Regardless of the actual logic at issue, it just seems like something that shouldn't be possible.

Why you go to college and study something you're interested in? What sense does that make?

It's angry, college is fucking bullshit and getting worse, sarcasm.

This sums up things better than I can. At least I can take solace in not going to the University of South Florida with their 58% budget cut.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/us/florida-set-for-new-cut-in-spending-on-colleges.html

Very little of that has much to do with the actual universities. They can't control the job market, they can't tell companies 'You know, you should hire more people with only high-school degrees' and they can't tell you 'You want to major in music? nope, there aren't enough jobs in that market, your going to be a chemistry major instead.' People in college are fucking adults, they don't need the college holding there hands and telling them what field they should study. Blaming colleges for you not being able to find a job a niche market is like blaming honda for there not being enough lanes on a highway or enough parking spots at the store. It's a college's job to provide you with the tools to get a degree, not to get you a job afterwords. The only complaint that has any merit is the price, and since I've never bothered studying how a colleges spend their budget, i have no idea how justified those prices are.

That's right, the government should pay for everything. Like in Australia, practically free education for every citizen.

They sometimes call us the "lucky country".

Basically what they tell us liberal arts majors at my university is to be a badass, even if you can't find a job with your degree you should be able to be smart enough to do most jobs. Or so they say.

I wouldn't believe that if I haven't heard the same shit at leadership conferences in high school.

Even so, I'm, thinking of taking some technical classes at a vocational school during the summer because I know they're really close to a tech firm located in my state.

My sister has a BA in English and is in charge of designing and laying-out lighting systems for places like the Transbay terminal.

And knin is correct that modern universities have stopped being schools and started being businesses that produce college graduates. And businesses cut costs from the bottom up.

karaokeninja said:

I have a BA in cinema and work at a tech company, for what that's worth to you.

Yeah, I saw you posted something on that earlier and I'm stealing your idea because while being able to discuss orientalism and how it relates to film is fine and dandy, being certified in a 'useful' skill that would get me an entry job that pays more than my mom's various jobs would be nice.

On a similar note, the geography department was throwing some serious recruiting pitches at me the other day... The idea of double majoring it up with geographic information studies sounds like it would be useful...

Just discovered small spots of surface rust on the rear fenderwell of my car. Time to break out the fine-grit and spray paint.

I did the reverse. Two semesters at East Stroudsburg University, a small state University in North East Pennsylvania , as a comp sci major because everyone and there mother said a film degree was useless. I hated most of my professors and was pretty much a fuck up. Too expensive to justify staying there and getting crap grades so I transferred to Borough of Manhattan Community College. Where basically none of my credits transferred with me. Never declared a major because I didn't have any idea other than "need to get a degree". Hated it there to, it felt like public high school, only I was paying for it.

Probably didn't help that the campus was 3 blocks from the World Trade Center and I was there the spring after 9/11. Going to class past military check points kind of puts you in a bad mood to start.

I had a summer job at a school in the South Bronx and my boss there transferred to a different school. So come that summer he brought me up there. Near the end of that gig he offered me a full time spot and I took it. Getting paid for my time, with full benefits and a job hard to lose, seemed way better than being miserable and paying for it. Plus I had $20K debt from only 3 semesters of school.

Been miserable and paid ever since and can't bring myself to go back into that meat grinder, diploma factory BS.

Squirrel: I feel where you're coming from. I spent my first four semesters as a software engineer/comp sci major, and grew to hate it more and more as it went on. My professors were dicks and my classmates shunned social contact, showers, and anyone that did not share their love of trench coats and fedoras in 90 degree classrooms. After fucking up enough I reapplied as an English Ed major and got my shit together. Granted now I'm just trying to get out as soon as I can since I already have two years of cost tacked on, and the state of Wisconsin is making that as hard as possible.

Isn't true that you can't declare bankruptcy on your student loans? So you can never run away from it...

I don't know, karaokeninja and RB's sister might be the exception and not the rule. Personal experience dictates that trying to get a job outside of you field of study is futile.

Codger said:

Isn't true that your a slave to your student debt forever and ever?

Yep.

I'm not looking forward to the ever increasing costs that my and all schools seem to be charging. I really wish they would cut harder non-educational and housing costs before they decide to raise prices.

yeah... after financial aid and all the jazz I'm expecting to pay something along the lines of $50k in students loans for 2 years at the 4 year school.

You have 156k in debt?

Law school is a bitch mang. 150k sounds pretty normal for dems law schoolin.

JonBrescia said:

Yeah, you can never escape student loans through bankruptcy, though I once had the thought that you could find a way to leverage some sort of commercial loan or some form of money like that, use the cash to pay off your student loan debt, and then declare bankruptcy on the normal loan you just took out.

This works, although getting somebody to give you that amount of money uncollaterized is basically impossible nowadays. You can always try to make it less obvious by saying that you're consolidating and being all like " Let me consolidate those three credit cards I have for 1k each and... might as well throw in those student loans for (cough) 150K (cough)".

Technical computer work is one of the rare exceptions where your ability to do the work vastly outshines your degree. Your degree might help you get an interview, but the person with the best code is going to get hired. I can't think of many other fields that have such demonstrable proof of your ability. Maybe art stuff, where you have a portfolio.

As Spankminister said, the barrier of entry is outsourced HR firms. More and more companies (in Australia anyway) find it cheaper than having their own HR. So getting a professional job without the right qualification is next to impossible. And most of them want experience as well, how the f'k is a graduate going to get experience if no one wants to hire you.

Trying to get into graduate programmes is just as hard. Most companies need you to have at least a high distinction to get your foot in the door and honours if you want to an interview.

Codger said:

As Spankminister said, the barrier of entry is outsourced HR firms. More and more companies (in Australia anyway) find it cheaper than having their own HR. So getting a professional job without the right qualification is next to impossible.

I just explained how to bypass this HR process in the sentence afterwards. Agreed with KN, if a company cares at all about who they hire, they don't outsource HR here. If it's the kind of job any slacker with a degree can do, it's not the kind of job I'm talking about. There are companies that are run like mills with substandard HR hiring substandard employees, and there are companies that need to get things done. The latter will gladly take employee referrals over a stack of resumes from HR.

Hahaha okay, that was a pretty hilarious typo on my part. I meant company obviously.

Who's to say they haven't? You don't know that knin wasn't replaced with a robot programmed to correct that to throw us off the scent.

You say that now, but when the robot overlords whipping your back as you mine silver in mountains of northern Canada, I doubt you'd still find them so awesome.

California will be a wasteland in the first few hours of the Robopocalypse. The rest of the US will follow suit very soon afterwards. The survivors will be shipped to Canada to the mines.

It saddens me that even though we've had a zombie craze when people mentally prepared for a zombie apocalypse, we've yet to have any real grapse of how dangerous the robot menace is.


EDIT: I see that a book came out last year called Robopocalypse and that it looks like it will be getting a movie. I can only hope it will inspire a new generation to be aware of the threat of robots.