Did you attend a college or university?

[Big J]

Incertain corners of society in the UK, it has become very popular to sneer at tertiary level education, and anyone who tries to talk up the value of going to university for any other reason than a guaranteed higher wage is shouted down. It's not exactly a mainstream view, but it is rather common among the sort of people who read the Daily Mail, consider themsleves to be up-and-comers, and genuinely believe they know all about universities, much more so than those who work there, despite never having attended one themselves. They're especially fond of castigating academics as all belonging to a particular political club that they perceive as "evil", "wrong" and wholly opposite to them. A totally typical line of argument is "Universities are full of pointless courses, like a degree in golf club management". This myth - which many choose to believe because they want to - originates in the fact that one further education institution, elevated to university status in 1992, was based near one of the major golf courses in the UK, and responded to demand from a specialist, local market by offering a low-level (far beneath university degree equivalent) course on management of a golf club business.

It's easy to get frustrated with people like that, though I try to remember that most of them are subconciously trying to make themselves feel better for not having had the opportunity to experience higher education by belittling its value. I'm far more offended by those who did have the opportunity and either don't appreciate it, or waste their time sniping on facebook about universities being a waste of time because they didn't get the grades to which they felt entitled. [huh]

Yep, I can relate to that.
I went to college, and two universities to get my Phd.. Paid for it all myself with part-time jobs. My father insists on accusing me of wanting to be 'above myself' and 'forgetting where I came from', along with introducing me as 'My son, he's not a real doctor'.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If ever there were an area where the Boys from Marketing deserve to be drawn and quartered, it's in regard to these for- profit unaccredited schools. They're notorious for their high percentage of student loan defaults, and for pressuring their students to incur even deeper debt through loans through the schools themselves rather than guaranteed government loans. Many of their programs can be had a lot cheaper at a community college.

Come the revolution, there's a nice place up against the wall all set aside for these people. I have a particular animus toward them over what they did to one of my theatre kids, who got sucked into a $20,000 a year "art college" which she had to quit after a year because she couldn't afford to go on -- and got absolutely nothing out of the experience but debt. She's working at the theatre full time now, and is constantly being dunned by them for bills she's already paid. I'd call them "pigs," but that would be unfair to actual swine.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I suspect, too, that the whole idea of participating in internet forums is largely a college-graduate thing. Keep in mind that forums are descended from Usenet discussion groups and, even older than that, email lists, and both of those phenomena grew out of academia. The first internet thing I ever did, in the late '90s, was an email list for collectors of early recordings run, at the time, out of Cornell University, and I was put onto it by a friend who was a professor of broadcasting.

There's a little icehouse beer joint in one of the tumbleweed towns near here (in which my brother-in-law's uncle is the town drunk) known as "the university". That's not it's real name, of course, the locals just call it that because "everybody there knows everything". Internet forums are a lot like bars.

 

[HudsonHawk]

You don't have to go to school to learn. Where I work, some of our best engineers had no college degree, while some with Phd.s have proven to be less useful.

One of the dumbest people I ever worked with had a PhD in astrophysics from M.I.T. The man could not think his way out of an empty room.

 

[Fading Fast]

I have no direct knowledge of "for profit" college - so I am not offering a counter argument to yours - at all - what you are saying makes sense to me. But IMHO, and in no particular order, the following are at fault for the over abundance of college debt / student loans

- Banks and other financial institutions that profit when they put the debt on their books and then - down the line - hope to have the gov't bail out the bad loans they made

- The government and its mindless belief that if subsidizing something - higher education - is good, then increasing the subsidy is always better and for encouraging the loans the same way the banks do and then, quietly, dropping the defaults on the taxpayer

- The students and their parents - nobody was ever taken into a room and had a gun held to their head to take out a student loan. Analyze, think clearly, weigh the risks and rewards and then make a decision. I had to pay for my own college, I didn't want debt, so I went to a state university, worked all the time during the school year and, then, upped my hours when school wasn't going and made it through without debt. I'm not - absolutely not - saying everyone can or should do it my way, but everyone should think hard about taking on debt.

I know there absolutely are stories of well-intended families just trying to help their child get a good education who get sucked into a bank / gov't- inspired vortex of debt, and I'm all for harshly holding the banks and gov't to account for this, but not every student loan excess story starts and ends with the banks and gov't - people have to take responsibility for their own actions as well.

Edit add: can't believe I left this one out of my list: The colleges and universities who have used the subsidized government loans as a way to keep hiking their prices versus putting out a more student friendly pricing model.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I know there absolutely are stories of well-intended families just trying to help their child get a good education who get sucked into a bank / gov't- inspired vortex of debt, and I'm all for harshly holding the banks and gov't to account for this, but not every student loan excess story starts and ends with the banks and gov't - people have to take responsibility for their own actions as well.

There are two pieces of advice I wish I could give to every high school kid out there, at least the boys who were like me at that age:

1. Nobody cares where you did your undergraduate degree.

2. When it comes to girls, it gets better. Hang in there...it gets better. Trust me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When society and private enterprise -- thru its hiring practices -- stops enforcing the idea of "you've got to go to college because you've got to go to college" on kids, brainwashing them into believing that they'll never amount to anything without a degree -- *any* degree -- then I'll agree with you. Until then "well, it's your own fault you went into debt" doesn't cut it.

 

[Nobert]

One of the dumbest people I ever worked with had a PhD in astrophysics from M.I.T. The man could not think his way out of an empty room.

Around here, those are sometimes referred to as "educated idiots."

I was just reminded by this thread that I did apply to college about 5 years ago. It was entirely at the behest of the woman I was dating at the time, who had just enrolled in community college, and was insistent that I put more thought into my financial security if I wanted a future with her. I got entirely stumped on the application essay: 'Explain your goals in terms of your application to the University of Southern Maine.' I wracked my brains trying to come up with a framework to hang my thoughts on, but all I could really think to say was, "Because I'm capitulating! You win, World! Also, my girlfriend nagged me into it." Anyway, she left me shortly thereafter and I never did finish that application.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If it's economic security you want, go to trade school and become a plumber. Most of them around here are over sixty, and if more young people don't smarten up and go into the trade, in a very short time we're going to be a nation of PhD's up to their knees in effluent.

 

[dh66]

If it's economic security you want, go to trade school and become a plumber. Most of them around here are over sixty, and if more young people don't smarten up and go into the trade, in a very short time we're going to be a nation of PhD's up to their knees in effluent.

Better still, don't buy into the notion that actual work is beneath you and get your lazy @ss out there and get a job as an apprentice - plumber, electrician, whatever - and earn while you learn. If you are lucky enough to live in a state where the local unions have not yet been emasculated by "right to work" legislation, so much the better, the union will send you to school for free. I have taught classes at a local trade school before, and while there is definately some merit in them, without any actual hands on the shovel experience they are worthless.

And for what it's worth, I am a card toting master plumber/gas fitter, but I also earned a BA from the Birmingham campus of the University of Alabama back in the 80s, when it was still an affordable, commuter friendly offshoot of UA.
I did not come from a "college family" either, I just had good enough grades in high school to be awarded a scholarship. I still had to go to work to support myself and buy books, etc. but I figured if I was being offered a free college education I'd be a pretty big dumb@ss not to take advantage of it.

 

[dh66]

I thought the same thing, but I realized, a large part of this online community is devoted to collecting vintage clothes, antiques and such. That takes the kind of scratch that might be harder to come by on the kind of jobs available to a high-school grad.

This, unfortunately, is probably somewhat true.

Probably also a better topic for a different thread as well, but it is exasperating and disheartening to me that much of my own personal tastes..... in clothes, furniture, etc.... which were born in the thrift stores of days gone by, are now so unattainably high end.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I was lucky enough that I picked up a most of my household fixtures long before the trendies and the hipsters discovered such things. Most of what I've gotten since then has come from the side of the road or the swap shop at the dump. I will not patronize any of these cutesy boutiquey anteeky places just on general principle.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Probably also a better topic for a different thread as well, but it is exasperating and disheartening to me that much of my own personal tastes..... in clothes, furniture, etc.... which were born in the thrift stores of days gone by, are now so unattainably high end.

Tell me about it! A book that I used to constantly check out of the library when I was five or six years old is now $185!

The thing that galls me still is that he really wanted me to become an engineer and harassed me about it for years- in spite of the fact that my math and hard science skills are pretty mediocre. He came home from World War II and could have pursued any educational option that he wanted: he had good high school grades, he was bright, and he had the GI Bill at his disposal. Instead, he just wanted to get married and take any job that he could. I would have preferred that he just fulfill his own dreams and not impose them vicariously on me.

I would loved to have gotten into engineering but I just couldn't wrap my head around calculus.

I was lucky enough that I picked up a most of my household fixtures long before the trendies and the hipsters discovered such things. Most of what I've gotten since then has come from the side of the road or the swap shop at the dump. I will not patronize any of these cutesy boutiquey anteeky places just on general principle.

What's worse is that the Salvation Army and Goodwill (or at least the ones around here) have now become cutesy, boutiquey and anteeky. :doh:

 

[ChiTownScion]

I was just reminded by this thread that I did apply to college about 5 years ago. It was entirely at the behest of the woman I was dating at the time, who had just enrolled in community college, and was insistent that I put more thought into my financial security if I wanted a future with her. I got entirely stumped on the application essay: 'Explain your goals in terms of your application to the University of Southern Maine.' I wracked my brains trying to come up with a framework to hang my thoughts on, but all I could really think to say was, "Because I'm capitulating! You win, World! Also, my girlfriend nagged me into it." Anyway, she left me shortly thereafter and I never did finish that application.

I dated one like that when I was 17. She had very grandiose plans of becoming a surgeon: I remember her arguing with her parents at her sixteenth birthday dinner over where she'd do her residency, and in which specialty she'd get her board cert. The closest she got to it: certification as an EMT and working for a private ambulance company for a wage barely above minimum.

A year later, I dated one who actually got into an accelerated med program (2 years undergrad, then guaranteed admission into medical school). We broke up, she lasted about a year pre-med.. then decided that she'd rather write poetry. How some people end up is always interesting... and the fate of your former nagging girlfriend fifteen years down the road may prove most interesting.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

[video=youtube;VX5oCv7P8GA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX5oCv7P8GA[/video]

 

[ChiTownScion]

When society and private enterprise -- thru its hiring practices -- stops enforcing the idea of "you've got to go to college because you've got to go to college" on kids, brainwashing them into believing that they'll never amount to anything without a degree -- *any* degree -- then I'll agree with you. Until then "well, it's your own fault you went into debt" doesn't cut it.

I rate HR types at about the same level as you rate, "the Boys." They usually have very little comprehension as to the day to day needs of a particular department, but they are entrusted to the role of corporate gatekeepers. They're the same type of squirrels who were employed as guidance counselors in college: give me a course catalogue and the requisites for a major and general degree requirements, and I'll select courses on my own, TYVM.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

When society and private enterprise -- thru its hiring practices -- stops enforcing the idea of "you've got to go to college because you've got to go to college" on kids, brainwashing them into believing that they'll never amount to anything without a degree -- *any* degree -- then I'll agree with you. Until then "well, it's your own fault you went into debt" doesn't cut it.

Maybe I'm exaggerating a little but this is done because by requiring the minimum wage workforce to have a college degree means that the employer doesn't have to hire specialized professionals at the upper end when the guy who normally drives the forklift can occasionally be called upon to carry out some these functions, if need be, even though it's not part of his job description.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Just more proof that corporate America is overwhelmingly dominated by people who have ascended to the level of their incompetence.

 

[Edward]

I thought the same thing, but I realized, a large part of this online community is devoted to collecting vintage clothes, antiques and such. That takes the kind of scratch that might be harder to come by on the kind of jobs available to a high-school grad.

I'd say the cash is definitely part of it. Also, I can't rule out that while the casual and workwear tredns are big, a sizeable proportion of vintage interest lies in suits, evening wear, black tie, white tie.... the sorts of things that, as a general rule, perhaps graduates are more likely to find their work and social lives provide a place to wear. Gross generalisation, of course, but it would seem logical if that's the trend.

The other possibility is that it could be as simple as the fact that most of us on TFL who bothered to open the thread and vote in the poll were interested to do so because we went to university.

I suspect, too, that the whole idea of participating in internet forums is largely a college-graduate thing. Keep in mind that forums are descended from Usenet discussion groups and, even older than that, email lists, and both of those phenomena grew out of academia. The first internet thing I ever did, in the late '90s, was an email list for collectors of early recordings run, at the time, out of Cornell University, and I was put onto it by a friend who was a professor of broadcasting.

I know a lot of people who never went to college, from all walks of life, and some of them do pretty well on pay day. But as far as I know, I'm the only one of them that participates in an internet forum.

It's something that I think will change over time as a generation comes up who don't remember life before the internet (my current undergraduate class were mostly born in 1994), but it certainly seems likely that those of us who came to the web as adults and got the forum habit were more likely to have done so as students with perhaps a bit more free time on our hands than working people with homes and families to run. For those of us in Generation X, and older, it's certainly the case that the internet was much more available to us at university than elsewhere. I remember the days when people used to joke about doing a postgrad just to have another year of email. I certainly remember the likes of Wired back in the 90s doing comment pieces on trends showing a rise in web usage for the 18-21s, and then a sudden drop-off when they left university and didn't have internet at home yet.

If ever there were an area where the Boys from Marketing deserve to be drawn and quartered, it's in regard to these for- profit unaccredited schools. They're notorious for their high percentage of student loan defaults, and for pressuring their students to incur even deeper debt through loans through the schools themselves rather than guaranteed government loans. Many of their programs can be had a lot cheaper at a community college.

It's happening here too now. AC Grayling opened his "New College of the Humanities" a couple of years ago. (I think this year might be their first graduating class?). Selling it off the back of small classes and bringing in celebrity names to do some of the lectures (if memory serves, the notorious Dickie Dawkins was one). In reality, though, all they're offering is a tutoring service: they're not recognised or registered as a university, and the degrees for which they are entering students are actually the University of London External programme. There were significant protests at it being allowed to go ahead, but they came to naught (I guess the UL saw the portion of the fees they'd get as the winning factor). It's gonig to be interesting to see what happens those kids on the job market. The UL degree is a strong brand, but I'm highly dubious they'll see much proportionate benefit from the extortionate fees they're paying for their tutors. Of course the university as business philosophy has also hit real universities, sadly, but there's hope it'll fade with time.

Yep, I can relate to that.
I went to college, and two universities to get my Phd.. Paid for it all myself with part-time jobs. My father insists on accusing me of wanting to be 'above myself' and 'forgetting where I came from', along with introducing me as 'My son, he's not a real doctor'.

Ah, now, here's a thing..... Not sure how it works in the US, but here in the UK it's very common for medical doctors to greet academics with PhDs in a manner along the lines of "It's nice to meet a real doctor". For a medical doctor in the UK, "Doctor" is an honorific (in the same way as "Mister" is a higher honorary title for sugeons), as medical doctors' academic qualifications are actually the equivalent of two bachelor degrees, not a PhD. PhDs are "real" doctors because the doctorate they carry is an earned qualification which they will take to the grave, and not merely a job title.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Just more proof that corporate America is overwhelmingly dominated by people who have ascended to the level of their incompetence.

As I've said many times before, most of the corporate leadership today are MBAs (i.e. glorified cost accountants) who are not grounded in any particular business or industry. They know little of the ins and outs of what's supposed to be their business because they're not required to know, especially when in a few years they'll probably move to another company as part of their resume-building tour.