Streams of Consciousness & Thoughts~~~

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It seems like the bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma because almost every high school senior is encouraged to go get one. They also easily receive the loan money to attend. Once the job market is saturated with bachelor's degrees most employers will want to hire only them.

I think it's silly too. My mom, aunts, and uncle all have great office jobs with awesome benefits and none of them have any degrees. But they've had these jobs for over 20 years. Someone in their 20s or 30s would have a difficult time doing that now.

I don't have my bachelors yet (2 years left!) and I can say it is hard getting a job. I work at my church tutoring kids because most offices require at least a bachelors.
 
sealabeag said:
Never eaten a twinkie in my life, but I love the honesty.
Click to expand...

I mean, look at this Twinkie Dog, and the flames and destruction and chaos surrounding it, and tell me that Twinkie farts aren't the absolute worst.

avatar162317_391.gif


(Mind you, I do not have personal experience with this myself. I am a girl. I do not fart.) :rolleyes:
 
ntw1103 said:
On Tuesday, there was a girl at the smallgroup I attended that said she was looking for a job, probably an administration type job. The company I work at said they were going to hire an office admin when they moved to a new office, which will be happening in the near future. I suggested that possibility, and she seemed interesting, so I said I'd get more information from work.

I got the job description and looked it over. They have "Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university" listed as a requirement. What about office administration requires a Bachelor's degree?
Some back story..

When I got hired, they didn't have an office admin, and they still don't. As such, the responsibilities fell onto my team(not quite sure how that worked), and since I was the new guy, it landed on me. This continued until earlier this year, when I got a new boss and he declared it sill for a Computer Scientist to be doing office tasks.

My point of telling that is to say, I know what is required of an office admin, and I can assure you that a bachelor's degree is not needed. Is it just me, or does that seem a bit extreme to have that as a requirement? There are plenty of really intelligent, hard working people who don't hold degrees, and they shouldn't need to.
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It is definitely sad that someone now needs a bachelor's degree to do office tasks. I am saddened in general by the massive push in the U.S. for university degrees in fields like this. Not only is it unnecessary for many of these jobs, it also lowers the value of a degree, places average students into massive debt before they've even started their adult lives, and makes it very difficult for anyone - degree or no degree - to get a job. In addition to those things, colleges have now started catering to the degree rather than educating students, and many of the classes have nothing to do with what the student is planning to do with their life. Often, students simply do what they must to get through the classes rather than attempting to learn. It's a sad cycle that I think, overall, hurts rather than helps our economy - (unless you work for a university). :p
 
MollyConnor said:
It seems like the bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma because almost every high school senior is encouraged to go get one. They also easily receive the loan money to attend. Once the job market is saturated with bachelor's degrees most employers will want to hire only them.

I think it's silly too. My mom, aunts, and uncle all have great office jobs with awesome benefits and none of them have any degrees. But they've had these jobs for over 20 years. Someone in their 20s or 30s would have a difficult time doing that now.

I don't have my bachelors yet (2 years left!) and I can say it is hard getting a job. I work at my church tutoring kids because most offices require at least a bachelors.
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The ironic thing is, I can count on one hand the number of people I know who are actually working within the field their degree was actually for. Everyone else I know who has a BA is working in a field completely unrelated to their degree. I wonder if that's changing for the younger generations at all?

I come from a family that, in general, did not have degrees until my generation. In fact, most people would probably look at a lot of my family and call them a bunch of hillbillies. But they have a wide variety of talents--cooking, art, music, athletics, organization, fixing things--that were all self-taught and not picked up in any classroom.

I have a relative who holds a very successful position at a top company anyone would recognize, and they never finished their BA. Knowing this person (*smile*), it was probably on purpose, just to prove a point!

I went the opposite route. Ironically, I went to school and got a degree because I thought it would give me more options, but God has always given me the grace to pay the bills with jobs that never required a degree. Oh, the money I could have saved on all that schooling!!! :mad: Unfortunately, unlike my family, I did not inherit the "self-taught genius" factor in any way. I only learn through constant, repetitive drilling and I have to be be able to learn from an actual live person, not words on a page.

Sometimes I try to console myself by remembering the passage that says God uses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise (1 Cor. 1:27), because I'm about as simple as it gets! :p
 
Grace-Like-Rain said:
It is definitely sad that someone now needs a bachelor's degree to do office tasks. I am saddened in general by the massive push in the U.S. for university degrees in fields like this. Not only is it unnecessary for many of these jobs, it also lowers the value of a degree, places average students into massive debt before they've even started their adult lives, and makes it very difficult for anyone - degree or no degree - to get a job. In addition to those things, colleges have now started catering to the degree rather than educating students, and many of the classes have nothing to do with what the student is planning to do with their life. Often, students simply do what they must to get through the classes rather than attempting to learn. It's a sad cycle that I think, overall, hurts rather than helps our economy - (unless you work for a university). :p
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Agreed. Having a bachelor's in today's market will get you nowhere. Unless you already have something lined up out of undergrad, I recommend to most students that they attend a community college for a 2 year program and learn a trade.

Unless you're going into medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, etc. Healthcare jobs are essentially recession-proof. Hopefully.
 
I'm not a fan of college education being pushed as the only acceptable route for kids fresh out of high school. I've heard a lot of parents insist that their kid go to college, because higher education is the "only" road to success. I've heard people talk about their kids and say that all they want for them is a good education, that education is the. most. important. thing.

Education IS important. But...I would rather see my kids grow up to do what they choose, and not feel forced down a road they are told is the best way. There are so many other options for young adults than starting out on their own so far in debt that they have to work three jobs just to stay afloat. There are trades to learn, places to travel while they're young and not tied down by anything...there's time to work at crappy jobs while they figure out what it is they even WANT to do with their lives.

I think it's insane that so many kids are taught that they aren't worth anything without a degree...but then they get that degree and often find out it's fairly useless. Yet, they don't want to learn a trade because they've come to believe they're too good for that kind of thing. Everyone wants the highest paying job with the least amount of work involved, and they want it straight out of school and have a hard time adjusting when they discover that's not how the world works. It's no wonder so many young people are depressed...massive debt alongside feeling like you've wasted your time and that your expensive education was pointless...I can't even imagine.

What if, instead, we taught kids that college is an OPTION and that there is nothing demeaning about hard work to earn a living?

Crazy idea, I know.
 
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the push for a "degree" is just another scam like the classic pyramid scheme. sure the schools and loan companies make out like a bandit, the person going into debt for said degree ends up in a lifetime of debt and wasted time.
 
For real, Wise! My friend got a degree in Film and is now $63,000 in debt for it without a job. He went to UT Austin, it's not like he went to a private university.

I went to the local community college and now I'm at the public university without any loans. Praise God!

Sure I would've loved going to UT Austin or A&M like most Texans do, but I couldn't afford that.
 
MollyConnor said:
It seems like the bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma because almost every high school senior is encouraged to go get one. They also easily receive the loan money to attend. Once the job market is saturated with bachelor's degrees most employers will want to hire only them.

I think it's silly too. My mom, aunts, and uncle all have great office jobs with awesome benefits and none of them have any degrees. But they've had these jobs for over 20 years. Someone in their 20s or 30s would have a difficult time doing that now.

I don't have my bachelors yet (2 years left!) and I can say it is hard getting a job. I work at my church tutoring kids because most offices require at least a bachelors.
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It really depends on what you want to do. If you want to be an accountant or an architect then you definitely need a bachelor's. If you want to be a nurse or a secretary or a medical assistant you can get a 2 year degree. But generally speaking, all the comfy, higher-paying jobs where you can make a lot of money without lifting more than a pencil require at least a bachelors.

There are exceptions like salsepeople who start without a bachelors degree and end up making top dollar, especially in real-estate. And then there's the infamous story of how someone started in the mail room or as a floor employee and worked their way to upper management or CEO, but that's probably very rare. It all depends on what you want to do...
 
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I certainly believe education has its place (after all, the Bible tells us to seek wisdom and understanding.)

I'll be the first to tell you that if my Dad needed open-heart surgery, I most certainly wouldn't want a doctor who claimed to be "self-taught"! (Unfortunately, the equivalent of that is happening now days in which medical workers take "quickie" courses for procedures they have little experience with--and people wind up dying.)

I was once told that employers look for degrees as a standard of character and work ethic--they're trying to set a baseline and so they assume that someone who has earned a degree has, to an extent, already demonstrated an ability to work in a professional setting. It's believed that someone who's put in all the work towards a degree has already proved they are self-disciplined and responsible enough to be able to keep up with demands and deadlines.

But I think the biggest problem I have with education is that it's so hit-and-miss, and in some ways, a huge gamble. There are no guarantees. It's a given that people go to school to "find a better job" with higher pay and supposedly, a better life for themselves and their families. But I've known several people who went to school to be nurses, psychologists, and even a pilot--but couldn't find jobs after getting their degrees. (When I left school, a group of doctoral students in the program I was was in the process of suing one of my former professors because they claimed he told them there would be jobs waiting for them--and there weren't any.)

So now these people are left with tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt... and on the surface, their degrees look fantastic. But they can't find anyone who will hire and "pay them what they're worth."

As Cristen touched on, I do think there is a very ugly side to education as well. It often creates a mentality of "elitism" in which everyone thinks they're too good for actual work and should be paid top dollar just for gracing people with their "highly educated" presence. Even here in the forums, people who might not have the best spelling or grammar skills are often relentlessly criticized without mercy.

At one of my former jobs, everyone was supposed to take turns cleaning the bathrooms. Of course, there were several people who felt they were way too good and too important for such a task and left it to the rest of us. I was especially infuriated by one particular male co-worker in his 50's who was trying to pawn the job off onto a young female employee --WHO WAS 7 MONTHS PREGNANT. I can't deny that I wanted to whack the guy in the face with the bowl brush--AFTER I finished cleaning each and every one of those toilets. (Ironically, this man was an alcoholic and was later fired because he thought he was too good for EVERYTHING--and never worked.)

*shrugs*

Now of course, cleaning the bathroom wasn't my favorite job, by far, but one thing is for sure--it was a great way to keep my pride in check. (My pride, yes. But my anger at these "elitist" co-workers? Not so much.)
 
zeroturbulence said:
There are exceptions like salsepeople who start without a bachelors degree and end up making top dollar, especially in real-estate. And then there's the infamous story of how someone started in the mail room or as a floor employee and worked their way to upper management or CEO, but that's probably very rare. It all depends on what you want to do...
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It's not always as rare as some people think. A lot of it has to do with how hard people want to work and if they're willing to do what no one else wants to do. Many people think a job is below them and move on, searching for that elusive unicorn of a perfect job.

In my home state, I worked for a company that had about 11 stores that were all privately owned.

Nearly every one of those owners started out bagging groceries as a teenager and worked their way up to eventually managing--and owning--a store. And a few of them worked up to owning more than one store.
 
Doggone it.

No matter how hard I try, I still manage to make some kind of error/typo in a good majority of my posts, even when I read them 3 times over.

*sigh*

I guess I'm living proof of just how (in)valuable an education can be!!! :p
 
So there was

some talk in

another thread that mentioned how

the person who makes

the 50,000th post in this thread

is going to reach new levels

of mad posting respect.

I'm thinking of trying

to stretch out all my posts until

I reach that magic number...

After all, Roh_Chris and Oncefallen

aren't the only ones

who know how to troll!!! :p:cool::rolleyes:
 
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