By far, the most valuable classes I took for my engineering degree were English. They were valuable, not because I enjoyed them or because they exposed me to things I would not otherwise have experienced, but because they taught me useful communication skills that I could apply to my career. The English classes have helped put food on the table my entire adult life.
If you want to learn a hobby (poetry, badminton, bowling, art history, etc.) then by all means do so and have fun. But don't spend $80K to learn a hobby unless you have more cash (not loans) than you know what to do with. Nobody would consider it smart to pay $200K for a house that is only worth $100K. But we do the exact same thing with college degrees and nobody thinks a thing about it. We have gone over the edge expecting people to spend $80K to get an undergraduate degree in psychology and then another $60K for a masters in counseling so the graduate can make $40K/year as a social worker. Go figure. Really. Go figure.
Six or seven years after college, I considered getting a master's degree in engineering. Then I did the math. I figured the cost of tuition and books. I counted the lost income due to going to school instead of working 40 hours/week. I then looked at what my increase in salary would be. It would have taken decades for me to break even on the deal. So I did not get the advanced degree. Instead, I worked on increasing my career skills in areas companies would be willing to pay for. That strategy turned out to provide much better financial returns than the masters degree.
In this country we have lost our minds going tens of thousands of dollars into debt to get something like a 4 year biology degree without having learned skills for which someone would be will to pay. In my opinion, if you are 18 years old and don't know what you want to do for your career, then get a job and save up your money. The best way to find a mushroom is to spend time in a place where there are mushrooms. The best way to find a career is to spend time in a place where there are careers (i.e. the market place).
Once you find yourself and figure out what you want to do, then go to college if college is required for your chosen career. The last place you need to be when trying to find your career is in college. Teaching careers are the careers that you can find in college. Business careers, engineering careers, nursing careers, etc. don't normally exist in college. They exist in business. They exist in engineering firms. They exist in hospitals, etc. Since careers (other than teaching careers) don't normally exist in college, it's futile to search for them there. The engineering classes I took in college did not teach me anything about what being an engineer was like. I only found out what being an engineer was like by working as an intern around engineers in an engineering department at a company.
I'm not against education. I'm all for it. However, it is foolish to pay more for something than it is worth. It is also foolish to pay for something that you will unlikely use. You may say, "You never know what you might learn in college that you might use some day." Well, there are lots of things in a grocery store that I could buy because "You never know when you might be able to use it." Instead of buying something there's a small I might possibly use (rice cakes comes to mind), I buy eggs and milk. So, how about buying courses in college that you KNOW you will use? That seems to me like a much better purchase. Or if you choose a career that is not required or advanced by having a college degree, then you don't need a college degree. College would only be teaching you hobbies, not a career.
Obed
