danceswithsockson
College degrees are becoming less and less helpful, because students are doing the bare minimum to get through. The value isn’t in the piece of paper, but the accumulation of knowledge expected from it. I see tons of kids with pieces of paper, but they don’t understand anything about their own major or the world around them. Use college as an opportunity to learn and grow. Join clubs. Talk to professors. Take internships. Learn how to apply what you’re learning, and you’ll go far.
johndbenjamin
Take a range of courses including those in the humanities. Taking foreign language courses can help you to learn how to think. Too many people go through college without learning how to think.
Bimlouhay83
There’s also a sort of supply and demand thing happening. At one point, graduating high school was a pretty big deal. With a high school diploma, you could get most any job.
Then, more and more people graduated high school. To be competitive, an associates degree would give you a leg up in the job market.
Then, more and more people got their AS and a BS made you more competitive in the job market.
Now, a ton of people have their BS and jobs are asking for a fucking masters degree for an entry level position making $40k.
Part of me thinks long term education for regular every day jobs is a bit of a scam perpetuated by some sort of cabal of corporations (/s…kind of). Not only does it create a business like atmosphere surrounding the economics of university where profit is more of a focus, but now corporations don’t need to spend as much time and money training employees for the job. Often times, on the job training could do as good, or better, than a classroom education for a lot of jobs out there. I’d love to see more paid apprenticeship programs. The tech industry could definitely do this by requiring a certain low level baseline understanding of the job (like understanding what operators do or what manipulating the DOM is), then bringing you in and teaching you on the job. This sort of information is accessible for free on the internet. There really isn’t a huge need for a masters in CS to be an entry level front end dev.
trailnotfound
I teach college, and it’s always so apparent which students are there to learn and which view it as a transaction.
XanaxChampion
Dude, yes!!
mindaddict
I agree. Even in non-demand degrees (which I am not necessarily encouraging) you can achieve much better results if you actually seek the knowledge. The more you can apply your degree to the “real” world, the more you will get out of it. The pressure for high GPAs sometimes hurts this process IMO. Just like everything else in life, students need to be able to make mistakes in education and taught how to learn from them.
Rajah_1994
From an American perspective (I work in higher ed).
Adding on to this I think it’s important for students if they have those “mandatory classes” to meet “goal areas”. Students should get out of their comfort zone and take classes about topics they don’t know about and really explore new things.
Personally, I think value is decreasing because some students are scared and worried. Students have a different share of responsibilities and are being pulled in a variety of directions. I think people need to have a clear perspective of what the world is like and we need to improve the world we live in.
Higher wages, better health insurance etc.
Also: I don’t know how many students I have tutored who had no idea how to study or how to apply knowledge. Or needed help using the library. These are skills we can teach. I remember being in elementary school and being taught how to take standardized tests and not much else.
Also students I have worked with have a series of new problems. Having problems involving caretaking for a family member, working two jobs, disabilities, kids and family, just to name a few. It frustrates me when universities are like we have a food bank we’re here to help. I know that I would have not made it through undergrad without the Trio program.
waleedsadiq04
This depends more on the college you go to and the major you choose tbh
I definitely agree with the second half of the comment though
Imo an engineering degree is much more valuable than something like a history degree
Also if you get a degree from a small unknown college it will be objectively less valuable than a degree from a more well known school
But if you spend 4 years at a top school to get a degree but all you did was go to class then you wasted your time and your degree won’t do much for you
However if you spend 5 years at a smaller not as good school to get the same degree but you went to class researched and worked in areas related to your major then your degree will be worth more than the top school persons degree