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Somehow this seems to belong here:
But on a serious note, there was a time when relatively few people had a degree of any sort so it really "meant something" (at least when you were looking for that first job).
[As an aside, I've always figured that, in the immediate post war years people, most of whom had no post secondary education of any sort, confused cause and effect - they looked around and saw that financially successful people tended to have degrees and fiugred that the degree was why they were successful - I've always figured it was the other way around - those people had degrees because their families were financially successful so they could afford to go to university.]
Back on topic. Degrees are sufficiently common today that they've pretty much become a minimum requirement to even merit consideration for many jobs (I've dealt with a lot of "old timers" in highly technical fields that don't have degrees themselves but won't even consider interviewing someone that doesn't have a university degree). And it gets tougher when you think about humanities degrees - more and more employers want someone they can throw off the deep end without significant amounts of training.
As to whether or not a university education is "worth it" - depends on what you want to get out of it. And what you expect to be able to do with that degree when you finish.
When I lived in Toronto one of my neighbours was always complaining that her husband had a degree in cartography but couldn't find a job in his field. I remember asking why - at the time people with his qualifications were being snatched up (often before they even managed to graduate). Her answer was eye opening to say the least. "Yes but all those jobs are in Northern Ontario and he wants to work in downtown Toronto." Fast forward a couple of years and I was looking to hire an assistant - first applicant I spoke to was a young lady who worked in our mail room. She had a degree in forestry - again I had to ask why she was working in the mail room when at the time forestry grads were being hired as fast as the universities could produce them. Her answer "yes but all those jobs are in Northern Ontario and that's no place for a woman to work".
Sniff.
I think it can be useful but only for some people. I have not been supported by anyone since I was 19 and neither asked for nor received any financial help from my family. I tried going to university at 21 and still hated school even though I loved learning. I instead did an apprenticeship and got a trades ticket. That trades ticket meant that in my late thirties after the right wingers had destroyed the building trade unions in BC I was able to retrain to fight them in a different forum not just the picket line and protest march.
I committed to my son that I would provide him with whatever education he wanted, be it trades training or university or whatever. He is now at UBC and working very hard. He could live at home for free but he prefers his own place so he works full time when not in school and 2 to 3 days a week when he is. He thinks he is learning something useful in the Geography Dept. At 24 he has a job that pays better than the Living Wage and he is getting great marks. Given that level of privilege I was happy to see his very positive reaction to the Straight White Male as Lowest Difficulty Setting link I sent him.
My son has choices and that is what I want for all the youth this country. I'll let them decide what works for them.
When tuition and living expenses leave many youth $30,000 to $50,000 in debt then it is a form of wage slavery to the banking system. They become the indentured servants of the financial elite. What I hate the most is if you are a young person and you run up twenty or thirty grand in debt you can declare bankruptcy EXCEPT if it was to pay for an education.
If my son had to take on $30,000 in debt to get a BA I would likely advise him against it and instead to pursue other career avenues until he was established enough to follow any academic dreams. Of course that includes educating oneself by reading. I found getting high marks in my disciplines as someone pushing 40 was a lot easier because in many courses I had already read much of the relevant information long before returning to university.
As a 25 year old science graduate, I can probably provide some perspective. I see university as a bad education and a smart (but risky) investment.
If your goal is to make money and land a satisfying career, university is still worth it. The $10k to $35k of income you'll gain over a lifetime pretty heavily outweighs the $80,000 you'll spend in tuition fees and time spent not earning a wage. In similar fashion, post-graduate degrees and degrees from presigious schools are also worth it. It's not the only way to earn 6 or more figures a year, but it sure as hell is the easiest.
If your goal is simply to educate yourself, university is terrible value, and getting worse by the year. There is pretty much nothing that I learned at university that I couldn't learn on the internet. There are a lot of good passionate professors, but a lot of terrible ones that make each class a 1-3 hour torture test. The primary positives of university, outside of the credentials you get, are the physical labs and the social connections you make. They're cool, but worth $80,000? No.
Is university affordable? For me, it was. I play life's game on the straight white male setting, and my dad (with my mom at home), and then my mom alone, raised me and my two siblings on not much more than $30,000 a year. I let you guys decide how privledged that makes me, but I basically paid for university by working my tail off in the summer, and taking $25,000 in government loans and $5000 on student credit at a major bank. For all intents and purposes, I don't have to start making government loan payments for about 3 more years and the private bank payments are less than my cell bill.
But there's a ticking time bomb to find a professional job, and those are scarce. As of my freshman year my plan was to use my degree to get a job with Environment Canada. Thanks alot Harper. As it stands right now I live at home working retail at barely over minimum wage and in 3 years will have loan payments of $400/month. Am I broke right now? Not really, no. Am I worried? Yeah. I'm starting to get into "failure to launch" territory here.
Power and the various contenders for the throne acquire much of their wisdom from the same schools. That everything requires managing had already been long settled among them. Now we just have to suffer the eternal question of who is better qualified for the work, while at the same time we're quite aware of the fact that they have all qualified many times over. What more convincing do we need to understand that generic methylphenidate is just as effective as the Ritalin brand.
70% of new jobs in Ontario will require post-secondary ed.
More evidence that PSE is the new standard for employment. Someone should tell our colonial administrators in Ottawa that they need to replace the billions of dollars removed from core PSE funding since the 1990s.
I just want to say one word to you. One word. Are you listening? Plastics.
And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.
Isn't the answer to this question: "It depends"?
From a particular student's perspective, there are one of two principal objectives that the student may have: (1) to enhance job prospects or (2) to enrich her life educationally (or some combination of those two objectives).
If a student's only goal is the enhance job prospects, then obtaining an accounting, nursing, engineering, computer science, math, or similar degree may be the way to go. If a student's only goal is to enhance her life educationally, then she probably will want to study other subjects (English lit, art history, political science, etc.). Certainly, studying subjects in that latter category may lead to enhanced job prospects as well, but an art history degree, for example, will not readily translate into a broad array of job opportunities (well-paying or otherwise). Either way, students should have a clear expectation of what a particular educational path will do for that student. If a student studies Latin literature and expects to get a well-paying job after graduation, he's likely to be gravely disappointed. And, if a student focuses exclusively on business courses, she's likely to be disappointed if she was hoping to get a well-rounded education. So, what is important is to align one's educational path with one's objectives. And, that is a matter of individual choice and preference.
I think a more interesting question is: Is it worth it for society to channel finite resources towards funding whatever educational choice a students may want? In other words, are all university degrees, regardless of what the subject matter studied is, equally valuable to society? Would a university producing 1,000 engineering students benefit society just as much as if the university produced 1,000 art history majors?
I suppose it might depend on how many bombs, tanks, and robot weapons are being built by those engineering students.
And an art history major is more likely to be aware of the real events commemorated by "Guernica", "Disasters of War", and Trajan's column.
... not necessarily a more simple way of framing the question.
Of course it is a good idea for society to offer to help people in THEIR chosen studies.
You are right however that monoculture is the problem. if we have all Engineers or all Fine Arts students then that is a problem. That is exactly why we need the choice to be the students. Humans are remarkably diverse in everything including their interests. I put my faith in the power of the people themselves to self actualize their dreams.
The current system with its debt load structure channels people based more on the demands of the market place than on their own dreams. Unleash the people and they will lead themselves to a better future.
The reason why many right wingers are totally opposed to the idea of free or heavily subsidized post secondary education is on display in Quebec. When educated youth stop believing MSM lies and start to self organize the political elite goes into disarray and cannot control the agenda.
I wasn't saying it's a choice between all engineers or all fine arts students. Rather, the question is: Would, for example, 900 students studying engineering and 100 students studying the fine arts be the equivalent of 100 students studying engineering and 900 students studying fine arts? From my perspective, I don't care what a student chooses to study. But, if society is going to fund education, then society has an interest in the relative number of people studying, say, engineering versus the fine arts.
One of my nieces obtained a fine arts degree from the large public university here in my state. At age 30, she waits tables (and will probably continue to do so for the indefinite future). By contrast, my sister went to the same public university and she received a nursing degree (and has been working as an RN for many years). If each of their educations cost $100,000, does the amount of money spent on one degree provide society with the same value as the money spent on the other degree? Now, if they were funding their own educations through loans and work, then the course of study should be entirely up to the student. It would be a different question if society was paying for the degrees (how many college-educated table servers do we need?).
So, I think part of the answer to the question in the thread title depends on who is asking the question: Society generally or a student individually?
Sven,
I can sort of see the argument you are trying to make. I disagree with it in quite a few ways, particularly that the main consideration is the payback to "society" and that that is determined by the paycheque at the end.
That aside though, I think that by playing off technical training against the liberal arts you are just digging yourself into a hole. Are you implying that any learning that isn't specifically technical and job oriented is frivilous and expendable? Or that those fields of learning are of no value to society, and that if someone chooses to study them he or she should not expect any funding?
I didn't take you for a strong proponent of a managed economy, right down to allocating who gets to study what (though many fields already have quotas; I don't think that is necessarily tied to funding).
And you would be correct! But, if society is paying for something, then society should necessarily have a say in how that funding is allocated.
No, I don't take an either/or view of the matter. Rather, I think that if society were to pay for post-secondary education, then society can legitimately ask: What percentage of liberal arts degrees is an appropriate number? 10%? 50%? 90%?
Engineering students who study at a liberal arts university take arts classes *in addition* to engineering, just as Arts and Humanities (and in my case, Fine Arts) take maths and sciences as part of our liberal arts education.
I'd like the physician, engineer, microbiologist, economist and agronomist with the broader education, please and thank you. It will make the world a better place to live in.
You don't seem to get that diversity is the key. Why worry about the proportions of who takes what? People get the training they desire and then come together with others and build or produce goods and services. The problem is that we have no free economy it is controlled by and for the Ultra Rich.
Sven you are directly saying that only people of privilege should have choice in society. That is oppressors language and would read well in an Op Ed in the National Post. What is the value of gold? The current price on the market or the beauty that a fine piece of gold jewelry makes? The first is determined by a betting process and the second is subjective and unrelated to the price set by the casino we call a free market. If your mother wore it does it make it more valuable and why? This idea that everything including education can be valued with dollar signs is fundamentally a sick economic model. Milton Freedman's acolytes have destroyed country after country and impoverished millions. Chile uses your model.
Well then I don't know how enforced quotas figures into your argument at all. You can't have it both ways.
As for who pays... The government is the channel through which we collectively fund a number of things, right down to our roads.
Now if we want to start looking at what is a fair portion for students to pay, I think it is far more significant that not only do students have to pay back their loans, but that student loans are one of the few debts that one cannot default on. For up to 7 years in Canada, and in perpetuity in the states.
If it is a question of abuse, I think the assumption that students are getting a free ride at the expense of the system is not quite right.
Sorry to drift this thread, but I really hope the students negotiating with the Quebec government at least raise the issue of making post-secondary education free. And if the government says it's impossible, I hope the student negotiators say "bullshit!".
Boom Boom if they are going into "fresh" negotiations then of course that has to be their starting position not a freeze. I think the government should come to a compromise and reduce the current fees by 50% over 7 years.
This:
is hysterical! I want this on a degree-sized poster, in a frame, now.
If anyone wants to see that awesome HuffPost article I posted earlier, I'll be happy to re-post it; it shows how incompetent the Quebec government is with finances, and makes an argument for free education.
That said, I don't agree with the point being made by the jokey-degree. I'd like it better if the degree focused on the criminal overpricing of education instead of assuming that a liberal arts degree is wasted. But I'd still hang it on the wall in place of the philosophy degree I never did finish...
No, you're probably not going to find a job "in your field" with a philosophy degree, but just having that degree opens doors to better jobs. I have spent my whole "career" (such as it is) in clerical jobs. What did most of the jobs higher on the ladder at almost every place I've ever worked require? You've got it. A degree. And not necessarily a specialized or science degree - liberal arts degrees were just fine.
Same here, Michelle - I worked for an arms-length gov't agency for about 5 years before I went back film and tv. I was in a bottom-payscale position for about 6 months and then was moved to a top-payscale position that had degree requirement. They couldn't have cared less what the degree was in.
Currently, I am working in the cultural industries and making a comfortable if somewhat unstable living - but that instability goes for any entrepreneur in any field.
If students pay a significant share of their education, then I tend to agree with you.
But, as Boom Boom said in his post right after yours, he and many other people think that post-secondary education should be "free" -- in which case, I think the question of whether or not society is getting value from the particular mix of degrees being issues is very relevant.
For example, if a student pays for half of the total cost of an education, then whether or not a philosophy degree is "worth it" has a very different meaning than if the education is "free" and the student has no skin in the game.
We're overlooking the fact that college and university education is free elsewhere on the planet. And Quebec can afford it if the government were to manage their finances better.
In the first place, do we apply that same standard to everything which is publicly funded? Is it worth it to me to subsidize mining and oil exploration for profitable companies?
Secondly, it seems to me if all education were paid for the people who would benefit most are the doctors, lawyers, and engineers who will be hauling down the big salaries afterwards.
And thirdly, to say that tuition is free does not mean that there isn't investment of time and effort and money on the part of students.
And we already have universally paid education to grade 12. What is the difference, and how is it so impossible to extend that through post-secondary education? There are enough examples around the world to illustrate that it is not only possible - it is effective.
Looking at this through a toilet paper tube trying to find presumed cheaters and abusers based on what you think is a worthy education is no different than trying to fight poverty by kicking people off welfare, IMO.
Certainly, the argument that corporations should pay for universities via taxes is particularly strong, given that they benefit immensely from a skilled workforce. After all, would any of the big pharmaceutical companies in Quebec have even considered locating in the province if there were no talented researchers to hire?