I wish I could say the same
The only college degree that truly was an education
- Thread starter GON
- Start date
I went back and re-read your post #12, to get a better understanding...
I took those same classes and gained a better appreciation of our world. Just my 2 cents, I respect your experience.
If you come to Silicon Valley, I will drag you to Stanford for an Astronomy lecture.
That sounds like lots of fun! One of the most fun and interesting classes I took was a history of cryptography class taught by a sociology/anthropology prof.
I must admit that a lot of my opinions are informed (skewed?) by seeing how the sausage is made as my wife is a psychology professor in a PHD program. The things I hear coming out of the mouths of supposedly learned people is sometimes appaling, sometimes mind numbingly boring as everyone finds a thousand ways to repeat the same old ideas. Having listened to a lot of online classroom discussions, the ratio of critical thinking to virtue signaling is way lower than one would expect from PhD level students.
I swear if I was a professor, it would be my policy that class was cancelled for the day the first time someone uttered the phrase, "I feel."
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Interesting; I've never heard of it coined that way...
In Silicon Valley, high tech instructs development to "Fail Fast", learn from it and move forward.
GON
$150 Site Donor 2025
Probably should mention what triggered me to post this thread "The Why".
:
I received a solicitation from Wheaton College (until recently Wheaton was often spoken of as the Ivy League of Christian colleges) to consider enrolling in Wheaton's:
This cracked me up. If one needed a Master's in this field- they have no business being in this field. I have extensive direct and indirect working experience in what is commonly called Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response (HADR), both domestically and internationally.
FEMA offers extensive free online certification for HADR and associated fields. Project management is a key task in the leadership of HADR, and the other key tasks are turf wars between interagencies. If ones needs a master degree in HADR to lead a HADR response, they might be a really bad fit for the reponse. A university that offers a master in HADR leadership likely is also lost in the sauce.
I couldn't help but ponder how many institutions offer made up degrees that are erroneous.
Now you know the rest of the story.
https://www.wheaton.edu/graduate-school/degrees/ma-in-humanitarian-and-disaster-leadership/?
:
I received a solicitation from Wheaton College (until recently Wheaton was often spoken of as the Ivy League of Christian colleges) to consider enrolling in Wheaton's:
Master's in Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership.
This cracked me up. If one needed a Master's in this field- they have no business being in this field. I have extensive direct and indirect working experience in what is commonly called Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response (HADR), both domestically and internationally.
FEMA offers extensive free online certification for HADR and associated fields. Project management is a key task in the leadership of HADR, and the other key tasks are turf wars between interagencies. If ones needs a master degree in HADR to lead a HADR response, they might be a really bad fit for the reponse. A university that offers a master in HADR leadership likely is also lost in the sauce.
I couldn't help but ponder how many institutions offer made up degrees that are erroneous.
Now you know the rest of the story.
https://www.wheaton.edu/graduate-school/degrees/ma-in-humanitarian-and-disaster-leadership/?
There is no way I could ever generalize about the education of millions of people.
As for my education? I wish I had the opportunity to get a GED and save myself the thousands of hours wasted in high school courses.
The 'bad' teachers were really not bad at all in high school. It was the sterile nature of the curriculum that was forced upon them. Learning life through a textbook can be hellishly dull, and teaching the same lesson four to six times a day is even worse.
That was my experience in high school.
When it finally came time for college... I absolutely loved it. The liberal arts classes were just as challenging as my stats, advanced math, and decision model classes. The textbooks were sometimes terrible. But I always took the time to get to know my professors and sit with them a few times during the semester. I really enjoyed getting to know them as people and I always tried to find one kernel of insight that was never mentioned in class.
To be brutally blunt, having conversations about arcane and esoteric subjects with people I genuinely liked made it all easier to understand. I can still teach my son financial and managerial accounting even though I never touched those subjects for decades.
The textbooks were dry. It's an absolute slog to write that stuff and I can't even imagine the constant fact checking and legal issues with writing one these days. But my professors? They were incredibly interesting people.
If I could experience Groundhog Day for one solid year and relive college without any negative consequences I would do it in a millisecond. The partying and fakery of the college lifestyle got old quick. What didn't was learning constantly and making the most out of life.
As for my education? I wish I had the opportunity to get a GED and save myself the thousands of hours wasted in high school courses.
The 'bad' teachers were really not bad at all in high school. It was the sterile nature of the curriculum that was forced upon them. Learning life through a textbook can be hellishly dull, and teaching the same lesson four to six times a day is even worse.
That was my experience in high school.
When it finally came time for college... I absolutely loved it. The liberal arts classes were just as challenging as my stats, advanced math, and decision model classes. The textbooks were sometimes terrible. But I always took the time to get to know my professors and sit with them a few times during the semester. I really enjoyed getting to know them as people and I always tried to find one kernel of insight that was never mentioned in class.
To be brutally blunt, having conversations about arcane and esoteric subjects with people I genuinely liked made it all easier to understand. I can still teach my son financial and managerial accounting even though I never touched those subjects for decades.
The textbooks were dry. It's an absolute slog to write that stuff and I can't even imagine the constant fact checking and legal issues with writing one these days. But my professors? They were incredibly interesting people.
If I could experience Groundhog Day for one solid year and relive college without any negative consequences I would do it in a millisecond. The partying and fakery of the college lifestyle got old quick. What didn't was learning constantly and making the most out of life.
Job market is tough.
I wonder how are BITOG members children’s job search going this spring after graduation ?
My primary care physician asked me if I could help her son find something. He’s been applying everywhere and no response or replies from medical equipment manufacturers. He has a mechanical engineering degree and wanted to get into orthopedic implants.
I told her (my PCP) that I can do an employee referral…… but with all the tariffs my employer put all hiring on pause. Many countries outside the USA are canceling their new equipment orders. I really don’t blame them.
Will this ME grad end up working a low paid part-time job in retail ?
University of Central Florida grad.
I wonder how are BITOG members children’s job search going this spring after graduation ?
My primary care physician asked me if I could help her son find something. He’s been applying everywhere and no response or replies from medical equipment manufacturers. He has a mechanical engineering degree and wanted to get into orthopedic implants.
I told her (my PCP) that I can do an employee referral…… but with all the tariffs my employer put all hiring on pause. Many countries outside the USA are canceling their new equipment orders. I really don’t blame them.
Will this ME grad end up working a low paid part-time job in retail ?
University of Central Florida grad.
Ex-Google contractor will pay you $2K to get him hired
https://sfstandard.com/2025/05/23/tech-layoffs-google-staffer-pays-you/
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Owen Lucas
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$2k referral for a tech job is pretty low IMHO.
Took my Daughter around this year on tours of most of the public 4 year Universities in Virginia and you can sure tell where the money is. These schools have so much money they don't know how to spend it all, the amount of money being spent on landscaping alone must be staggering as they were planting only annual flower plants.
There is no truth to be honest. I have seen people who won't even need an engineering degree and perform well, and I have seen people who hated what they learn even in physics and just want to forget them all and do sales afterward. To me the only real test of whether you need the degree is to see whether people can do well with or without it, and that's really the only way you can prove or disprove whether you or people like you really need it.
I know people who didn't learn much in school but rub elbows with other old money heirs and they ended up doing well in business later. I also know people who had to give up something they want in life because they were poor and ended up with a degree they don't enjoy, but were necessary to pull their entire family out of poverty as a ticket to a middle class job. There are so much overlaps between different choices that in the end it is all about how YOU use your degree and what you want to do in life.
One extreme case I know, a straight A student who ended up in Oxford, then graduate and work as a sales in investment banks, getting frustrated because he didn't came from old money and were sent to do sales job in developing nations instead of managing portfolio. One day he decided to quit investment banking and became a police officer on a boat (not because he wants to chase criminals but because he though it was cool and is a stable job), and manage his own nest eggs with all the free time in the world.
My only requirement for my kids is no matter what you choose to do, manage your own risk and work hard. If you fail because you are lazy you have nobody to blame, and don't run up a debt just because you want to have a 4 year "experience". If you just want an "experience" instead of working hard to reach your goal you can do that with a community college then transfer to a state school.
Another thing I learn is you get what effort you put in, whether it is career, school, or family. You can't just go to a school and expect them doing everything for you and you can't just blame not getting what you want in life just because a school rejects you. You are responsible for everything in your life, regardless of what happens to you. All else is just statistics.
I know people who didn't learn much in school but rub elbows with other old money heirs and they ended up doing well in business later. I also know people who had to give up something they want in life because they were poor and ended up with a degree they don't enjoy, but were necessary to pull their entire family out of poverty as a ticket to a middle class job. There are so much overlaps between different choices that in the end it is all about how YOU use your degree and what you want to do in life.
One extreme case I know, a straight A student who ended up in Oxford, then graduate and work as a sales in investment banks, getting frustrated because he didn't came from old money and were sent to do sales job in developing nations instead of managing portfolio. One day he decided to quit investment banking and became a police officer on a boat (not because he wants to chase criminals but because he though it was cool and is a stable job), and manage his own nest eggs with all the free time in the world.
My only requirement for my kids is no matter what you choose to do, manage your own risk and work hard. If you fail because you are lazy you have nobody to blame, and don't run up a debt just because you want to have a 4 year "experience". If you just want an "experience" instead of working hard to reach your goal you can do that with a community college then transfer to a state school.
Another thing I learn is you get what effort you put in, whether it is career, school, or family. You can't just go to a school and expect them doing everything for you and you can't just blame not getting what you want in life just because a school rejects you. You are responsible for everything in your life, regardless of what happens to you. All else is just statistics.
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That's politics in general regardless of what system you look at: communism capitalism religious run nation etc. There will always be a line they draw in the sand to please some people but upset the others, and even dictatorship needs to please enough people to not get toppled. Loan forgiveness is just one way to do it in one system.
Contractor does not have the same standard as a full time employee in interview etc.
I probably can get a contractor job in google for 1/2 of the pay overall and get laid off as the program is canned, but if I want to enter Google as full time employee I probably need to study for 4 months, 4 hours daily, to compete to get in. I know you can say they do the same job but the determination and work ethics to prep for interview set these 2 apart.
My SIL is a highly paid psychiatrist in Denver area. They work somehow in conjunction with one of the larger schools up there.
Recently their department won several "awards" and we went to the ceremony where she won some stuff and she gave a lengthy speech.
Now, on one hand such things are good for employee morale.
But what I really noticed was people who exist, live, work and breathe in an echo chamber. They all think they're smart and they all think they're "helping" but they just sit around in a VERY expensive, palatial building and tell each other they're very smart and very helpful. Meanwhile, I believe very little of that translates to the outside world.
About 10 years ago, I worked for a short time with a college professor with his Ph.D who, at the time, taught engineering classes at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He was hired to be an engineering manager but couldn't accomplish the simplest of tasks. I'm not aware of a single thing he accomplished for the several months I worked with/for him. The company canned him, and he deserved it. I have no idea how the man earned a Ph.D.
Ya know I was thinking about it further and one thing she does that might help some people is work on extreme phobias. Like people who are VERY afraid of public restrooms -- they'll work up to eating M&Ms off toilet seats and even licking toilet seats. In public restrooms. I'm not kidding.
So basically she gets paid around ~$350k/yr to have people lick toilet seats. Can't make this up -- truth is stranger than fiction.
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