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Lazamataz’s fate is hanging in the balance!
Posted on 04/28/2011 9:55:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Some cities are better than others for college graduates. Some college courses are definitely hotter than others. Even some iPhone apps are better for college students than others. But when it comes down to it, there’s only one question that rings out in dormitories, fraternities, and dining halls across the nation: What’s your major?
With college graduation nearly upon us, two questions are running through the minds of nearly every soon-to-be-alumnus: Was my degree worth it? And: What do I do now?
While the most important factor in choosing a college major may be a student’s interests, a close second is certainly the likelihood of actually finding a job and making a living after graduation, especially when factoring in the high cost of tuition. Turns out that when it comes to post-college earning power, not all degrees are created equal.
To find the most useless degrees college students can get with their four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, we wanted to know which majors offer not only the fewest job opportunities, but those that tend to pay the least. The Daily Beast considered the following data points, weighted equally, with each degree’s numbers compared to the average for each category, to achieve a categorical comparison that accounts for differentiation from the mean. Data are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Payscale:
* Starting and mid-career salary levels, using the profession most associated with the degree.
* The expected change in the total number of jobs from 2008-2018.
* The expected percentage change in available jobs from 2008-2018.
For informational purposes, in this accompanying gallery, we provide the number of degrees awarded for 2008-2009, the most recent academic year available from the National Center for Education Statistics.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
What do you call a Journalism grad?
Waiter.
It wasn’t always so. Go back and read papers from 50-60 years ago, and the writing and obvious researching that was involved, it definitely took a high-level of skill back then.
You need constant practice lying and hiding the truth to be a successful journalist. Plus forget all rules about how to write well.
I have always loved history but realized it was not going to get me a job so I just minored in it. Retired now and still love it.
I think this is partly because journalism and communications are the two preferred “degrees” of people whose primary goal in college is to play sports and/or drink themselves into a stupor and want to do the minimum level of schooling required.
Those two degrees represented 80%+ of the football team at my school.
I’ll wager a large percentage of Chemistry & Biology degrees go on to medical school.
since the 1960’s journalism has been ensconced in
so-called “j schools”.
these are separate colleges in universities which set their own requirements—no difficult courses.
no calculus, no physics, no chemistry, no latin, no greek, no history, law, etc.
yet these j grads feel qualified to comment upon all of these fields.
Coincidence - University of Colorado, Boulder, just closed their Journalism School, they told students that they could still take courses in subjects pertaining to journalism but they no longer offer a degree in it. A waste of time and money is more the reason I suppose. Let the students find another way to indoctrinate themselves in communism.
I don’t like beer. How did I get a degree?
Same for Biomedical Eng. A good starting point is the masters. Most get a B-EE then pick up M-BME post haste.
Even though ...”EVERYone has a Masters, Mr. Wolowitz”...
History major here. I’ve got my PhD, and teach.
A very nice foundation pays me good money to warp young minds, write books, and hopefully, snag my tenure so I can laugh at the badly-educated who scoff at college degrees. (Nothing is certain until I get tenure, though.)
Get a good job (that pays more than $10 an hour and isn’t threatened by illegals) without a degree around here in Central NC? Not going to happen.
And the wife has an English degree, is an editor of a technical magazine, and makes more than I do. (She’s been working steadily with the same publication for fifteen years...that makes a difference.)
The "degree" itself is useless to the extent that nobody in the industry really gives a sh*t if you have the degree or not. It's more about getting the right internships and proving you can do the job. Or knowing someone who can give you an in.
One of the main problems I saw in the industry, at least in my day, was that starting salaries for reporters were dogsh*t. Absolute, utter dogsh*t. That meant the only people who could afford those jobs were the trust funder types who received outside support from parents, relatives, etc. If you had to work for a living, you didn't stay in the job for long because you couldn't make ends meet. Hell, my editor worked nights selling jeans at a mall.
Now, consider the type of people who want to be journalists and can afford to be journalists, and you can begin to understand why the old guard media heavily skews liberal.
My degree wasn't worthless, though. (1) It gave me an opportunity to hone my craft as a writer, and (2) I was able to make a pretty good career in non-journalism thanks to that.
Oh, and chemistry is a lousy degree to get today. The field is saturated with BS’s. At least an MS is required for a person to secure any position that isn’t temp. Same goes for biology. Microbiology is still a good field and statisticians are in huge demand everywhere.
Chem and bio majors work temp. The majority of history majors go to law school (and good luck with that).
I’m glad I left Big Pharma when I did.
UNC-Chapel Hill journalism majors, particularly black/female ones, get hired all over the South. They are barely literate.
Maybe it is not what you’ve got but how you use it. While a communications degree may not lead you to a job in the newspaper business, there are quite a few jobs for those willing to see the opportunities out there.
OK. No beer. How about dope, sleeping late, cutting classes, and beginning weekends on Thursdays?
*Hick* that ought to do it! :)
-Professor Rex
Mechanical Engineering Technology is not a Mechanical Engineering degree. It is not even an engineering degree. It is engineering lite for students that cannot cut the math and science of an engineering degree. It prepares students to be a glorified assistant to a real engineer. That is why it is useless. You would be better off learning to be a mechanic or a machinist.
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