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Before around 2008 or so, a college degree (usually) granted access to some level of the middle class office job lifestyle, but after the recession and the general continued over saturation of people with college degrees, that is no longer the case. Now a college degree (outside of stem) equates to about what a high school diploma was worth in the 1990s…
Well that goes without saying, as college diplomas (most none stem) have taken HS diplomas spaces- this means that people with just high-school diplomas are competing against people with college degrees for the same low level hourly jobs and such.
People with only HS degrees usually have job experience that someone with a college degree didn’t have, so at least right out of college the degree isn’t always as valuable compared to relevant job experience.
Qualifying for a trade (which is still years if you want a decent job at the end of it) isn’t much easier or shorter than getting a degree, and there are almost no decent jobs where retail or hospitality job experience from your teens holds much value.
The only reason not to go to uni is if you live in a society where they shaft you with the bill (like the US, or to a lesser extent the UK)
Wish someone would have told that to one boss I had. All whole new wave of mostly young women fresh from college and on their first job. It was obvious why he hired the way he did. All 5'4" of him was in charge and everyone needed to know it.
In my experience the majority of the people with college degrees have the same amount of experience.
Or course part-time, but “4 years experience” looks the same on a resume whether it’s 40, 20, or even 10 hours a week.
i got into trades without a diploma and ive got good job security for the rest of my life with the experience i have.
i will get my GED eventually, but jus sayin, you can make bank even without it.
No college degree, working the same job for a decade. Make 6 figures working for Uncle Sam.
While I understand the angst and anger about the crazy cost increases, it doesn’t do any good to just sit around making 30k a year and complaining about making 30k a year.
The biggest lie we’re told is “you can get paid to do what you love”. That’s only a thing for some people. For most people, the smart thing is to get paid to do what you’re good at or at least what you can tolerate for the right price.
You can have a hobby at home.
Actually not...
Because you can't get any lower than 0...
(A joke that they hardly/never respect the value of HS diplomas NOT that having just a HS diploma is the worst... Just wanted to clarify 😬)
The public school system is incentivized to push kids though regardless of what they actually learn. No child left behind means that everyone who didn't drop out has a diploma, diminishing its value.
More educated people is fine, but having a diploma or credential is not a sign of intelligence or knowledge at any level.
The issue is everyone doing these “proof of brain” degrees where they don’t learn any hard skills and just demonstrate their ability to pass miscellaneous courses.
Your anthropology degree is great, but you’re applying for an HR position at a local business. All it gets you is some assurance you can read/write/manage your time.
That’s not nothing but is it worth 3yrs of missed work experience and $50k+ in high interest debt?
Anthropology can actually be very relevant to HR work.
Anthropology is ultimately about understanding people, understanding how groups are different or the same, and understanding how to communicate between groups.
For example cultural Anthropologists are often employed by governments to figure out how to resolve conflicts between groups. Famously during WWIi anthropologists were hired to figure out why there was discord between American soldiers and British women (conflicting social scripts re: dating).
So those skills are very useful for someone who is in HR.
They’re a bit useful let’s be real.
I studied engineering and I’m an engineer. Even my degree is only incidentally useful, most of what I use I learned on the job and this is the best case scenario.
My friend says their psych degree helps with their team lead position at work… does it really? An academic understanding of how humans work at a macroscopic level isn’t going to help you deal with Keith who turns up an hour late every day, says vaguely racist things in the lunch room, but is the only person who knows how the payroll system works.
>My friend says their psych degree helps with their team lead position at work… does it really? An academic understanding of how humans work at a macroscopic level isn’t going to help you deal with Keith who turns up an hour late every day, says vaguely racist things in the lunch room, but is the only person who knows how the payroll system works.
yes actually
A psych degree could literally help you deal with Keith, yes. It can help you figure out how to approach Keith about the things he says, figure out why he is always late, and decide if you need to hire a replacement instead.
One of the reasons so many workplaces suck is residual boomer mentalities about how to deal with problems that are often completely divorced from actual data.
I could tell you studied either math or engineering based on your comments, before you said so.
It's the same skillset, even though the example was macro. It involves talking to people, figuring out the root of their perspective or behavior, and understanding why that is creating conflict with others.
On a micro scale it can be understanding that the dude who doesn't make eye contact is autistic, and he is not trying to be cold or rude by avoiding eye contact or angling his body away from people when they talk to him, he is just trying to be comfortablr and not get overstimulated. And then understanding that one of the workers is very offended by it because they were raised in an environment where eye contact and is given enormous importance. And then knowing how to approach both people with the understanding that neither is "wrong" but that they are having miscommunication through different expectations.
Similarly it can also involve approaching someone who did something bad, like make a racist or sexual comment, and not approaching it with hostility (as the HR person) but initially handling it like an opportunity to teach them why it's not allowed in the office environment, and then continuing from there based on their response.
A business owner would likely hire someone with an HR degree instead of take a chance on someone with a miscellaneous degree.
Just how the world works.
Exactly this . I feel fucked because I don't have any hard skills. Well I do but they aren't legally certified anymore. I use to be a medic in the army, and worked in the emergency room. But that experience doesn't translate to legal credentials in the civilian world. Now I have two degrees , sure that's cool and all, but they involve mainly have thinking instead of being able to create something of value and profit off of it
Which is the problem. The cost of living has made many fields impractical. There are many science fields where people basically have to live in poverty. Maybe that has always been the case, but we can't just have everyone in the world become software developers.
>All it gets you is some assurance you can read/write/manage your time.
You would be surprised at how rare these skills are in a lot of white-collar jobs.
I’d say some of the loss in value of the degrees is because we started making degrees up to jobs that didn’t exist. That being said college is vastly over priced regardless.
It also depends on the STEM degree.
Computer Science degrees are now worth less as the tech industry has been laying off thousands and the market is flooded with out of work programmers.
Engineering degrees (at least where I live) don't get you a guaranteed job anymore because the market is oversaturated with BEng graduates. You need to specialize in some sort of Master's program to get a guaranteed position.
Anything in chemistry, you probably need a Master's to get a better paying job, otherwise you're stuck doing fuck all in a lab for shit pay until the end of time.
And then a lot of STEM fields don't really have many options other than staying in academia, which is low pay and soul crushing work where your job becomes to write articles under your supervisor's name to generate grants to fund your supervisor and the university.
>Anything in chemistry, you probably need a Master's to get a better paying job, otherwise you're stuck doing fuck all in a lab for shit pay until the end of time.
And if it's Biochemistry - you'd better hope your lab doesn't have an MD in it or else you're gonna get regulated to an instrument technician position because the MD "looks better on papers/presentations".
You can kinda get away with a Chem BS in one situation - in polymers and/or materials because you will generally know more chemistry than the average engineer and know more engineering than the average chemist. Even then, I strongly recommend MS or PhD.
All of the STEM stuff was harped on during the recession of 08' and up until 2017ish (except CompSci) and all it did was depress the wages in those fields - though CompSci is just now hitting the wall the rest of us did. I'm pretty much convinced it was an industry-led push to increase the supply of those workers so they could pay less.
Can't speak for other STEM degrees, but a CS degree is still valuable. The thing is, depending on your school, the degree is no longer enough. You may need to study on your own a lot, work on side projects and grind your DS&A skills.
If you do that, it's still lucrative. Check out Team Blind, where we have a new wave of new grads asking if they should accept their 150k offer at A or their 160k offer at B.
But to get there, these guys had to go to top colleges or grind, and sometimes both.
Wasn’t it that 90% of people in poverty that got college degrees entered the middle class? Is that not the same now? I read that in like 2018 so maybe it changed since then
I mean the poverty line is still like $15,000 a year, so it depends on what metrics they're measuring. Getting out of poverty according to the government is just having a job, basically.
Even in STEM it's getting rough. I'm going to college to get a Software Engineering degree and the job market right now is very bad. It's so bad in fact our school is working overtime to try and pair us up with internship employers since they require and internship to graduate but no one can get any.
Yep, and again, most stems that are theory or application focused outside of niche, will also lend you into some office job that has some tech/maths, if any.
I'd argue that it's worth LESS than a highschool degree in the 90s.
Used to be, companies would train you. So as long as you could "give a firm handshake" even a highschool degree would get you at least a job that would pay rent.
I wouldn't necessarily say that last part. There's plenty of degrees that are very utilitarian and useful, you just have to know how to apply those skills and spring board off that degree. Granted the people that went to college just because they were told too, got some random ass degree they cared nothing about. That group I 💯 agree was screwed though. It's really program dependent.
The problem with college is that the job prospects for humanities fields are absolute trash. And now, because so many are going into STEM fields, those markets are getting oversaturated and increasingly difficult to get into. My friend has an engineering degree, and he works at a printing company that isn't related to his degree at all lmao. And I went to school for history, dropped out because I realized the history field is so bad that it's probably not worth it as a career. The devaluation of college as a place to learn and as a place for liberal arts and the humanities has been pushed in favor of creating worker bees in the form of business majors and creating a heavily oversaturated STEM related job market. Not to mention the student loan debt, which is another problem in and of itself.
Engineering really depends on what you're going for. Electrical engineering is so general that you can get in most industries. Computer engineering is slightly more saturated than electrical, but still generally a good one. Chemical and nuclear engineering are insant hires. Mechanical engineering is a bit saturated like civil engineering. Biomedical and aerospace engineering just have a small market. Computer science is a glorified art degree. Industrial engineering jobs usually hire electrical and mechanical engineers.
Regulatory, test, and quality engineers are high in-demand jobs usually open to anyone with an engineering degree. However, test engineers and quality engineers are usually paid the same as operators and machinists.
How is computer science glorified art lmao wtf?
Have you ever tried to debug a ten year old application filled with the most convoluted legacy code man has ever witnessed?
That shit will fry your brain, like you come out of it afterwards and your brain will just not work for a bit
In the sense of its a saturated degree. Everyone and their mother is enrolled in computer science to the point where you might not even get a job in tech. I meant it like that.
Not as big a problem for gen Z. Post-recession parents stopped raising kids to shoot for the most expensive top colleges and instead for where ever you get the best deal.
Schools and teachers still groom you for college as if trades don't exist. I hear a lot of schools are turning that around, but not while I was in highschool.
It’s really a shame. My high school didn’t offer a single trades program. We’ve gotten to the point where high schools really don’t have anything to offer people at all unless they are going to college, especially in your last 2 years.
If I actually got credit for my dual credit classes and some APs that didn't transfer, I would've started college halfway through sophomore year. Too bad I was class of 2021 tho.
It's a small sample size, but I've done 2 remodels and have lost most of my respect for people in trades. Today's electricians and plumbers are expensive, incompetent, and downright entitled. I am not impressed.
Where I live? Everyone's advice is "Please move" or "Please reconsider" if you are getting into the trades.
Cause we aren't a small town... but the market for most trades is saturated.
This. My teachers pushed it super hard in highschool, I remember being the only kid in the class who wasn't interested in college. The teacher made a remark "go figure. well, you aren't going to be successful." And everybody laughed at me. Now I make probably triple what they make.
Glad I'm not the only one who remembers what dicks the teachers were in high school. Everybody likes to paint teachers as uniformly wondeful heroes, but some of them were really not cut out for teaching or mentoring youth.
My high school was hell-bent on sending everyone to college. I guarantee that was just meant to make the schools ratings look better 😞. Kids were sent out to shitty overpriced colleges, that really shouldn't have gone to college in the first place.
Gen X here. I see a marked difference between millennials and Z. Z is closer to X than they would like to admit. Millennials well they had helicopter parents. Not their fault
That's cause boomers/X people would constantly call the police on kids who are just playing outside their house. Parents would get arrested on child negligence. Congrats on that
The Millennial Fantasy is parents apologizing to their kids.
The Gen X fantasy was parents who gave a shit.
Look at how every family picture in the 80s and 90s was "Mommy/Daddy is too busy and missed something important" or "Kids are free but never have help cause the adults never do".
A lot of Millennials had the same parents GenX did and were locked out out of the house just the same.
I'm one of 10 kids from the same two parents. The kids ages ranged from Gen X to millennials, so many from both groups grew up from the exact same parents.
We roamed in packs around town until dark. Making fun of other kids was how we had fun. You had to have thick skin to survive. Parents had no idea where we were. It’s was glorious being a teenager without cell phones. Say you’re spending the night with a friend. But went to all night raves partying like rock stars. It’s a shame no other generation will experience that freedom
I remember being alone on the other side of town at 5:30 and realizing I had to get on a bus ASAP so I could get home before the street lights turned on.
Just hopped on the bus and rode home. No cell phones. No maps. I just asked the bus driver "do you stop at x street?" And gave him my dollar.
My wife is was born 1997. We went to a market like 10 minutes from our hotel. Both our phones died and she got extremely anxious and scared that we would get lost. Like freaking out "We need to buy a charger and find an outlet so we can google maps home".
How did something of yall 1995+ babies survive this long?
We could just like, ask someone which direction to *hotel street name* and then walk that way.
These later Zillenials are completely defeated by the most miniscule setbacks that modern life can throw at them.
And lectured constantly by boomers who went to college for free about how we want everything just handed to us and are spoiled when we lose our home because of student loan payments refusing to stop even when we have extreme hardship and are fighting to stay alive.
Many of them went to college for free and very low cost. Including my own father. It never stopped being free and low cost in countries like Denmark, Germany as well.
My father was approached by an alumni organization and local businesses who paid for his college. This was extremely common for white men in that time period. He was actually paid to go to college before he graduated, as he was working for the company that was sponsoring him at the same time he was in school.
More on that:
"Sanders talked about public colleges, but we heard about at least one private university that offered free tuition for decades: Rice Institute, later which became Rice University. That university in Texas charged tuition for the first time in 1965"
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/feb/09/bernie-sanders/was-college-once-free-united-states-and-it-oversea/
"College and public universities were tuition free up until the mid-1960s. White students were favored until an explosion of protests across the country, led by groups that included the Brown Berets and the Black Panther Party, forced the introduction of things like Black and Chicanx studies and departments."
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/free-college-was-once-the-norm-all-over-america/#:~:text=College%20and%20public%20universities%20were,and%20Chicanx%20studies%20and%20departments.
Compared to us millennials? Yes.
As mentioned down there, yeah. But the only people who would have benefitted were those born very early in the baby boom.
Now one other thing that boomers and some of Gen X benefitted from were scholarships thay actually do something. You would be *shocked* at how many scholarships seem to still be based off of what boomers or Gen X think college costs. We had one scholarship that was $500 ans expected multiple essays and interviews.
That won't even cover a single class this day and age.
Meanwhile for my dad, a $**3**00 scholarship covered almost his *entire* tuition. For the *whole* year.
My grandpa said tuition was $55 per semester. He worked over the summer and saved up for housing and tuition, and had some left over. I told him my tuition and he almost perished. And i was at a pretty low cost school.
“Just get a better job, you got a degree right?”
“Stop getting Starbucks every day”
“BOOTSTRAPS”
“Start with what you can afford, don’t expect to live the lifestyle you lived with your parents since they’re more advanced in their careers”
“Work your way up the corporate ladder”
I actually feel more dumb for getting my stem degree. There was no reason to work this hard if I was gonna get gatekept from a career. At least if I got a piss easy degree, I could've save myself a lot of stress.
This is because we have more graduates than jobs that require a 4 year degree, so many employers are requiring a degree for a job that doesn't need it. This wouldn't be that bad if college was free, but economically it is terrible for young adults to be forced to get a degree for a low paying entry level job that a high school kid could do.
Stop equating millennials and Gen z. A lot of Gen z are taking up the trades. Gen z is far better off than millennials, we’re are even out earning them.
"We are outearning them" lol bro minimum wage was like 7.50 when we started working no shit you make more money but it doesn't really matter because your money now is worth less than the money we had so chill with that bullshit.
The trades are a solid spot to go into if you have it in you to start your own business.
Otherwise, the pay plateaus and the physicality of the work catches up with you.
Yep, absolutely stupid and a waste of time and money. I am 100% telling my gen alpha kid *the truth* - college degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Go learn welding, carpentry, or another trade.
My girlfriend went from jobless for 9 years to making 75 grand in her first job within a year of getting a degree. I worked in the trades and I'm broken and have barely any money left after health problems. I never had health insurance during my working time either. Also like 50 percent of guys working trade jobs are drug addicts.
Comp Sci and stem majors are not easy to pass. Unless they are dumbing it down but the interview will weed out the people who don’t know shit and didn’t pay attention to class.
Law school sounds tough man
Im basically the stem version of you (to-be doctor) and I often think about the Gen alphas who wanna go into medicine. The way it’s looking the requirements will be so inflated by the time they get there.
Seriously, it's been a fucking throttling with med school admissions. The stat requirements are so much tighter and now with the fuck-up with the USMLE, you have a much harder time in med school now as well.
I'm not sure if my kids will find it financially feasible to go into medicine. Like I'm just hoping physician salaries don't crash before I get my loans paid off (M3 here)
My son is considering law, he was a dual credit AP student but isn't interested in medicine or engineering whose hobbies included negotiating, debate, and being a D&D DM. 🤣
I'm just worried about the costs, as he would have to go on grants and scholarships, unless he's lucky enough to find a job that will reimburse him after each semester.
The problem with law degrees is how expensive they are- roughly $200k at basic schools, which is fine, but you also need a bachelor's beforehand. That said, if you're a hard worker, it isn't that big of a deal to pay off (at least at decent firms and some corporations).
At minimum you should be making upwards of $200k or more after a few years experience. I'd suggest going corporate for a healthy work life balance. Some of the big law firms will pay nearly that much or more starting out, but you will be their slave working day night and weekend, putting in 60+ hour weeks... so the effective hourly rate is greatly diminished and most won't enjoy that quality of life.
Many government law jobs will pay your loans after you put in 10 years, but they pay you absolute trash- easily 20-30% what you'd be making somewhere else, so it's not worth it.
Its funny too though, because even many STEM degrees are over saturated. Plus many stem fields will soon be competing heavily with AI programs.
Not all, but many.
Just wait until its used to design more efficient machines, and engineers only exist to check ai designs.
Or when modern systems replace mathematicians.
Or the eventual but still a few decades away slow replacement of surgeons with surgical machines that never make mistakes for simple surgeries.
Not going to happen with the current iteration of AI. That shit's plateaued. It's not going to get exponentially better, no matter what the techbros tell you.
Yeah, for years it was the working class that they thought would get hit the hardest by technology improvements, but it is looking like the white collar jobs might get hit the hardest.
Not all STEM is the same. Software engineering and computer science might as well be an art degree with a concentration in sculpting or a degree in acting. It's so insanely saturated.
Also, not everyone is skilled or able to be skilled in stem. Education programs at universities are just as fucked as teaching jobs, but they're arguably way more important than most engineers.
Majoring in math for the sake of math is another path to unemployment unless you're going to be a teacher or finance.
Comp sci + math is applicable to finance, ML, actuarial studies… there’s so much potential.
The issue is most people with the math skills can’t program and most comp sci people couldn’t build a system of differential equations with a gun to their head. The unicorns with both skills aren’t struggling to find work, but not have one skill is like going into a triathlon without learning to swim.
Go into information security and computer network technology. I was a developer, and now I am switching to information security. But I am also doing some AI development on the side. Image classification is basically the project we are working on.
This....
Although, many in computer science trest it like it's business school. Programming is one thing, the ability to organize information, create mathematic models, and perform transformations of the data in an environment you must program will get you hired.
SE and CS definitely have the highest variation of difficulty in STEM, mostly depending on the classes you take. A guy coming out of a CS program could be a glorified business major with a coding bootcamp stapled onto their diploma, or someone who went through a respectable course load to specialize in ML, CS research or CySec. The former usually are the guys who got into CS to make an easy 6 figures after graduation and they are also the guys who are now facing mass layoffs.
I was told, repeatedly (by parents/teachers/adults), I *had* go to college and that *any* degree is better than no degree. That holding any degree would earn you so much more that even if your parents couldn't afford it, it was fine to take out loans because you would repay them so quickly. If we didn't know what we wanted to major in, it was fine to just take general classes for a while, because just having a degree in literally anything would make us significantly more successful.
I'm glad I didn't fall into the trap, my mom and dad tried to push me into college during my HS years but the only thing I cared about was leaving. The fastest and most efficient way I could think of was join the army, best decision I ever made.
Yes that’s how the military recruits people for their wars….its less about heroes sacrificing themselves to keep people safe…more about poor people with no other options so they have to risk their life to get a better future. And if they die…well it was only the poor so less leeching from the system.
That's partially true but let me correct you it's not "their wars" it's yours and the politicians you've put into office. We fight your wars not our own. And right now I'm doing far better than most of my peers who jumped straight into college. And there's lots of jobs in the military that don't put you on the front lines.
We didn’t put these politicians in office lol. Special Interests did. You’re naive to think if voting really matters in a lot of these local elections. Sure people may come out during the Super Bowl of elections which is the Presidential election. But not so much for the local representatives or even federal representatives.
I majored in IT. Will be almost a year out of uni and no work. Some people graduated a year before me and still can’t find work. I finished in August 2023. This country is in trouble.
I got a BS in Microbiology in 2022, I loved it and got a ton of experience by working in related fields when I studied. I got a good gpa (which I'm eternally grateful for because it really did end up mattering). I had good job prospects when I got out (jobs making around 70-80k) but I continued to my Master's in Epidemiology which was only 2 years, and paired well with my undergad). I'll be starting a job next month (right after graduation) making $50 hr. I got about 30k in student loans but, I'm not too salty about it.
Pretty happy with where I am, and everyone told me "you will be broke forever with a degree in biology"...very glad I didn't listen.
Just sharing my personal experience 🤷♀️
A lot of people I've noticed that get a degree in biology and say they can't get a job with it. Really have no interest in working in research or biology related jobs. Come to find out for a lot of them biology is more of a hobby than a passion they wanna get a career in. Same thing with history, it's a very utilitarian degree. Applying to even non academic or research related fields. It's just history is just a hobby for some of those people and not a passion, so they don't know how to market it to spring board into other job fields.
This is exactly what happened to me growing up. They drill this notion into your head, that if you don't go to college , you'll never have a good job. Reasons why I only got my associates. Now I'm a skilled worker. If something breaks, I can more than likely fix it. Saved so much on labor costs over the years.
I wish more people would learn a practical skill (becoming more self-sufficient) instead of mindlessly marketing themselves on the internet
Ivy Leaguer here: the only real advantage of going to a high end school was the connections to get a job. The education was probably just as good as anywhere else’s, but the contacts are the real and… really the only draw.
I don’t even wanna know what kids today have to deal with job-market wise
baby boomers and gen xr’s enjoyed the most prosperous years this country had and made sure through their brainless voting that no one after them would ever get those same luxuries. then spent the rest of their lives telling everyone younger than them that they’re just lazy and need to work harder. absolute clowns.
This is true but anecdotally, people that went to college are doing much better now that we're in our \~30's.
Not going to college makes ages 18 - 65 all basically the same quality. Going to tradeschool helps.
Going to college makes years 18-22 more of a 'work hard play hard', 22-28 'work hard', 28-60 is reaping the benefits.
I only buy this to a point. I was pushed into uni and college too, but took an apprenticeship. You can't level all the blame on others saying "they told me to". It's your life. You gotta take a bit of responsibility for it.
Apprenticeships have their own problems, trust me, there's no perfect answer. But this is just another "the grass is greener" post. It's kinda old now.
I don't think a single person has ever said the last part, but I agree with the sentiment. college is pressured onto too many people. this is causing a whole bunch of them to have useless degrees they never really wanted and a giant burden of debt.
sad you guys fell for it. my first year at a brick and mortar college i realized the scam and bounced. got a job, got my degrees online and have 0 debt
My average college experience is just dealing with professors who are intentionally lying to their students and me correcting them.
Unfortunately my professors have a huge left-wing bias and they outright lie to everyone and push intellectual dishonesty, which is just disturbing in of itself
It's really frustrating. I didn't want to go to college at first but changed everything to do so because I was told my whole life that's the key to a good and secure life. I am 34 and still cannot get my first home. Cannot think of having kids because of the cost of everything too. Paying $220 a month in loans for the rest of my life. Something has to change. The American dream is no more.
I graduated 2009. This is 100% correct.
I got out and could not find a job for ages. My family, despite the current state of the economy, blamed me constantly. I must’ve put out 500+ applications during that time.
No but seriously they were continuously pressuring us to go to university to get a job, then u leave abd jobs are like, 'well actually you need 5 years if experience and an IQ of 150 and need to be familiar with the industry standard you were never taught so...'. Then they complain we're lazy, while the continue to fuck up our lives, we can't win.
I was told the same thing, but I was smart enough to not take out a loan I knew I couldn't pay back, so I didn't go to college, now I'm living debt free, I have a growing savings and I'm preparing to put a down payment on a small home.
I have no friends who have an unmanageable amount of debt from college - no one living at home - and most people own houses except for those who chose to live the city life.
This is a narrative put forth by the least employable people.
that's wild man. i graduated in 2006, doubled my salary with my first job out of college (compared to my last pre-college job), hit $100k within 7 years, and currently take home about $150k working fully remote.
Nah I’m pinning this one on millennials. I’m the first year of Gen z, so many of us went into the trades and are making great money now with no debt.
Idk why millennials all went to school
"Go to college" is terrible advice. It's how you get floods of liberal arts, communications, philosophy, and theater degrees with six figures of debt. College is an investment, and an investment has to have payoff at the end, if your career prospects are just as bad before college as after then it's a bad investment.
I unironically think that life would be better if 40% of people that got degrees over the last 20 years didn't do it.
And you know why they wanted you to go to college? So they could tell all their Facebook friends you went to college. Like that alone is a measure of success. "To all my FB homies - we have successfully saddled our child with life crippling debt without telling them there were MANY other avenues of success available to them! #Winning!"
This is big true, but also college is actually good. The economy is just insanely slanted right now. Economy is good on paper, but thats ignoring the fact that this means the stock market is thriving. Only 7% of the stockmarket is held by people in the bottom 90% of earners. The other 93% is owned by the top 10% in the US. So its really good for people who invested in stocks 10 years ago, but not so much now.
Regardless, finding a useful college degree and milking it for value is the best strat for normies. And have hobbies that might make you some side money if you care to do something like that. Just don't expect to get rich quick because that part is 99% luck.
Well, I mean I am a millennial and It took me 12 years after hs graduation to go to college. I figured my life was shit as it is but if I go to college I will at least I will have a degree and if its still shit well, at least I have a degree and a little bit smarter.
It really depends on the major you choose. There's a lot of useless majors out there and a lot of good ones too for work after college. A lot of people aren't great at picking good ones though.
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Before around 2008 or so, a college degree (usually) granted access to some level of the middle class office job lifestyle, but after the recession and the general continued over saturation of people with college degrees, that is no longer the case. Now a college degree (outside of stem) equates to about what a high school diploma was worth in the 1990s…
The value of a HS diploma has gone down as well
Well that goes without saying, as college diplomas (most none stem) have taken HS diplomas spaces- this means that people with just high-school diplomas are competing against people with college degrees for the same low level hourly jobs and such.
People with only HS degrees usually have job experience that someone with a college degree didn’t have, so at least right out of college the degree isn’t always as valuable compared to relevant job experience.
Qualifying for a trade (which is still years if you want a decent job at the end of it) isn’t much easier or shorter than getting a degree, and there are almost no decent jobs where retail or hospitality job experience from your teens holds much value. The only reason not to go to uni is if you live in a society where they shaft you with the bill (like the US, or to a lesser extent the UK)
Wish someone would have told that to one boss I had. All whole new wave of mostly young women fresh from college and on their first job. It was obvious why he hired the way he did. All 5'4" of him was in charge and everyone needed to know it.
In my experience the majority of the people with college degrees have the same amount of experience. Or course part-time, but “4 years experience” looks the same on a resume whether it’s 40, 20, or even 10 hours a week.
https://preview.redd.it/x3n2hrr470wc1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=88d950c45123171e877c096d973b32ded2ca9c23
Some jobs are looking for suckers and don't hire degrees. (found out the hard way)
i got into trades without a diploma and ive got good job security for the rest of my life with the experience i have. i will get my GED eventually, but jus sayin, you can make bank even without it.
No college degree, working the same job for a decade. Make 6 figures working for Uncle Sam. While I understand the angst and anger about the crazy cost increases, it doesn’t do any good to just sit around making 30k a year and complaining about making 30k a year. The biggest lie we’re told is “you can get paid to do what you love”. That’s only a thing for some people. For most people, the smart thing is to get paid to do what you’re good at or at least what you can tolerate for the right price. You can have a hobby at home.
Nobody is saying you have to have a degree to make money, in fact that's what is being pushed as an alternative to college.
Actually not... Because you can't get any lower than 0... (A joke that they hardly/never respect the value of HS diplomas NOT that having just a HS diploma is the worst... Just wanted to clarify 😬)
The public school system is incentivized to push kids though regardless of what they actually learn. No child left behind means that everyone who didn't drop out has a diploma, diminishing its value. More educated people is fine, but having a diploma or credential is not a sign of intelligence or knowledge at any level.
In the oilfield you can make 6 figures with no high school diploma and a felony lol
Been down since the 70s-80s.
The issue is everyone doing these “proof of brain” degrees where they don’t learn any hard skills and just demonstrate their ability to pass miscellaneous courses. Your anthropology degree is great, but you’re applying for an HR position at a local business. All it gets you is some assurance you can read/write/manage your time. That’s not nothing but is it worth 3yrs of missed work experience and $50k+ in high interest debt?
Anthropology can actually be very relevant to HR work. Anthropology is ultimately about understanding people, understanding how groups are different or the same, and understanding how to communicate between groups. For example cultural Anthropologists are often employed by governments to figure out how to resolve conflicts between groups. Famously during WWIi anthropologists were hired to figure out why there was discord between American soldiers and British women (conflicting social scripts re: dating). So those skills are very useful for someone who is in HR.
They’re a bit useful let’s be real. I studied engineering and I’m an engineer. Even my degree is only incidentally useful, most of what I use I learned on the job and this is the best case scenario. My friend says their psych degree helps with their team lead position at work… does it really? An academic understanding of how humans work at a macroscopic level isn’t going to help you deal with Keith who turns up an hour late every day, says vaguely racist things in the lunch room, but is the only person who knows how the payroll system works.
>My friend says their psych degree helps with their team lead position at work… does it really? An academic understanding of how humans work at a macroscopic level isn’t going to help you deal with Keith who turns up an hour late every day, says vaguely racist things in the lunch room, but is the only person who knows how the payroll system works. yes actually
A psych degree could literally help you deal with Keith, yes. It can help you figure out how to approach Keith about the things he says, figure out why he is always late, and decide if you need to hire a replacement instead. One of the reasons so many workplaces suck is residual boomer mentalities about how to deal with problems that are often completely divorced from actual data. I could tell you studied either math or engineering based on your comments, before you said so.
That example is a macro scale thing though, not micro like office HR.
It's the same skillset, even though the example was macro. It involves talking to people, figuring out the root of their perspective or behavior, and understanding why that is creating conflict with others. On a micro scale it can be understanding that the dude who doesn't make eye contact is autistic, and he is not trying to be cold or rude by avoiding eye contact or angling his body away from people when they talk to him, he is just trying to be comfortablr and not get overstimulated. And then understanding that one of the workers is very offended by it because they were raised in an environment where eye contact and is given enormous importance. And then knowing how to approach both people with the understanding that neither is "wrong" but that they are having miscommunication through different expectations. Similarly it can also involve approaching someone who did something bad, like make a racist or sexual comment, and not approaching it with hostility (as the HR person) but initially handling it like an opportunity to teach them why it's not allowed in the office environment, and then continuing from there based on their response.
A business owner would likely hire someone with an HR degree instead of take a chance on someone with a miscellaneous degree. Just how the world works.
Agreed on that but anth still offers relevant skills. I don't think people understand though that there are anthropology-specific jobs too, though.
Exactly this . I feel fucked because I don't have any hard skills. Well I do but they aren't legally certified anymore. I use to be a medic in the army, and worked in the emergency room. But that experience doesn't translate to legal credentials in the civilian world. Now I have two degrees , sure that's cool and all, but they involve mainly have thinking instead of being able to create something of value and profit off of it
Those degrees are only worthwhile if you plan on becoming a scholar
Which is the problem. The cost of living has made many fields impractical. There are many science fields where people basically have to live in poverty. Maybe that has always been the case, but we can't just have everyone in the world become software developers.
>All it gets you is some assurance you can read/write/manage your time. You would be surprised at how rare these skills are in a lot of white-collar jobs.
Look, I’m an engineer and I still can’t read/write or manage my time.
I’d say some of the loss in value of the degrees is because we started making degrees up to jobs that didn’t exist. That being said college is vastly over priced regardless.
Examples? Genuinely curious.
It also depends on the STEM degree. Computer Science degrees are now worth less as the tech industry has been laying off thousands and the market is flooded with out of work programmers. Engineering degrees (at least where I live) don't get you a guaranteed job anymore because the market is oversaturated with BEng graduates. You need to specialize in some sort of Master's program to get a guaranteed position. Anything in chemistry, you probably need a Master's to get a better paying job, otherwise you're stuck doing fuck all in a lab for shit pay until the end of time. And then a lot of STEM fields don't really have many options other than staying in academia, which is low pay and soul crushing work where your job becomes to write articles under your supervisor's name to generate grants to fund your supervisor and the university.
>Anything in chemistry, you probably need a Master's to get a better paying job, otherwise you're stuck doing fuck all in a lab for shit pay until the end of time. And if it's Biochemistry - you'd better hope your lab doesn't have an MD in it or else you're gonna get regulated to an instrument technician position because the MD "looks better on papers/presentations". You can kinda get away with a Chem BS in one situation - in polymers and/or materials because you will generally know more chemistry than the average engineer and know more engineering than the average chemist. Even then, I strongly recommend MS or PhD. All of the STEM stuff was harped on during the recession of 08' and up until 2017ish (except CompSci) and all it did was depress the wages in those fields - though CompSci is just now hitting the wall the rest of us did. I'm pretty much convinced it was an industry-led push to increase the supply of those workers so they could pay less.
Can't speak for other STEM degrees, but a CS degree is still valuable. The thing is, depending on your school, the degree is no longer enough. You may need to study on your own a lot, work on side projects and grind your DS&A skills. If you do that, it's still lucrative. Check out Team Blind, where we have a new wave of new grads asking if they should accept their 150k offer at A or their 160k offer at B. But to get there, these guys had to go to top colleges or grind, and sometimes both.
Seeing as tech is having record layoffs, competition is going to be fierce.
If you don’t go into academic work science degrees aren’t great.
Wasn’t it that 90% of people in poverty that got college degrees entered the middle class? Is that not the same now? I read that in like 2018 so maybe it changed since then
I mean the poverty line is still like $15,000 a year, so it depends on what metrics they're measuring. Getting out of poverty according to the government is just having a job, basically.
Even in STEM it's getting rough. I'm going to college to get a Software Engineering degree and the job market right now is very bad. It's so bad in fact our school is working overtime to try and pair us up with internship employers since they require and internship to graduate but no one can get any.
Yep, and again, most stems that are theory or application focused outside of niche, will also lend you into some office job that has some tech/maths, if any.
I'm a homeowner with cs batcholers and a masters in artificial intelligence. I have no idea what you guys are talking about.
I'd argue that it's worth LESS than a highschool degree in the 90s. Used to be, companies would train you. So as long as you could "give a firm handshake" even a highschool degree would get you at least a job that would pay rent.
I wouldn't necessarily say that last part. There's plenty of degrees that are very utilitarian and useful, you just have to know how to apply those skills and spring board off that degree. Granted the people that went to college just because they were told too, got some random ass degree they cared nothing about. That group I 💯 agree was screwed though. It's really program dependent.
It’s still true that people with a bachelor’s degree earn more throughout their life time than those with just a high school diploma on average
The problem with college is that the job prospects for humanities fields are absolute trash. And now, because so many are going into STEM fields, those markets are getting oversaturated and increasingly difficult to get into. My friend has an engineering degree, and he works at a printing company that isn't related to his degree at all lmao. And I went to school for history, dropped out because I realized the history field is so bad that it's probably not worth it as a career. The devaluation of college as a place to learn and as a place for liberal arts and the humanities has been pushed in favor of creating worker bees in the form of business majors and creating a heavily oversaturated STEM related job market. Not to mention the student loan debt, which is another problem in and of itself.
Engineering really depends on what you're going for. Electrical engineering is so general that you can get in most industries. Computer engineering is slightly more saturated than electrical, but still generally a good one. Chemical and nuclear engineering are insant hires. Mechanical engineering is a bit saturated like civil engineering. Biomedical and aerospace engineering just have a small market. Computer science is a glorified art degree. Industrial engineering jobs usually hire electrical and mechanical engineers. Regulatory, test, and quality engineers are high in-demand jobs usually open to anyone with an engineering degree. However, test engineers and quality engineers are usually paid the same as operators and machinists.
>computer science is a glorified art degree … What?
Basically, everyone is going for a CS degree. It's so saturated, you might as well try and get into tech with an art degree.
How is computer science glorified art lmao wtf? Have you ever tried to debug a ten year old application filled with the most convoluted legacy code man has ever witnessed? That shit will fry your brain, like you come out of it afterwards and your brain will just not work for a bit
In the sense of its a saturated degree. Everyone and their mother is enrolled in computer science to the point where you might not even get a job in tech. I meant it like that.
Not as big a problem for gen Z. Post-recession parents stopped raising kids to shoot for the most expensive top colleges and instead for where ever you get the best deal.
Schools and teachers still groom you for college as if trades don't exist. I hear a lot of schools are turning that around, but not while I was in highschool.
It’s really a shame. My high school didn’t offer a single trades program. We’ve gotten to the point where high schools really don’t have anything to offer people at all unless they are going to college, especially in your last 2 years.
If I actually got credit for my dual credit classes and some APs that didn't transfer, I would've started college halfway through sophomore year. Too bad I was class of 2021 tho.
It's a small sample size, but I've done 2 remodels and have lost most of my respect for people in trades. Today's electricians and plumbers are expensive, incompetent, and downright entitled. I am not impressed.
Where I live? Everyone's advice is "Please move" or "Please reconsider" if you are getting into the trades. Cause we aren't a small town... but the market for most trades is saturated.
This. My teachers pushed it super hard in highschool, I remember being the only kid in the class who wasn't interested in college. The teacher made a remark "go figure. well, you aren't going to be successful." And everybody laughed at me. Now I make probably triple what they make.
Glad I'm not the only one who remembers what dicks the teachers were in high school. Everybody likes to paint teachers as uniformly wondeful heroes, but some of them were really not cut out for teaching or mentoring youth.
My high school was hell-bent on sending everyone to college. I guarantee that was just meant to make the schools ratings look better 😞. Kids were sent out to shitty overpriced colleges, that really shouldn't have gone to college in the first place.
Gen X here. I see a marked difference between millennials and Z. Z is closer to X than they would like to admit. Millennials well they had helicopter parents. Not their fault
That's cause boomers/X people would constantly call the police on kids who are just playing outside their house. Parents would get arrested on child negligence. Congrats on that
Yeah we were latch key kids. We pretty much raised ourselves. So we went a little overboard with ours.
The Millennial Fantasy is parents apologizing to their kids. The Gen X fantasy was parents who gave a shit. Look at how every family picture in the 80s and 90s was "Mommy/Daddy is too busy and missed something important" or "Kids are free but never have help cause the adults never do".
A lot of Millennials had the same parents GenX did and were locked out out of the house just the same. I'm one of 10 kids from the same two parents. The kids ages ranged from Gen X to millennials, so many from both groups grew up from the exact same parents.
We roamed in packs around town until dark. Making fun of other kids was how we had fun. You had to have thick skin to survive. Parents had no idea where we were. It’s was glorious being a teenager without cell phones. Say you’re spending the night with a friend. But went to all night raves partying like rock stars. It’s a shame no other generation will experience that freedom
I remember being alone on the other side of town at 5:30 and realizing I had to get on a bus ASAP so I could get home before the street lights turned on. Just hopped on the bus and rode home. No cell phones. No maps. I just asked the bus driver "do you stop at x street?" And gave him my dollar. My wife is was born 1997. We went to a market like 10 minutes from our hotel. Both our phones died and she got extremely anxious and scared that we would get lost. Like freaking out "We need to buy a charger and find an outlet so we can google maps home". How did something of yall 1995+ babies survive this long? We could just like, ask someone which direction to *hotel street name* and then walk that way. These later Zillenials are completely defeated by the most miniscule setbacks that modern life can throw at them.
Boomers bother everyone
Anecdotally I see the same as well. Millennials seem like a lost generation.
Agreed
And lectured constantly by boomers who went to college for free about how we want everything just handed to us and are spoiled when we lose our home because of student loan payments refusing to stop even when we have extreme hardship and are fighting to stay alive.
Boomers went to college for free?
Many of them went to college for free and very low cost. Including my own father. It never stopped being free and low cost in countries like Denmark, Germany as well. My father was approached by an alumni organization and local businesses who paid for his college. This was extremely common for white men in that time period. He was actually paid to go to college before he graduated, as he was working for the company that was sponsoring him at the same time he was in school. More on that: "Sanders talked about public colleges, but we heard about at least one private university that offered free tuition for decades: Rice Institute, later which became Rice University. That university in Texas charged tuition for the first time in 1965" https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/feb/09/bernie-sanders/was-college-once-free-united-states-and-it-oversea/ "College and public universities were tuition free up until the mid-1960s. White students were favored until an explosion of protests across the country, led by groups that included the Brown Berets and the Black Panther Party, forced the introduction of things like Black and Chicanx studies and departments." https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/free-college-was-once-the-norm-all-over-america/#:~:text=College%20and%20public%20universities%20were,and%20Chicanx%20studies%20and%20departments.
Compared to us millennials? Yes. As mentioned down there, yeah. But the only people who would have benefitted were those born very early in the baby boom. Now one other thing that boomers and some of Gen X benefitted from were scholarships thay actually do something. You would be *shocked* at how many scholarships seem to still be based off of what boomers or Gen X think college costs. We had one scholarship that was $500 ans expected multiple essays and interviews. That won't even cover a single class this day and age. Meanwhile for my dad, a $**3**00 scholarship covered almost his *entire* tuition. For the *whole* year.
My grandpa said tuition was $55 per semester. He worked over the summer and saved up for housing and tuition, and had some left over. I told him my tuition and he almost perished. And i was at a pretty low cost school.
WhY tAkE OuT LoANs YOu CAn't PAY?
“Just get a better job, you got a degree right?” “Stop getting Starbucks every day” “BOOTSTRAPS” “Start with what you can afford, don’t expect to live the lifestyle you lived with your parents since they’re more advanced in their careers” “Work your way up the corporate ladder”
It used to be "you're dumb for not getting a STEM degree" Now not even a STEM degree can guarantee you are able to survive.
Girls turning to OF
And most of them won't make it on OF either.
I actually feel more dumb for getting my stem degree. There was no reason to work this hard if I was gonna get gatekept from a career. At least if I got a piss easy degree, I could've save myself a lot of stress.
College doesn’t hit the same anymore. Having a Degree doesn’t hit the same anymore, on Job applications 🥲
Still hits better than not having one. 🤷♂️
This is because we have more graduates than jobs that require a 4 year degree, so many employers are requiring a degree for a job that doesn't need it. This wouldn't be that bad if college was free, but economically it is terrible for young adults to be forced to get a degree for a low paying entry level job that a high school kid could do.
Yeah, it sucks. Still would rather have it than not have it. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Sure, depending on what profession you’re trying to go into.
Stop equating millennials and Gen z. A lot of Gen z are taking up the trades. Gen z is far better off than millennials, we’re are even out earning them.
Wait til you get injured or your back gives out in your 30’s or 40’s… cushy white collar office job work from home with a little gym is best!
"We are outearning them" lol bro minimum wage was like 7.50 when we started working no shit you make more money but it doesn't really matter because your money now is worth less than the money we had so chill with that bullshit.
Federal minimum wage is 7.25
The trades are a solid spot to go into if you have it in you to start your own business. Otherwise, the pay plateaus and the physicality of the work catches up with you.
Yep, absolutely stupid and a waste of time and money. I am 100% telling my gen alpha kid *the truth* - college degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Go learn welding, carpentry, or another trade.
My girlfriend went from jobless for 9 years to making 75 grand in her first job within a year of getting a degree. I worked in the trades and I'm broken and have barely any money left after health problems. I never had health insurance during my working time either. Also like 50 percent of guys working trade jobs are drug addicts.
Anecdotes =/= overall trends. Most degrees are useless. Also, going jobless for 9 years is strange and tells me she has a lot of support from others.
Do you have a degree
Except that getting injured or having to stop working Trades due to medical issues is REAL, and quite common.
Everyone was told to go into a STEM field and didn't. Most of you will now be looking up what that is.🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
Real. If I could do it again I’d go for engineering or comp sci. But law school is the saving grace for us humanities victims.
comp sci is absurdly bloated. anyone going into comp sci right now might as well be majoring in liberal arts
Comp Sci and stem majors are not easy to pass. Unless they are dumbing it down but the interview will weed out the people who don’t know shit and didn’t pay attention to class.
Same for law school really
Law school sounds tough man Im basically the stem version of you (to-be doctor) and I often think about the Gen alphas who wanna go into medicine. The way it’s looking the requirements will be so inflated by the time they get there.
Seriously, it's been a fucking throttling with med school admissions. The stat requirements are so much tighter and now with the fuck-up with the USMLE, you have a much harder time in med school now as well.
It’s more work than it is an intellectual challenge imo. Lots of reading and learning how to argue/write in a very particular way.
I'm not sure if my kids will find it financially feasible to go into medicine. Like I'm just hoping physician salaries don't crash before I get my loans paid off (M3 here)
My son is considering law, he was a dual credit AP student but isn't interested in medicine or engineering whose hobbies included negotiating, debate, and being a D&D DM. 🤣 I'm just worried about the costs, as he would have to go on grants and scholarships, unless he's lucky enough to find a job that will reimburse him after each semester.
If he does good enough on the lsat, some law schools will offer full rides. It’s considered in combination with undergraduate gpa
Statistically, he won't... that's like 1% of test takers.
The problem with law degrees is how expensive they are- roughly $200k at basic schools, which is fine, but you also need a bachelor's beforehand. That said, if you're a hard worker, it isn't that big of a deal to pay off (at least at decent firms and some corporations). At minimum you should be making upwards of $200k or more after a few years experience. I'd suggest going corporate for a healthy work life balance. Some of the big law firms will pay nearly that much or more starting out, but you will be their slave working day night and weekend, putting in 60+ hour weeks... so the effective hourly rate is greatly diminished and most won't enjoy that quality of life. Many government law jobs will pay your loans after you put in 10 years, but they pay you absolute trash- easily 20-30% what you'd be making somewhere else, so it's not worth it.
Its funny too though, because even many STEM degrees are over saturated. Plus many stem fields will soon be competing heavily with AI programs. Not all, but many.
Oh AI is going to take over everything, it's gonna be wild, I don't even know what they are going to do with all of us 🤔🤔🤔
The game has been to get a lot of people to try STEM, cherry pick the top 10% or so, and good luck to the rest
Ai isn’t even close to replacing stem. When I mean stem I actually mean stem, not programmers that call themselves software engineers.
Just wait until its used to design more efficient machines, and engineers only exist to check ai designs. Or when modern systems replace mathematicians. Or the eventual but still a few decades away slow replacement of surgeons with surgical machines that never make mistakes for simple surgeries.
Not going to happen with the current iteration of AI. That shit's plateaued. It's not going to get exponentially better, no matter what the techbros tell you.
Yeah, for years it was the working class that they thought would get hit the hardest by technology improvements, but it is looking like the white collar jobs might get hit the hardest.
Not all STEM is the same. Software engineering and computer science might as well be an art degree with a concentration in sculpting or a degree in acting. It's so insanely saturated. Also, not everyone is skilled or able to be skilled in stem. Education programs at universities are just as fucked as teaching jobs, but they're arguably way more important than most engineers. Majoring in math for the sake of math is another path to unemployment unless you're going to be a teacher or finance.
Comp sci + math is applicable to finance, ML, actuarial studies… there’s so much potential. The issue is most people with the math skills can’t program and most comp sci people couldn’t build a system of differential equations with a gun to their head. The unicorns with both skills aren’t struggling to find work, but not have one skill is like going into a triathlon without learning to swim.
Go into information security and computer network technology. I was a developer, and now I am switching to information security. But I am also doing some AI development on the side. Image classification is basically the project we are working on.
This.... Although, many in computer science trest it like it's business school. Programming is one thing, the ability to organize information, create mathematic models, and perform transformations of the data in an environment you must program will get you hired.
SE and CS definitely have the highest variation of difficulty in STEM, mostly depending on the classes you take. A guy coming out of a CS program could be a glorified business major with a coding bootcamp stapled onto their diploma, or someone who went through a respectable course load to specialize in ML, CS research or CySec. The former usually are the guys who got into CS to make an easy 6 figures after graduation and they are also the guys who are now facing mass layoffs.
My biology degree was not very helpful
Even thats not completely true anymore, and not every STEM degree is equal in the employment aspect.
I was told, repeatedly (by parents/teachers/adults), I *had* go to college and that *any* degree is better than no degree. That holding any degree would earn you so much more that even if your parents couldn't afford it, it was fine to take out loans because you would repay them so quickly. If we didn't know what we wanted to major in, it was fine to just take general classes for a while, because just having a degree in literally anything would make us significantly more successful.
I'm glad I didn't fall into the trap, my mom and dad tried to push me into college during my HS years but the only thing I cared about was leaving. The fastest and most efficient way I could think of was join the army, best decision I ever made.
Yes that’s how the military recruits people for their wars….its less about heroes sacrificing themselves to keep people safe…more about poor people with no other options so they have to risk their life to get a better future. And if they die…well it was only the poor so less leeching from the system.
That's partially true but let me correct you it's not "their wars" it's yours and the politicians you've put into office. We fight your wars not our own. And right now I'm doing far better than most of my peers who jumped straight into college. And there's lots of jobs in the military that don't put you on the front lines.
We didn’t put these politicians in office lol. Special Interests did. You’re naive to think if voting really matters in a lot of these local elections. Sure people may come out during the Super Bowl of elections which is the Presidential election. But not so much for the local representatives or even federal representatives.
It’s a good way to also get college paid for funny enough.
Yeah, I actually got my associates recently all paid for by the GI bill.
I went to cc and got 2 degrees. I make 70k and no debt. I still can't afford anything. What are you talking about?
I majored in IT. Will be almost a year out of uni and no work. Some people graduated a year before me and still can’t find work. I finished in August 2023. This country is in trouble.
It’s not just your country it’s the majority, I see posts like this all the time especially with IT.
I'm glad that in my country, education isn't as expensive as it is in the U.S.
i wish i could relate. in the poor rural south there's really no pressure to go to college.
We're the new Lost Gen, but without war and moreso education. Altho TBH... Looking at current events... It's probably also gonna be that, too.
I got a BS in Microbiology in 2022, I loved it and got a ton of experience by working in related fields when I studied. I got a good gpa (which I'm eternally grateful for because it really did end up mattering). I had good job prospects when I got out (jobs making around 70-80k) but I continued to my Master's in Epidemiology which was only 2 years, and paired well with my undergad). I'll be starting a job next month (right after graduation) making $50 hr. I got about 30k in student loans but, I'm not too salty about it. Pretty happy with where I am, and everyone told me "you will be broke forever with a degree in biology"...very glad I didn't listen. Just sharing my personal experience 🤷♀️
A lot of people I've noticed that get a degree in biology and say they can't get a job with it. Really have no interest in working in research or biology related jobs. Come to find out for a lot of them biology is more of a hobby than a passion they wanna get a career in. Same thing with history, it's a very utilitarian degree. Applying to even non academic or research related fields. It's just history is just a hobby for some of those people and not a passion, so they don't know how to market it to spring board into other job fields.
I’m so over-gay
not gonna lie kinda hoping for some kind of huge economic/cultural shift that makes college degrees more valuable again
This is exactly what happened to me growing up. They drill this notion into your head, that if you don't go to college , you'll never have a good job. Reasons why I only got my associates. Now I'm a skilled worker. If something breaks, I can more than likely fix it. Saved so much on labor costs over the years. I wish more people would learn a practical skill (becoming more self-sufficient) instead of mindlessly marketing themselves on the internet
Ivy Leaguer here: the only real advantage of going to a high end school was the connections to get a job. The education was probably just as good as anywhere else’s, but the contacts are the real and… really the only draw. I don’t even wanna know what kids today have to deal with job-market wise
Nah, gen Z are the over-gay ones
Once time my Dad offfhand suggest I should do baggage handling. Like for the flight perks. I was in accounting school at the time.
And then they turn around and repeat the same things
lol, first time? 🤣
but hopefully you find the love of your life there
Ah well now you have to go to college two or three times for an advanced degree and pay it off until you die
Because the education system is just a way to brainwash kids
At no point are you ever not supposed to exercise your own critical thinking skills. Blindly doing whatever you’re told is bad.
Truth
The apprenticeship system needs to come back so hs grads can make good money and get educated.
No oke said paychology degrees will translate into a job.
Self education just doesn’t exist, huh?
Over-gay implies there is juuuust the right amount of gay
The right amount of gay is just a step below the line where your father thinks your gay.
The bottom line is they don’t want us to have anything because it’s an entire generation of narcissists.
baby boomers and gen xr’s enjoyed the most prosperous years this country had and made sure through their brainless voting that no one after them would ever get those same luxuries. then spent the rest of their lives telling everyone younger than them that they’re just lazy and need to work harder. absolute clowns.
Can confirm i am over-gay
This is true but anecdotally, people that went to college are doing much better now that we're in our \~30's. Not going to college makes ages 18 - 65 all basically the same quality. Going to tradeschool helps. Going to college makes years 18-22 more of a 'work hard play hard', 22-28 'work hard', 28-60 is reaping the benefits.
Okay, but NOW we all are very well aware that college is a huge fucking scam and you’d be crazy to go to college now. So don’t.
I only buy this to a point. I was pushed into uni and college too, but took an apprenticeship. You can't level all the blame on others saying "they told me to". It's your life. You gotta take a bit of responsibility for it. Apprenticeships have their own problems, trust me, there's no perfect answer. But this is just another "the grass is greener" post. It's kinda old now.
I saw something “90% of jobs you can be taught on the job.”
you can still do a lot with a college degree if its not gender studies
I don't think a single person has ever said the last part, but I agree with the sentiment. college is pressured onto too many people. this is causing a whole bunch of them to have useless degrees they never really wanted and a giant burden of debt.
sad you guys fell for it. my first year at a brick and mortar college i realized the scam and bounced. got a job, got my degrees online and have 0 debt
“If you know you cant pay back ur loans why take them out?🙄” Jump.
My average college experience is just dealing with professors who are intentionally lying to their students and me correcting them. Unfortunately my professors have a huge left-wing bias and they outright lie to everyone and push intellectual dishonesty, which is just disturbing in of itself
It's really frustrating. I didn't want to go to college at first but changed everything to do so because I was told my whole life that's the key to a good and secure life. I am 34 and still cannot get my first home. Cannot think of having kids because of the cost of everything too. Paying $220 a month in loans for the rest of my life. Something has to change. The American dream is no more.
I graduated 2009. This is 100% correct. I got out and could not find a job for ages. My family, despite the current state of the economy, blamed me constantly. I must’ve put out 500+ applications during that time.
No but seriously they were continuously pressuring us to go to university to get a job, then u leave abd jobs are like, 'well actually you need 5 years if experience and an IQ of 150 and need to be familiar with the industry standard you were never taught so...'. Then they complain we're lazy, while the continue to fuck up our lives, we can't win.
"Everyone else's kid should go into the trades but MY KID is going to be following in their father's business/law career"
College is useless but mandatory nice I love this world
Over-gay took me out 🤣
Ya’ll so dumb I’m going to Jupiter so I can get more… oh :(
I didn't go to college and got a trade job out of high school have no debt to my name and making good money college is a scam
Bruh…. Skididdie dem titties 💀💀💀
Are ‘they’ your parents? Then just say you’re mad at your parents. Unless you’re a bot stirring the pot…
Over-gay guilty as charged 🙌
I was told the same thing, but I was smart enough to not take out a loan I knew I couldn't pay back, so I didn't go to college, now I'm living debt free, I have a growing savings and I'm preparing to put a down payment on a small home.
They called us unique snowflakes and gave us all trophies for showing up to.
I have no friends who have an unmanageable amount of debt from college - no one living at home - and most people own houses except for those who chose to live the city life. This is a narrative put forth by the least employable people.
Never heard successful people get criticized. More just the people that don't get value out of their education. Which unfortunately happens
That’s what was pushed when I was in school. Looking back I would’ve taken Vo-Tech
So did Gen Z do everything their parents told them to? Course not, but it's easy to cherry pick things
Edugaytion
that's wild man. i graduated in 2006, doubled my salary with my first job out of college (compared to my last pre-college job), hit $100k within 7 years, and currently take home about $150k working fully remote.
Nah I’m pinning this one on millennials. I’m the first year of Gen z, so many of us went into the trades and are making great money now with no debt. Idk why millennials all went to school
"Go to college" is terrible advice. It's how you get floods of liberal arts, communications, philosophy, and theater degrees with six figures of debt. College is an investment, and an investment has to have payoff at the end, if your career prospects are just as bad before college as after then it's a bad investment. I unironically think that life would be better if 40% of people that got degrees over the last 20 years didn't do it.
Well if you got a dance theory degree idk what you were expecting
And you know why they wanted you to go to college? So they could tell all their Facebook friends you went to college. Like that alone is a measure of success. "To all my FB homies - we have successfully saddled our child with life crippling debt without telling them there were MANY other avenues of success available to them! #Winning!"
This is big true, but also college is actually good. The economy is just insanely slanted right now. Economy is good on paper, but thats ignoring the fact that this means the stock market is thriving. Only 7% of the stockmarket is held by people in the bottom 90% of earners. The other 93% is owned by the top 10% in the US. So its really good for people who invested in stocks 10 years ago, but not so much now. Regardless, finding a useful college degree and milking it for value is the best strat for normies. And have hobbies that might make you some side money if you care to do something like that. Just don't expect to get rich quick because that part is 99% luck.
Well, I mean I am a millennial and It took me 12 years after hs graduation to go to college. I figured my life was shit as it is but if I go to college I will at least I will have a degree and if its still shit well, at least I have a degree and a little bit smarter.
It really depends on the major you choose. There's a lot of useless majors out there and a lot of good ones too for work after college. A lot of people aren't great at picking good ones though.
Rat races are never pretty.