Attitudes about Education - a rant...

I have to get this off my chest. For those of you who look at the prospects of college education only as a means of "making money," I think you are really missing out on the value of education. Of course people who go to college do so with the intent of having a better life, but this emphasis on the idea that the only way education can pay off is by the potential to earn more money is F-ED UP!

Education is about learning how to think, and training your mind how to work - even if what you're studying doesn't have an immediate pay off. EDUCATION IS ITS OWN REWARD, PEOPLE.

GRRRRR.


edit typo grrr

I'm kidding. The luxury of a liberal arts education is that you are flexible to change. Going to college for a specific job sometimes traps you in the wrong field or in a field that is no longer marketable.
The problem is most people are scared away by the cost of an education that isn't directly aligned to a profession.

Speaking as somebody who got an education just to make money and came out of college as a knuckle dragging technocrat, I was delighted when a niece chose "Art History". She now has a doctorate in it and she's wonderful to be around.

Unfortunately I found out too late about why we go to school and it seems to be a secret the education system does not want to get out. I was fortunate to have one year of phenomenal education but now wish I had more.

Go to school for a job and all you are is a degreed slave.

that's being offshored.

There's no ROI for me. Only a big-ass debt that cannot be paid back reasonably given what jobs ARE available.

In a world where flowers smelled nice and didn't cause allergies, I would agree with you entirely. Unfortunately, this is real life. Most people don't have $30k to fritter away on education that won't get them anywhere in real life.

It's not about immediate payoff. It's about being able to pay back and not being taken for a ride in the process. When I was at university over a decade ago, some of my associates were complaining about the irrelevancy of some of the courses. Lord knows how much more empty fodder is required for those degrees these days...

..about what I said. The point is, if you go to college concentrating on it only as a means to a job, you probably will get screwed in the long run. I was a humanities major, and now I'm building web sites, working with computers and I'm able to write among other things. You know what made me capable of learning these technical skills? THE HUMANITIES! Yes, learning languages that I don't use today has been invaluable to me. I guess it's how you look at it. I think your response was written with the very assumptions I'm talking about.

Train and improve your mind, and the rest will take care of itself.

Being a self satisfied success IMO is the goal, college is not a guarantee of success. However having the genes that get you through college is a pretty good indication of future success. Many people arrive by starting off as carpenters or mechanics or septic pumpers or truck drivers or dispatchers or gardeners or thousands of other things and some progress into owning a company and some even become wealthy some become good conversationalists and there are many who are well liked by their friends. Many who do go to college are not suited to be business men or employees and thus end up miserable as failures in their own mind. You seem to believe that college makes the man. IMO this is a lot like saying cloths make the man. More and more it is proving out that genes make the man.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/health/15gene.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1