The true value of the degree lies in demonstrating the ability to learn
+1
I keep reading comments disdaining some majors (psychology, literature, history, etc.) as wasteful because they don't result in instant job offers the way engineering, nursing, and accounting do. It might be instructive to consider a slightly longer-term perspective.
Two of my children majored in psychology. Neither is a psychologist, but it didn't matter. Those sheepskins were prerequisites to get into the fields they wanted.
The son is a professional firefighter. There are a thousand applicants for every vacancy. Round 1 of the weed-out process is "Are you a college graduate?"
The daughter is an epidemiologist with a MPH. Her marketable skill set is statistics, but she wouldn't have been accepted into grad school without a bachelor's degree.
I, OTOH, hold a master's in mechanical engineering. I learned about tensors and divergence and curl and boundary layers. But when was the last time Megacorp called on me to solve Navier-Stokes equations in cylindrical coordinates? (Spoiler alert: Never.)
A final observation: my youngest abandoned college after a year and a half. She works as a chef and loves it. She will never lack employment because she has a strong work ethic. That industry is a prime example of Woody Allen's observation "80% of success is showing up".
I get frustrated with the parental "we'll only pay for a paying career like engineering"
+1
I keep reading comments disdaining some majors (psychology, literature, history, etc.) as wasteful because they don't result in instant job offers the way engineering, nursing, and accounting do. It might be instructive to consider a slightly longer-term perspective.
Two of my children majored in psychology. Neither is a psychologist, but it didn't matter. Those sheepskins were prerequisites to get into the fields they wanted.
The son is a professional firefighter. There are a thousand applicants for every vacancy. Round 1 of the weed-out process is "Are you a college graduate?"
The daughter is an epidemiologist with a MPH. Her marketable skill set is statistics, but she wouldn't have been accepted into grad school without a bachelor's degree.
I, OTOH, hold a master's in mechanical engineering. I learned about tensors and divergence and curl and boundary layers. But when was the last time Megacorp called on me to solve Navier-Stokes equations in cylindrical coordinates? (Spoiler alert: Never.)
A final observation: my youngest abandoned college after a year and a half. She works as a chef and loves it. She will never lack employment because she has a strong work ethic. That industry is a prime example of Woody Allen's observation "80% of success is showing up".
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