From Graduate School Student to Amazon Warehouse Janitor
slate.com
slate.com
And there is also an oft-missed social justice aspect to all this. Professors and teachers are disproportionately white (and by definition, college-educated): https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61. We sell education as a way to overcome the legacy of systematic oppression of certain minority groups, but we are actually creating quite a large wealth transfer from disadvantaged minorities to college-educated white people. And members of these minority groups aren't seeing the pay-off from paying their tithes to the educational establishment. As the author notes in the article:
> A 2014 study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research revealed that an incredible 55.9 percent of black recent college graduates were “underemployed” and working in a position that didn’t require a four-year college degree.
Is this true? I suspect large swathes of this country detest education. Nobody seems to be voting for better funding of schools - hell look at Oklahoma where school is only open 4 days a week. And that's an entire state!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/with-state-bu...
While there are certainly people that champion education in this country, there are many that condemn it.
Oklahoma spends about $8,000 per student per year on K-12 education. If it were a country, it would fall between Italy and Spain on that statistic.
You also have school systems like mine where they blew the budget on building a new school that the contractor built fraudently(stuff like the radiators in classrooms being just covers with no actual radiator underneath). It just so happens that the contractor who built the school is friends/family with members of the school board so I guess it's no paper for homework that year and the contractor doesn't get sued.
We let far too much of our school system just be raided by private interests which is how you see us spend more money than similar countries, while barely able to run some schools
> We let far too much of our school system just be raided by private interests
Right. "Private interests" are to blame, even though school systems are run by public employees top to bottom (from the principal to the janitor). Education in Sweden and Denmark must be a real disaster, given that in those countries school-choice programs allow parents to use voucher dollars on private schools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Sweden ; http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/27820....
Edit: your first link has an extra semicolon at the end I think. I will read these articles but it will take some time
However, this isnt true for every engineer, every degree, or every college. And- Did I really need to pay 40k to learn math really well?
My engineering job + coworkers were significantly better than college as far as increasing my ability to be an engineer.
Even one of the most valuable degrees, I'm starting to become skeptical of its value.
Good enough is somewhere between the skills of a skilled college graduate and someone like George Hotz, the hacker who jail broke the iPhone and read the latest AI/ML papers to start his own self-driving car project.
For the rest of us, an engineering college degree signals that we made it through the accreditation gauntlet.
The professional organizations control the accreditation. Medical school enrollment is strictly limited by the number of residency spots which are funded by the US government. The AMA controls the former, as it could easily expand the supply to lower the direct costs.
An argument can be made that a MIT ChemE degree is more difficult to obtain than one from Cal State Poly. However, as long as each school is accredited by ABET, there is a baseline level of knowledge that each graduate of the ChemE program in any ABET-accredited school should obtain.
Software engineering is a term I personally hate, as there is no way to engineer software like a bridge. No standards, no stable technology.
1. "Does an education really need to cost so much?"
2. "Do I really need an education?"
The answer to #1 I can't answer. I would be inclined to cut certain things like athletics and student perks, but university presidents are smart people and I don't pretend to be able to do their jobs of maximizing institutional reputation at minimum cost better than they can. A 3-year professional degree that eliminates all general educational requirements seems like a pretty damn obvious win though.
The answer to #2 is, I think, yes for most software engineers. Of course there are innumerable examples of brilliant people who become titans without a formal education, but you're making it awfully hard on yourself. I wrote code all through my teenage years before going to college and easily felt things out intuitively, but... let's just say that if there's a version of me out there who dropped out of college after 2 years, I hope I wouldn't hire him/me. And, barring winning the startup jackpot or pivoting to management, the difference in lifetime earnings between someone who really has their shit together and someone who's bringing up Wikipedia at work to try to remember how linked lists work is so wide that the price of a good state school education screams "worth it" to me.
Barring the possibility of going back in time to try the experiment, how do you know it's not actually the path you took that's the hard one?
Eliminating the only part of a university education that's useful? We already have coding bootcamps and they don't take three years.
If I had to choose between a person (with natural aptitude) who took this 3-year path you describe and the same person, but instead they took only the ~2 years of general education requirements, and spent zero minutes studying engineering in the classroom, I would hire the latter without hesitation.
I would prefer a hiring process that filters out that attitude.
> humanities education makes you a better-rounded person somehow
That's literally what university is for. It sounds like what you wanted was a trade school, and there's nothing wrong with wanting that, but there is still a reason why a university education is valued by some people.
They all seem like "responsible" careers that someone worried about making a living could turn to. And then these graduate programs make expensive and misleading glossy brochures and web sites to entice students into a career where jobs are plentiful and well-paid.
Well, you can turn those programs into a decent job, but you have to play your cards just right. You have to choose the exact subfield that is hot right now, and pick up skills that aren't necessarily taught at the grad program. And you have to get into the exact right internship, or get lucky enough to snag one of the dwindling number of government jobs in your field. But no one at these schools bothers to tell the students these things. So in the end, relatively few graduates end up working in the field they studied.
But they do keep the $50,000-100,000 in debt they accumulated.
This would quickly defund useless education.
Currently student loans are pretty much no risk at all. You can even shake them off with bankruptcy.
There aren't a dwindling number of government jobs in public administration or public health.
> But no one at these schools bothers to tell the students these things.
Several schools' in those fields big draw is their internship/fellowship programs and connections to key employers in the public or private sector, and these things are heavily marketed as important.
> So in the end, relatively few graduates end up working in the field they studied.
A number of professional degrees are competitive advantage in related and even distant fields as well as their exact field, so that's not a sign of not getting a significant career advantage from the degree.
“I had pushed for a college education, believing that with it came job security and the freedom to pursue my writing without the burden of poverty.” Another person lied to by the academic industrial complex. The problem is, the world is awash in “writing.” Just “writing” is not a lucrative field. There is a lot of this: “applied to art grants and startup-accelerator programs, and even joined an innovative female-owned co-working space, Splash Coworking” and “I had to host a 12-hour poetry reading to raise money on GoFundMe,” but there is a distinct shortage of “I took an operating system course, which finally taught me how to master pointers and prevent memory leaks.”
According to [0], whites make up between 68% and 81% of the US population in the 25-64 age groups, and, according to your link, 76% of academics. In the same age group, Asians are 5.8-4.1% of the population, yet 10% of academics.
That makes whites over-represented by at most 76/68 = 1.12, so 12%, while Asians are over-represented by at least 10/5.8 = 1.72, so 72%.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...
Just 50%? So 1% less, and they will be a minority in their age group?
Making a living as an independent creative is really hard. Marketing through channels like Instagram could help (10k true fans). Even creatives who get to be “creative” by way of being in an agency where they “apply” their creativity don’t have an easy life (constant deadlines and stress). Being creative on a deadline can definitely take the joy out of creating.
So many people want to be a writer. There are tons of writer workshops/retreats. Usually they feature writers who have achieved some level of success. But the reality is that someone like Kristen Roupenian who got a book deal out of her “Cat Person” story that went viral was very lucky. The right story at the right cultural moment.
> “40k artists resident in London (about same number in NYC)
For London and NYC each:
75 superstar artists (>$1M/yr income)
300 mature, successful artists (>$100k/yr income)
5,000 part time artists (need to supplement their income)"
Even if we ignore the fact that some of our greatest thinkers often had "non-marketable" proclivities (Newton was also an Anglican theologian, Einstein worked as a patent clerk, Bertrand Russell wrote poetry, C.S Lewis was an author, etc.), there's something deeply human about being able to put pen to paper. But, for whatever reason, we are losing sight of why poetry, music, and art is valuable. This is a wide-ranging problem and no one seems interested in fixing it.
Everyone thinks those things are valuable, but due to nearly costless distribution of media the very best in their field can distribute their art to the entire world and we can enjoy it. It's a market that lends itself to superstar economics now, like spectator sports stars.
As a consumer of art, it has never been easier to enjoy and appreciate it.
Honestly, I'm sympathetic to the author, not least because I think there's some irony in the piece. She recalls mournfully the time she revealed on social media that she was at the edge of homelessness if she could not raise money. If that was painful for her, the impetus behind this essay is not as self-indulgent as it appears. She did not relish publishing this, rather, she did it because Slate paid her for it, and she's still trying to make her ambitions work. She may or may not yet succeed, but there's something admirable—and, one fears, perhaps pitiable—in her dedication.
the argument that only "marketable" skills
are valuable is a farce
Then Amazon came along, and it was obviously far better, in many respects: suddenly, I had easy access to foreign language books, for one thing.
But, less obviously, other benefits were lost. Mostly those that escape measurement by econometrics. Not just in terms of squeezing all there is out of people that are suddenly the subject of the economic force of an employer the size of Amazon. Small stores, within walking distance, i. e. the traditional "downtown" is gone, and with it all chances of surreptitiously meeting anyone from the mayor to your neighbour. It's all online now, or sometimes a big-box store outside of town within a barren cultural desert of parking lots and lots.
But the argument is hard to make: why (and how) should anyone forgo cheap prices, or the comfort of intensely personal transport, for my vague yearning of community? And so it will continue, the better future, as imagined by Kafka and brought to the big screen in Wall-E.
(presented here mostly as an alternative to the inevitable gloating of STEM majors over the failure of others to find a place in the world catering to their strengths and interests.)
Did you not have a public library where you lived?
Our society seems to have no problem taking a rational approach to something like, for example, basketball. Unless you are one of a few truly phenomenal people with the talent and drive to succeed professionally, playing basketball is a hobby. Full stop. You can count on coaches to (mostly) objectively advise you as to whether or not you are one of those people.
Not so, the liberal arts. What was intended as a program of enculturation for the children of the wealthy elite has turned into a monster that devours the children of the working class, who are mostly not exceptional, and for whom an arts degree is an expensive diversion at best.
I think people need to do a lot more research into career earnings and job prospects. These degrees have never paid well, which is unfortunate for the subject of the article.
2)beyond job choice or debt. Did this person not take internships during college??? Cry me a river. You take jobs during bachelor years, you get reccmondations talk to your employment office (most colleges have them) and you have something lined up (espcially for a grad). I smell that this person does not work well with others and bruned all of her bridges with her colleagues.
Are we getting the full story, is this person good at what they studied and worked hard to make connections? Possibly not. This is an anecdote that should not be used as conclusive evidence of anything.
Yeah, but there are lots of people who are hard, smart workers, good at what they do, but they either
a) don't realize how important it is to make connections in order to even survive in today's professional world, or
b) were told that all they had to do to succeed in life is go to college, pick a realistic major, work hard, be honest, be trustworthy. Well, that's often not enough.
You almost always have to have a large professional network in order to thrive in today's world.
And many people struggle with that.
The power of role models and established process is huge.
Point of evidence: the gradual replacement of the term "author" with "content creator".
Point of evidence: the gradual replacement of the term "author" with "content creator".
Please tell me more about "corporate authors" and why such a term doesn't denigrate the literary contributions of authors of traditionally published poetry and prose. Or do newspapers disrespect the humanities by calling their authors "journalists"? "Op-ed contributors"?
It makes sense, actually. For many people in the culture, they're fairly comfortable (founders are few, employees many) and so they start looking up Maslow's pyramid.
It's close-ish to Austin, but I doubt there are very many large companies and startups in San Marcos.
Perhaps more than an illusion in practice: Nobody takes those jobs if they can find any alternative...and then the structure of those jobs (time commitment, low pay, inability to take time off) makes it hard to even look for another.
This is a line sold to millions of students in all fields of study. You may be unsympathetic, but given the systemic promotion of higher education over the last few decades it's easy to understand why she would believe the degree would be the ticket to an opportunity in the field of study.
My parents strongly urged all of their children to pursue professional, specific degrees: engineering, law, medicine, or accounting/finance. They reinforced time and time again that "liberal arts degrees" provided fewer career options, and to put it plainly, that I would probably end up broke if I chosen that path. I don't think they would have provided financial support to study something like, for example, music. Or even psychology, for that matter, unless the goal was to be a PhD/academic.
I agree with your points, however, that degrees do not guarantee employment and we should not mislead students. Too many students think "degree = job". Having observed the Norwegian education system from afar (Norwegian mother & family), I advocate the way they do it and the way many Europeans have vocational programs and opportunities for technical training as an alternative to university. Even the janitors in Switzerland may train for as much as 3 years ( see https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/swiss-skills_training-t... ). Although, I do not know how that would work in the American culture, where tradesmen typically are not respected and do not make as much money as engineers and the like. Income inequality is a much bigger problem here than in some of the Scandinavian and European countries.
TLDR: degree != job, if paying for degree, get a technical one (engineering), accounting/finance, or legal/medical. Make good grades. Grades are more important in some professions than others. Don't expect to get a job with a liberal arts degree.
A degree in some of the traditional liberal degrees History, Litrature from good Uni (Ivys' Oxbridge ) is still viable.
I used to work (at one of the big publishers) with a younger colleague who had a first from Oxford in English - she has now moved into the City and probably earns as much if not more than some of the developers
The cult of the MBA is a separate thing.
They were already in the class or network of people. They knew they were going to be 'doing that work' because they were already recruited into that world long before university. It has nothing to do with their degree other than a passing qualification that they were expected to receive and in many cases the school just hands them no matter what their grades really were.
The degree is a technicality to their position and I am saying that the example you gave while interesting is not normal for anyone planning to work for a living.
I worked peripherally to publishing and am quite familiar with the situation. We had $1 million plus commission sales people 'of the right sort'. Did they know what the tech they sold did or have any real sales skills? Did it matter?
That technicality, however, is a fine point in a much larger discussion, and I wasn't going to bring it up for the purpose of this post. I imagine the type of jobs you are talking about, "high-status, high-paying" would place a, for example, state-school Electrical Engineering graduate with good grades higher than a state-school liberal arts graduate. But they will usually rank a Harvard, etc. graduate with a liberal arts degree even higher than the EE graduate. Just my read on how that works. An English degree from <Insert State School> is not perceived the same as an English degree from Oxford or Cambridge.
It is, don’t get me wrong, but if a more granular cultural standard for what education is meritorious - disciplines contra brand name unis - maybe vocational training would be more appetizing.
If you have any single friends who are successful lawyers, you might be surprised how easy they have it on dating apps compared to someone with more normal jobs. I don't think there's an easy answer to changing that social behavior at a massive scale; it's just part of our culture and the only thing we can do is teach our children to be accepting of everyone and that they are free to pursue whatever careers they want without judgement.
But as she's working in an Amazon warehouse for just about minimum wage, so I don't quite see how one would see a sense of entitlement quite as prominently as you do. I could just as easily characterise the sentiment as "desperation".
After all, the "American Dream" isn't, at its core, just about rags-to-riches. It's also about a society where everyone can find opportunity that at least approximately match one's aptitude.
For the so-called "Great Generation" the situation was starkly different. While graduate degrees mattered less, opportunity was abundant. And someone somewhat diligent and not too stupid, as one without a doubt must be to keep a job in a warehouse while publishing essays as she does, would have found a way into the middle class[0].
To see this change and react with the sort of told-you-so glee of others' misfortune, possibly informed by some anxieties around "the two cultures", strikes me cruel.
0: only valid for white men, of course. So some things do get better with time.
According to Glassdoor, $43k/y is the average salary for a creative writer.[0]
[0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/creative-writer-salary-SR...