The Empty Promise

[stingray79]

This is dedicated to the of thousands upon thousands, if not millions of teenagers that trusted their Teachers, Principal, Guidance Counselor, and most of all their Parents to help them out in life and help show them how to be successful in life…

The conversation…

“You have to go to College, if you want any sort of future, so your not flipping burgers all your life…”

“But what about the loans? How will I repay them?”


The promise…

“If you go to College, you will be able to get a good job to repay the loans and pay your bills, have a place of your own, and save for a future, I PROMISE…”


This is the story of thousands upon thousands, if not millions of teenagers that trusted their Teachers, Principal, Guidance Counselor, and most of all their Parents to go to College, even though they were not sure, or in some cases didn’t want to go at all, and did their duty and went to school so they would have a future… And low and behold, it didn’t matter… The did what they were told to do in order to have that life which their parents wanted for them, and that promise that was made… has in the minds of some, if not all of us… been broken forever…

After graduation, for most of us this is the reality that starts to set in… (Very few of us, if anyone anymore gets, “A REAL JOB”.)

Surprise! There is no reward for going to school! Your going to get the same shitty pay as the kid that didn’t even graduate High School, so all your work is for naught!

To hell with getting you’re A.A., B.A., or M.A.

It is their in what lies the broken promise…

I went to College and still have not been able to get “A REAL JOB”, so I can repay the loans I took out to go there in the first place, I can barely pay my bills, I still don’t have a place of my own, and I have saved nothing for my future, I simply don’t make enough money to do that…

And worst of all since we can not fulfill the fruits of the promise…

WE ARE SEEN IN THE EYES OF OUR VERY PARENTS AS FAILURES!

[Fender247]

I would say a college degree or any professional or advanced degree is more a way of improving your chances. Nothing is really guaranteed.

[lostnotyetfound]

No one ever said to me "I promise" but I believe that is the overall message we get from society. Unless you want to work at McDonald's flipping burgers then you better go to college. As a result of going to college you will be able to find a job that will allow you to support yourself, buy a home, etc...

This may have been true years ago when our parents were growing up. It is far from true now. Everyone and their mother has a college degree so it is no longer special. With the cost of everything going up and paychecks not keeping a steady pace people are lucky if they can afford the basics and a house is pretty much out of reach.

I have that college degree. Luckily I went to a state school so my loans are fairly small and I locked in a great interest rate before they got out of control. I'm a receptionist, don't think I really needed a degree for that and my pay is laughable. Everyone wants to see those of us in this position as "failures" so the don't have to open their eyes and see how crappy the economic situation really is. All the real jobs are being shipped overseas so the big corporations don't have to pay a reasonable wage and insurance. Soon the only jobs available will be flipping burgers. Then what?

[wordsmith]

Everyone and their mother has a college degree so it is no longer special.

It takes more than a college degree to be "special," professionally speaking, and it always has.

Also, according to the most recent census, the percentage of Americans with college degrees is no greater than 30%. Way fewer than half the people in this country completed post-high school schooling. Simply because most people you yourself may be around have college degrees, that doesn't mean that it's as common as you may think.

[NewMrs.]

To hell with getting you’re A.A., B.A., or M.A.



This Original Post is a duplicate that was also posted another forum on this board, so I replied with my main thoughts last week on the other forum. However, I just wanted to point out that this isn't a new problem. My mom had the same problem 15 years ago.

My mom got married shortly after she graduated from high school, she worked as a school secretary for two years before she had me and my sisters and became a SAHM, and then when I was in junior high and high school she went to community college part-time and eventually earned an AA in business. She hadn't had any real work experience for the previous 17 years and we lived in a rural area, and thus she wasn't able to find a job with her AA. One of the problems was that she was competing with BA's for the few jobs that she thought that she had a shot at. (These were all jobs of a clerical nature.) She went back to school and earned her nursing license. This improved her employment prospects.

[kellybeen18]

In college there's all this pressure to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life (or at least the next 40-some years until retirement). I had to pick a major, even though I had no idea what I wanted to do after college, so I chose Poli Sci and Economics. I'm not really doing anything specifically related to that now, and I don't really want to. Maybe I would have been better off not going to college right away and taking time to figure out what I wanted first. Of course, if I would have told my parents I wanted to go to art school, they would have laughed at me.

[roulettefanatic]

my brother has been saying this for years on end and it turns out he's absolutely right....it's all a big lie, unless you find something that requires a skill (especially nowadays like plumbing, electrician, nurse, medical technician).....employers want to know what you can do for them, not what your education is in.....this is mainly the reason why i will not allow my child (if i ever have children) to major in the liberal arts (if things continue on this path).....i say that halfway jokingly because i can't force my son or daughter to study anything or not study anything but i didn't realize how hard it was for liberal arts people until i became one myself......school should open up more opportunities and it does, but you have to find the right niche......i don't know too many starving doctors and lawyers, but look at the years of schooling involved in that.....you can make a "decent" living but that all depends on what people think is a good standard of life.....for some reason i expected to be making at least $40-45k out of school in the New York metro area but i'm way below that, partly because of what i studied.....some majors are more lucrative than others.....but there is definitely this lie that is sold to every kid in America because my parents fell for it too.....my parents are immigrants (my father didn't even finish high school but built a business for himself) and the first thing they stressed was education but they never made it clear where it would get us.....

[NewMrs.]

my brother has been saying this for years on end and it turns out he's absolutely right....it's all a big lie, unless you find something that requires a skill (especially nowadays like plumbing, electrician, nurse, medical technician).....employers want to know what you can do for them, not what your education is in.....this is mainly the reason why i will not allow my child (if i ever have children) to major in the liberal arts (if things continue on this path).....i say that halfway jokingly because i can't force my son or daughter to study anything or not study anything but i didn't realize how hard it was for liberal arts people until i became one myself......school should open up more opportunities and it does, but you have to find the right niche......i don't know too many starving doctors and lawyers, but look at the years of schooling involved in that.....you can make a "decent" living but that all depends on what people think is a good standard of life.....for some reason i expected to be making at least $40-45k out of school in the New York metro area but i'm way below that, partly because of what i studied.....some majors are more lucrative than others.....but there is definitely this lie that is sold to every kid in America because my parents fell for it too.....my parents are immigrants (my father didn't even finish high school but built a business for himself) and the first thing they stressed was education but they never made it clear where it would get us.....


You know what's funny? My husband majored in Computer Science in college and he works as a software engineer now, and he is of the stubborn opinion that people shouldn't use college to "train for a career." He has this whole theory that his career is reasonably okay because he is doing something that he is interested in, not because he majored in something technical. He thinks that most of his computer science classes in school were complete BS and that he had to take it upon himself to aquire the skills that are actually useful in his job.

We have little "arguments" about this a lot when we're in the car, because I don't understand his line of reasoning very well. I have said in the past that when we have kids someday and they grow up and need to find a career, that we should strongly encourage them to train for something technical. He is of the opinion that if they really want to study something like theater or music or some other kind of liberal arts discipline in college, then we should let them, and that if they pursue things that they are actually interested in, then they will be able to figure out how to carve out careers for themselves. Somtimes I think that my husband is a little too utopian.

[vinsanity]

You know what's funny? My husband majored in Computer Science in college and he works as a software engineer now, and he is of the stubborn opinion that people shouldn't use college to "train for a career." He has this whole theory that his career is reasonably okay because he is doing something that he is interested in, not because he majored in something technical. He thinks that most of his computer science classes in school were complete BS and that he had to take it upon himself to aquire the skills that are actually useful in his job.

We have little "arguments" about this a lot when we're in the car, because I don't understand his line of reasoning very well. I have said in the past that when we have kids someday and they grow up and need to find a career, that we should strongly encourage them to train for something technical. He is of the opinion that if they really want to study something like theater or music or some other kind of liberal arts discipline in college, then we should let them, and that if they pursue things that they are actually interested in, then they will be able to figure out how to carve out careers for themselves. Somtimes I think that my husband is a little too utopian.

Interesting! Sure sounds like a "grass is greener" type of argument. It appears your husband wants your kids to explore their interests, while you want to pave a path of opportunity for them, knowing firsthand that one is not likely to be found in liberal arts.

Although I graduated with an accounting degree, I agree more with your viewpoint than his. Although it would've been nice to study something more interesting in college, I knew well that I would've been much more set in my career if I stuck to the accounting route, and that's what was more important to me. Sure, I have an interest in what I do, but the main reason I went this path is because of the financial opportunity. It would be great if people could find good careers, at least more easily, in the liberal arts fields, but like you said, the idea is a little too utopian.

[wordsmith]

You know what's funny? My husband majored in Computer Science in college and he works as a software engineer now, and he is of the stubborn opinion that people shouldn't use college to "train for a career." He has this whole theory that his career is reasonably okay because he is doing something that he is interested in, not because he majored in something technical. He thinks that most of his computer science classes in school were complete BS and that he had to take it upon himself to aquire the skills that are actually useful in his job.

I am definitely of this opinion. I majored in what I loved (English) and have never regretted it for a moment, both because it's very broadly applicable and because I have many marketable skills, none of which were necessarily obtained via college (though definitely honed through the course of study). I would never, ever, ever, ever dissuade anybody I know, kids or no, from the liberal arts if that's what they love and choose. There isn't anything wrong with going to school for the purpose of learning a trade or to obtain technical/professional training, but it's not what I personally wanted, and not the reason I went. I've not suffered for the choice, and I loved my college program/experience, so it was win-win.

He is of the opinion that if they really want to study something like theater or music or some other kind of liberal arts discipline in college, then we should let them, and that if they pursue things that they are actually interested in, then they will be able to figure out how to carve out careers for themselves. Somtimes I think that my husband is a little too utopian.

I must live in this utopia, because it's exactly what I've spent my adult life doing, following spending my time in college predominantly studying English, theatre, and music at a liberal arts college. I can't imagine having done anything other than what I did, which is to study what I'm most deeply interested in (had I had years and income to burn, I also would have obtained degrees in sociology, psych, anthropology, and art, but I did have to pick and choose a bit). I had quite a few classmates (many of whom dropped out/dropped their majors eventually) who were enrolled in courses of study that were not of their choosing or interest.

[deerheart]

Well, as a journalism major who's found out the hard way that her degree is worth absolutely nothing, I respectfully disagree with you, wordsmith.

I guess I've just had a different experience. I would say although I think I have a lot of skills as a result of my liberal arts degree (and my schooling was a lot of fun), I just don't think those skills are valued by society. So, now I'm going about trying to learn a more technical set of skills so I can find a job.

I'm thinking that maybe a liberal arts degree is more valued/applicable if one decides to stay in academia/teaching. Otherwise, I'm kind of coming to the conclusion -- via my own failures -- that it's pretty much worthless.

I tend to agree with this:

....it's all a big lie, unless you find something that requires a skill (especially nowadays like plumbing, electrician, nurse, medical technician).....employers want to know what you can do for them, not what your education is in.....this is mainly the reason why i will not allow my child (if i ever have children) to major in the liberal arts (if things continue on this path).....i say that halfway jokingly because i can't force my son or daughter to study anything or not study anything but i didn't realize how hard it was for liberal arts people until i became one myself......school should open up more opportunities and it does, but you have to find the right niche......

I don't know if I would have listened to someone who told me this type of stuff when I was in college, but I'm fairly sure no one told me. Actually, I think the message that was fed to me was more of a, "You can do anything! Just be yourself and the money will follow! Yay for you!" type of thing. And foolishly, I totally believed that.

[AshleyJordan]

I have a liberal arts degree (urban studies with a minor in creative writing,) and I never had any trouble at all getting full-time jobs, freelance clients, or into graduate school with my B.A. I was recently at a reunion-type of event for my college and was amazed at all of the cool work people are doing (amongst my college friends, I know one professor, one green buildings coordinator, one research analyst, one nutritionist, a bunch of teachers, and a bunch of fundraisers. We are all doing interesting work and put food on the table.

Also, I work in development, and I have many, many donors who majored in anthro, or women's studies, or some other liberal arts subject, and went on to become finance people without MBA's. I'd venture to guess that if you're having trouble finding fulfilling work with a liberal arts degree, there might be factors beyond your education at work. It's not my place to judge what those factors might be, but I've always gotten good jobs with this degree, and so have many other people who I know.

[gemma-dahl]

I agree 100 percent that employers want to know what you can do for them. But I can do a lot for them - and I didn't major in any kind of trade.

I majored in liberal arts, too. I took classes in every subject, from chemistry to sociology to literary theory to poli-sci to math to psych. I took design classes. I took an IT class or two. I took writing and literature classes. And I'm grateful I didn't go into a trade. I can learn computer stuff on my own - but how will I ever continue to be a writer if I don't have a good foundation of general knowledge from which to draw?

However, when I first graduated, I wouldn't have said what I did. Getting that first job is tough sometimes. I live in a place with a lot of college grads and no jobs - so the competition is stiffer. Then I realized something: Your degree doesn't open doors - you do. You need to keep learning after college. Treat life like a college, and you will eventually find pursuits that make you happy.

I lived at home for a few months after school, too. So what? You early 20s aren't forever.

Regarding the journalism degree, deerheart, I don't have one, and I do work in that field. To get there, I had to work a few jobs at a time since leaving undergrad, and I still need to constantly freelance to prove that I intend to continue in journalism, especially since my career took a technical turn.

Most entry-level j-jobs want the j-school degree - and most of them involve long hours and low pay. You WILL find a small-circ. paper willing to hire you fresh out of undergrad, but you need to be willing to move to a smaller town with a lower COL, and accept that your life is gonna be a lot of work for little pay for a while. Most people don't wanna do that. I worked the sports and arts desks on my college paper - and I know tons of j-kids who went into HR or became paralegals or whatever because the costs of a journalism career, at least initially, were too high. I would encourage you not to give up. If you want, I can discuss this off board with you - I can even look at your clips, resume, and so forth.

[wordsmith]

Well, as a journalism major who's found out the hard way that her degree is worth absolutely nothing, I respectfully disagree with you, wordsmith.

Not even useful in getting a job in journalism? That's interesting...I worked for the better part of a decade in journalism, myself, and I know that I had coworkers who had majored in it...

Most entry-level j-jobs want the j-school degree - and most of them involve long hours and low pay. You WILL find a small-circ. paper willing to hire you fresh out of undergrad, but you need to be willing to move to a smaller town with a lower COL, and accept that your life is gonna be a lot of work for little pay for a while. Most people don't wanna do that. I worked the sports and arts desks on my college paper - and I know tons of j-kids who went into HR or became paralegals or whatever because the costs of a journalism career, at least initially, were too high. I would encourage you not to give up. If you want, I can discuss this off board with you - I can even look at your clips, resume, and so forth.

Exactly. The jobs are still there. There is a difference between "my degree is useless," and "I don't want to do this kind of job," if that's in fact really what a person is saying. And it's fine if somebody decides a particular career track is not for them, due to any or all of the above factors...but in that case, the problem actually isn't the degree, it's the expectations. You can still get a job with the degree.

I guess I've just had a different experience. I would say although I think I have a lot of skills as a result of my liberal arts degree (and my schooling was a lot of fun), I just don't think those skills are valued by society. So, now I'm going about trying to learn a more technical set of skills so I can find a job.

I guess this really depends on what your interpretation of "valued by society" is. I agree in the sense that I feel there are def. jobs that that society undervalues, included the majority of human services and education - if they were more valued by society, they would pay more. But regardless of the lower pay, those jobs DO exist, for those who choose them.

At any rate, every job I've ever had has relied heavily upon my writing, communicating, and instructing skills (neither of which I obtained, but both of which I definitely honed, in college), so I do feel they're valuable in obtaining/keeping a job.

But the real point is that if it had been important to me to learn a trade or get specialized training, I could have gone to trade school or a tech school of some sort. It wasn't what I wanted, though, and I wouldn't have been happy. Also wasn't what I wanted to get out of continued ed. I also wouldn't be happy doing that type of work, at any rate. The jobs I've had that have utilized the things I'm interested in have been great fits.

It's unfortunate that you've had the experience you've had, don't get me wrong, but I still do firmly believe that people need to follow what they're truly interested in, and not toss it aside because of fear that they won't be able to use it. I know too many people stuck in careers that don't make them happy, because they chose them for reasons other than personal interest. I don't wish that on anybody.

[wordsmith]

Then I realized something: Your degree doesn't open doors - you do.

This is exactly right. A degree isn't a golden ticket, and there's no reason for any thinking individual to believe it is. What you do with yourself, your degree/training/experiences, and the choices/decisions you make are what get you places, not your degree. Your degree may not open doors, but it does ensure that there are doors that will not be slammed in your face due to not having a requirement of the job. A degree gives you more options than you would otherwise have if you didn't have one, plain and simple.

While it's easy for anybody having a hard time securing employment to look at their time spent getting their degree as somehow worthless or a waste of time due to frustration, think about how drastically fewer options you'd even have without one.

[NewMrs.]

I must live in this utopia, because it's exactly what I've spent my adult life doing, following spending my time in college predominantly studying English, theatre, and music at a liberal arts college. I can't imagine having done anything other than what I did, which is to study what I'm most deeply interested in (had I had years and income to burn, I also would have obtained degrees in sociology, psych, anthropology, and art, but I did have to pick and choose a bit). I had quite a few classmates (many of whom dropped out/dropped their majors eventually) who were enrolled in courses of study that were not of their choosing or interest.


Well, that's cool that others agree with my husband. He and I are both stubborn, so somethings I disagree with him just for the sake of a good argument. My husband is the son of a college professor and a high school math teacher and his sister is an English teacher, and I was starting to think that he thinks the way that he does just because he has so many teachers in his family. (Although my dad and his sister and his brother and my sister are all teachers also.)

After reading these replies, I may be starting to follow his line of reasoning a little bit more, but I'm still not sure yet. However, since you seem to agree wtih him, I will expand some more about his thoughts:

He has said many times that he thinks that college shouldn't be used as a trade school. There's nothing wrong with going to trade school, but he doesn't think that college should be used as one. He also thinks that the people who earn Computer Science degrees and then complain that they can't find jobs in their field are the same people who weren't passionate about it in the first place and just chose that major for the prospective money.

My whole problem is that a lot of people spend tens of thousands of dollars to earn a college degree, so why shouldn't they have the same expectation of getting a good job that one would have from spending their time and money at a trade school?

But I guess that when the time comes for us to have hypothetical kids and send them to college, I will join him in encouraging them to do whatever they want to do.

[Bocheezu]

He has said many times that he thinks that college shouldn't be used as a trade school. There's nothing wrong with going to trade school, but he doesn't think that college should be used as one. He also thinks that the people who earn Computer Science degrees and then complain that they can't find jobs in their field are the same people who weren't passionate about it in the first place and just chose that major for the prospective money.

Comp Sci isn't really a money degree, though. People that are in it for the money will show up in medicine, business, law, and engineering. And they'll still get jobs and good pay even if they aren't passionate about it, especially in med/engy because the demand is so high. Will they hate their jobs? Some will, some won't, but I guarantee the money makes up for it most of the time.

[NewMrs.]

Its interesting that this board is having this discussion now, because one of the other sites where I lurk had the same discussion yesterday. Somebody on the board posted the following link to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i34/34b01701.htm

Here is a link to the other board's discussion of this article:

http://boards.thenest.com/boards/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=51506965&forumid=243

[erika36]

I was curious what kind of degree you have and in what field?

[gemma-dahl]

I wanted to add that I initially thought my liberal arts degree was useless to me in becoming a writer - especially for that first month or two after college. It seemed like all of the j-school students really had advantages because of the connections they made in the program.

Then, I realized that I would have to a) work for a small paper full-time, or b) take on a bunch of part-time or freelance j-jobs to demonstrate a consistent commitment to writing, in addition to working my steady day job. It was one or the other - but choosing c), "Give up," could not be an option if I wanted a career.

I opted for b. It was a lot of work, struggle, and sometimes, 12-hour days. But that experience could not have been had if I had chosen to forgo college (In high school, I considered doing a trade school, or just bypassing college altogether.) and the work that I did really, really drew from my rich and broad liberal arts education. My one regret: I didn't branch out enough. I wished I had taken at least two or three economics and/or business classes in school. I had to learn all of these concepts on the fly while on the job. Quite nerve-wracking. :rolleyes:

[AsianGeek]

Comp Sci isn't really a money degree, though. People that are in it for the money will show up in medicine, business, law, and engineering. And they'll still get jobs and good pay even if they aren't passionate about it, especially in med/engy because the demand is so high. Will they hate their jobs? Some will, some won't, but I guarantee the money makes up for it most of the time.

The degree itself isn't a money degree, but your talent + degree = profit. You have to first prove to the industry that you have talent and then you'll be raking in the money.

[wordsmith]

I wanted to add that I initially thought my liberal arts degree was useless to me in becoming a writer - especially for that first month or two after college. It seemed like all of the j-school students really had advantages because of the connections they made in the program.

Then, I realized that I would have to a) work for a small paper full-time, or b) take on a bunch of part-time or freelance j-jobs to demonstrate a consistent commitment to writing, in addition to working my steady day job. It was one or the other - but choosing c), "Give up," could not be an option if I wanted a career.

I opted for b. It was a lot of work, struggle, and sometimes, 12-hour days. But that experience could not have been had if I had chosen to forgo college (In high school, I considered doing a trade school, or just bypassing college altogether.) and the work that I did really, really drew from my rich and broad liberal arts education. My one regret: I didn't branch out enough. I wished I had taken at least two or three economics and/or business classes in school. I had to learn all of these concepts on the fly while on the job. Quite nerve-wracking. :rolleyes:

Totally my experience. The broad intellectual base afforded by my liberal arts college degree was seriously INVALUABLE in being a writer/reporter. I had a working knowledge of so many different types of things, I could be counted on to write solid articles on pretty much whatever was thrown at me, and my background in research and academic inquiry gave me the tools to quickly bone up on anything I didn't happen to be familiar with. My publisher was always confident that due to my academic background, I could hit a home run with just about whatever was pitched to me.

Actually, there was not a majority of people at my paper possessing journalism degrees...there were a couple, but most of us had studied English.