Beastie's Babbles

[jabbahunt]

Yes, yes, and yes.
Still the top ten percent of schools will obtain the top 10 percent of jobs.
It is very important to obtain your degree, its your choice to execute it. Even if you don't choose to use it, your communication skills or abilities are enhanced. Also, the variety of people you deal with in college will help you in dealing with employers as well as employees.
One thing to remember about school, it is a door to somewhere else. Very few degrees send someone out with enough knowledge to do a specific job. What they do is guide you, and let future employers that you ability to learn a task, and college allows for a higher as well as broader ability.
These are general statements, not meant for the few of you that have the natural ability or genius to obtain this on your own.

ps. Beastie, not sure how you did in school or how you have applied yourself afterward, but you can't go on to a masters or phd with just a high-school diploma.

[SoulEvan]

No comment. Haven't experienced college yet to say anything. All I know is high school, so far, hasn't done a whole lot more for me than make me bored and miserable. The people are really my only interest. :blink:

[Beastie]

Ok so Jaba makes the only point so far and also made another in game. It's a valid one: how can I really even suggest that college is a bad thing?

Disclaimer... again this thread is my canvas. I paint many pictures, and the one I painted in my opening to topic 3 was of an unhappy Beastie with some regret for my schooling. This is absolutely untrue. College was the best best best time of my life. And I am happy with my station in life since.

With that said, I still plan to make some points and further they still need to be addressed.

WHAT ABOUT the fact that job placement for college grads is at an all time low... and worsening?
A grad gets into the market to advertise himself as a fresh, available resource and he/she sees that he/she in now in competition with 8 million other fresh, (some of them stale from 2 graduations ago) available, and just-as-capable resources. Now the employer can be even more picky because there are so many resumes, each with that magic 4 year degree.

Eventually the grad will probably settle for a lesser position. Lesser because it pays less and lesser because it may be one that he/she could have gotten with or without the degree. If promotions are based in merit, great! If they are based on seniority, plan to stagnate for a good while.

Education inflation is between 8 and 12 perecent. Cost of living and wage increase is around 3 percent. If I have a child today, a 4 year university education will cost nearly $250,000 in 18 years. Are we ready for that?
Maybe that is the solution right there to suppressing the number of kids that go back to 10% lol.

My office just placed an ad for 1 position. It is a phone job and pays $10.31/hour. We got 75 resumes in a day-and-a-half. All had at least some schooling. Should college grads have to compete this fiercely for a position like this?

Anyway these are just some tough issues that I come across every day in dealing with recent grads. Any thoughts?

[GRITS]

Not sure how much I want to delve into this one Beastie. I think a lot depends on what you do with your degree after graduation and what you were doing on your way to graduation. I use to counsel undergraduates in Biology, most considered themselves pre-med. One of the things I told them that would help get them 'noticed', since the competition for med school was against all the other 'smartest kids in the class', was their off hours schedule. If you graduate with top honors and were not involved in extracurricular activities...it doesn’t carry the same weight if you did more with your life than book learning. I think most employers want some one diverse or ‘well rounded’.
Many of my 'classmates' now manage fast food places or work in retail. I am one of the few people in the group that I hung out with as an undergraduate that actually works in the same field that they majored in college. College seems to have turned into a ‘major in anything’ just get the paper or you don’t get a job mentality.
For the last few years I have been responsible for hiring employees to work in my labs. I need someone for a job that is a tedious one and requires a lot of manual dexterity. I look for someone with the enthusiasm to learn that can do the required work and that I can get along with for 8 hours a day. In my last lab the woman I hired was a HS graduate that upon completion of the practical part of the interview I knew she was the one I wanted to hire and she turned out to be a great worker. No she couldn’t trouble shoot problems very well and her people skills were less than desirable but she was a damn good worker and could handle what the job needed. She still works there and it has been over 3 years now. Small salary increases but no real advancement available past the level she is at now. I set out to find the same kind of employee here in my new lab….ok same skills a little more personality…. and Human Resources would not allow me to look at applications from people without a bachelor degree from an accredited school of higher learning because of the salary that I was offering. I have a great employee and she is very independent and is trusted to work on her own..... but did I miss someone who would have been just as good or even better without a degree?
Fair or unfair it’s just the way the world is these days at least in the education and science fields and I am sure many more. It is all relative. You may not think your degree is significant but ask someone without one how hard it is for them to find a job. With the flood of hopefuls with degrees it is getting harder to get even a “nothing” job without one .The jobs that use to be available to HS graduates are going to the college graduates. The better jobs are going to those with an education that are a little more assertive or whose education is a little more specialized.
If you choose a career that allows outside ‘testing’ for certification then a college degree may not be necessary. But if want a career and not just a job then I think it is becoming mandatory that ‘some college’ be part of your resume’. That piece of paper has become a way of weeding out at least some of the applications. One of the things a college degree tells an employer is that you can make a commitment to do something for four (or more) years and accomplish tasks put before you.
Bottom line it all depends on how assertive you are and how good you are at what you want to do. Keeping in mind a degree might get you in the door but your skills are what will keep the job and allow for advancement….then again…is advancement available if you don’t have an advance degree???
Needless to say I believe education is important both for the practical and speculative knowledge that you gain. But I am not sure how fair it is to someone who is intuitively good at what they do.

[kermit]

i wish i could put "good at ricochet" on my resume as an extracaricular activity but i doubt it would fly (unless gemakk was my future employer or something...lol). that is what i'm most worried about...i joined the national mathematical honors society hoping that it will help in this regard. the group does spnsor book raffles and trips to math conferences and such...but it's still math and i may need to do something legitimate that makes me seem more well-rounded as an individual.

i play a few musical instruments...which is always a question on scholarship applications for some reason...but i think i can pretty much give up on having a collegiate sports carreer this late in the game... it's not uncommon for to eat three donughts, drank a beer and smoke a cig at the same time...i'm not exactly in the best of shape...:D

[jabbahunt]

Volunteer at local musuem, little league, anything like that. And remember, when you get the degree it does not mean instant fame, if you look at most people their career mirrors their high school or college antics. But you can choose what you do in school and keep the motivation for your career. IE: Grits is the one wishing she could do more for the girl without a college education.

[fritoman]

I WAS TERRIBLE IN SCHOOL, so i decided not to go thru it again in collage, so worked at the lower jobs for awhile and my buddy got me hooked up working for fritolay, making about 54,000 a year and thats about all i will make cept for stock options and bennys, unless i move up in the company which i already have told them i am not interested, my brother on the other hand went to UMR and graduated with a computer sience and tech degree, went to work for GTE and got his masters, went to work for lockheed martin and now makes 160,000 to 180,000 a year, soooo if you wanna make a living you probly dont need and education but if you wanna live well then you will need it

[g-boy]

I do think it depends on the field. If you major in a business field, you're going to have a hard time. Same with like psychology, history, literature, that kind of stuff. It also means that getting a masters or higher degree is going to be a huge help in getting a job in the field you graduated in. I'm planning on majoring in biological sciences, and I've thought about forensic biology. But it isn't the highest paying job, nor is a higher degree necessary. I'm not sure if I want to go pre-med yet... I have lots of time to think about it, see how I do in college. I can't say much about the job market, I know little about it yet. All I know is I will be shooting for the highest degree I can achieve, and see where it goes. I want to get a bachelor's, find a job, and go to college part time to further my degree. We shall see how it all works out.

[kermit]

i'm at that point now...

i think i'm going to go to graduate school for sure now...i have to apply next semester and take the gre and all that still.

it's a good idea to join clubs and participate in sports or campus events...because i'm realizing that real-life is all about networking and communication...that's the big money.

i think classes and books are only one part of the equation...w/o effective marketing and salesman-ship, your ideas mean nothing to other people.

if my kids want to go to a trade school and learn to be an electrician or plumber, that would be okay w/ me...but i don't want them to settle for anything less than a comfortable life-style.

[Beastie]

Ok Ok Ok,

So my rebel-rousing sparked no debate after all. We can now draw a few conclusions:
1. College is simply nothing to argue about. You are DEFINITLY in a better position with some college education, with or without a full degree.
2. Those that get GREAT jobs without college probably were either lucky, handed the job from friends or family, or simply in the right place at the right time.
3. The job you get and how far you go may not be directly related to the degree you chose, but the schooling its self is still responsible for getting you in the door.
4. Applying yourself to the fullest is more important in some fields than in others, when in school. Extra curricular activites are always good regardless of field.

Ok so it wasn't a great topic. Oh well. I can deal.
I will apparetnly have to attack a more vulnerable institution next week!

Thanks all,
Beastie