College Degrees
A few weeks back, I was watching this special on 20/20, and it was about finding what your monetary worth is and I got pretty pissed! All these people on the program had college degrees and all they had to show for them were jobs that pay $11.50 an hour and accumulated debt from taking out student loans. One woman had accumulated about $75,000 dollars of debt in attaining her apparently useful degree and hasn't been able to land a job in the 3 years since graduating. A man on the show said he had accrued at least $125,000 dollars in debt trying to get his degree.
Don't get me wrong, It's not like $11.50 is anything to sneeze at, but come on! Especially when you're constantly told by commercials that if you have a Bachelor's Degree, you'll make at least $500,000 dollars more in your lifetime than a person with just a high school education, it makes perfect sense at the time. And while that might be true, when you get out of school only to find out that you need to go back to school and get a Master's Degree to get the job is not a good look. All the while you're juggling all that aforementioned debt and are getting the feeling that you've just been ripped off. It's like putting your fingers in a Chinese finger trap, fighting it will only make it tighter!
Exhibit A:
This is what a diploma really means...
Jobs and schools of all kinds try to tell you that if you don't want your life to be a piece of crap, you need to go to school and get that advanced college degree, but when you don't get the job because you're not yet qualified, you become slightly annoyed. Finally, after you stop bitching about it, you go to school and get the degree they require only to then find out that you're now overqualified, and end up getting a job at Wal-Mart or some other job you could have gotten fresh out of high school with no experience, all the while becoming increasingly bitter. You then go through a cycle of assorted emotions (as illustrated below). First, a period of unmitigated rage, then despair starts to set in about possibly never getting a job, and that's where you start to unravel this lie.
Exhibit B:
The Job Depression cycle. Note the wild swings in a person's mood when they have hope for a better tomorrow, and the crushing defeat and anguish they feel as it's summarily snuffed out...
To be sure, people (who either have jobs or are otherwise financially independent) will either tell you things are going to be ok, or that you should be willing to work anywhere people are hiring at this point. Because of that statement and their indifferent attitude to your plight, now you're back at the first stage of the job despair cycle: blinding rage! Nevermind that you have to pay rent and you have a standard of life to maintain. You should get a crappy, low paying, halfassed job, accept your fate, and simply let your dreams and life's ambitions die. The thing about apartments is that the landlord expects to be paid on time every month, and are generally not trying to hear that because your job doesn't pay enough, you almost had the rent! You'll almost have a place to live too after that!
Consider that many CEO's and owners of companies make billions of dollars a year and never went to school at the college level! For example, Donald Trump. He's one of this planet's wealthiest and yet, he never went to college. School sounds like such a lie now, don't it? The way of the world now isn't what you know, but who. How else can you explain a certain ex-president graduating from Harvard University with a C average, when you can't graduate from there with any grade less than a B?
As it is with connections, it can be argued that those with high ambition need not to go to school anyway, because if people really want it, they'll stop at nothing to see their dreams realized. People with this mindset will probably see going to college as a waste of time and money, because their ambitious enough to make their dreams reality and not get a degree just to get a job that does not match and end up with an assload of bills to pay.
I understand that about a million folks who worked white collar jobs lost them in December alone, with 2 million losing their jobs since the beginning of this economic downturn. Just yesterday, I read about a company called Qimonda in Henrico County folding and cutting about 1,500jobs from its workforce. One of the job markets that have since grown is the blue collar sector, the part that those in office buildings look down on and turn their noses up at. Makes those hard-earned degrees all the more worth it huh?
Don't get me wrong, It's not like $11.50 is anything to sneeze at, but come on! Especially when you're constantly told by commercials that if you have a Bachelor's Degree, you'll make at least $500,000 dollars more in your lifetime than a person with just a high school education, it makes perfect sense at the time. And while that might be true, when you get out of school only to find out that you need to go back to school and get a Master's Degree to get the job is not a good look. All the while you're juggling all that aforementioned debt and are getting the feeling that you've just been ripped off. It's like putting your fingers in a Chinese finger trap, fighting it will only make it tighter!
Exhibit A:
This is what a diploma really means...
Jobs and schools of all kinds try to tell you that if you don't want your life to be a piece of crap, you need to go to school and get that advanced college degree, but when you don't get the job because you're not yet qualified, you become slightly annoyed. Finally, after you stop bitching about it, you go to school and get the degree they require only to then find out that you're now overqualified, and end up getting a job at Wal-Mart or some other job you could have gotten fresh out of high school with no experience, all the while becoming increasingly bitter. You then go through a cycle of assorted emotions (as illustrated below). First, a period of unmitigated rage, then despair starts to set in about possibly never getting a job, and that's where you start to unravel this lie.
Exhibit B:
The Job Depression cycle. Note the wild swings in a person's mood when they have hope for a better tomorrow, and the crushing defeat and anguish they feel as it's summarily snuffed out...
To be sure, people (who either have jobs or are otherwise financially independent) will either tell you things are going to be ok, or that you should be willing to work anywhere people are hiring at this point. Because of that statement and their indifferent attitude to your plight, now you're back at the first stage of the job despair cycle: blinding rage! Nevermind that you have to pay rent and you have a standard of life to maintain. You should get a crappy, low paying, halfassed job, accept your fate, and simply let your dreams and life's ambitions die. The thing about apartments is that the landlord expects to be paid on time every month, and are generally not trying to hear that because your job doesn't pay enough, you almost had the rent! You'll almost have a place to live too after that!
Consider that many CEO's and owners of companies make billions of dollars a year and never went to school at the college level! For example, Donald Trump. He's one of this planet's wealthiest and yet, he never went to college. School sounds like such a lie now, don't it? The way of the world now isn't what you know, but who. How else can you explain a certain ex-president graduating from Harvard University with a C average, when you can't graduate from there with any grade less than a B?
As it is with connections, it can be argued that those with high ambition need not to go to school anyway, because if people really want it, they'll stop at nothing to see their dreams realized. People with this mindset will probably see going to college as a waste of time and money, because their ambitious enough to make their dreams reality and not get a degree just to get a job that does not match and end up with an assload of bills to pay.
I understand that about a million folks who worked white collar jobs lost them in December alone, with 2 million losing their jobs since the beginning of this economic downturn. Just yesterday, I read about a company called Qimonda in Henrico County folding and cutting about 1,500jobs from its workforce. One of the job markets that have since grown is the blue collar sector, the part that those in office buildings look down on and turn their noses up at. Makes those hard-earned degrees all the more worth it huh?
posted by Chosen One at
4:07 PM
2 Comments:
This is a great blog posting and it's so true. I realized all that bullshit after I graduated with my degree in 2002. I STILL haven't found any jobs related to the field. I have worked jobs here and there..and most of them don't pay much of anything. All the while people straight out of high school get some of the jobs that I apply for..overqualified maybe? It's a lose-lose situation. What they don't tell you in college is that if you don't major in a handful of fields you won't get a job. Simple!
That sounds about right. Too bad bad nobody will ever find that out until they're already too deep in debt and are way in over their heads. I feel for us all right now...
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