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College was always intended for the kids of rich folks to get cushy high paying jobs doing nothing
Honestly it took war with Russia for people to see scientists as valuable despite them underpinning basically everything in modern society
I put myself through community college, got 2 AAS degrees. I’m doing pretty good for myself. Before college, I usually worked around minimum wage and hated every single soul sucking job I had just to barely scrape by. This was early 2000s… we had real dollar menu meals and $5 footlong subs, ya’ll who be out there surviving these days you’re built different and you have my respect.
Anywho, if I hadn’t gone to college and did something with my life, I promise you I would have ended myself. That’s not hyperbole, I had 2 failed attempts before college already.
I wish people would stop demonizing college. Especially in the US, we have more and more uneducated people because you have people on the internet (mostly on video format) telling people, “Oh yeah, college was a scam, I dropped out and I make millions, and speaking of millions, this video is brought to you by…”
It saddens me to see terrible advice like this meme, implying college was a waste. Or that hundreds of people upvoted it.
And yes, I know, college is fucking expensive in the US. It was expensive when I went and we were arguing about it then and I know it’s gotten worse. But we shouldn’t be celebrating ignorance, we should be fighting to get our education back.
People say that because going to college is becoming exponentially expensive. It gets meaningfully worse year over year
Education is great, learning is more then half of the joy of life. The education system in our country is absolutely broken. Both these things are true
You can still come out on top in a broken system. I did. I have no regrets, no debt. But as a whole, it’s just getting worse all the time
Yeah college is only a waste if you don’t have a game plan for what you’re doing with it. People who say it was a waste either didn’t plan, didn’t realize they weren’t interested in what they thought, or overpaid.
I see it differently. Plenty of people do non training subjects and employers are rarely interested in that. Loads of people plan and do everything right but buy a product which is little use in the job market
I hate the idea of considering college/uni as just job training. Seriously, why can’t our society just encourage people to go learn just to LEARN. Oh yea because wage slavery.
The primary goal of a university is teaching the next generation of academics. That’s it. The entire goal is teaching and research.
But like everything else in this society, it must become a profit-driven endeavour and if it doesn’t contribute with the revenue of some company, it’s not worth it.
That’s a bit OTT IMO. You don’t need to become an academic for knowledge of the world, the ability to digest information, and the ability to effectively communicate, to be useful. I think it’s valuable just as, like, life enrichment, too. Not to mention that spending the first few years of your independent adult life around people going through that same transition has other value - socialising, shared experiences, it’s not unusual to make many friends for life.
You’re absolutely correct - but what you’re describing is a learning institution in general, not a university. That’s the fundamental issue.
Universities have a very specific purpose and it’s academic. Unfortunately, our society not only shoves a bunch of commercial values in the mix, but also eliminates most of the other learning opportunities, which turned universities in this weird mix of conflicting interests and unrealistic expectations.
My age group in Canada was indoctrinated to think anything less than a university degree was signing your own death warrant job wise. That evolved into younger generations doing the same with masters and PhD programs. Now it’s even worse than it was then. I hope my kids choose wisely.
Speaking of learning… *yeah, not yea or nay. It isn’t a vote.
I worked at a gas station while I was in college so I could pay my rent. I remember my girlfriend at the time was in the store talking to me and some bitch was like “I wish my boyfriend worked at a gas station”. She went to the same school as me but didn’t know and had the nerve to treat me as less than her because she was in school. People are fucking idiots
Yeah, they are. I don’t think people understand the fiscal realities of living in America, but I’ll tell you one thing. I just get gas at the gas station. Maybe some sigs. No Red Bull, no Monster, I go home and make instant coffee. If this is the nation of the lowest common denominator, then I’m gonna fucking lean into it. I don’t eat fast food. I don’t go to the movies. I don’t go to the mall. I don’t do any of this Yankee shit. I constantly educate myself 24 fuckin’ 7. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane. Relative to what I do mostly, the library is one of my frequent places though. No Coachella for me. No Disney land. No toys like Star Wars figures. Just integrated circuits, code, and knowledge. With some mathematics that I fucking stumble the fuck through. If something breaks, I learn how to fix it. I go outside and pick the weeds before I would ever spray. I plant food. I eat that food. I grow my own weed in a legal way. I cook my own food. I am 40 years old. The world just gets worse. And I feel it’s because we feed the problem. No more fucking war. Israel is committing a genocide. Religion is for Idiots. If I buy music, I have to have a hard copy and I rip it to my devices. If I cannot do this, I will sit in fucking silence staring at the wall. For I am an unmovable object. I am not perfect. I don’t want to be perfect, I also don’t want to be a cuck. or an insensitive idiot. But I will tell you the truth.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s, and I already cucked you, sorry.
I remember working retail and having angry customers tell me to go to college and do something with my life when they didn’t get their way. Little did they know that I, like a majority of the workers there my age, were in college and just working a summer job. Some people are just dicks and my experience in retail has shown me that anyone 50+ yrs old is most likely to be an asshole for no reason. Idk why but the older generation here in the US is full of self-centered cunks.
Lead poisoning damage to their brains has made them genuine psychopaths.
I too believe this is a major reason for the downfall of society
They are probably full of regret around their younger years and just projecting their own bullshit onto others.
The illusion of equal opportunity, dut dut doooo
Here’s the thing… I remember some years back that (I think it was) Denmark had the best educated population or the most college degrees or some such, so your cashier or barista could very easily have a college degree.
The difference is that they get paid far better than retail in the US, get all the benefits of social policy, and from unionization. Vacation time, health care, maternity leave, etc. that retail positions in the US would be highly unlikely to have. I’m sure there’s some social stratification to blue collar positions vs white collar in such a country, but I’m sure it takes a lot of the sting out of it when you’re taking your two weeks vacation on the mediterranean coast.
I live in Austria, where it’s not even quite as nice (well, similar benefits, but no federal minimum wage). It’s deeply engrained in our culture that education doesn’t have to be prep for a job. I personally know many people who pursue or have completed uni education that’s completely unrelated to their like of work. Some have degrees in other areas, some don’t. We have some pretty ‘bad’ statistics for how long People take to finish their degrees because people are, like, full time kindergarten teachers and taking 10 years to do a political science degree on the side purely because it interests them. People value education for its own sake and I love it. Unfortunately though, capitalism has this culture on the decline, and not even that long after education became open to most people.
No minimum wage, but we do have collective bargaining, for anyone who’s interested.
I would rather have a citizens income than a minimum wage and would prefer a maximum wage (highest paid cannot be more than 100x lowest paid)
Yes, thanks for adding :) but there’s industries where the minimum wage is still under 10€.
Yeah, it’s not exactly a worker’s utopia here, for sure, but at least there’s some raise every year that my employer wouldn’t otherwise give me if not for collective bargaining.
Everyone had their own experience.
My degree got me into “real jobs”/career jobs. Before that I even with nearly 2 decades in IT I could barely make headway.
Getting my degree let me actually pursue my passion in environmental work.
I still hate I NEEDED to get the degree and loans and and whatever but it DID help. Also I did enjoy school. I like learning.
School was bad ass! I would go back if I could. But now I have bills to feed and kids to pay
I graduated 20 years ago with a really good mark from a really good uni and shitloads of extra curricular stuff. It was worth nothing then and I deeply regret doing it.
A lot of people have no business getting degrees imo. I watched a lot of people be academically successful, but absolutely fail at learning anything. Which translated to being useless and unemployable. I have an MS in mechanical engineering and saw people graduating who couldn’t physically understand basic loading but still got their degree.
Same happened to my roommates. 1 had to get new completely degrees, second forced to get phd, and other works at local grocery. Took 6 years for my SO to find a job paying decent and its still pretty low.
I’m really not surprised. Random degrees getting you work is a myth nowadays
My degree has sorta paid off but I still sorta wish I would have gotten an associates and started working and saving earlier.
Yes it’s an arts degree, and yes the arts are in dire straits right now, but uhhh I at least feel fulfilled having tried to make the most of my passion— which I recognize doesn’t pay the bills, but made me feel validated and boosted my self-esteem, which I don’t think any job would’ve ever done for me nearly as much.
…so anyways, how’s that reset going, is your machine back up and running? Great. Thanks for calling tech support have a nice day.
Society prizes art above all else (its like 90% of what we remember about ancient cultures if you count stories as art) but hates artists with a passion.
I wish we lived in a society where all basic human needs were provided, to give people an opportunity to just engage in culture instead of being so focused on the future of consumption
I agree that our society could deal with less of a focus on consumerism, but the problem that wishing that all basic needs were magically provided is that you cannot get around the fact that someone needs to do the providing.
I think that the most realistic way forward to get some of the same benefits is for us to start reducing the length of the work week, certainly to 4 days and possibly even to 3 days.
As evidenced by the efforts of AI Bros to make them obsolete
Just wanting to point out the irony of making fun of artists’ life choices… below a comic.
Sorry, I should clarify those were my own choices I was referring to. I’m the one who has a film degree and now works in tech support.
I meant to be empathizing more than making fun of op.
I think anyone not looking for reasons to be angry could read you were speaking about yourself, don’t mind them!
Those corrupted morals of exploiting other humans and living things need to get justified somehow. Have a little compassion. ;)
If it makes you feel any better, my STEM degree hasn’t done me a lick of good, either.
Turns out, specializing in the thing academics do after they burn out of, or can’t properly get into, the academic system… not a great path to go down, yeah.
It was a passion degree as well.
“These jobs are below me! They should belong to the peasants!”
I firmly believe we all should take turns doing the shit jobs so that some are spared from having to do it all the time.
The CEO should spend a few hours a week scrubbing toilets. Citizens should go on say, a two-year tour of duty in their young years to do the stuff depicted in the comic. A benefit is that they’ll treat service workers better later in life.
And more importantly, we should question how much of this is actually necessary. It seems all most of it does is make a couple people rich beyond morality.
Discomfort pay. I think doing disgusting or hard jobs should carry EXTRA pay.
Or. You could just pay them more. Which would be politically way easier.
These people are the “peasants” or close enough the distinction doesn’t matter. We were all told the way to move up was to go to college pay all that tuition and you’ll more than make it up longterm. If you end up working min wage stuff anyway it’s better to just do it out of high-school. The warehouse guy probably makes decent but is also working shit hours and slowly destroying his body, again something college is supposed to help you avoid.
Yeah but a degree is not a get-out-of-shit-job-free card… We all have to take what the market offers, or get creative, start a business, etc.
And it’s not like people without degrees don’t put effort into improving their skills.
As long as the majority of people can just forget unpleasant jobs exists and leave them to the less fortunate, the incentive to make them less shitty is weak.
But when you’re choosing your potential college paths as a 16 year old child, how exactly are you supposed to make a solid prediction of the job market in 7 years?
succinctly put, and relevant username.
More that these jobs do not pay enough to pay for the degree, or even enough to simply afford a place to live without a second job.
US millennials were told growing up that literally all you had to do was get a bachelors, because that’s how it worked in previous generations. We had to take out ridiculous loans to pay for this, because even in-state tuitions have been out of control for about two decades now. Now, the job market is shit (and really has been since we entered the job market.) It doesn’t matter how smart or capable you are. The US doesn’t want smart or capable right now.
I remember getting my first check as a teacher. When I calculated the amount of time I spent working, and my pay bump from being a fast food supervisor to yah know, a degreed professional expected to work 80+ hour weeks didn’t mean jack or shit, especially when I had to buy my own supplies.
It’s fucked up.
“Those lazy peasants! They are hardly working!”
Everyone’s experience is different, and things ARE absolutely more difficult in recent decades than many decades ago.
That said, I remember around the time I was graduating and how it felt like the vast majority of everyone I knew was baffled by my willingness to move far away (for the job), and how many of them refused to move away from home (where there weren’t many job options for degrees).
There’s also choices to make to do projects or a thesis around real productive ideas to build something to show off to employers. There’s opportunities to practice interviewing, shadow careers, and make yourself presentable and stand out for your field, and again I just remember very few who actually put in the effort and wanted to appear well-rounded amd with a portfolio of sorts to distinguish themselves. Most of my classmates seemed to just want to check boxes and expect a career to happen.
Some people in my personal experience seem unwilling to do what’s necessary to make their degree worthwhile.
Yeah you may be able to get [insert degree] at [random local college], but a lot of the good careers are not going to be where you got the degree, amd you really have to find ways to convince employers why you’re different.
Then on top of all of that, there’s just some luck as well. And I know in some ways I also just got lucky in landing a job.
Meanwhile, ever since I moved and started a career, I have been surrounded by incredible degree-wielding people from all over the world. So clearly lots of people do find success and they are doing great jobs.
Great jobs? Doing what? Licking boots?
Uprooting your entire life, saying goodbye to all of your friends, family, community, home, all for the pursuit of some dollars, that’s insanity. Only in a sick world where money is our master is that viewed otherwise.
Uprooting for adventure is one thing, uprooting for work is not the same.
Your comment sounds like some AI generated LinkedIn status and it makes me feel sick.
I needed to live and pay bills and take care of a family. I tried to write it in a sensitive way and it still wasn’t good enough for your entitled, priviliged, and judgmental stance.
Some of us literally have no ability to just entertain “adventure.” We needed to just survive. And I was simply stating that I think some people need to be a bit more willing to make hard choices to better their lives, such as moving where their particular jobs are more likely to be.
It has nothing to do with licking boot. It has to do with reality and survival. But a secondary benefit was that I found joy in my career and what I do since it’s a public service type of career as well. I also became a productive member of society and can now help others a bit in various ways.
I’ll also add that while the goal at the time was not to do anything I wanted, but to do what I needed, I wound up in a degree and field that is still interesting (I didnt study what I wanted, I studied what I thought might pay well and which I was good at). Moving for jobs was significant to changing my life and giving some new perspective and adventure in the simple sense that I got away from where I grew up and saw a different place and have met and worked with tons of great people from all over the world who also moved here. It was not my original purpose, and it’s not the same as travel for adventure or leisure which was not something I could ever entertain for the majority of my life, but it has in a way given me adventure I wasn’t seeking.
I will also note the original move for a job itself was never simple. We literally slept on floors for the first few weeks.
I don’t regret any of it. Our lives are immensely better today for making hard but smart moves for the better. Others should also do the same if they have options to better their lives.
There’s more to careers than just money. The distribution of jobs in different industry sectors, job specialties, etc. aren’t going to be uniform throughout the world, so many types of jobs will require people to move.
It’s not even about money. It’s about wanting to work in something specific that isn’t as easily available in the town you happened to be born in.
that’s insanity
makes me feel sick
That’s a pretty strong reaction to the simple idea that maybe living your entire life within a 30 minute drive of where you were born isn’t the best way to experience this life. You don’t have to want it, but is it that much to ask to simply understand that some other people want it?
My hometown is, like, fine. I could’ve stayed. But its state government is insane, the dominant local industries and companies don’t really fit my moral framework, and the social aspect pushes people into a car-based lifestyle that I’m not particularly interested in. I left for a job, but I also was just looking for a reason to leave.
You were looking for a reason to leave. I covered that in my comment, “Uprooting for adventure is one thing”.
OP’s comment reads like sigma male bullshit, essentially saying “I worked harder and smarter than everyone else, they just didn’t have the work ethic I do”. It’s wank. It repulses me, therefore the phrase “makes me feel sick”.
It’s not about work ethic. It’s an openness to new things, and a willingness to coordinate and plan things.
And seeing “moving away” as a huge sacrifice, to where you’d tend to describe it as “uprooting your life,” is a particular worldview that you’re entitled to, but one you should be aware that many other people don’t share.
You’re attributing a lot of unspoken values in that comment that I don’t really think are there, and I suspect it’s because you place a much higher value in staying close to home than the typical person does, and because you seem to elevate the purpose of a career to primarily be maximizing one’s own money.
So take a step back. Reread that comment with the revisited assumption that some people choose careers for reasons completely different from money, and that people don’t feel a strong need to stay in the same city where they grew up. It’s just career advice at that point.
Mate, you got so much patience and empathy to be able to respond and explain. Love who you are and who you have become. I absolutely would have walked away from a negative comment and you are so capable to reiterate points to a random internet comment.
Boot licking is chosing to stay home and making a pittance at one of the few dead end jobs available when the outward move could have been expontially better and resulted in you moving back with your family, with more resources, later on when possible.
You’re basically judging / telling people to get stuck because in your ideal world they wouldnt have had to.
In case you haven’t noticed, this ain’t that.
I’m judging/telling people what to do?
Did you not read the post I responded to?
Most of my classmates seemed to just want to check boxes and expect a career to happen.
Some people in my personal experience seem unwilling to do what’s necessary to make their degree worthwhile.
you really have to find ways to convince employers why you’re different.
I said in a sick world where money is our master would moving in the pursuit of dollars be insanity. Moving for other reasons is not what this post is about. So what do you think I was implying by that? It is normal, sometimes even necessary, for people to do this, what do you think I’m trying to say about the world?
Boot licking is chasing the shareholders/masters in the hope that they’ll treat you right and give you a few more dollars per hour than you would working in your home town. A few more dollars than your peers. Boot licking is defending this sick fucking system that we live under where Trumps, Zuckerbergs, and Musks rule the world because money is our master.
Seeing more of your responses, it is clear you spend too much time online in anti-capitalist groups and expect people to just magically accomplish your ideals.
Good luck to you and your bitterness. The rest of us have actual lives to live and bills to pay. It’s not as binary as you see it.
Far as I can tell you’re not really making any point.
Learning to live as a stranger and reintegrate into a community is a fun experience for many of us though. When we have the flexibility to travel to work we gain a huge competitive advantage. I think OP brings up the most important point though, many people are too lazy or on cruise control to make themselves interesting.
Doing things slightly outside your comfort zone and outside your expertise makes you standout. Employers want to hire interesting people as well. It’s not “boot licking” to create a diverse portfolio of skills.
I picked up Portuguese as a hobby, then later in life my job had a business partner in Brazil, so they paid for me to take classes on company time, sent me to Brazil, then let me act as our liaison with them.
I didn’t do anything to hunt down money. I traveled for work and have never stopped learning. I never wanted to stay in my small town. This allowed me to create an interesting story and I rarely open at an interview with my qualifications, but they always remember who I am.
“I never wanted to stay in my small town”
“Uprooting for adventure is one thing”
Y’alls reading comprehension is pish.
And bitching about a lack of opportunities in your hometown ignores thousands of years of human evolution. When resources became sparse we migrated, evolved, or died.
Uprooting your entire life, saying goodbye to all of your friends, family, community, home, all for the pursuit of some dollars, that’s insanity
Or, maybe they just hate their life/family/community and want to get out of a dead end town with no opportunities?
I moved 7 hours away for a job and I’ve never been happier. Met my chosen family and have made a decent life for myself.
If my grandmother had wheels she would be a bike.
Yeah, and if her wheels were like your argumentation, she wouldn’t make it to the end of the block.
Just because you don’t agree with people doesn’t make it insanity, and saying it does shows how small minded you are.
Blah blah blah. Despite my original comment, I wasn’t looking to leave and was planning on returning, but I’m glad I left and I don’t want to go back after experiencing something better.
Keep looking for any excuse to not understand viewpoints you disagree with/reinforcing your existing beliefs, it really helps your (lack of) argumentation style.
But I’m done with this discussion, as it’s a waste of my time and energy. Good day.
What’s with moronic comments I am seeing lately such as yours in Lemmy?
Yup I can relate with N4 100%. Not only a degree, but two years experience in the field. And yet here I am, with a customer service role. I’ve been searching for work for two years now. It sucks
If you are about to finish high school and still dont know what to study in college but have the opportunity to go to college (I know many can’t and that’s ok). Study business administration and marketing; you’ll either learn a skill you can apply in a corporate job, or you can use it to be trully successful opening your own business and being independent anywhere in the world.
Because if there’s one thing this world needs, it’s more MBAs to help keep making the world into the great place we currently know.
My honest opinion for kids graduating highschool and don’t know what to study in college, get all your gen eds at community college and transfer in once you know what you want to study.
Ok, so you dont really want to know how to open, market, and manage your own business, you just want to study the obscure history of a particular art form in order to work at McDonald’s or Starbucks and then complain about that your corporate overlords dont pay you enough to make a living wage… got it
EDIT (Because my dumb phone deleted it): If you dont want to go to a 4 year college and study a trade skill at a comunity college, then do it. I just personally feel like too many kids want to study a career that not only doesn’t pay, but is vastly overpopulated with applicants and not even close to have a descent amount of jobs.
Edit 2: My main thing is, study something that will give you the tools to be independent and not have to work for a soul sucking coorporation. If you know what you like to do and can study it in a community college, then do that. But business admin and marketing is universally useful to know how to run your business successfully, and its not an MBA (Masters in Business Administration)
That’s what I did. Not all my gen ed classes transferred, but plenty transfered for it to be worth it, especially because my community college ended up being free for me through a local government program.
Yeah, I had a buddy do that, and they’re in a better place than I, who chose to go directly to college and drop out and end up there anyway after I realized I suck at math.
Still ended up in a decent place, but damn the loan bill sucks.
This is dense. College degrees are still very profitable. They aren’t working in any of these roles in mass.
Absolutely made up propaganda for those without the ability to verify the simplest of facts.
I’m not sure why the above comment was down voted so hard. This community should encourage insightful comments.
It seems like overall college degrees are still a worthwhile financial investment on average.
If you disagree, dialogue.
Compared to the average high school graduate, the earnings premiums were:
$495,000 over a lifetime for people who completed an associate’s degree; $1 million for those who completed a bachelor’s degree; and $1.7 million for those with a graduate degree.https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2021/data-on-display/education-pays.htm
For example, workers with a bachelor’s degree had median weekly earnings of $1,305 in 2020, compared with $781 for workers with a high school diploma. And the unemployment rate for bachelor’s-level workers was 5.5 percent, compared with 9.0 percent for those whose highest level of education was a high school diploma.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/18/median-return-on-investment-for-a-college-degree.html
the typical college graduate can expect a median 12.5% return on their investment in higher education
I’m not sure why the above comment was down voted so hard. This community should encourage insightful comments.
I do not consider the sentence, “Absolutely made up propaganda for those without the ability to verify the simplest of facts,” to be an example of brilliant insight; I suspect that the vote count would have been different if it had not been present.
Averages and outdated statistics only tell some of the story… It’s not the boomer age anymore…
More pros and cons: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/work/5-reasons-whyyour-new-bachelors-degree-is-worthless.html
Realistically the situation keeps getting much worse, not better. Not just for students but also for faculty, et al.
Bad bot.
“Blah blah blah, I am just as bad at accepting facts as trump” - you
It’s “en masse” you trolling pissant lol. Toodles!
I thought I was a bot? You’re the one insulting an trolling 🤷♂️.
Attacking a typo and calling me names because I pointed out a fact. Good Lord 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.
Wow, nothing drives home “I’m not mad, you didn’t get to me!” quite like five emojis.
Anyways, this was fun, but since “toodles” didn’t get the point across, now I get to block you and retire from this exchange as king. Buh-bye! 🤙
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 naw emojis are just triggering for the users here. Real good way to separate those who want to have a conversation and folks like you who are just concerned with toeing the line.
Seems you’ve upset a lot of people without a college degree, or a lot of people doing nothing with their degree.
It’s a bummer people downvote facts when it hurts their feelings. Pretty much a page out of the conservative playbook.
What’s your threshold of ‘in mass’? Because it was 1/9 recent college graduates working low wage jobs as of mid-2023.
In June 2023, about 11.2 percent of recent college graduates were working in low-wage jobs in the United States. This is a slight increase from June 2021, when 10.8 percent of recent college graduates were working low-wage jobs.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York classifies low-wage jobs as those that tend to pay around 25,000 U.S. dollars or less. Recent college graduates are defined as those aged 22 to 27 with a bachelor’s degree or higher and not enrolled in further study.
11% of recent graduates with degrees working low wage jobs feels like they’re actually working these roles en masse after all.
11% is certainly not nothing, but the vast majority are not working these jobs.
I’m not really sure how you can look at 11% and say “yes, they are working these jobs en masse”. A bit disingenuous.
Edit: Post OP and others continue to downvote - yet can’t counter. I’m sorry college didn’t have the outcome you expected, it’s definitely no longer the golden ticket it once was. But to claim it isn’t a benefit at all, or indicate that most college grads are unable to use their degrees is at best misleading and at worst disinformation. There are a lot of variables, including the major you choose, and how much you spend to complete the degree.
