Or, people who needlessly went to college take jobs they would be doing anyway.
Maybe the market will some day find that the ones that didn't go to college are valuable as well, usually know how to deal with unexpected situations better and learned more things "on the job" while the college ones were dabbing in theory.
Theoretical studies are nice, but it's one thing to study something theoretically, another, to experience it.
That's assuming that the college degree is a worthless signal, BTW. The scary thing is that the college degree probably is a useful signal. It's an insanely expensive one in terms of time and money, though. And after you finish your undergraduate, you may find out that there is a new, more expensive, longer signal that you are expected to complete to be an office assistant.
When the argument is whether it's better to study an entirely different X or jump straight to practicing Y, if the goal is to get better at Y there's no argument. The problem isn't that the college students were "studying theory", it's that they were on the wrong thing entirely for where they ended up. They're not going to get paid better for their subject X theory.
(And it's a dumb argument since the correct answer is "both at the same time to the extent possible", which at least the computer science programs have definitely picked up on in the last 15-20 years. And knowing the Internet as I do, the "to the extent possible" words are not extraneous... obviously we are not going to put a brain surgeon in a brain on day one of school, OK?)
The market is great, but you can't just sit around and wait for it to figure things out while real people are suffering from its inefficiencies.
You see... It would be great if people had better history/sociology knowledge, I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a technocratic dystopia. The fact that these fields are seem as "useless" is a terrible thing.
But we live (at least US/Western countries) in a capitalist society, like it or not.
This means that the monetary value of your skills is directly linked only to the monetary value they can generate, not other types of value that undoubtedly they have.
People choosing to study humanities must be prepared to face a job market where their skills are not in great demand.
Then again, money is not everything.
A degree in history or sociology is seen as useless because it mostly is outside academia. The people who are good in the field will most likely end up on the academic track, and those who aren't will most likely end up in low paying jobs having wasted several years and tens of thousands of dollars.
The problem isn't history or sociology degrees, it is people thinking that a degree is a ticket to a good job.
Is it wrong for him to think that he needs a college degree in order to teach high school? What are his chances of teaching high school WITHOUT a degree?
I already mentioned low-paid jobs.
Also, at least here in Australia the only pure degrees that the high-school education system cares about are maths and science, everything else is "generalist" and can be filled by any teacher. In addition, at least here a general degree isn't good enough any more, you either need a teaching degree or a graduate diploma in teaching.
In the US at least, it sounds very reasonable to go to college to get a history degree if your goal is to become a high school history teacher.
To me, it sounds perfectly an achievable goal to decide to go to college, get a major in history, know that you're not even close to the best historians out there, and expect a job teaching high school. just like the guy in the article assumed.
Unfortunately, it didn't work out, and might have been a waste of money. But there was nothing unreasonable in his thought process, from my perspective at least. I would even bet it won't be too tough for him to get a teaching job in the future.
Yeah see the expectation is the problem. Here in Australia most of the people with teaching degrees are waiting for the boomers to retire, because there are very few full time positions (unless you are willing to move to the most remote and poor communities).
>But there was nothing unreasonable in his thought process, from my perspective at least.
The unreasonable thing is believing that just getting a degree will get you into a middle-class profession. That hasn't been true for at least twenty years. You need good grades, co-ops, and connections.
As the article points out the market for tertiary educated workers is smaller than the pool of tertiary educated workers.
Some teachers take the initiative to double-major of their own free will (respect!), but it is certainly not required. When I was in school I casually assumed that my teachers knew a great deal more about the subjects than what they were teaching; when I got to University and had the opportunity to look at their curricula requirements I learned that was not true, at least not in general.
The problems aren't with trying to change the minds of millions of people, it is with reconciling a system that no longer works because we are still operating under the false tautology that human labor, of any kind, has value.
Don't underestimate the power that marketing has. Between state and privates schools there is a lot of money to be had and it only keeps working if they can convince each generation that the education they provide is indispensable
This story was about the US.
>This is also useful in most pubs since they are a few centuries old.
And? I've been to a pub in the US that was 3 centuries old and thought to be the first building in the city (used to be a private residence). The building's history was probably part of the orientation, and it isn't like it is hard to memorize. Having a history degree doesn't make him more qualified to talk about it, it isn't like the history of pubs is included in the undergraduate (or even graduate) curriculum.
>assumption that a history degree means you'll most likely be operating a beer tap to pay the bills
Yea, a history degree is known to be pretty "useless" to most people who obtain one, that doesn't mean one is more qualified because they have one, it just means there is very little one can do with a history degree.
As investment -- "I want a degree to get a better job" -- it may not be good for the individual, and for society it's probably a net negative, because the benefits to your human capital are minimal while you are putting more resources into a zero-sum status competition.
Now, it's perfectly okay to have consumption, but you shouldn't confuse it for an investment. Spending 4 years backpacking across Europe also sounds like an awesome time, another end unto itself, but you shouldn't borrow money you don't have to do it.
Spending money improving the level of history knowledge in a population can have paybacks that range from better national security through to the quality of art. These things are very hard to quantify and to just look on their direct financial return gives a very poor measure.