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Thread: Saying No to College

  1. #1

    Exclamation Saying No to College

    Saying No to College

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/fa...anted=all&_r=0

    By ALEX WILLIAMS
    Published: November 30, 2012

    BENJAMIN GOERING does not look like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, talk like him or inspire the same controversy. But he does apparently think like him.

    Two years ago, Mr. Goering was a sophomore at the University of Kansas, studying computer science and philosophy and feeling frustrated in crowded lecture halls where the professors did not even know his name.

    “I wanted to make Web experiences,” said Mr. Goering, now 22, and create “tools that make the lives of others better.”

    So in the spring of 2010, Mr. Goering took the same leap as Mr. Zuckerberg: he dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco to make his mark. He got a job as a software engineer at a social-software company, Livefyre, run by a college dropout, where the chief technology officer at the time and a lead engineer were also dropouts. None were sheepish about their lack of a diploma. Rather, they were proud of their real-life lessons on the job.

    “Education isn’t a four-year program,” Mr. Goering said. “It’s a mind-set.”

    The idea that a college diploma is an all-but-mandatory ticket to a successful career is showing fissures. Feeling squeezed by a sagging job market and mounting student debt, a groundswell of university-age heretics are pledging allegiance to new groups like UnCollege, dedicated to “hacking” higher education. Inspired by billionaire role models, and empowered by online college courses, they consider themselves a D.I.Y. vanguard, committed to changing the perception of dropping out from a personal failure to a sensible option, at least for a certain breed of risk-embracing maverick.

    Risky? Perhaps. But it worked for the founders of Twitter, Tumblr and a little company known as Apple.

    When Mr. Goering was wrestling with his decision, he woke up every morning to a ringtone mash-up that blended electronic tones with snippets of Steve Jobs’s 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, in which he advised, “love what you do,” “don’t settle.” Mr. Goering took that as a sign.

    “It’s inspiring that his dropping out basically had no effect, positive or negative, on the work and company and values he could create,” he said of the late Apple co-founder.

    In that oft-quoted address, Mr. Jobs called his decision to drop out of Reed College “one of the best decisions I ever made.” Mr. Jobs’s “think different” approach to education (backpacking through India, dining with Hare Krishnas) is portrayed in countless hagiographies as evidence of his iconoclastic genius.

    Indeed, ambitious young people who consider dropping out of college a smart option have a different set of role models from those in the 1960s, who were basically stuck with the acid-guru Timothy Leary and his “turn on, tune in, drop out” ramblings. Nowadays, popular culture is portraying dropouts as self-made zillionaires whose decision to spurn the “safe” route (academic conformity) is akin to lighting out for the territories to strike gold.

    Bill Gates dropped out of college. So did Michael Dell. So did Mr. Zuckerberg, who made the Forbes billionaires list at 23.

    Mr. Zuckerberg’s story is familiar to anyone who has seen the 2010 film “The Social Network,” in which Harvard seems little more than a glorified networking party for him. While the other Phi Beta Kappas are trudging through their Aristophanes, his character is hitting the parties, making contacts and making history. The dropout-mogul-as-rock-star meme will get a further boost with coming Steve Jobs biopics, including “Jobs,” starring Ashton Kutcher, and another one in the works written by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay for “The Social Network.”

    Such attitudes are trickling down to the small screen, too. In a recent episode of the Fox sitcom “The Mindy Project,” Mindy Kaling’s character, a doctor, grills a teenager about his plans for college. “I’m not going to college,” he tells her. “Why should I load up on debt just to binge drink for four years when I could just create an app that nets me all the money I’ll ever need?” Such tales play well in the eyes of millennials, a generation hailed for their entrepreneurial acumen and financial pragmatism. Why pay money if you can make money?

    No wonder the swashbuckling Web subculture is suddenly percolating with whiz-kid programmers thinking like “one and done” college hoopsters, who stick around campus only long enough to showcase their skills (and meet National Basketball Association draft requirements) before bolting for pro riches. Tech-start-ups have their own versions of Carmelo Anthony: folks like Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams of Twitter, and Kevin Rose of Digg. (Meanwhile, David Karp of Tumblr dropped out of high school.)

    “Here in Silicon Valley, it’s almost a badge of honor,” said Mick Hagen, 28, who dropped out of Princeton in 2006 and moved to San Francisco, where he started Undrip, a mobile app. He is now recruiting from the undergraduate ranks, he said, which is becoming a trend among other tech companies, too. In his view, dropouts are freethinkers, risk-takers. They have not been tainted by groupthink.

    “College puts a lot of constraints, a lot of limitations around what you can and can’t do,” Mr. Hagen said. “Some people, they want to stretch their arms, get out and create more, do more.”

    Even the staunchest critics of college concede that a diploma is still necessary for many professions — law and medicine, clearly, and in many cases, for a Fortune 500 executive, too. But that’s the point: how many more lawyers and middle managers do we need?

    “College is training for managerial work, and the economy doesn’t need that many managers,” said Michael Ellsberg, the author of “The Education of Millionaires: Everything You Won’t Learn In College About How to Be Successful.”

    Mr. Ellsberg, 35, graduated from Brown University and spent years trying to translate his expertise in post-colonial critical theory into a paying career. So his book tries to impart real-world skills, like salesmanship and networking, which he argues are crucial as white-collar jobs are being downsized or shipped to Bangalore. The future, he added, belongs to job creators, even if the only job they create is their own.

    “I’m not saying you have to be Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs,” Mr. Ellsberg said. “I know people with dog-walking businesses who make six figures.”

    Mr. Ellsberg joined a growing chorus of academic dissenters, who have made it fashionable to question the value of a college degree. Last year, an anonymous academic who called himself Professor X, published “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower,” which argued that future police officers and nurses need not be force-fed Shakespeare.

    Nikhil Goyal, a 17-year-old high school student in Long Island, published “One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student’s Assessment of School,” contending that some students are better served by ditching lecture halls and treating the world as their classroom. The debate has inspired articles in The Huffington Post and New York magazine.

    Perhaps most famously, Peter A. Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, in 2010 started his Thiel Fellowship program, which pays students under 20 years old $100,000 apiece to bag college and pursue their own ventures. “People are being conned into thinking that this credential is the one thing you need to do better in life,” he said on “60 Minutes” last spring, adding, “they typically are worse off, because they have amassed all this debt.”

    For such critics, the explosion in student debt is the next subprime crisis. There is now $1 trillion in outstanding student debt, with $117 billion tacked on last year alone, according to calculations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Tuition levels have quadrupled since the early ’80s, according to the Student Body Scholarship Association.

    These figures rankle James Altucher, a prominent investor, entrepreneur and pundit who self-published a book called “40 Alternatives to College.” “College presidents now just arbitrarily think they can raise tuitions,” he said. “So what is happening is, rich people can still afford college, but poor people are borrowing this money and sacrificing their future for a lifetime of debt.”

    Such opinions have met considerable headwind. Jacob Weisberg of Slate pounded Mr. Thiel over his “nasty” idea, which he argued is “diverting a generation of young people from the love of knowledge for its own sake and respect for middle-class values.”

    Indeed, many educators dismiss the college-is-overrated debate as a dangerous fringe idea, and say the real challenge is that only 56 percent of students who enter a four-year institution finish within six years, according to a recent Harvard study. To them, the statistic represents a crisis, not a sign of progress.

    “The reality is, there is not a declining demand for college and university,” said Richard Arum, a New York University sociology professor who co-wrote “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.” “There is an increasing demand, and that is not just true for America, but for all the world. Increasingly, you need a diploma to compete for the jobs that are out there.”

    The Ivory Tower apostates are undeterred. “I think kids with a five-year head start on equally ambitious peers will be ahead in both education and income,” said Mr. Altucher, who regrets graduating from Cornell. “They could go to a library, read a book a day, take courses online. There are thousands of ways.”

    Natalie Warne found one of them. A poised 22-year-old from Chicago, she stepped off the college track after high school to “hack” her education, which to her meant traveling the country to protest atrocities in war-torn Uganda.

    It started with a gap-year internship after high school with a charity called Invisible Children, where she acquired experience in public speaking, event coordinating and film editing (she eventually appeared on “Oprah”). Finding satisfaction, she stretched her gap year into two, and two became three. While speaking at a TED conference, she met Dale J. Stephens, the founder of a group called UnCollege that champions “more meaningful” alternatives to college. Her plans for college are off for now.

    “Experience has proved to be a far better teacher in my life than any book, classroom or educator,” she said.

    UnCollege advocates a D.I.Y. approach to higher education and spreads the message through informational “hackademic camps.” “Hacking,” in the group’s parlance, can involve any manner of self-directed learning: travel, volunteer work, organizing collaborative learning groups with friends. Students who want to avoid $200,000 in student-loan debt might consider enrolling in a technology boot camp, where you can learn to write code in 8 to 10 weeks for about $10,000, Mr. Stephens said.

    THEY can also nourish their minds from a growing menu of Internet classrooms, including the massive open online courses, or MOOCs, which stream classes from elite universities like Princeton. This guerrilla approach hits home with young people who came of age seeking out valuable content free on Napster and BitTorrent.

    Mr. Stephens, a dropout from Hendrix College in Arkansas (he later earned a Thiel Fellowship), started UnCollege less than two years ago, and already its Web site attracts 20,000 unique visitors a month. “I get on scale of 10 to 15 e-mails a day from people who say something along lines of, ‘I thought I was the only one out there who thought about education like this, I don’t feel crazy anymore,’ ” he said.

    There are other groups, too, like Enstitute, which offers two-year apprenticeships with entrepreneurs in lieu of college, and Zero Tuition College, an online support network for students looking for alternatives.

    The goal is not to foment for a mass exodus from the ivy halls, Mr. Stephens said, but to open people’s minds to a different set of opportunities.

    Sounds nice. But it is not an easy decision for students whose future is on the line. Jean Fan, a high school senior in San Mateo, Calif., is an editor for UnCollege, where she hopes to help inspire students to evolve “from passive to active learners.”

    Even so, she is busy applying to elite universities right now. She recognizes the irony.

    “In terms of grades and test scores, I’m one of the top students at school,” said Ms. Fan, 17. “College seemed like the obvious next step.”

    She added, “Common sense, of course, is highly overrated.”



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  3. #2
    Reading the comments are a hoot, most seem to be from teachers and professors, so the spin is what you would find from a bunch of cops on police abuse thread.

    This comment stuck out though:

    LuT-NY
    There is a lot to be gained from a college degree but choosing an alternate path or teaching oneself should not be frowned upon.

    On another note...what I could personally use is a trained carpenter, electrician,,plumber, and tiler who know what they are doing!

    Dec. 1, 2012 at 12:32 a.m.
    Kiddies, this is truth right here.

    Right now, over half of people who start college don't finish.

    Many of those who do, do so leaving with a massive debt load.

    And in spite of the success stories, you are most likely not going to be the next Jobs, or Gates or Zuckerberg.

    There are only so many ways in which you can re-invent playing with each other or yourselves on gadgets and gizmos.

    Learn a trade, learn how to make or produce something.

    You most likely won't ever starve.

  4. #3
    I have an 8th grade education,I said no to High School.I don't even know if that is legal anymore.
    Just realize that you are responsible for your decisions in life,if you rack up $200,000 in college debt,that's your problem,no one else's.
    If you go the 8th grade route like I did,you will at least get plenty of exercise without having to pay for a gym membership,but you will never be a Doctor or Lawyer or such,if that is your goal.

  5. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by mad cow View Post
    I have an 8th grade education,I said no to High School.I don't even know if that is legal anymore.
    Just realize that you are responsible for your decisions in life,if you rack up $200,000 in college debt,that's your problem,no one else's.
    If you go the 8th grade route like I did,you will at least get plenty of exercise without having to pay for a gym membership,but you will never be a Doctor or Lawyer or such,if that is your goal.
    Yet you still ended up here. We're glad you're here, fellow patriot.

  6. #5
    Wow, surprised the NY Times covered this story. They must be feeling the pressure from the alt media and their low earnings.

    Anyway, I don't see the college trend changing, so long as the Fed. Gov. keeps bank rolling college degrees. It will get to European levels where hordes of college students are in the street protesting for socialist higher education.
    "We do have some differences and our approaches will be different, but that makes him his own person. I mean why should he [Rand] be a clone and do everything and think just exactly as I have. I think it's an opportunity to be independent minded. We are about 99% [the same on issues]." Ron Paul

  7. #6
    I signed myself out of public school 2 weeks after I turned 18 and 2 months before I was set to graduate. It was the best thing I ever did for myself. The idea I should have a piece of paper that says that I have jumped through the hoops the state has put up and performed to the state's satisfaction, was incredibly insulting to me back in 2008 when I was an Obama supporter. Now, it is even more so.

    College is a scam for most professions.
    I'm starting to think that the Mayans were right about 2012. Ron Paul will change the world.

  8. #7
    I couldn't have said it better!

    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post



    Reading the comments are a hoot, most seem to be from teachers and professors, so the spin is what you would find from a bunch of cops on police abuse thread.

    This comment stuck out though:

    On another note...what I could personally use is a trained carpenter, electrician,,plumber, and tiler who know what they are doing!

    Kiddies, this is truth right here.

    Right now, over half of people who start college don't finish.

    Many of those who do, do so leaving with a massive debt load.

    And in spite of the success stories, you are most likely not going to be the next Jobs, or Gates or Zuckerberg.

    There are only so many ways in which you can re-invent playing with each other or yourselves on gadgets and gizmos.

    Learn a trade, learn how to make or produce something.

    You most likely won't ever starve.
    Last edited by tod evans; 12-01-2012 at 06:11 AM.

  9. #8
    For most people further education is a huge millstone of debt around your neck. Sadly, it does little to train one for the jobs they will get. Considering that most people are simply not that brilliant; years spent hitting frats, faking citations, and skipping class do close to nothing to prepare one for the real world. I know there is a massive education problem in this country, (one money cannot solve) and we will always appear more ignorant than other countries statistically, but more and more college, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, doctorates, do not prove our country is more educated or whatever. People with degrees constantly have more knowledge about Kardashians than the constitution, or what the heck was on sportscenter than math/history/science whatever. The fact most people say that boiling water freezes faster than cold water is a testament to this. (Yet they the "difference" between Love and Hip Hop and Love and Hip Hop Atlanta.)

    I did what I was always told to do, get a bachelor's degree and get a job because of it. All the jobs I was supposed to get evaporated and even with two majors I was rather 'unqualified' for decent work. Now I work in a prison where only a high school diploma/GED is required, I could never done a thing after high school.

    The only good thing about education is sometimes we take some of the knowledge we obtain from it for granted. (No, you can't learn everything on the internet/wikipedia!!!) I take for granted that I could spot historical inaccuracies easily in movies, see symbolism/allusions/motifs, etc. If you are not educated a lot of these things are just not important. I'm sure most people who watched 300 were convinced that the Persians really looked like that or that the 1700s or 1800s were hyper-sexualized because movies/TV shows say so.



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  11. #9
    Jobs was forced out of Apple in a not-so-glowing story. Ross Perot (a Rockefeller protege) funded his next move and it was Bill Gates (a Rockefeller protege) who funded Apple out of bankruptcy upon Jobs' return.

    Zuckerburg, Theil, Gates, Moore (Intel) and founders of 3Com, Silicon Graphics, Sun Micro, etc., are all stories that would never have happened if those folk hadn't sold a majority stake to venture capitalists (the you-know-who's of banking, hiding under a 'Rock Of Gibraltar'-type named subsidiary who offer millions for a 70% stake in billions) and then followed their Standard Oil playbook of starving out, buying out, stealing from, hidden deals and worse to crush competition and build companies with an agenda.

    Same goes for the pioneers of industry; Carnegie, Ford, Edison, Westinghouse, et al.

    I wish those names were more often substituted with real names (we'll likely never hear of in any article) of real entrepreneurs who don't make a billion dollars but make a respectable living after truly building their companies from the ground up or inheriting same and building it further.

    Still, in either case, the real education is learning how the system actually works. The banksters own everything through a title deed and/or taxation. The companies they truly invest in see laws and regulations legislated in their favor to crush competition and the majority of their revenues come from lucrative government spending contracts.

    Otherwise, I couldn't agree with the gist of the article more. College trains you to run a McDonald's franchise for investors and how to roll a joint with one hand while you're driving drunk. Most 30-somethings I know are saddled with debt from student loans they took out to go deep sea fishing in the Caribbean and that they added to as consumers through more debt when they graduated into the housing boom economy and had no clue what a recession was.

    The US is currently short 50,000 machinists, who are average-aged 56 and retiring. The US is currently training 2,000 machinists per year. Everywhere young people look they see American Idol stars and the Zuckerberg stories while they stock grocery store shelves part time and suck the life out of their parents. Being a pragmatist, it doesn't leave any doubt in my mind how this picture should look, but probably never will.

  12. #10
    I did rather well for a non-college grad, in tech and real estate. Now if I just had a good life coach to keep me from shooting myself in the foot...
    “One may come to the aid of another being unlawfully arrested, just as he may where one is being assaulted, molested, raped or kidnapped. Thus it is not an offense to liberate one from the unlawful custody of an officer, even though he may have submitted to such custody, without resistance.” (Adams v. State, 121 Ga. 16, 48 S.E. 910).

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Bossobass View Post
    Jobs was forced out of Apple in a not-so-glowing story. Ross Perot (a Rockefeller protege) funded his next move and it was Bill Gates (a Rockefeller protege) who funded Apple out of bankruptcy upon Jobs' return.

    Zuckerburg, Theil, Gates, Moore (Intel) and founders of 3Com, Silicon Graphics, Sun Micro, etc., are all stories that would never have happened if those folk hadn't sold a majority stake to venture capitalists (the you-know-who's of banking, hiding under a 'Rock Of Gibraltar'-type named subsidiary who offer millions for a 70% stake in billions) and then followed their Standard Oil playbook of starving out, buying out, stealing from, hidden deals and worse to crush competition and build companies with an agenda.

    Same goes for the pioneers of industry; Carnegie, Ford, Edison, Westinghouse, et al.

    I wish those names were more often substituted with real names (we'll likely never hear of in any article) of real entrepreneurs who don't make a billion dollars but make a respectable living after truly building their companies from the ground up or inheriting same and building it further.

    Still, in either case, the real education is learning how the system actually works. The banksters own everything through a title deed and/or taxation. The companies they truly invest in see laws and regulations legislated in their favor to crush competition and the majority of their revenues come from lucrative government spending contracts.

    Otherwise, I couldn't agree with the gist of the article more. College trains you to run a McDonald's franchise for investors and how to roll a joint with one hand while you're driving drunk. Most 30-somethings I know are saddled with debt from student loans they took out to go deep sea fishing in the Caribbean and that they added to as consumers through more debt when they graduated into the housing boom economy and had no clue what a recession was.

    The US is currently short 50,000 machinists, who are average-aged 56 and retiring. The US is currently training 2,000 machinists per year. Everywhere young people look they see American Idol stars and the Zuckerberg stories while they stock grocery store shelves part time and suck the life out of their parents. Being a pragmatist, it doesn't leave any doubt in my mind how this picture should look, but probably never will.
    Industrial arts is a great field to get into if you enjoy it. I almost became a welder (had to stop for various reasons I won't get into here), but welders make damn good money, don't go into any significant debt, and are employable right out of training, and are always in demand. Apprentice and journeyman programs really should make a comeback. (I believe we have a thread on that subject somewhere)
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    Reading the comments are a hoot, most seem to be from teachers and professors, so the spin is what you would find from a bunch of cops on police abuse thread.

    This comment stuck out though:



    Kiddies, this is truth right here.

    Right now, over half of people who start college don't finish.

    Many of those who do, do so leaving with a massive debt load.

    And in spite of the success stories, you are most likely not going to be the next Jobs, or Gates or Zuckerberg.

    There are only so many ways in which you can re-invent playing with each other or yourselves on gadgets and gizmos.

    Learn a trade, learn how to make or produce something.

    You most likely won't ever starve.
    Most of us don't have connections with the Elite like they do. And the companies named in the OP were not started in someone's garage/basement. There's a big difference between us mundanes and them.
    I am the spoon.

  15. #13
    “The spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the influences which are definitely present.” ~ Rudolf Steiner

  16. #14
    College degree is useless (at least a BA/BS) alone. Experience is multiple times more valuable.

    Don't make the mistake of just going to class and not doing much. Experience through internships and brown-nosing professors for networking purposes is the way to go. I have a degree in Human Biology and I graduated in 2011. I am now working as a temporary/seasonal worker for USPS for 3-4 weeks as a mail handler. Pretty crappy eh?

    I know a few people who graduated from the same university as me and they are trying to get some pre-requisite classes at a local community college they need for a job training program (which is usually an AS/AA), but of course.. classes are full and waitlist is full as well. I am thinking... is it worth trying to get into these prerequisite classes and getting into the program that is offered once a year? and if I dont get it, I have to wait another year? It is just a AS/AA equivalent job training program that last 2 years. I am also worried about job market saturation.

    At any rate... I am one of those that (as mentioned in a previous post) one that is sucking parents =(. I've applied to low wage jobs, but never get any calls back. USPS I got a call back a month later for the temp position. I hope having a federal job, despite being just 1 month, on my work experience would help me find better jobs later on. I am planning to use the money for holidays, school and/or funds for my business.

    College, for the most part, is a scam. They make you buy books where 50% of the time, you don't use and often times old editions are not allowed. They charge you for student activities that you may or may not use (which is a hefty part of tuition costs). They increase tuition costs by 5-10% every so often while quality of education remains the same or decreased. For anyone that is going or planning to go to university.. GET EXPERIENCE/BROWN NOSE and don't go into a "unique" field that makes your degree worth even less.

  17. #15
    My opinion is somewhere in the middle. I don't think everyone is made out for college, but I don't think it's the demon that many people here think of it to be. If I wasn't on a degree path right now with plans for grad school, I would probably just be living at home and working at McDonalds. I had no other options that appealed to me.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Son of Detroit View Post
    My opinion is somewhere in the middle. I don't think everyone is made out for college, but I don't think it's the demon that many people here think of it to be. If I wasn't on a degree path right now with plans for grad school, I would probably just be living at home and working at McDonalds. I had no other options that appealed to me.
    But if employers were allowed to test for intelligence instead of requiring a degree, you could've gotten the job you want without so much overpriced schooling. And if all you do is school, you're not going to be able to compete with all the other folks who have actual experience. In a market like the current one, the applicant with experience gets the job, even if he doesn't have as much schooling.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12



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  20. #17
    If you are inventive enough, you don't even need a high school education. Now, I got my bachelors because I didn't want my GI Bill going to waste. What people have to understand is that unless your degree is in the medical field or something like that, it will not help you get a job. Experience is what gets you the job, and the degree is only icing on the cake which may accelerate promotions.
    Last edited by AFPVet; 12-01-2012 at 03:14 PM.
    Indianensis Universitatis Alumnus

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by AFPVet View Post
    If you are inventive enough, you don't even need a high school education. Now, I got my bachelors because I didn't want my GI Bill going to waste. What people have to understand is that unless your degree is in the medical field or something like that, it will not help you get a job. Experience is what gets you the job, and the the degree is only icing on the cake which may accelerate promotions.
    Full of win^^
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  22. #19
    If you're not a self-starter, or you're not exceptionally skilled in a specific sector, then the problem you run into is that everyone else around you will have a degree and you won't. Many companies use degrees as a qualifier for employment; just or unjust. This makes is very hard to ever get a management position, or a job with a big company, etc.

    And even if you are skilled in a specific sector, if that skill becomes obsolete, you had better be very versatile, otherwise you'll be left out in the cold.
    __________________________________________________ ________________
    "A politician will do almost anything to keep their job, even become a patriot" - Hearst

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34 View Post
    But if employers were allowed to test for intelligence instead of requiring a degree, you could've gotten the job you want without so much overpriced schooling. And if all you do is school, you're not going to be able to compete with all the other folks who have actual experience. In a market like the current one, the applicant with experience gets the job, even if he doesn't have as much schooling.
    Not in the field I'm going into.

  24. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Matt Collins View Post
    If you're not a self-starter, or you're not exceptionally skilled in a specific sector, then the problem you run into is that everyone else around you will have a degree and you won't. Many companies use degrees as a qualifier for employment; just or unjust. This makes is very hard to ever get a management position, or a job with a big company, etc.

    And even if you are skilled in a specific sector, if that skill becomes obsolete, you had better be very versatile, otherwise you'll be left out in the cold.
    Agree. Even jobs which used to be considered "unskilled" well paying jobs like manufacturing now require more training than they used to since they involve more technology. Otherwise you are looking at retail work which does not pay much (unless you have personal connectiong to get you in someplace).

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by AFPVet View Post
    If you are inventive enough, you don't even need a high school education. Now, I got my bachelors because I didn't want my GI Bill going to waste. What people have to understand is that unless your degree is in the medical field or something like that, it will not help you get a job. Experience is what gets you the job, and the the degree is only icing on the cake which may accelerate promotions.
    A degree that can be used towards a medical field/profession is not enough. As you said, experience is the key. People who are in the medical field are very competitive. You gotta have GPA of 3.6+, years of internships and experience, brown-nosing and getting letters of recommendations, good score on MCAT/DAT/etcetc to get into med school or whatever school. The bar keeps getting higher too.

    But yeah. I guess having a degree is better than not having one, especially from a well-known university (not some for profit school with even a more useless piece of paper).

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34 View Post
    But if employers were allowed to test for intelligence instead of requiring a degree, you could've gotten the job you want without so much overpriced schooling. And if all you do is school, you're not going to be able to compete with all the other folks who have actual experience. In a market like the current one, the applicant with experience gets the job, even if he doesn't have as much schooling.
    I work in a technical field, and during my recent job search it was not uncommon at all for employers to require minimum scores on company exams before even considering you as a candidate. Lockheed Martin comes to mind, and their tests were no joke.

  27. #24
    I've known kids fresh out of design school who when faced with what should be a simple task, such as figuring handrail miters, are unable to put all their high dollar education to practical use.......

    But you can bet your ass they thought highly of themselves anyway...



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  29. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by alucard13mmfmj View Post
    A degree that can be used towards a medical field/profession is not enough. As you said, experience is the key. People who are in the medical field are very competitive. You gotta have GPA of 3.6+, years of internships and experience, brown-nosing and getting letters of recommendations, good score on MCAT/DAT/etcetc to get into med school or whatever school. The bar keeps getting higher too.

    But yeah. I guess having a degree is better than not having one, especially from a well-known university (not some for profit school with even a more useless piece of paper).
    Oh sure... nursing school is very competitive. Physical therapy is a good one to get into though.
    Indianensis Universitatis Alumnus

  30. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by tod evans View Post
    I've known kids fresh out of design school who when faced with what should be a simple task, such as figuring handrail miters, are unable to put all their high dollar education to practical use.......

    But you can bet your ass they thought highly of themselves anyway...
    Is this something that would have been covered in their course of education?

    I think too often people place unrealistic expectations on college grads (typically those who didn't go/graduate) just to watch them fail and belittle their education. If someone has a BS/BA in a specific field, it doesn't mean they are going to be totally proficient in application right away. I would argue that this is more the goal of vocational and technical schools that teach a trade. Most Undergrad/Grad schools are focused around the idea of thought rather than hands on activity. There's always a learning curve with any job, you just can't expect someone who hasn't been doing that specific job for years to come in and perform as such.

    I'm not saying you're wrong at all, because I've seen the exact phenomenon you've pointed out dozens of times. I guess it's just a balance between what our expectations should be and what our institutions of higher learning should be focusing on. Now if the person still thinks highly of themselves after this type of embarrassment, they deserve ridicule. Part of starting any new job is being humble and recognizing that you are inexperienced.

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Matt Collins View Post
    If you're not a self-starter, or you're not exceptionally skilled in a specific sector, then the problem you run into is that everyone else around you will have a degree and you won't. Many companies use degrees as a qualifier for employment; just or unjust. This makes is very hard to ever get a management position, or a job with a big company, etc.

    And even if you are skilled in a specific sector, if that skill becomes obsolete, you had better be very versatile, otherwise you'll be left out in the cold.
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Agree. Even jobs which used to be considered "unskilled" well paying jobs like manufacturing now require more training than they used to since they involve more technology. Otherwise you are looking at retail work which does not pay much (unless you have personal connectiong to get you in someplace).
    Well, there are two points being argued here, one is that it is needed for a skill set, two, that it is needed because "everybody else has one".

    Skill set and high tech I don't buy, the EU of all places, is booming with high tech manufacturing and they have an apprentice system set up that provides more than adequate training to work in a manufacturing sector that we should, by all rights, have the upper hand in.

    The "everybody else has one" argument is nothing more than inflationary, bubble thinking. Inflate the graduation rate, now everybody has one, meaning that they are now worthless.

    Next generation, everybody will have to have a PhD because "everybody has one", and kids will be $500,000 million in debt before they even start.

    No, everybody does not have to have one, furthermore, not nearly everyone is capable of doing real college level work.

    This would not be a problem, if we had not systematically committed suicide and destroyed our economy and industrial base, by design.

    But, of course, we have.

    Now you have millions of people, with no chance of meaningful work, all on relying on the system for support, which is dangerously close to collapse.
    Last edited by Anti Federalist; 12-01-2012 at 02:29 PM.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    Saying No to College

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/fa...anted=all&_r=0

    By ALEX WILLIAMS
    Published: November 30, 2012

    BENJAMIN GOERING does not look like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, talk like him or inspire the same controversy. But he does apparently think like him.

    Two years ago, Mr. Goering was a sophomore at the University of Kansas, studying computer science and philosophy and feeling frustrated in crowded lecture halls where the professors did not even know his name.

    “I wanted to make Web experiences,” said Mr. Goering, now 22, and create “tools that make the lives of others better.”

    So in the spring of 2010, Mr. Goering took the same leap as Mr. Zuckerberg: he dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco to make his mark. He got a job as a software engineer at a social-software company, Livefyre, run by a college dropout, where the chief technology officer at the time and a lead engineer were also dropouts. None were sheepish about their lack of a diploma. Rather, they were proud of their real-life lessons on the job.

    “Education isn’t a four-year program,” Mr. Goering said. “It’s a mind-set.”

    The idea that a college diploma is an all-but-mandatory ticket to a successful career is showing fissures. Feeling squeezed by a sagging job market and mounting student debt, a groundswell of university-age heretics are pledging allegiance to new groups like UnCollege, dedicated to “hacking” higher education. Inspired by billionaire role models, and empowered by online college courses, they consider themselves a D.I.Y. vanguard, committed to changing the perception of dropping out from a personal failure to a sensible option, at least for a certain breed of risk-embracing maverick.

    Risky? Perhaps. But it worked for the founders of Twitter, Tumblr and a little company known as Apple.

    When Mr. Goering was wrestling with his decision, he woke up every morning to a ringtone mash-up that blended electronic tones with snippets of Steve Jobs’s 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, in which he advised, “love what you do,” “don’t settle.” Mr. Goering took that as a sign.

    “It’s inspiring that his dropping out basically had no effect, positive or negative, on the work and company and values he could create,” he said of the late Apple co-founder.

    In that oft-quoted address, Mr. Jobs called his decision to drop out of Reed College “one of the best decisions I ever made.” Mr. Jobs’s “think different” approach to education (backpacking through India, dining with Hare Krishnas) is portrayed in countless hagiographies as evidence of his iconoclastic genius.

    Indeed, ambitious young people who consider dropping out of college a smart option have a different set of role models from those in the 1960s, who were basically stuck with the acid-guru Timothy Leary and his “turn on, tune in, drop out” ramblings. Nowadays, popular culture is portraying dropouts as self-made zillionaires whose decision to spurn the “safe” route (academic conformity) is akin to lighting out for the territories to strike gold.

    Bill Gates dropped out of college. So did Michael Dell. So did Mr. Zuckerberg, who made the Forbes billionaires list at 23.

    Mr. Zuckerberg’s story is familiar to anyone who has seen the 2010 film “The Social Network,” in which Harvard seems little more than a glorified networking party for him. While the other Phi Beta Kappas are trudging through their Aristophanes, his character is hitting the parties, making contacts and making history. The dropout-mogul-as-rock-star meme will get a further boost with coming Steve Jobs biopics, including “Jobs,” starring Ashton Kutcher, and another one in the works written by Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay for “The Social Network.”

    Such attitudes are trickling down to the small screen, too. In a recent episode of the Fox sitcom “The Mindy Project,” Mindy Kaling’s character, a doctor, grills a teenager about his plans for college. “I’m not going to college,” he tells her. “Why should I load up on debt just to binge drink for four years when I could just create an app that nets me all the money I’ll ever need?” Such tales play well in the eyes of millennials, a generation hailed for their entrepreneurial acumen and financial pragmatism. Why pay money if you can make money?

    No wonder the swashbuckling Web subculture is suddenly percolating with whiz-kid programmers thinking like “one and done” college hoopsters, who stick around campus only long enough to showcase their skills (and meet National Basketball Association draft requirements) before bolting for pro riches. Tech-start-ups have their own versions of Carmelo Anthony: folks like Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams of Twitter, and Kevin Rose of Digg. (Meanwhile, David Karp of Tumblr dropped out of high school.)

    “Here in Silicon Valley, it’s almost a badge of honor,” said Mick Hagen, 28, who dropped out of Princeton in 2006 and moved to San Francisco, where he started Undrip, a mobile app. He is now recruiting from the undergraduate ranks, he said, which is becoming a trend among other tech companies, too. In his view, dropouts are freethinkers, risk-takers. They have not been tainted by groupthink.

    “College puts a lot of constraints, a lot of limitations around what you can and can’t do,” Mr. Hagen said. “Some people, they want to stretch their arms, get out and create more, do more.”

    Even the staunchest critics of college concede that a diploma is still necessary for many professions — law and medicine, clearly, and in many cases, for a Fortune 500 executive, too. But that’s the point: how many more lawyers and middle managers do we need?

    “College is training for managerial work, and the economy doesn’t need that many managers,” said Michael Ellsberg, the author of “The Education of Millionaires: Everything You Won’t Learn In College About How to Be Successful.”

    Mr. Ellsberg, 35, graduated from Brown University and spent years trying to translate his expertise in post-colonial critical theory into a paying career. So his book tries to impart real-world skills, like salesmanship and networking, which he argues are crucial as white-collar jobs are being downsized or shipped to Bangalore. The future, he added, belongs to job creators, even if the only job they create is their own.

    “I’m not saying you have to be Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs,” Mr. Ellsberg said. “I know people with dog-walking businesses who make six figures.”

    Mr. Ellsberg joined a growing chorus of academic dissenters, who have made it fashionable to question the value of a college degree. Last year, an anonymous academic who called himself Professor X, published “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower,” which argued that future police officers and nurses need not be force-fed Shakespeare.

    Nikhil Goyal, a 17-year-old high school student in Long Island, published “One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student’s Assessment of School,” contending that some students are better served by ditching lecture halls and treating the world as their classroom. The debate has inspired articles in The Huffington Post and New York magazine.

    Perhaps most famously, Peter A. Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, in 2010 started his Thiel Fellowship program, which pays students under 20 years old $100,000 apiece to bag college and pursue their own ventures. “People are being conned into thinking that this credential is the one thing you need to do better in life,” he said on “60 Minutes” last spring, adding, “they typically are worse off, because they have amassed all this debt.”

    For such critics, the explosion in student debt is the next subprime crisis. There is now $1 trillion in outstanding student debt, with $117 billion tacked on last year alone, according to calculations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Tuition levels have quadrupled since the early ’80s, according to the Student Body Scholarship Association.

    These figures rankle James Altucher, a prominent investor, entrepreneur and pundit who self-published a book called “40 Alternatives to College.” “College presidents now just arbitrarily think they can raise tuitions,” he said. “So what is happening is, rich people can still afford college, but poor people are borrowing this money and sacrificing their future for a lifetime of debt.”

    Such opinions have met considerable headwind. Jacob Weisberg of Slate pounded Mr. Thiel over his “nasty” idea, which he argued is “diverting a generation of young people from the love of knowledge for its own sake and respect for middle-class values.”

    Indeed, many educators dismiss the college-is-overrated debate as a dangerous fringe idea, and say the real challenge is that only 56 percent of students who enter a four-year institution finish within six years, according to a recent Harvard study. To them, the statistic represents a crisis, not a sign of progress.

    “The reality is, there is not a declining demand for college and university,” said Richard Arum, a New York University sociology professor who co-wrote “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.” “There is an increasing demand, and that is not just true for America, but for all the world. Increasingly, you need a diploma to compete for the jobs that are out there.”

    The Ivory Tower apostates are undeterred. “I think kids with a five-year head start on equally ambitious peers will be ahead in both education and income,” said Mr. Altucher, who regrets graduating from Cornell. “They could go to a library, read a book a day, take courses online. There are thousands of ways.”

    Natalie Warne found one of them. A poised 22-year-old from Chicago, she stepped off the college track after high school to “hack” her education, which to her meant traveling the country to protest atrocities in war-torn Uganda.

    It started with a gap-year internship after high school with a charity called Invisible Children, where she acquired experience in public speaking, event coordinating and film editing (she eventually appeared on “Oprah”). Finding satisfaction, she stretched her gap year into two, and two became three. While speaking at a TED conference, she met Dale J. Stephens, the founder of a group called UnCollege that champions “more meaningful” alternatives to college. Her plans for college are off for now.

    “Experience has proved to be a far better teacher in my life than any book, classroom or educator,” she said.

    UnCollege advocates a D.I.Y. approach to higher education and spreads the message through informational “hackademic camps.” “Hacking,” in the group’s parlance, can involve any manner of self-directed learning: travel, volunteer work, organizing collaborative learning groups with friends. Students who want to avoid $200,000 in student-loan debt might consider enrolling in a technology boot camp, where you can learn to write code in 8 to 10 weeks for about $10,000, Mr. Stephens said.

    THEY can also nourish their minds from a growing menu of Internet classrooms, including the massive open online courses, or MOOCs, which stream classes from elite universities like Princeton. This guerrilla approach hits home with young people who came of age seeking out valuable content free on Napster and BitTorrent.

    Mr. Stephens, a dropout from Hendrix College in Arkansas (he later earned a Thiel Fellowship), started UnCollege less than two years ago, and already its Web site attracts 20,000 unique visitors a month. “I get on scale of 10 to 15 e-mails a day from people who say something along lines of, ‘I thought I was the only one out there who thought about education like this, I don’t feel crazy anymore,’ ” he said.

    There are other groups, too, like Enstitute, which offers two-year apprenticeships with entrepreneurs in lieu of college, and Zero Tuition College, an online support network for students looking for alternatives.

    The goal is not to foment for a mass exodus from the ivy halls, Mr. Stephens said, but to open people’s minds to a different set of opportunities.

    Sounds nice. But it is not an easy decision for students whose future is on the line. Jean Fan, a high school senior in San Mateo, Calif., is an editor for UnCollege, where she hopes to help inspire students to evolve “from passive to active learners.”

    Even so, she is busy applying to elite universities right now. She recognizes the irony.

    “In terms of grades and test scores, I’m one of the top students at school,” said Ms. Fan, 17. “College seemed like the obvious next step.”

    She added, “Common sense, of course, is highly overrated.”
    I don't think school prepares you to be a manager as this suggests. I teaches you to manage your own paperwork at an entry level. It teaches you nothing about managing people and running a business. Thats why you see such a high percentage of successful entrepreneurs dropping out of school. They simply were not missing anything that would help them run a business.

  33. #29
    I'm not belittling anyone just posting about past experiences..

    When I used to have visions of expanding and hired help I made it a point to believe what I was told by the person looking for work... Ya' know it's really easy in the trades to tell if a person is worth their salt in fairly short order, no matter what their mouth says....


    Quote Originally Posted by Aeroneous View Post
    Is this something that would have been covered in their course of education?

    I think too often people place unrealistic expectations on college grads (typically those who didn't go/graduate) just to watch them fail and belittle their education. If someone has a BS/BA in a specific field, it doesn't mean they are going to be totally proficient in application right away. I would argue that this is more the goal of vocational and technical schools that teach a trade. Most Undergrad/Grad schools are focused around the idea of thought rather than hands on activity. There's always a learning curve with any job, you just can't expect someone who hasn't been doing that specific job for years to come in and perform as such.

    I'm not saying you're wrong at all, because I've seen the exact phenomenon you've pointed out dozens of times. I guess it's just a balance between what our expectations should be and what our institutions of higher learning should be focusing on. Now if the person still thinks highly of themselves after this type of embarrassment, they deserve ridicule. Part of starting any new job is being humble and recognizing that you are inexperienced.

  34. #30
    Companies in the US are less willing to train people- they would prefer to hire those who already have the skills. Perhaps they are also afraid of spending the time to train somebody and having them leave for another job once they aquire the skills. We have lots of people looking for jobs but we also have a lot of jobs looking for skilled people who can't find the ones they need.

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