| Well, in a very real way, delaying your entry to the job market by four years right now is a very safe bet. It's brutal out there for people without in-demand skills. But what this article dances around, but doesn't quite realize, is that college no longer confers in-demand skills a priori. A journalism major that made six figures as a recruiter? That's a combination of personality and luck, and very little element of 'college training'. If you want to consider college an investment (which is not crazy), you can't just think of it as a checkbox. College, done, now give me a job that pays well! Not realistic. You need an actual skill that people want to pay for. Science and engineering degrees always work well for this. Practical business skills (like accounting), medicine and law, these are the things that pay off. You know, the ones with _hard_ classes. :) I don't want to dump on humanities - if you love it, do it. If you're one of the best in your field, and if you're smart and passionate you should end up there, you'll do okay. Some even more than that. But if you aren't the kind of person whose eyes light up when someone else at a party wants to talk about French Poets, don't study French Poetry and complain about the job market. Passion is fantastic, following it is great - and most people aged 18-22 don't have one. And if you don't, it's idiotic to take classes in a low-job field where you'll get trounced by those that do honestly care about the material above and beyond the grade. If you aren't following your bliss (and that's okay), go into a hard field that you don't absolutely hate. And you might not love your job until you figure things out, but at least you won't be miserable _and_ broke. But for the love of god, don't major in Philosophy and complain that you didn't get your money's worth. (And I loved my philosophy classes in college.) |
Better to do the easiest humantities course and get that middle manager job so you can earn the bonuses for cutting the number of engineers.
Or better still - skip college, learn to be a plumber. Invest the $40k tuition in a van an some tools. get jobs, buy more vans, hire other plumbers - build empire. It's like a startup except most of them make money.