Is College Worth it? So many graduates In Debt/Underemployed

[superresistant]

Main issues as I see it:

1. Offer and Supply rules. If too much people graduate a graduation will worth nothing.

2. Wrong direction, 90%+ wants the graduation to get a good job. For this technical education should be enough, college should be for people up to create jobs.

3. Governments living up for statistics, so to display a population with "high education" they create all sort of useless graduations.

This.
Why is it so hard for people to understand ?
If today 99.9% of people able to have a degree have a degree then the degree is worth nothing among these people.
You are only helping your State propaganda. You are a tool for statistic.
A degree is a paper that is not worth wiping your ass with.

Most of people that I know from studies are stuck to low-paid-jobs and some of them are still unemployed.
The day I decided to not give a damn about graduation is the day I started doing concrete things which lead me to a better life.

[Jcw188]

My wife and I always say that my kid can do whatever he wants.  College is great in terms of the social aspects to it, and living away from home for the first time, etc.  And I think you learn a lot, in certain courses.  However kids should do what makes them happy.  You can get by just fine in a technical trade or artist, as long as you know what you're in forand it could be harder to get a job. 

[Don007]

Remember that finding a well-paid job will be easier if you've passed a study.  Currently, with the crisis, this is also the fact for normal paid jobs. Atleast here, in The Netherlands.  For an average of even below average job requires some kind of related certificate. If you didn't went to school, you might only find a shitty job if you're lucky (as people from Poland / Romania etc took already these jobs in the Netherlands).

[tins]

My wife and I always say that my kid can do whatever he wants.  College is great in terms of the social aspects to it, and living away from home for the first time, etc.  And I think you learn a lot, in certain courses.  However kids should do what makes them happy.  You can get by just fine in a technical trade or artist, as long as you know what you're in forand it could be harder to get a job. 

I feel similar about my son, though I will push that he does go to college.
My wife and I are very, very different. She got her bachelor's, then 2 different master's, just finished her doctorate.
I could not bring myself to make it through one year of college and dropped out...too much of a social butterfly.
But we are an example of college degrees not making or breaking life goals and careers. My wife is a school superintendent and I own a fairly large insurance marketing organization. Even better than the money, we are both HAPPY in our fields. There is an old saying that is very true, 'If you are happy in your career, you'll never have to work another day in your life'.
To sum up my hopes for my son. More than just telling him to go to college or don't go, I will encourage him to find a career path that fulfill him and teach him to work hard. Loving what one does and hard work will make a person more successful than any plaque on the wall.

[Mike Christ]

The day I decided to not give a damn about graduation is the day I started doing concrete things which lead me to a better life.

QFT

[sana8410]

Yes, it's possible to educate yourself..but good teachers make it easier
Yes, it's possible to get a good job without a degree..possible but increasingly difficult
Some professions like law or medicine require degrees, some like engineering or science are close to impossible without a degree
So yes, college is still necessary, but it is essentially a medieval organization that desperately needs to reinvent itself

[twelvesigns]

Yes in short it is worth it!

[marilyngroom]

Unfortunately you need a degree to get certain good jobs.

[marilyngroom]

Yes in short it is worth it!

Could be worth it to you, but you have to look at it, is it worth it for everyone. Would a better system be better?

[tins]

Unfortunately you need a degree to get certain good jobs.

It would be smart to attempt to figure out what kind of career they would be interested in, before spending thousands and thousands of dollars on that education.

[thok422]

I agree that the current debt/exponentially decreasing acceptance rates make it difficult, but I can say as a current college student that I am better off learning what I am now than just taking my high school diploma and running with it.

[counter]

If you have the drive and are the kind of person who focuses on a goal and gets it college may not be the best for you.  You most likely will find away to succed IMO.

[Bit_Happy]

Mainstream view:
You need a degree to compete for the best jobs.
If there is any way to get into college you must do it.

Rebel view:
If you are old enough to apply for college, and you haven't yet figured out how messed up the system is, then you have serious issues.
College is 4 years of indoctrination and partying.
Even if you like to party, avoid college to save a huge amount of money and student loan debt.

Summary:
If you are confident in your ability to start a successful business and/or learn valuable skills that do not require college, then college is a huge waste of time and money.

[BCEmporium]

We must separate two views here, the European and American.
Americans need to take a loan to get to college, Europeans have it nearly free but paid by all with taxes.
Still can't figure which is worse, if put analphabet farmers paying others' college or slam dunk youth into deep debt.

[dogechode]

The problem is pretty simple but difficult to fix. Companies are looking for more and more education as a way to "screen" applicants. Not because they really need people with degrees, but because they need a way to filter through the massive number of applicants they typically receive. I have seen job listings for positions that honestly don't legitimately even NEED a person with a bachelor's degree, yet they are requesting candidates have a Master's in order to apply. Ludicrous!

Since you basically need a bachelor's degree or higher unless you want to work at a gas station, everyone has to go to college, regardless of whether the 4 years of "learning" will actually help them do their job better or not.

If this is going to change, the first change will have to come from hiring organizations, because as long as 99% of job listings for any kind of decent job making a living wage list college as a requirement or strongly desired criteria, then people will keep feeling like their kids MUST attend college.

[Hazir]

The problem is pretty simple but difficult to fix. Companies are looking for more and more education as a way to "screen" applicants. Not because they really need people with degrees, but because they need a way to filter through the massive number of applicants they typically receive. I have seen job listings for positions that honestly don't legitimately even NEED a person with a bachelor's degree, yet they are requesting candidates have a Master's in order to apply. Ludicrous!

Since you basically need a bachelor's degree or higher unless you want to work at a gas station, everyone has to go to college, regardless of whether the 4 years of "learning" will actually help them do their job better or not.

If this is going to change, the first change will have to come from hiring organizations, because as long as 99% of job listings for any kind of decent job making a living wage list college as a requirement or strongly desired criteria, then people will keep feeling like their kids MUST attend college.

This is pretty much good summary of what is going on. There is too many college graduates in the first place. There is not really job for everyone after college, also 'higher education' is overrated. Only practice at work actually makes you a good employee not years spent in college. Finally demands of employers about future employees are so divorced from reality that it is not even funny anymore.

[Bit_Happy]

The problem is pretty simple but difficult to fix. Companies are looking for more and more education as a way to "screen" applicants. Not because they really need people with degrees, but because they need a way to filter through the massive number of applicants they typically receive. I have seen job listings for positions that honestly don't legitimately even NEED a person with a bachelor's degree, yet they are requesting candidates have a Master's in order to apply. Ludicrous!

Since you basically need a bachelor's degree or higher unless you want to work at a gas station, everyone has to go to college, regardless of whether the 4 years of "learning" will actually help them do their job better or not.

If this is going to change, the first change will have to come from hiring organizations, because as long as 99% of job listings for any kind of decent job making a living wage list college as a requirement or strongly desired criteria, then people will keep feeling like their kids MUST attend college.

For decades the Las Vegas area was a place where middle class workers could find stable high paying jobs without a college degree, but that changed radically when The Great Recession started.
Nationwide/globally the world needs to stop requiring a degree for basic level supervisor (and other) jobs.

[BCEmporium]

We had a funny one around not that long ago, a local administration office was hiring an undertaker where the minimum scholarship requirement was a complete high school. Not yet a degree, but still... why in hell do you need 12 years of school to dig with a shovel?!

[dogechode]

This is pretty much good summary of what is going on. There is too many college graduates in the first place. There is not really job for everyone after college, also 'higher education' is overrated. Only practice at work actually makes you a good employee not years spent in college. Finally demands of employers about future employees are so divorced from reality that it is not even funny anymore.

I mean if you really think about the jobs out there, there are a lot of jobs like:

-Customer service
-Sales
-HR

These are just a few examples but honestly what do people learn from college that is necessary to do those jobs?

Another good example is IT. If you don't already dick around with computers and you actually know so little about them that you would benefit from the low-level IT shit they teach you in college IT classes, then you are never going to be even so much as a half-way decent help desk employee let alone a real IT professional. If you do already dick around with computers, then you have nothing to really gain from the classes.

Programming is similar in that honestly, what they teach you in college programming classes pretty much goes right out the window when you start a job programming. I think it would be good to have taken like 2-3 classes just so you are familiar with the basic concepts of programming, but after the first couple all the higher level stuff they teach you doesn't wind up applying at your job at all. When you get hired by a good company they teach you from scratch how to code the way they want it done. If you work for a bad company they just expect you to learn it on your own and the college stuff you learned still doesn't help any.

Yet in all of these examples, if you look at job postings for these types of positions they all want college, and people with freaking master's degrees apply to these jobs it's absurd.

[Snowfire]

There are really two questions here.

Whether college is "worth it" to the individual in a narrow, monetary sense is often a tough call, the exact answer depending on context. There are certainly cases where an individual can end up financially worse off in life having gone to college than if s/he had not done so.

It is a different thing altogether from society's standpoint. Better educated people are better citizens; they are trained to think better; they are less vulnerable to superstition, fraud, and charlatanry, political or otherwise. Educated people are also more interesting to be around, all other things being equal. Society is stronger and more civil when its members are better educated. This may not be much consolation for the poor guy with a PhD in literature or physics who is waiting tables or driving a taxi; but it is nonetheless true.