university job to take another university job for 3 miilion — you read that right, 3 MILLION. So I have to wonder how much these high-flying professionals-turned-profs who are used to making a lot of money from their previous careers are costing: famous motivational speakers, celebrity deans, rappers-turned-management-lecturers etc. And look, for all I know the B-schools and law schools are self-supporting and this isn’t even an issue, but i have to wonder. And of course the amount that any given institution spends on marketing and PR — Vandy farmed some of it out to an NYC firm, but every school’s got something going on. That’s where I think the money’s going. Certainly not to the people the doing the majority of the actual teaching.
You know, the Texas Tribune has published all of the salaries for everyone who works at UT-Austin (or possibly the UT System), along with titles. So this is actually a very answerable question, at least from the standpoint of faculty-vs-staff salary ratios.
Talk about needing the stomach for something! I wonder if there’s a budget breakdown, as in, how much is taken in via tuition, alumni donations, and corporate “grants” vs. how is spent on admin, teaching, consulting, sort of thing. I suspect there’s a fair amount of spending (to, say, private firms, speakers etc.) that won’t show up on an individual salary breakdown, so I don’t think individual salaries of even average salaries would be as telling as a pie chart. Which is why I bet they don’t want to publish one. But I kind of don’t want to know….so, yeah, gin! Who’s with me?
3 Million bucks? Wow…
Have you read a book called Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line? It must be ten years old by now, but a friend put me on to it recently. It comes to the unsurprising conclusion that universities exist solely to make money; they are out-of-control entities that merely want more buildings and, above all, more prestige. Sobering.
You ought to write a book review of it if you have the stomach for it.
Yeah, that is unsurprising to me, so I think it would just be masochistic. Better solution for this evening is to see what gin has to say about the matter.
Right now, I would tell that seventeen-year-old girl that today, a university degree–or a set of them, for that matter–can represent either: 1) a life preserver which will later keep her afloat while she watches over half of her classmates drown or; 2) a raging fire upon which to throw her mostly-borrowed money. And I would also tell her that 3) the only decent predictor of which outcome she will experience is her class.
Nevertheless, I would recommend to her that she go to college–if not now, then eventually–because it is where she will come into contact with people of diverse backgrounds/ideas and where she can–if she so chooses–rectify the many deficiencies in her understanding of the world. Yes, I’m assuming here that her primary and secondary institutions failed her. Only the children of the super-rich get the kind of education I’m talking about in elemantary and high-school; they are the only students who needn’t be dumbed-down and lied to as their families own the world in the first place. (Your dear Reader is not a member of that elite class, of course. The super-rich do not wonder what to tell their children about college.)
Education v training–that recurring theme in these comments: it’s a question more suited to another time, imo. When I entered the university twenty-something years ago one might have believed in the virtues of pure skill-acquisition. Twenty years-ago skills alone would almost certainly translate into a job, maybe even a good one. Now, it’s hard to see where one can still believe this. I myself wouldn’t know any better but for that fact that I recieved an education–purely by accident, mind you; I went to college in search of training. Along with that training, I found a love for history, philosophy, economics and literature; the things which make a citizen, as opposed to a worker. When most of the formerly-decent-paying jobs have been shipped off to low-wage nations, the ability to think critically is suddenly a very useful skill. In fact, it’s one of the only useful skills left, though it’s not useful for the individual self but rather for the whole of society.
I guess what I’m basically saying is this: the very idea that one can even pursue individual fulfillment within our current system is at best very naive, at worst, very selfish. In order to believe this, one must think that our current systemic difficulties can be overcome; that things will eventually go back to normal. This in turn requires a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalist economy, what has always made it ‘go’ and what has historically brought it out of crises. To seek mere training right now is to a) expect that everything will magically correct itself, b) gamble that–either by dumb-luck or social connections, those acquired skills will prevent one from becoming part of the half (or maybe majority?) of workers/unemployed who are essentially modern-day serfs/beggars.
Whether or not it’s in that seventeen-year-old-girl’s best interests to go to college, it’s definitely in society’s best interest that she does. The chance that she (and those around her) would actually become educated in the process represents the last hope for western society.
(And you all thought that guy Dan had a bleak outlook. Ha!)
Correction:
“To seek mere training right now is to a) expect that everything will magically correct itself, OR b) know that it won’t and gamble that–either by dumb-luck or social connections, those acquired skills will prevent one from becoming part of the half (or maybe majority?) of workers/unemployed who are essentially modern-day serfs/beggars.”
Where we differ, I think, is that you received your education by accident whereas I received my real-world experience by accident. So, as someone who had to look for a “real” job later in life, I found out how useless that piece of paper really was, and I started to meet more and more people who valued “soft skills” over any sort of formal certification.
Also, I’m not sure I’d recommend college as a place to find diversity, unless it’s community college (or maybe state. ‘Cause otherwise you get that pseudo-diversity thing, where the college has recruited Afro-Carribeans, Aleutians and Samaons up the wazoo, but neglected to notice that they’re all rich. I think the problem with colleges now is that they’re far too isolated; better for kids to meet older people, people who are working through college, people who care about class and don’t, then for them to be surrounded by other privileged kids who don’t know why they’re there.
we don’t need to contribute to the anti-intellectual currents in the United STates. You as a former professor and bearer of PhD should know that.
Actually, as a former professor I do know that proclaiming intellectual activity only happens inside the walls of magical tower is exactly what’s been making people do damned anti-intellectual.
Perhaps a 2 year stint for all high school graduates either in the military or in public service could serve as a bridge from high school to determining what the first career might look like and how to get to it. Taking college courses could still be an option (many military bases encourage soldiers to sign up for classes), there would be pay (not the kind to get rich from, but sustainable).
In my job, I see more than just a few college grads retraining for “blue collar work”. As a group, these grads do have a distinct advantage in securing employment over the non-grads in that, as a group, they have more exposure to the world and how it works, and have better communication and social skills. If I owned a HVAC company, I’d be looking for a technician who not only can fix the AC unit, but who knows how to interact with clients.
Obviously, I don’t regret my degree and certifications.
Actually, I would be totally on board with the public service you’re describing; I think it would help a lot of kids figure out what they want. And I can see your point about worldliness benefitting job applicants — but again, I wonder if there’s a class issue here, rather than an education issue. As in, do people who can afford to go college have that advantage already, regardless of degree?