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| I saw this over at ZeroHedge |
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| These two entries caught my eye |
Another major issue that can get lost in the weeds is that many people who get a degree don't get a job in their field...or don't get ANY job. How do you handle those people? Most surveys ignore them.
The two areas-of-study that I circled are likely to suffer from both of those issues. "Professional journalists" are nearly extinct and AECGGS is such a recent invention that it is foolhardy to assume there is any organic demand for the graduates.
Don't ignore the side benefits. Having a career that you LOVE to do can save money in the long run due to less stress and less medical needs over time. When you are content with how you spend 9 hours of your time outside the house, a lot of home life falls into place.
ReplyDeleteI'm an architectural CAD draftsman. It doesn't pay much, but I enjoy time creating structures, especially walking through them as they are being built. Rarely boring.
The challenges (like most jobs) are the people you have to deal with. Clients who want to cut cost. Contractors who want speed in building. City Departments who want to stick to letter of law. Keeping a lot of balls in the air.
I am surprised that you didn't mention "change orders" aka "late revisions" as an aggravation.
DeleteThe four corners of the Project Management pyramid are cost, timing, deliverables and risk.
The biggest pita for me as site super, was the wait time between asking for a revision because the architect screwed up and finally getting it.
DeleteA lot of times, the architect would just go by the old field drawings to make up his new ones for the remodel and 90% of the time, they didn't jive with actual field conditions.
Currently as I see it the best paying degree is political connections.
ReplyDeleteLike the Longshoremen Union, having an IN gets you into membership.
In work best enjoyed I find plumbers and electricians most happy around here. Their work is always in demand, they share information about deadbeats so better PAY your Bill buddy and they have enough toys and TIME OFF to enjoy them.
There is a rumor going around that Elon Musk is working on an invention to make plumbers obsolete.
DeleteHe noticed all of the shit going into people's heads via WIFI and is working on a way to make it go in reverse.
Musk is pretty good, but Einstein said something about stupidity being infinite and he wasn't sure about the galaxy being so.
DeleteI got a B of A in Graphic Design in 1996. Started out making 20+/hr straight outta college. People wanted to hire me b/c I had that piece of paper alone.
ReplyDeleteToday that job pays 15-18/hr in my AO. Still want the paper, and 5 years experience now, too.
My CDL license gets me jobs in the 22-25/hr range, and cost nothing (earned while working).
Most "advisors" in US high schools should be sued for malpractice.
Delete"Follow your passions. There will be a job for you." They pander to whatever whim the student projects. "Sure you can be a world-class, theoretical astro-physicist. Your 2.2/4.0 GPA in math won't be any problem. Einstein had bad grades too."
Funnily enough... I was interested in and liked the mechanical drafting classes I was taking in HS, but society at large and my advisor said you have to find something you Love, b/c you'll be doing it for 40 years. Graphic designing was more fun than drawing gears and floor plans, but I know all too well which would have been a better career choice.
DeleteSomehow it is sad that foreign language qualifications are right down at the bottom.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom of that job-market fell out when Google Translate became "good enough". Now there are hand-helds and smartphone apps that do voice-to-text-to-translate in near-real-time. Why hire somebody for 40 minute-a-week of translation when you can use the app and get 95 percent of the functionality?
DeleteThe value of a translator (especially if the other party is not aware of their capability) is that he can capture the side-conversations during negotiations.
I recall one of the PhD requirements for Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley was a minimal technical proficiency in German, French, or Russian. Don't know if that is still true.
DeleteI graduated very long ago with one of those not-worth-much degrees (from WMU) and got a job with Chevy. I saw the light and got one of those degrees at the high end (back when a college degree meant something). Paid for it myself. Lost 5 years but got smart in time and the pay difference didn't take long to recover expenses.
ReplyDeleteThats the one positive to my B of A.... I've advanced to mgmt very quickly in other endeavors, my papers being a reason cited.
DeleteERJ, I am one of those people that did not get a job in the field for which I studied in either my undergraduate or graduate degree. That said, I have managed to do uncommonly well due to the fact I landed in an industry where I could learn as I go and the overall trend is good.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder if in some cases new graduates spend too much time looking at the what rather than the where. I should think that degrees that overlap the what and the where (for example, education where many people enter teaching or journalism where many people assume they will be "writers") it becomes difficult as there are too many bodies for too few positions - and those sorts of degrees may not teach such things as "how to use your degree outside of your major".
In fact, that is a failing of many higher education institutions: they care for getting students through the system, not what happens to them afterwards.
So the least profitable degrees run the government and control media. Is power more important in the long game?
ReplyDeleteI'm not surprised at the value of engineering. But it's hard, so there is a MUCH smaller talent pool. When you add the PE requirement, that pool shrinks even more.
ReplyDeleteEngineering is hard because your true final grader is Mother Nature, and she is a stone cold b***h who will kill without remorse if your designs aren't up to requirements.
DeleteI'm glad a degree is not required for Pole Dancers. That might be our only entertainment when the power goes off. --ken
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping my chemical engineering degrees will let me run a moonshine still. I doubt they still teach Fenske diagrams to calculate the number of trays needed in your distillation column!
DeleteMy granddaughter and her husband both have degrees, granddaughter in sociology, her husband in agribusiness. Neither one is working in their respective degrees.
ReplyDeleteOne of my acquaintances works in IT. He told me that most of his work is stupid requests like "The printer doesn't work".
ReplyDeleteIt is always because it is out of paper. His clients cannot be bothered to re-route a job to another printer an office or two over OR to add paper to the machine. The issue usually generates several "tickets".
I asked him how long it would be before some simple if-then-else scripts were inserted to route jobs to the next functioning printer.
He shrugged. It would eliminate 2/3 of this department.
Even IT is not totally safe.
We don't have an IT person in our office - we do as much as we can without calling them because they make the process painful.
DeleteJonathan
P.S. The nearest IT person is 75 miles away and doesn't like to leave their office.
The impending economic collapse is going to make most of this moot. Even for degrees that most people would consider "useful".
ReplyDelete