UNKNOWNINCOGNITO said:
I'm considering taking a student loan, but have been discouraged from a few people saying how it takes years to fully pay it off or how you'll never be able to pay it off due to other expenses. so my question and discussion is, are you in debt and how as it effected you ?
On the student loan front, I am at least 40,000 dollars in debt, and I graduated in December of 2010. I would need to be able to get a job today, that is far out of my job ability range and pay grade to even be able to pay that off in a minimum of 5 years. Considering what I know other people are paying for their schooling, my debt is very small, half of what I have heard most people are in debt for.
The poll doesn't really work for the paying off choice, because within 3 years is a fairytale, even my 5 year estimate with practically perfect conditions is a fairytale.
Really, teachers and colleges want you to believe that a degree will be a deciding factor in getting a proper career type job or any low level job for that matter, but in this economy and with the hiring mentality of this job market, a degree is basically a very expensive piece of toilet paper.
All that matters these days is connections, if you don't have a friend on the inside, you aren't going to get a job where you are looking to get one.
There is also too much of an emphasis in hiring practices on whether the person getting hired has held a job, and a job recently. The biggest problem with the profession type sectors of the job market is that a person can't get hired in their field if they haven't had the experience in working in their field, and the employers of today don't count college as actual experience, doesn't matter if you no the ins and outs of everything they do and are a perfect candidate, if you haven't actually worked in the field before, chances of getting hired are most likely around 2%.
Razada said:
I don't know about over in the UK, but I think one of the big problems here in the US is the stupid emphasis on being "Well-rounded". Meaning that students have to know little of something from everything, even if the classes are just teaching the same stuff that had been taught over and over from kindergarten to 12th grade.
That problem is the general knowledge curriculum. I don't know how college was decades ago, but I remember when I was a little kid and up to high-school, I was told that college was where people went to sharpen their knowledge in their selected field so that they could become professionals.
These days, for the most part, that is bull-crap. Yes people get to choose the field they want do go into and take required and elective classes in that field's curriculum, but on top that now there is the general curriculum for being allowed to graduate. These days that curriculum in the amount of classes, is even larger than the amount of classes required for the actual Majors of the degrees that people have chosen.
It's become bloated, and that is why the graduation statistics for the US are what they are: It takes the average college student 7 years to graduate with a 4 year degree. I was a little head of the curve, it took me 6 and a half years.
Even class requirements for some Majors are getting out of hand, and it is actually making people pick Majors that aren't exactly what they want. I'm a perfect example of that:
My passion is for writing fiction, so I wanted to go for a Creative Writing degree, but I couldn't because that degree program had a two years of a foreign language requirement. I just couldn't see myself paying for and taking up four valuable class slots learning a language that I'd never use. I was looking to learn to write creatively in my language, not learn another language. So, instead, I went for the degree of Rhetoric and Writing Emphasis, and used my elective slots in that degree program to take creative writing classes. From what I've gathered from my encounters with other English degree students, I would bet that at least half of the students in the Rhetoric and Writing program, actually wanted to be in the Creative Writing program, but had the same stance as I and took the writing degree that didn't involve a stupid foreign language requirement. I would understand it if the student was actually going into a field where it was 100% needed, but other than that, foreign language classes should be strictly elective courses.
I went to college to learn to write well, not to take two lab sciences, three math class, two general history classes, sociology, psychology, philosophy, a humanities art history class, two speech classes, weight-lifting, and a health class that was the equivalent of the health classes I took in elementary school. That is 15 classes that in most respects were exact copies of basic level classes that I took in grade school. Nothing new, just a waist of time.
I don't consider myself well-rounded for it. I find myself to be less efficient and knowledgeable in the field I chose to Major in.
The formula gets even worse when you add wanting to get an education degree in the section you are majoring in. I originally wanted to get a four year English Education degree, but on top of the English Major and general curriculums, I would have had to take 12 education classes. I spent two days in the first beginner education class and said to hell with it. I had four other regular classes along with it, and the second day's homework from that education class was more work than a full week of work from those other four classes combined. So I dropped the education section of my degree.
I heard during my last year before graduating that the university was cutting back on the required education classes and that in my state, people now don't have to have a full education degree to get a teaching license.
The problem grows, because from what I've heard from students that still go to the university I went to, the general requirements are soon going to grow in number again.
I find this to be incredibly alarming, because as I see it now, our colleges aren't producing professionals in their fields. They are producing mediocre to okay workers in specialized fields, and those workers happen to have minimal extra unneeded knowledge in other things.
