For those retired - do you see college as important as when you were college age?

[tcartwri]

BTW I still get anxious when the discussion of qualification and education comes up in a group of my coworkers/peers. Even though I'm the old guy in the shop with all the experience... That has always bothered me and would have been worth the effort just to have some paperwork to frame on the wall.

 

[MacLawn]

I'll post now, and come back later to read all the other posts. Man, am I old fashioned! I have a Master's, me wife a doctorate degree. So, we definitely believe in education. My old fashioned ideas - when I was in college, I believed that education was good for education's sake. Education in the classical sense. English, literature, humanities, a real classic education. Even though my work has required my education, I really didn't look at education as a means to making money. I viewed it as a means to improve myself overall. I'm out of it boys, a real dinosaur, still thinking the way educated people thought 200 years ago and more. Or course nowadays with the costs of college, one has to think of the so called return on investment in monetary matters. To me, that is very sad. But of course necessary. We have definitely put our priorities in wrong places in America.

Ok, I'll be back…

Oh, this DOES say, "For those retired"… I'm 65 going on 66, so I qualify. Semi-retired.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

What I saw when I went to college, was people spending money at the wrong level.
Your Undergraduate degree is over 100 credit hours. That is a lot of money to be dropping at that level. Go to an instate school over a private school. Spend money at the Graduate or Doctoral level.
The reason I say this is because out of the first six roomates I had, I was the only one who graduated. I saw time and again friends who wasted money. They racked up debt and were in programs they did not want to be in and dropped out.
For my area of employment, --education-- A BS is the basic you will need. To get your permanent certification you have to have a masters degree. To keep the certification you need to continually take classes and take part in staff development. My wife and I are both teachers, and see student teachers coming from private school who have so much student debt, it will take them 1/2 their careers to pay it off.

I admittedly have not read every post in this thread, but I will add my 2 cents any way. I once had a very eccentric, but smart college professor bring up the subject of why we were in his class. The executive summary is as follows: "If you are going to college with the intent of making a lot of money, then you are making a mistake. You go to college so that you can do what you want to do in life".

I have found that to be true. I graduated with a degree in Biology and Chemistry and went to work in an industrial research lab. Loved the work, but hated the politics and the academic snobbery that filtered down from the PhDs and management. Finding that I was in a dead end job, I went to Law school at night, got my degree, passed the bar and went to work for the State Department of Health where I finished out my career as a Supervising Attorney in the Air Quality Division of the Department of Environmental Quality.

Besides, I wanted the experience of college and the knowledge it offered. That was important to me.

 

[rswyan]

From reading your posts, you seem to have wisdom and smarts beyond many that I know with degrees. I am a retired, degreed mechanical engineer. Over the years, I worked with a number of older individuals who were engineers by experience who taught me a lot. A degree is no assurance that someone has a lick of common sense, but these days, in certain fields, you cannot get a job without an accredited degree.

Spot on ... :thumbsup:

Eddie is one that can, and has, done ...

Many times lack of academic accomplishment lies at the feet of the teacher or educational system ... not the student.

 

[California]

Man, am I old fashioned! I have a Master's, me wife a doctorate degree. So, we definitely believe in education. My old fashioned ideas - when I was in college, I believed that education was good for education's sake. Education in the classical sense. English, literature, humanities, a real classic education. Even though my work has required my education, I really didn't look at education as a means to making money. I viewed it as a means to improve myself overall. I'm out of it boys, a real dinosaur, still thinking the way educated people thought 200 years ago I'm 65 going on 66. Semi-retired.

"If you are going to college with the intent of making a lot of money, then you are making a mistake. You go to college so that you can do what you want to do in life". ... ... I wanted the experience of college and the knowledge it offered. That was important to me.

I agree with both posts, that 'Education in the classical sense' is worthwhile. This enriches one's life, gives one a sense of their place in the universe. And perhaps the perspective to work toward improving the human condition.

Apparently today this kind of education is a rare luxury.

 

[dmccarty]

I'm not saying all virtual offerings are scams or have limited educational value. They do open the means to scamming with no investment other than some PC's and phones.

More Trouble for For-Profit Colleges: They Can't Keep Calling Your Cell|David Halperin
$200,000 financial aid scam hits Bay Area college - SFGate

Given the percentage of kids that start school, do not graduate with a degree but end up with large debt, is the current system much more than a scam for many kids and their families? Looking at the kids who actually get a degree that allows them to get a decently paid job and the percentage drops further. Course even the kids who do get a degree are often saddled with large debut and a degree that does not help pay for the debt. Which is the real scam?

The EIC(Educational Industrial Complex) pushes kids into college and the reality is that many people SHOULD NOT go to college. College is not for everyone. The EIC has created this idea that one must go to college to be successful and if one does not have a degree well, you aint so smart and you will not do well in life. In the US, people working in the trades are not as respected as they should be, yet we need trades people more than ever. this week, the Wall Street Journal had yet another article about the lack of qualified industrial workers. The US needs a vocational educational system but what we had in the past has been diluted for a variety of reasons but certainly the idea that every kid needs to go to college has helped the dilution. Companies want to hire industrial workers with the skills they require, but ironically, the same companies are responsible for the lack of vocational training. The companies don't want to spend money to train works who then might leave for higher paying jobs which is a reasonable concern. Course, if the company was LOYAL to the workers and paid the worker a decent wage, the employee would have no reason to look elsewhere for a job. DUH.

Flip side, managers have a difficult problem because of technology. They need to hire employees that have a given skill set, yet the skill set can be hard to find. The job might require skills A, B, C, D and E, yet potential employees might only have the B, D, and E skills. You have to wonder how many potential employees don't send in a resume if they don't match all of the skill sets? You really see this in IT jobs were different technologies/skills are being created at a rapid rate and it is impossible to have someone will all of the skills.

The reality is that the US needs to refocus vocational training in high school instead of pushing all kids to go to college. The states need to take a hard look at the rising cost of a college education and the consumers of college education need to make some better decisions. A few years ago on the morning radio show I listen too, a mother called in to talk about college costs. She had saved for her daughters education and the kid could go to a FLA school without any debt. The daughter also got an offer to go to a very good school out of state that might require a bit of debt but not much. However, the daughter wanted to go to Columbia so she could live in New York City which would leave her deeply in debt. What degree did she want? ENGLISH. There was going to be no way in heck that kid would be able to easily to pay of the Columbia debt yet her mother was trying to figure out what to do. Well DUH, the kid goes to school in FLA, or maybe the other out of state school, but no way do you go to Columbia.

Later,
Dan

 

[downsizingnow48]

Our daughters did both the liberal and the job-oriented higher education. The older one did a humanities track for 4 years. Got out of college, couldn't find a job. Went back to school, got a master's degree in epidemiology, got a job right away. Her sister, two years behind, saw that. After two years in a humanities track, she transferred to a forest science college, finished that, got a master's degree in hydrology, got a job right away. So they got both the general education and the career-oriented education.

 

[dave1949]

I agree with both posts, that 'Education in the classical sense' is worthwhile. This enriches one's life, gives one a sense of their place in the universe. And perhaps the perspective to work toward improving the human condition.

Apparently today this kind of education is a rare luxury.

Just as it used to be--for good or bad. Prior to GI's returning from WWII with GI Bill benefits, college was a lot more rare.

I also agree with MacLawn; higher education can be its own reward and personal enrichment. A person could educate themselves in a classical sense, and I think people did that historically. They also spent time with acknowledged leading thinkers in given areas. This was really the roots of creating universities.

Of course, people from wealthy families could more easily afford to send their (male) kids off to study with so and so for a year or two. But I think some starving learners were there due to their personal thirst for knowledge too. Not much has changed. :laughing:

Attempting a more universal and egalitarian system of higher education is not easy. I don't think I can accurately judge the necessity or usefulness to society of a more universal higher education system. Theoretically there should be benefits. On the other hand, a sociopath who can quote Homer is still a sociopath.

 

[SPIKER]

I guess I am a bit more along the lines of school of hard knocks and can say that much of higher learning is responsible for the failure of many of the students coming out of college. The times are a changing and the US is falling way behind because of how our education system has been working.

These schools are often setting up kids for failure rather than success as they want to push the liberal arts and Business management degrees which only lead to require MORE schooling as every employer already knows those degrees are filler/fodder for colleges. It required students to take on a great deal of debt and learn a great deal on subjects that are basically only good to answer trivia questions on game shows...

WHY do I say that? Well I am BACK in school again after 20 years of having my Associates degree in Electrical Engineering Technology. I found that for most part I was having to correct all the mistakes made by the older more educated engineers or encouraging them to update their methods to meet new codes. Since I was usually the GO TO guy I always got some of the less desirable jobs but always got them done and FIXED all the issues left to me. Always praised by the bosses but when companies close or bought out it means you are left hunting jobs again.

Now being back in school I'm stuck with the school saying I have to retake all these BS classes to meet the schools requirements. This leaves me taking classes on long ago dead guys that have nothing to do with what I want/need dramatically running up costs, time and reducing the likelihood of graduation.


The employers also are partly to blame, one of the posters said he had a secretary who opened all the resumes and toss all the ones without degrees. That is part of the problem today that companies want/will only look at a degree and not the individual. These companies often end up with the fresh out of school kid with little experience and maybe not even qualified for the job at hand. My last company job had me get let go because I was doing Engineering Work without a BS/MBS/PHD. The company was bought out and the new owners kept on only the labors and people with 4yr degrees. They dumped people who were with the company since it stared one with 38 years and one with 43 years working there.


Personally I think the failed education system starts from junior high/high school time. The kids should have a LOT more useful LIFE SKILLS type education vs the Education simply for educations sakes. The Vocational schools are where we need to push the average kid towards teach them life skills that will help them get and keep a job. While it is great to have continuing education and education simply for educations sake that should be more the exception than the rule. Going into the Military is always one of the best ways for the average kid to get a great education and work experience, training and or life experience of seeing the world and who other cultures are. Reading about other cultures on FB or Internet or some old dusty text is no where near as good as going there and seeing it first hand. That is where I started after Vocational school which was fun but I made the mistake of taking something I already was doing (auto-body repair painting.) My SR year I had better painting skills than the instructor and did help teach other kids in my class those skills.

I'm now back taking Trig classes as after 20 years of NOT using it for my chosen career field I need to re-hone those skills and RE-Take some more psychology classes for my BSEE degree.

Mark

 

[jaotguy]

one simple question ... what happens when you were around before the "IT / computer engineering courses " were even thought of by the education system ... you know , where you were teaching the courses/ropes to younger people , before there was any certification ... chicken and the egg stuff ...

had one company go through 4 "certified" consultants that couldn't do the job ( 4 months wasted ) ... they finally called me in desperation ( and had run out of degreed applicants ) ... 3 days later , it was up and running properly .... simple solution , but the newly "papered" bodies had no real practical experience.


yes , too much is put on the "degree" and employers equate it to the ability to think ....

yes our education system is geared to esoterical things that don't matter in the real world ..... they should teach the core subjects necessary to do the JOB ... leave the artsy fartsy extras out , and shorten the time ( and money ) needed to get the degree....

here's an idea ... make it mandatory for the institutes to have jobs lined up for all graduating students in the field they are studying ...
no jobs , no courses can be offered .... say 9 - 12 months guaranteed placement, if the graduate measures up.... and no tossing them out for the new batch.

then both the school and student take a real interest in "success"....

frightening proposal to all those institutions ... you only do well when your students do well....
they would soon respond quickly to the real world demands for job skill sets ....