Is My Bachelor of Science Just BS?
by Andrea L. AdamsLink to article
Although every college student nearing graduation jokingly mentions the impending “real world” with a sense of doom, nothing prepared me for the reality that hit once my student loan bills started rolling in. While I was in high school, the mantra was “go to the college you feel best about – it will pay off in the end.” What no one tells you is that if you choose to go to a smaller private liberal arts school, you will regret it (at least every time anything with a dreaded Sallie Mae logo on it arrives).
I do not come from either a wealthy or poor family, but even with financial aid and scholarships, I came away from my undergraduate schooling with a B.S., as well as over $70,000 in loans. And in no way does my degree even guarantee me a job. I studied video production and Spanish. Perhaps had I chosen a more traditional study, such as accounting or law, I might have a job in my career after graduation. Maybe. But then I would have to take into consideration graduate school, as well as how highly competitive it is to get well-placed internships within these fields. Not to mention, I would have hated it. This causes me to wonder exactly what my degree is in: is it a Bachelor of Science, or did I pay over 100 grand for a bunch of BS?
Right now I’m working two jobs, at least six days a week. Neither job is within my chosen career field. I plan to move to Los Angeles within the next few months to pursue a career that utilizes my degree, but the problem is that in addition to paying my bills, I need to save enough money to make the move. Most of my friends who moved to Los Angeles or New York City were not able to find jobs immediately, so I need to be sure that I have enough to support me while I job search.
Even those of my friends who are lucky enough to have found work usually have to find a second part-time job or rely on parental help. More and more recent grads are simply moving home after graduation. The salaries that most entry-level jobs pay are not nearly enough to cover the costs of living, regardless of whether you live in New York City or Des Moines.
Obviously, I am not alone in my post-graduate stress. What I wonder is, what happened to the security that is supposed to come with a college degree? I feel less secure than I ever have. For all the high school guidance counseling and university career centers, why are the majority of college graduates sent out into the world clueless? No one is teaching courses on how to adapt to life outside of school. Like the primary school obsession with test scores, colleges are fixated on “job placement.” How many schools brag about the percentage of grads that are gainfully employed a year later? Simply being employed is not the same as having a fulfilling career that pays a fair amount.
I would never take back those four years, but I wish that someone would have told me how painfully hard the struggle after graduation can be. I rather feel like I was lied to, or at the very least, misled. I always thought that going to college would result in a life of relative ease. I guess that life of ease is many years down the line, if it exists at all.
By: Andrea L. Adams
Ithaca College 2006
March 24th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
The student loan program is one of the greatest ripofs ever invented. It has not made education more and more affordable. All it has done is allow colleges and universities to jack up tuition more and more and more. If it’s any consolation, the people doing the work of teaching aren’t getting the money. Most of the teaching is now done by ill-paid and ill-treated temps of one sort or another — adjuncts, teaching assistants, and visiting lecturers.
People need to realize that soaring tuition costs and poverty-level wages for faculty are two sides of the same coin. Our institutions of higher education are run by people who are hell-bent on squeezing as much money out of students and their parents and the taxpayers as possible.
In regard to your personal situation, just remember that the way to get what you want is to take care of the day-to-day details of your personal life while you keep taking small steps toward your goal. It sounds obvious when you say it, but it took me until I was thirty-five to figure that out (I’m forty-five now). Buena suerte.
March 26th, 2007 at 6:21 am
Education as a business service is following the same diasterous road as health care as a business service. We’re paying way too much for too little.
Once upon a time having degree meant having it made, that’s no longer true and hasn’t been for a long time.
Keep working where you can and putting away a nest egg. Hopefuly. you’re contact in NY or LA will help you land a decent paying job. Use all your resources to give yourself a helping hand.
March 27th, 2007 at 11:27 am
With all the programs and growth of number of colleges/universities, I do think that the security of having a college degree has been lessened significantly. As high school diplomas have come to be expected, undergraduate degrees have also become expected, and in the job market a commodity. Even now, you can see that graduate degrees like MBAs no longer guarantee that great job.
I don’t know about colleges everywhere, but I do know that my undergraduate and graduate universities publish places of employment and sometimes average salaries.
As for a life of relative ease, I personally don’t think that life is or should be easy. In a way it can be seen as the human form of survival of the fittest. This is not to say a college degree is worthless; even if you don’t work I do believe having that experience is very important for a person’s development. And while it does not guarantee an easy life, it does provide opportunities that just aren’t available to those without that piece of expensive paper that says you graduated college.
Personally, I finished undergrad with a BS in computer science, hated it, and didn’t want to work in that field. I went straight to get my masters, and now work and live in relative comfort. My loans are paid off, and I just got an offer from another firm for $80k. I guess it’s just all part of growing up.
March 27th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Forgot to give context; I’m 25 and I finished my masters end of 2005.
March 30th, 2007 at 10:13 am
My advice to high-school seniors ready to graduate: Look for an exciting career in fries. College is a rip-off nowadays, and it now makes sense to immediately start making money, and immediately avoid going into a huge debt.
Whether your job is flipping burgers, or serving coffee; get a job that pays a little money, live at home for a couple of years to reduce expenses, and build yourself a nest egg. Then, if you want to go to college to better yourself, you have somewhat of a financial footing.
Some companies offer tuition reimbursement. This is your first move - look to go to college on someone else’s money. Next, when you think you have enough money to start college, look to take classes at your local community college and not a major university. The per credit cost of your community college is significantly lower. Rack up as many credits as possible (maybe even an associates degree), and then look to transfer them to a major university. Not all the credits will transfer, but try to take credits that you know will transfer.
In the end, you probably will incur some debt - that is, if you really want a degree after all. You may find happiness in your fry-oriented career, and they may actually move you up to management at some point, and give you appropriate training. Nothing says that if you are being successful at not going to college that you have to go. But, assuming you go, if you follow the above advice, you will be in debt. However, now your debt is a much more manageable $20K or $40K as opposed to $100K.
My REAL advice, however, is to look in to a plumbing school or electrician school, as opposed to a college. Right now, the demand for Master Plumbers and Master Electricians are so high that they can pretty much write their own ticket.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Andrea, you are a bright lady. You are seeing the reality of the work situation with a clarity some people don’t attain until their 30s. The key point: The education system and the business world are misleading the young now and they were doing it 45 years ago when I graduated with an MS in Math and Engineering Mechanics.
Here is the truth as I see it: The colleges do not train you for a job, rather your graduation is only proof that you are probably trainable and show some talent in the field you got your degree(s) in. Dr. Jack Welsh, the former head of General Electric said, and I almost totally agree with him, that after you have been on the job a month your degree is of little importance in evaluating you. I could say alot because the cause of the problem is located in the very basic dynamic of the social system and that would take alot of words and time to describe so I’ll close with the advice I wish someone had given me when I was young. Don’t look around for something you would like to do. Not working would be very enjoyable wouldn’t it?
No, look around for something you can do that will make some money. If that doesn’t resonate with you now believe me it will at some point, and with a vengeance. You should immediately begin to educate yourself in the areas of business operations, accounting, and business law. DO NOT start taking courses. You will learn too slowly that way and it will cost too much money for what you will get. Your goal is not to become a professional in those fields but rather to understand the basics so you can converse intelligently with the professionals. You can do no better than the “for Dummies” series of books. Also subscribe to, or go to the library and read, Businesss Week. Read it faithfully.
It will take a while but you will slowly pick up the culture and language of the business world. If you have access read some of the old issues that go back some years. Later on you will want to read The Economist. It wiil take a couple of years for you to restructure your thinking but you will come to view the world as it actually is. Always keep in mind this final point: anybody who makes money by buying and selling financial contracts is, by definition, stealing.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Ralph Swanson wrote:
“I’ll close with the advice I wish someone had given me when I was young. Don’t look around for something you would like to do. Not working would be very enjoyable wouldn’t it?
No, look around for something you can do that will make some money. If that doesn’t resonate with you now believe me it will at some point, and with a vengeance.”
Boy, that is sad. If you are going to spend your life doing something you don’t enjoy doing, what is the point of being alive? So you can afford to clutter up your life with all sorts of junk you don’t need?
What’s more, the approach suggested by the above poster doesn’t even work. Look at all the millions of people who toiled away for years or decades as factory workers or secretaries or middle managers — jobs they didn’t even like — and one day they were called in and given pink slips and escorted off the premises by security.
I’ll close with the advice I wish someone had given me when I was young. The way to get what you want is to take care of the day-to-day details of your life while you keep taking small steps towards your goal. Buena suerte.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Yes. The answer to your question is yes.
30 years ago I earned a degree in nuclear engineering and spent 20 years in the nuclear Navy and the civilian commercial nuclear power industry. As I left, I reviewed my (most pertinent) textbooks and discovered that my entire career involved work that was addressed by a total of 5 pages in all those books! When I wrote to the dean of my school informing him that I would not be sending my daughter to his irrelevant institution, he didn’t even get it!
If you want to know the worth of a school, look at their diploma. Most say you are afforded title, rights, privileges, and honors thereto based on completing a course of “instruction” prescribed by the faculty. In contrast, an MIT PhD (used to) denote the holder as “qualified to perform original research.” Hell of a difference.
The answer to your question is still yes.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
College is a racket. Unless you have the wealth to complete an advanced professional program [such as a medical degree or law school etc.], make use of whatever Vo-Ed program is offered in your high school when young, get a selleable skill and use the $50,000-$70,000 you would have borrowed for college to buy a small house or for a down payment on a house, it will go a lot further. Colleges are there for the money, they sell degrees knowing there are no jobs for those degrees or that most of the people who complete the programs will end up working minimum wage jobs.
I am advising the young people in my family to learn trades if at all possible, especially ones where someone can work for themselves. Studying liberal arts can be done on one’s own time at the public library and for far cheaper. I wish that some sort of apprenticeship programs could be brought back for young people, where they learn by DOING rather then just reading about it. I suppose Vocational Education at the high school level is the closest to this.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I think everyone is missing the point here….college IS NOT intended to guarantee career nirvana….it simply provides a ‘leg-up’ over those without the degree who are applying for the same job. After the first 2-3 jobs in your career no one will even care where you went to college or what you studied—of course, there are exceptions to this statement–blue-shoe law and financial firms will always look for harvard, MIT, Wharton, U of Chicago, etc. backgrounds. Do not make the mistake of thinking that college is just a trade school with books–if that’s your attitude you are going to be mighty disillusioned pretty quick. Take it for what it is supposed to be: an environment to learn, expand your knowledge, meet experts in hundreds of fields of scholarship and develop an appreciation for each individual’s unique contribution to what we call society.
May 26th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Andrea,
Those four years were not a waste. They did more for you than you know right now. Your present is a struggle, a struggle that you could not have imagined as an undergrad in an insular environment like college.
My cousin has a PhD in Agricultural Engineering. For a time, he taught college courses at our Alma Mater, NC A&T State University. He (as I last know), was head of Saalam Farms that supplies a restaurant in Chicago (owned by the Nation of Islam - not an endorsement). Between the college gig and this directorship, he sold T-shirts at rock concerts.
I’ve been struggling too at 44 years of age. I’m not where my education was supposed to place me — the mythological “easy street.” I sympathize with your angst.
My cousin’s assessment of education is as follows:
BS = BS! You are capable of learning a subject and sticking to a goal path.
MS and PhD: You are capable of higher learning with little direction/support from faculty.
Have you considered writing grants to produce films, since your degrees are in Video Production and Spanish? Could you do something that could be completely in Spanish and placed in a film festival? This sounds, I know “pie-in-the-sky,” but I’ve found that you must become the CEO of your own life and true worth and wealth is found from within.