[dudul]

"I went to a university [...] to no longer be poor, because I believed, as I was told by guidance counselors and the media and many adults and colleges themselves, that that was the only way to be not-poor."

Geez, who would have thought? You really have to be an expert to know that a degree in Art History/Gender studies/<insert random liberal art topic> won't take you anywhere.

Here is the problem with this generation. They want to be told what to do, they want everything to be properly explained to them and nice PC terms they can understand. They don't want to figure shit for themselves, don't want to think and certainly not take any responsibility for their poor choices.

[quadrangle]

What nonsense. Those who go about questioning everything and figuring shit out for themselves do figure out the situation: Random humanities degrees don't pay but neither is there even good prospects in valuable careers like teaching. The level of social mobility in this society is as low as it has ever been, everything is winner-take-all economics, there's tons of corruption and monopolies and oligopolies, and we're facing serious problems in our financial world, the environment, and basic natural resources.

If you actually step back and look at the situation, there is NO correlation between generating value and gaining personal wealth. In our society, the people who provide the most important values, farmers, nurses, teachers, garbage collectors, construction workers… they all struggle. The richest people extract value rather than provide it: day-traders, advertisers, corporate bureaucrats…

Yes, many people are indeed making poor choices. But that is not the heart of what is going on. In fact, it's more accurate to blame people like you for the problems because the very act of blaming people for poor choices in college majors is itself distracting from addressing the real problems.

[dudul]

"the people who provide the most important values, farmers, nurses, teachers, garbage collectors, construction workers… they all struggle." Haha this is hilarious.

From the US Dept of Agriculture: "In 2004, the most recent year for which comparable data exist, the average farm household had an annual net income of $81,480, while the average U.S. household netted $60,528."

Nurses have an unemployment rate of 2%.

Construction workers? Do you know how loaded plumbers, electricians, etc actually are?

Garbage collectors, anyone with 2 arms can do that, it's called supply and demand.

Teachers, I would argue that today teachers don't provide much value. And their median income is still above $50,000, not sure you can really say that they struggle.

There are good prospects. Don't waste your time getting a f*cking degree in women studies or american history. Instead learn a trade, it will take a couple years and almost no tuition. Learn how to do things people are ready to pay for.

[quadrangle]

Average is useless for talking about farm households. As far as I know, a small portion of farm households have enormous farms and make quite significant income and most farmers are not that. We need median figures to talk about this.

The idea that teachers don't provide much value is a complex one to tease apart. Teachers are often lousy because the shit teachers take for modest income turns a lot of people off of the trade. A great teacher provides tremendous value.

The fact is, you are scapegoating this irrelevant target of "history majors" etc. We could wipe all of those people out of the picture and most of the situation wouldn't change. Sure, those folks exist, sure the economics of that stuff is pathetic. But they are a side-issue. This is not the primary stuff that's going on here.

The thing is: you're RIGHT in many respects. It's nonsense to expect great careers from certain fields of study. Learning a trade is indeed the smart thing to do. But saying that our problems boil down to that issue is simply wrong.

We have a society built on suburban sprawl, private automobiles, run by corporate oligopolies, and we're facing peak oil and climate change at the same time as we have extreme political corruption and financial absurdities.

Yes, people shouldn't rack up credit card debt. That's fundamentally stupid. But we also have a system that actively pushes everyone into this. The victim-blaming here is not acceptable. Just because someone is a sucker doesn't mean they deserve to be suckered. The whole system of debt relations that we have built up as a society is ruining us, and the blame belongs with the usurers who exploited the system and profited off the rest of us.

For the record, I have zero debt of any sort. I'm not saying this because I'm complaining about it personally.

[dudul]

I don't disagree that a lot is fucked up today, and I agree with the article when it mentions that the boomers are responsible. The boomers are worse than the millennials.

The thing is, college is the typical excuse today to explain failure and debt, and the article mentions it a lot. If the post was focusing on housing prices or un-refrained globalization I would be totally on board, but no, we have the typical millennial complaining that her mom and dad didn't tell her what to study to get a good job.

[quadrangle]

Ok, perfectly fair critique of the article. And I agree with your other points here. I guess it was about whether we talk about the article or about the real problems.

Regarding the article, the "I got a degree, why am I not wealthy?" nonsense is indeed the wrong thing to complain about if someone wants to talk about what's wrong with the system. College, especially the humanities, is a multilevel marketing scheme. And as with other such things, I still don't like victim-blaming. Someone getting into a pyramid scheme hoping to make it big is a nincompoop, but the real evil is the people pushing the scheme from the top more than than the suckers who cycle through the bottom rungs to keep the pyramid going.

[_random_]

Teachers are subsidised by state so it's not a "real" tax-generating sort of job.

[quadrangle]

This is non-sequitur. None of this discussion was about what generates taxes. The discussion is about what generates value and wealth for society overall.

[gibsonje]

It's extremely easy to criticize other degree/career choices when you're sitting comfy in a VERY desired field. Just because I rolled the dice and liked computers and went down an already well paved path doesn't mean I made "better" choices than someone else. I chose the path of least resistance, to be honest, and at the end of it there happened to be a party waiting.

[dudul]

I guess you were lucky. I didn't go to college in the US. From what I understand, in America people see college as a place to "experiment, open your mind, find yourself" and all these things. My experience in Europe was "go to college because you want to become something - nurse, scientist, comedian, etc - and a college degree is the best way to get it". You don't go to college to find out what you want to do, you go to college because what you want to do is best done if you learn how to do it in college.

So yes, it's easy to criticize other people's choice in terms of useless degrees.

[quadrangle]

To be fair, you admit here that you inherited certain social values about college that others did not. That in and of itself is a big factor here. In that sense, it's also fair to say things like "college advisers and counselors failed to serve most students because they get paid to counsel students on productive and fulfilling career directions and are giving students bad advice."

[gibsonje]

The same thing applies to us here... I went to college to become a software engineer/computer scientist. I didn't go to find out what I want to do. I knew what I wanted to do.