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 ...
On an NCIS rerun episode last night, Gibbs is in the Interrogation Room with the prime suspect, a prostitute, and her scumbag lawyer. After the lawyer rants & raves & threatens Gibbs, as he is leaving the room, Gibbs turns and asks,
“So, which one of you charges more per hour?”
Priceless!
Someone has to make sure THINGS WORK!
The same is sure with Agriculture.
We are so spoiled with ALWAYS having food on the table and in the store, with getting in a car, plane, elevator and assuming that it will work.
We flip a light switch and the lights come on.
Journalists, lawyers, politicians, entertainers, actors do not have the objective scrutiny that engineers and farmers have. They are also usually vastly overpaid for their work, especially in relation to the necessity of their work in comparison to farmers & engineers.
The Engineering Technology degree is a starting point for becoming a good mechanic, machinist or, yes, engineer.
I had a Prof at Ga Tech who told us, “If you guys graduate after 4 or 5 years here you will not BE engineers. You will be able to understand the language and have some basic skills, but you will BECOME engineers at your first job.”
We really need to give kids the option of a good apprenticeship during high school. Do it like the military. Yes, there are the service academies and college ROTC, but the best officers are often the “mustangers”, enlisted men go through OCS to get a commission.
If we start running our engineers “up through the ranks” from apprentice to mechanic/machinist to engineer we will end up with much better engineers.
Waiter.
LOL.
How about summoning a French journalism grad?
Hey, Garcon.
The Germans have done it that way for years.
I was at our local Chamber of Commerce “Future Economy Council” meeting last week and when discussing the need for apprenticeships it was mentioned that the local subsidiary of a German company was the ONLY company in the area offering apprenticeships.
“I had a Prof at Ga Tech who told us, ‘If you guys graduate after 4 or 5 years here you will not BE engineers. You will be able to understand the language and have some basic skills, but you will BECOME engineers at your first job.’”
Boy talk about an effing useless degree. Spend five years to get to the point where with just four more years of study you get to be an engineer.
You SHOULD be able to get to THAT point with an AA from a good community college — not by burning bucks for four-five years at Georgia Tech.
You are right when you say we need to give kids option of a good apprenticeship during high school. That way they would not need to waste five years in college to get the technical training they should have gotten in high school. An Engineering Technology BS is putting lipstick on the pig.
The Prof was speaking to ENGINEERING students, not “Technology” majors or “Industrial engineering”. In other word, “hey hot shot, you have not arrived, yet even though you may have a fancy piece of paper.”
After finished Navy/USMC flight school at Pensacola with my shiny new wings, I still had a lot to learn. New aircraft, had to function at the various non-piloting jobs I had in the squadron, tactics, and so on.
True, we have Electrical Engineering Technology degrees where I work - a few 'bad apples' have ruined employment opportunities at a local Air Force Base; there is a hiring 'ban' on EET degrees here. You are either an Electrical Engineer - or you are not considered for a job.
But, the facts remain the facts. In my career, I have been fortunate enough to witness Intel closing a plant (and losing my job), a space company move off shore and closing, Cray Supercomputing downsizing, AMD downsizing, a start-up fail, being outsourced by Dell, another company mismanaged into insolvency, and a loss of a job due to not winning a contract for which 3 groups were hired. I'm now working for 75% of what I used to make just 6 years ago.
During the downsizing - my experience at both AMD and Dell was that the people who where shown the door were ALL American citizens - not one single foreign national (not ONE out of thousands at Dell). Why? Because Dell doesn't pay Social Security and other taxes on H-1B Visa employees. They are cheaper to hire, even though their salary is identical to mine.
Knowing these things, would you encourage your kids to go into engineering? Where you career is terminated over decisions you have no part in making, where you may have to sell your home for 20-40K losses because you have to go where the jobs are, and where the laws of suppy and demand are modified by political forces?
Computer and electrical engineering bachelor's degrees were no exception to the rule. Graduates numbered 14,584 in 2004-05, but declined to 14,209 in 2005-06 and 13,783 in 2006-07.
Because Dell doesn't pay Social Security and other taxes on H-1B Visa employees. They are cheaper to hire, even though their salary is identical to mine.
The SSI law says the following:
"Unless specifically exempt by law, all earnings from employment in the United States--including earnings of citizens of other countries -- are covered under Social Security and are subject to Social Security taxes. These taxes must be paid even though the taxpayer does not expect to derive any benefit from them."
Depends who the managers are. Indian managers want to keep on as many Indians as possible and figure you can find a gig anywhere since you don't need to be sponsored. Racism, bigotry and favoritism are thing practiced by all people groups of all nations of every generation - except for the post-modern conquered Western whites - who are committing cultural suicide.
It may also have to do with the fact that EEOC rules force companies to have racial quotas and by replacing white engineers with "minorities" it frees up room so that the HR staff, the marketing, accounting, legal departments, et al, can work with people who look like themselves. You are a geek afterall, they don't understand you, and you can be replaced by someone who looks like the guy who sells them soda at the corner 7/eleven, so you aren't of any importance or consequence.
That is why it pays to have face-time with non-technical people rather than hiding away like some recluse playing WoW, surfing the internet or having BBQ competitions with fellow geeks using liquid oxygen.
“Knowing these things, would you encourage your kids to go into engineering? Where you career is terminated over decisions you have no part in making, where you may have to sell your home for 20-40K losses because you have to go where the jobs are, and where the laws of suppy and demand are modified by political forces?”
Would I encourage my kids to go into engineering? I not only would, but I have. Two sons are engineers and the third is majoring in mechanical engineering in college. What I would do is discourage them from going into engineering jobs primarily involving the federal government, especially aerospace. And also to say away from stuff like computer chip design and software. (They did not all take that advice.)
My oldest son is an electrical engineer with a specialty in antenna design. Demand for those skills will not go away. He will always have a job because so few engineers have the combination of knowledge and talent he has. He is being fast-tracked as a tech fellow. My middle son is a Civil Engineer who is working in the commercial sector. Again, those skills are not really subject to H-1B competion because you need to be a P.E. and few engineers on an H-1B are P.E.s (By the time they are P.E.s most have become naturalized citizens.)
As for me, I have been in engineering 30 years, and expect to lose my job in July. Been there, done that — four times before. Always found something within a year. This time I plan to become a contractor, doing work I had been doing before on a contract basis. I pay all my benefits. Think I have some prospects lined up because companies have work that needs doing but are unwilling to hire employees. The company I will be working fore (Myself, Inc.) pays its employees (my wife and I) great benefits — all medical expenses and full tuition for employees and their dependents. (While I am paying myself, that makes it a business expense, which removes that income from taxable income — and gives me an effective 35% discount on all education and medical.) I think I can survive.
And even if I do not “do” engineering in this career, my engineering education is a better preparation for any kind of work that virtually any other college degree. So even if you do not plan to be an engineer after you graduate, a BS Engineering is a better choice than any BA and most other BS degrees. But again, that assumes you have the smarts to get through Engineering, which is not being dumbed down.
If you want to do the type of work that a BS Mechanical Engineering Technology prepares you to do you are better off going to a community college or tech school and saving lots of cash and two-three years of your worklife. Again - this is honorable and skilled work. Working with my hands is something I seriously considered, but I found I preferred engineering.
Success to you. Even going on to a history PhD is no guarantee of a job.
As a native of a small south Arkansas town my only hope would have been working in the paper mills and related industries so I turned Yankee and have been in Chicago since graduating from high school.
Plenty of opportunities here in many fields even with the Illegals.
That explains everything...
I have the double whammy. Majored in Political Science, minored in journalism.
I started out in the poorest county in NC out on the coast, and was forced to hustle from age 17. My daddy kicking me out of the house was a blessing in disguise!
I’ll admit that I was half-assured of a teaching job when I finished school. I was fortunate enough to have an excellent dissertation advisor who was also a member of the board of the foundation who now pays me (and also a personal contact for subsequent publishers).
Not everyone has these advantages, and go on to be PhD code monkeys (like my friend with a doctorate in physics from Stoney Brook, of all things!). It’s who you know, right?
Hah! Hey, I did submit a spelling correction! But when i saw the first post, I laughed out loud!
Just jacking with ya!!
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