Rant: College ripoff

[PheagleAdler]

I paid a lot to go to college, but it was the greatest 4-5 years of my life, especially to be able to get away from my parents for a while, no offense to them.

[AshleyAshes]

12 hours ago, PheagleAdler said:

I paid a lot to go to college, but it was the greatest 4-5 years of my life, especially to be able to get away from my parents for a while, no offense to them.

...So it's been all downhill since?

[PheagleAdler]

2 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

...So it's been all downhill since?

Downhill? No, but I have regular bills, no cafeteria...damn I do miss the food, they always had pizza and omelets and a full salad bar etc.

[Pignog]

maybe we should bulldoze all liberal arts buildings and replace them with more engineering schools. only then will we have a just society.

[FenrirDarkWolf]

27 minutes ago, Pignog said:

maybe we should bulldoze all liberal arts buildings and replace them with more engineering schools. only then will we have a just society.

No that'd be bad because not everyone is good at engineering or business.

[jcstinks]

3 hours ago, FenrirDarkWolf said:

No that'd be bad because not everyone is good at engineering or business.

We'll always need plumbers, janitors, and factory workers. Don't need college to do that.

Better to learn a useful skill than study English or History and do something wholly unrelated to your training.

[AshleyAshes]

4 hours ago, Pignog said:

maybe we should bulldoze all liberal arts buildings and replace them with more engineering schools. only then will we have a just society.

I realize you're exaggerating, but I Think the issue is that a disproportionate number of students and then job applicants are going into fields that don't have nearly that number of job positions available.  Training people in liberal arts to work in positions in the liberal arts fields is good for society.  Training 10 students for liberal arts when there's 2 liberal arts positions in the field is screwing over 8 liberal arts students and making a buck doing it.  The same can of course be true for any kind of field.  Our society does a disservice to it's own people by pointing them towards over saturated fields unless they are like, total super geeks at that field who will make the top or near top of the pile.

[Pignog]

I think the problem is less that we have an educated citizenry and more that the types and quantity of jobs available, and requirements to get them have changed in the last three decades. The liberal arts were never intended to be vocational training and the vast majority of liberal arts (I'm including social sciences with humanities here) graduates aren't going to be applying for "liberal arts positions" (synonymous with academic positions?), especially without a graduate degree. So an anthropology BA isn't going to become an anthropologist, and a history BA isn't going to become a historian. They're going to be applying for entry-level white-collar positions, like a human resources assistant or something. Without looking at any stats (by all means, someone post some) there are too many applicants for too few jobs. Computerization/automation has eliminated the need for a lot of these white-collar positions, and the ones that are left are advertised with a laundry list of additional certificates and years of experience that almost no graduate has.

I think the larger problem that no one wants to talk about is automation. There were some technological advances during the late 1970s/80s that allowed companies to restructure and eliminate a lot of jobs in the mines, mills, and factories in North America. This hasn't stopped. We're still automating, and we're going to see a lot of people out of work in the next twenty-five years, and no amount of the "right" degrees or certificates is going to stop it. And before people get too self-congratulatory about how safe they think they are, they should check and see if their position is in danger of automation: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

23 hours ago, PheagleAdler said:

Why is liberal arts a degree in the first place?

Humanity has accumulated knowledge in many different and interesting fields. Some of these fields don't provide us with bigger TVs or a glut of commodities but they are still worth studying because they give us a better understanding of the world.

[Onnes]

I think in recent decades the biggest force in employment changes has been the ability of companies to move their jobs to parts of the world where labor is dirt cheap. As improved communications technology and shipping networks have allowed more and more vocations to be moved to remote locations, there's been an equivalent loss of such jobs in the developed world.

[AlexInsane]

2 minutes ago, Onnes said:

I think in recent decades the biggest force in employment changes has been the ability of companies to move their jobs to parts of the world where labor is dirt cheap. As improved communications technology and shipping networks have allowed more and more vocations to be moved to remote locations, there's been an equivalent loss of such jobs in the developed world.

So what does that leave us? If all the work is overseas, what's left for us to do here? Do we really have to live in another country just to make ends meet?

[Onnes]

4 minutes ago, AlexInsane said:

So what does that leave us? If all the work is overseas, what's left for us to do here? Do we really have to live in another country just to make ends meet?

It's not like all the wealth has moved overseas, just a large number of lower and middle class jobs. Eventually we're going to have to confront the fact that the value of labor isn't keeping pace with everything else due to a combination of world population and technology.

[Pignog]

18 hours ago, Onnes said:

I think in recent decades the biggest force in employment changes has been the ability of companies to move their jobs to parts of the world where labor is dirt cheap. As improved communications technology and shipping networks have allowed more and more vocations to be moved to remote locations, there's been an equivalent loss of such jobs in the developed world.

 

18 hours ago, AlexInsane said:

So what does that leave us? If all the work is overseas, what's left for us to do here? Do we really have to live in another country just to make ends meet?

This is what a couple of my machinist friends (and hell, me as well if I listen to them) plan on doing. Ontario produces some of the best tool and die makers around, but most of the larger factories they served have moved to Mexico to lower their labour costs. There is still work here for machinists, but a lot of it is switching to CNC machining which requires more training (automation again) and machinists here tend to work in small shops. To make the big bucks you have to go to Mexico, where  they need experienced Canadian and American tool and die makers.

As for the rest of us, it's really up-in-the-air what will happen. Although technology creates some new job opportunities, there just won't be a need for an army of labourers. Maybe automation will liberate us all from monotonous work to pursue more important activities (lmao). Maybe we'll ensure a guaranteed minimum income for everyone, especially considering the large number of benefits. Or maybe we'll all get turned into soylent green.

[Onnes]

2 hours ago, Pignog said:

As for the rest of us, it's really up-in-the-air what will happen. Although technology creates some new job opportunities, there just won't be a need for an army of labourers. Maybe automation will liberate us all from monotonous work to pursue more important activities (lmao). Maybe we'll ensure a guaranteed minimum income for everyone, especially considering the large number of benefits. Or maybe we'll all get turned into soylent green.

I definitely think an unconditional basic income is the only sane way forward. It also has the benefit of consolidating and simplifying a huge number of laws and functions related to employment, healthcare, and welfare benefits.

[Pignog]

threads dead so might as well cap it off with Kurt Vonnegut:

Quote

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”