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Forums - General Discussion - Is college worth it?

I completed Electronic classes in high school. Got a scholarship to a university that used to be an all girl school. You needed to pass a swimming test to graduate from that school. I can't swim. So I turned that down and went to a college close to home. Got kinda bored with it. Landed a job as an assembly electrician. Still kept going to college only to meet girls while I worked my job. Got bored of college again and stopped. Wanted to go into computer science, but it was so boring.

10 years later, I'm the boss at work and I'm hiring for an Electrician right now. I smack my workers' tight man butts and grab their penises. It's not gay.







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Well, learning a trade is always useful, helps you to make more money and stuff, being useful also.
Just attend some quick class on carpentry before you go to college. Someone will have to rebuid everything after the up and coming World War 3.



My grammar errors are justified by the fact that I am a brazilian living in Brazil. I am also very stupid.

I will admit that, to become a supervisor at my job you have to have a college degree--not that it helps. Also, there are people at my job (nuclear power plant) who walk in the front door making triple what I make based on the department they work in. Hell, they probably make more than I make a year in bonuses alone!

I guess I cut myself out of a lot of opportunities but, at the same time, I'm doing better than I ever imagined I would.



All depends on what you want to do with your life. If you want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, architect, vet etc then college is kinda necessary.

If you want to piss away 2-4 years of your life gaining "life experience" before you settle into adulthood I'd suggest travelling the world in a working holiday sort of fashion. I took my family on a holiday to Australia a few months back and we did a 4,500 km road trip to the red centre and back. Every roadhouse we stopped at to fuel up, stay over night or have a break was staffed by at least one young European working tourist. And these are some of the most remote out of the way places in Australia.

Getting yourself into debt, without a reasonable idea of what you're going to do with the education you get from it doesn't sound very sensible to me.

I'm a vet so I had to go to university. But I came out with very little debt because my parents committed to paying for our tertiary educationat least for the first degree, and the cost of university was much lower back then. So I only had to pay off the amount of loan I used to go visit my girlfriend (now my wife) in Macau which was only a couple thousand $. Took 2 years to pay it all off in pretty small installments.

A good approach for those willing, I think, is joining the military and having them pay for your college education. A lot of people get various degrees useful to the military (engineering, medicine, computer science other stuff) and get paid for it. You are bound to the military for a time. But that has it's benefits too.



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

Going to college is something that needs to be heavily researched if you live in the US in particular. School is expensive, school choice can have a huge impact on whether or not you'll even finish, and most degrees aren't worth the expense. Liberal arts schools are practically scams at this point, with most degrees leaving you even worse off after school because now you have a mountain of debt and a job paying the same you could have managed with a bit of gumption and effort without a degree.

The worst thing is that high school teachers anymore have all mastered the "go to college" rhetoric and don't bother establishing that having pre-existing direction is imperative if you don't want to waste time, money, and motivation. The system has established a perfect circle that will leave a generation in debt with degrees that don't match the field they actually ended up in. I make more money than the vast majority of people that actually finished their degree at the school I dropped out of which, to me, is pretty telling of the scam that school is for most people. If you're working at Starbucks during college and are still at Starbucks a year after college, you probably made a bad choice somewhere along the way that you were pushed into by all the insistence that no college means failure.

The funny thing is, I'm $30k in debt, yet I have more financial freedom than so many others. I was able to cover almost $2k in move in costs just a month ago, and yet I still have money in the bank, my credit is healthy, and I have a fresh new PS VR sitting downstairs.

I could be financially smarter, but that isn't the point here. I may as well finish this post with my criteria for going to school:

1) Research before school. Take a gap year or three if you have to in order to figure out what you actually want to do. A few years of potentially making less money is worth actually getting some kind of bang for your thousands of bucks.

2) Don't get a degree in a field that is dying or is already filled to the brim, and don't get a degree in an art based field. When it comes to art, practice and building your portfolio are things you can do for free, and opportunities to network are more prevalent in the real world than at school for the purpose. When it comes to most liberal arts degrees in general, they are either filled, dying, or fields where a degree doesn't make much difference. If you aren't going for an in demand field that will still be in demand in four years and truly benefits from having a degree, don't waste your time.

3) If you feel like you just have to go to college and you'll figure it out as you go, start by focusing on a more general degree that has at least some real world value, like accounting, even if it is a bit dull. Worst case is that you either drop out, or you leave with a degree that will at least get you a good enough job to be comfortable while you figure other things out.

I wouldn't say I regret the three years I spent at college. I figured out a lot about myself in a lot of ways, but it also bred a vehement hatred in me of the broken system of higher education in the US with rapidly rising costs and lowered standards and expectations. I did get my first job experience, which helped propel me into the temp work that got me into the permanent position I have now, but it's kind of funny I got everything I would have out of the job rather than the education I abandoned for a degree I didn't even really want but I settled on.



 

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d21lewis said:

I will admit that, to become a supervisor at my job you have to have a college degree--not that it helps. Also, there are people at my job (nuclear power plant) who walk in the front door making triple what I make based on the department they work in. Hell, they probably make more than I make a year in bonuses alone!

I guess I cut myself out of a lot of opportunities but, at the same time, I'm doing better than I ever imagined I would.

d21, out of curiousity, what state do you live in?



spurgeonryan said:
It is one of the biggest scams to the American public of all time. I work at Walmart and even after maxing out my GI bill I have three degrees, 40 thousand in debt and work at Walmart. My only fun in life is watching my kids play games and posting here.

Fuck college!





......and George Bush Jr.

Hey Spurg,  maybe you life will get better when that Hillary Clinton bitch becomes the next President and wipes away your shitty ass college debt!



I only went to college because I wanted to learn and find a girlfriend. (working on that one still)


Never really cared about money, but I am in $50k debt. Still going to finish up a degree and see where life takes me afterwards. Going to college is convenient for those that don't want to work for 4 years after HS, but I also don't have a problem with working. Eventually my plans will work out.



Got mine for free so I probably can't say, but I've made my money in a field that has little to nothing to do with my studies; honestly my degree may have been something of a hindrance in that regard.



I have been serving in the military for almost 15 years.

I have a BS in Buisness Management and I am almost finished with my Masters.

My degrees have helped with promotion but more importantly have made me a more well rounded and educated individual.

Many jobs that pay over 60k a year will not even let you in to do an interview without some form of degree or certification. I understand this depends on the field, but most higher paying jobs want experience (with) education.

I don't want to start at the ground floor and work my way up, but rather get another job once I retire from the Marines that pays similar to what I make now.

Your field is unique. My buddy was in the Navy for 12 years on Nuke subs and got out and makes almost three figures with no degree. Sure, they are closing his plant soon (because nuclear power scares the masses), but I am confident he can move to a different plant later. He is working on his BS because the plant requires a degree for upper management positions and that is what he is working for.

Sounds like you have a great gig, but I would not consider your situation the norm.