User, when did you realise that higher education is a scam and most university degrees are useless?

Meant to include you in reply.

There is no "women's study" "feminist study" or any other form of what you would call lefty courses at my university. To be fair I went to an engineering university but I haven't heard anybody else ever mention them. If they do exist they would be free though yeah you get 6years covered for you before you have to pay. And then I believe it costs about £1,800 a year

>most university degrees are useless
So major in something useful then.

The big grift isn't that university is useless, it's the lie that everyone can be a winner. If God blessed you with a low IQ, no amount of university will help you

>Not everywhere is the USA mate
Do they have no entrance exams or academic standards in Scotland? Is literally everyone allowed go to uni for free? That is the twisted mindset of those in the USA who demand that college must be "free".
Here, mediocre students can go to college, take ridiculously easy courses to get ridiculous, pointless degrees like "Feminist Studies", then demand their student loans be paid by the taxpayers (not by the unis and their massive billion-dollar endowments, oh no).

OP here. True. I am the only one in my family (working class background, all of my cousins learned a trade) with a PhD and incidentally the one with the lowest income.

>So major in something useful then.

Hindsight is 20/20 bro. I fell for the STEM meme. Become a scientist they said.

You expect someone with a degree in "Feminist studies" to be smart? That's on you.

No, I don't. That was my point. They aren't smart, but want everyone else to pay for their damn-fool decisions.
>the colleges should pay for misleading their students

You apply for universities by sending your current grades and a short personal statement, usually in your penultimate year of high school. The university then writes back saying you got in, you are rejected, or they will let you in if you get a certain grade in one of the exams still to finish, I needed an A in advanced higher chemistry for example.

I think the fact that university is free forces us to be more selective about students and courses, not to say that there aren't some useless courses and people here but there isn't the same monetary incentive to let everybody in. Foreigners do have to pay for uni here though so Scots are given a set number of places to prevent the unis just filling up with Chinese students.

Honestly mate I think job satisfaction might be more important than pure salary. I'm happy taking 5k less a year if it means better location or work environment

So which STEM degree has failed you? Most of them are still in high demand.

Job satisfaction and better conditions mean better mental health. What good is money if you are miserable.

Not yet apparently

I learned useful skills in college, like the industry I work in, and debt free. I would like to thank god for this opportunity

>I think the fact that university is free forces us to be more selective about students and courses,
I would have no problem if public State Universities did that in the USA. Most of them are already funded enough to do it. Their biggest problem is all that juicy student loan money has convinced them to create monstrous, bloated "administration" bureaucracies that produce nothing but demands for more money.

See .

>Honestly mate I think job satisfaction might be more important than pure salary. I'm happy taking 5k less a year if it means better location or work environment

My job satisfaction isn't particularly high either. 70 hr weeks are not uncommon.

The obvious one: I'm a molecular biologist. My primary field of study was cancer biology and genomics.

>I'm a molecular biologist. My primary field of study was cancer biology and genomics.
So where are you working that is not paying sufficient compensation? Are you working for a non-profit?

For what it's worth, I am self-employed and 70-hr weeks are normal -- and I am making far less than my younger brother or sister, both of whom have STEM degrees.

I'm working as a postdoc in a large cancer research center on the east coast for 50k / yr.

Why did you study.

Goddamn right it's a scam! Succesfel people don't need higher education. 90% of people don't need that shit.

>doesn't read thread, spouts off lame attempt at sarcasm anyway

I dropped out of high school. Got into IT and eventually started my own business. Make your own rules in life :)

Is it a non-profit, or government-funded? Because many of those have notoriously "underpaid" staff.

My first semester ...
Now i make 100k+ a year as an electrician and will be selling my business in less than 5 years will retire and never have to worry again .

It's linked to the Harvard Medical School.

there is a lot of scamming going on. the wrong degree in the right school, the right degree in the wrong school, or just the wrong school and the wrong degree can screw you up. if you are borrowing without consideration of repayment, then you are in a lot of trouble. very little gets spent on actual instruction. lots gets spent on useless consultants, useless tech, and useless services. user higher ed admin.

You should seriously consider updating your resume/CV and see what else may be available, because 50K a year is retail store manager level.

Did you know some of the captchas have 17 fire hydrants?

Okay, now that's just damn stingy. Harvard has a truly massive endowment and easily afford to pay full-time researchers a good wage.

postdoc is one step of adjunct faculty. it's not his resume. that's about all you get in the purgatory of postdoc land. it used to be that you did a post-doc in order to improve your vita sho you could get a ft faculty job. then they told you that your needed two. now the dreamers just keep getting one after the other.

I don't particularly want to be an academic scientist. I would love to have a position in industry (pharma, biotech). But those jobs are sparse compared to the number of cancer bio PhDs. After several years and half a thousand applications, I haven't found anything.

Nobody does. Because cancer researchers are a dime-a-dozen.

Sound like a way to keep competent, educated people in shit-paying jobs, making the administration look good on paper. If one finally makes it as tenured faculty, it might be worth it, but it sounds like they don't intend for that to happen.

OP here. Even industry positions now oftentimes require a postdoc. Simply because there is such an oversupply of applicants.
I buried my dream of any kind of faculty position one year into my postdoc when I saw brilliant people with 2 or r Nature/Science/Cell first author paper struggle to find anything.

>I would love to have a position in industry (pharma, biotech). But those jobs are sparse compared to the number of cancer bio PhDs.
Biotech? Jeez, when I was in college (before I dropped out because I didn't want student loan debt), that was supposed to be the next massive-growth industry. What happened?

It is a growth industry profit-wise, investment-wise etc. However, the growth of bio PhDs exceeds the growth of the industry by a lot. On the other hand, many companies outsource their basic research to universities who hire even more PhD students and postdocs.

That really shows what the problem is. People don't seem to find out that there are no faculty jobs for phd's until they start looking or are in post-doc-hell. wait until industry positions require two post-docs, and you are told that the job awaits if you do just one more.

It's worse outside of STEM. Read the article in the Chronicle about the English phd students in Columbia that staged a strike because not one grad got a job and the department admitted a class of 50--yes 50.

people who work for slave wages as grad assistants

I'd say a good 75% of all majors are useless. STEM, accounting and econ. You shouldn't need a Fucking degree to be in sales but somehow you need one now, he'll even entry level manual labor jobs says they prefer one with a degree

Yes. And this is problem with higher education. I was told that biotech was booming, that I would surely find a job, that going into STEM is a great decision. That being a cancer researcher is a noble and demanded profession etc. And it is hard to fact check these things when you are just fresh out of high school.

>he'll even entry level manual labor jobs says they prefer one with a degree
That has not been my experience. "Manual labor" jobs usually require at least some related job experience, but sometimes not even a HS diploma. Here in CA, speaking Spanish is more of a "prerequisite" than a degree.
Skilled labor (not high-tech) jobs have far more jobs offered than applicants right now. Anyone with any kind of mechanical aptitude should go to trade school, and will likely have multiple job offers when they complete it.

By Junior year of Highschool I realized most jobs don't really need a degree, they just want some bullshit on paper so they know your not a complete retard since Highschool became a joke. Only really needed for STEM, Nursing, and certain business jobs. Most of the others are useless unless you're planning to teach somewhere, Foreign language degrees is at least decently practical I suppose.

Despite that, between scholarships and my Father's GI bill I'm getting it virtually for free anyways, it only costs me some time and expenses for my Apartment since I didn't want to live in the dorms. Majoring in Accounting with a minor in Personal Finance. If it leads somewhere then great, if it doesn't, well I didn't go into any debt to get it so there's no damage to me.

>Majoring in Accounting with a minor in Personal Finance.

You'll be fine bro.

If Automation takes off I might be kinda fucked then, but I at least know that Accounting is pretty dependable right now.

i was told i needed take the fallowing class's in order or i would not be abel to pass the next one
A>B>C>D

i skipped A and passed B and C with flying colors. when i was applying for class D i was told i need to pass class A or i will fail class B>C>D.
but i passed class B, C no problem

The opposite. k-12 is a scam and an abomination.
Higher education is perfectly fine if you choose to pursue it.

Could learn a trade. Could go to community college learn a skill and trade. Later to University and say because already got 2 years done. Dont do history, women studies, or another fag ass lib arts and be fine in life.

I have both 2 year and 4 year degrees. I also have experience and training in machining, IT, CDL, maintenance which was not part of my education. I added more. 4 year degree cost me ubder 10k because i looked around for a school i can afford. Make good money.

Op you can do it. You can do it all night long.

Accounting is going to be one of the first to go. AI companies already have the technology that makes accountants, financial analysts, and the like completely redundant, and it should be fully in the world market in less than 10 years. People need more complex skills than numbers if they want their wageslavery to continue in the coming decades.

I kinda feel like 2 years could be taken out. K-10, then let those kids pursue what they what earlier. Most of the world at 16 usually starts college anyways

Wat.. take your skillset elsewhere. You should be making 4x that or more

My skillset is not really needed. University education in molecular biology and biomedical research (including practical work as a PhD student) does not provide a skillset which is demanded on the market. It provides skillsets required in academic research.

bump

after 4 years at Walmart unable to find employment anywhere else

Doubt you're still active, but not Australian by any chance?

I've got 17,000 extra dollars a year that disagree.

I'm curious: Do any of you pathetic dumb hicks ever glance at job listings and see where they literally all ask for a bachelors?

Who know that literally every right winger on Cred Forums is either a NEET or got a job they aren't qualified for through their daddy's friend. Oh that's right, everyone who earned their career. Sucks to suck.

OP here. If you had read the thread, you would have known that I have a PhD.

It isn't that degrees are useless, it's that the institutions themselves don't make graduating as simple as they make it seem. Most companies are training and promoting within nowadays, which takes away potential enrollment dollars from universities (especially state uni's which require heavily on tuition). Knowing this, many universities offer limited sessions for upper/grad-level courses per semester, forcing students to enroll the following semester to suffice certain credits which keeps a somewhat normal flow of tuition dollars coming in throughout the year.

OP here. I never really had problems with that. If you plan a bit, you can graduate in time easily.

Yes and no. If H1b weren't a thing I would agree, but there are plenty of good degrees that pay fuckall because of cheap poo labor. It really depends on the degree I think

This

>when did you realize that higher education is a scam and most university degrees are useless?
It was when I took a 600 level course and almost none of the students in the course had any critical thinking skills what-so-ever. That even at the level they expected to get by just regurgitating facts from the texts. I dropped my major in that moment and switched to a general studies major. I started taking the courses that I thought would improve my thinking skills and really challenge me instead of taking some prescribed path through the institution. Might not look as good on paper, but I know that I am much better for it. I am in my last semester now and I am a way better thinker than I ever was before I made the switch.

Threads like these are so pathetic. Earning an advanced degree is the safest way to fast track yourself to middle-upper class.

I did 4 years college + 4 years medical school + 4 years residency + 1 year fellowship. Did it suck? Yes. But now I'm a radiologist in a private practice bringing in 500-550k/year in a large city. Sure my 20s sucked, but I get to live the rest of my life with neither myself nor my family wanting for anything. Oh, and I work from home.

Most of my other STEM friends from college got 6 figure jobs straight out of college (or close to it), and currently are all in the solid 6 figure range.

Go to college kids. Working in the trades has pathetic lifetime earning potential in comparison to any STEM job in the mid-late career outlook.

L A R P
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lEaRn A tRaDe

Hello again me 3 letter government man. Long time no see, like a whole 30 seconds! Hope your data mining is going very well with your bots. Tschuss

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>I’m too stupid to know which degrees are value for money and which are not
>degrees are a scam

Shut up, shine my shoes, make my coffee and get me a side of fries, pleb.

>by now
>even if they graduated last year
>my personal experience is the only reality and only valid perspective

You do realize how much you undermine otherwise solid arguments by injecting your own stupidity into them, yes?

There's larping, there's outliers, and then there are real stats.

Medicine is one of the few useful degrees both in regards to earnings and social prestige. Most STEM degrees (!= engineering and computer science) are pretty much useless. Keep in mind that most STEM degrees (especially at the PhD level) are awarded in the life sciences which have nearly no career potential. I was stupid enough to get a doctorate in medical science / molecular oncology and I make 1/10th of what you are making.

Look into what life graduates (which are the majority of STEM graduates) are making. I know more PhD level molecular biologists who work in retail than I know molecular biologists who make 6 figures.

Fair points - should've clarified that by STEM I mostly mean comp sci and engineering (which my friends were in) lol. I understand some people go into academia because they're legitimately passionate about it, but most PhD positions apart from research superstars or tenured university lecturers have pretty poor earning potential.

If only a small majority of degrees actually result in financial benefits, then how is that contradicting what OP is saying. Let's be real, the majority of degrees are useless. Still, this shit is pushed onto naive teens.

Still instead of pushing TE, people push STEM. People don't realise how underpaid scientists really are. People are usually surprised that a PhD level cancer researcher makes about as much as a retail store manager.

I paid 35k for my bachelor's in comp sci. I work as an eningeer for a major US defense contractor making 75k. My loan was paid off the first year.

College is an investment. Many folks make bad investments.

Because colleges enable them.

bump