Liberals discuss non-existent job prospects for irrelevant majorsPosted on 06/12/2010 2:01:06 PM PDT by nwrep
Liberals discuss non-existent job prospects for irrelevant majors
Many from the Class of 2009 are living with their parents and working part-time retail jobs they could have landed without a degree. Others are taking more college classes to put off paying back student loans, which average more than $20,000. Many say they’ve lost self-confidence. Still, none of the 18 students from the Classes of 2009 and 2010 interviewed by The Oregonian expressed regret about going to college.
After a yearlong search, Jackie Mroz, 22, of Oregon City, is about to get some experience, but at a cost.
She put everything she had into her studies at the University of Oregon, graduating in 2009 with degrees in international studies and sociology and a double minor in nonprofit administration and African studies. She studied abroad in Senegal, took challenging courses, earned a 3.8 grade point average and raced through college in three years.
“It has gotten me pretty much nowhere,” she said.
Audra Armen-Van Horn, 23, Portland, worked for Victoria’s Secret while earning her psychology degree from the University of Oregon. Now, a year after graduating in 2009 and applying for more than 100 jobs, she’s still working part time for the store while hoping to get a job with the American Cancer Society.
Malcolm Staudinger, 22, a 2009 graduate in environmental science from Portland State University, lives at home with his parents in Vancouver, Wash., and is now looking to Montana and Alaska for a job related to geographic information systems.
Matt Petryni, 24, a 2009 UO graduate, said the seminar has helped him regain hope after a discouraging year of rejections from the world of urban planning where he hopes to work.
Of course some graduates are landing jobs, particularly those with specific technical skills such as John Yeier, 24, who graduated from the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls on Saturday. He’s the sole member of his class with a degree in embedded engineering , which integrates computer software and hardware in cell phones, cars and other machines. He will work on small plane navigation system software for Garmin AT in Salem.
LOL
My daughter has gone back to school and working on a degree, as a mother of 3, she has little time for the BS head games some of the profs or students try and pull...
HAving a few years under the belt makes a big difference.
Yes. The weed out course for medical school. I have heard many doctors say it has absolutely nothing to do with what they need to know in medical school.
I am a Mechanical Engineer who has two daughters thinking about medical school. Up until they hit 1st semester Organic Chem (which I did study correspondence) I am able to help them in all of their math and science courses. When 2nd semester Organic rolls around, then forget it.
I remember thinking in college that the Chem Engineers had it much tougher than me. Chem I and II kept me from 4.0s both semesters. A mans got to know his limitations as Dirty Harry would say. I think Partial Differential Equations are easier than Organic Chemistry.
Teach courses in African Studies.
I'm not being facetious. My point is that some degrees are mostly self-perpetuating -- the only need for them is to keep the subject alive.
The subject may be interesting, but it's not a marketable skill outside the academic world.
I told my kids I wouldn’t pay,or help pay for any of this useless, touchy-feely crap.
Hey, I'd do that spy stuff for the hot blonde!
I found Philosophy to be essential to my future development.
Of course, I only took a (full year) survey course, and they taught REAL philosophy with no Marxism.
But a degree in (real) Philosophy is a major achievement, and valuable in its own right. It is very different from a degree in one of the divisions of the Department of Social Carcinoma (Women's Studies, Urban Planning, Chicano Studies, Nonprofit Administration, (most) Sociology, etc).
Hey, a degree in ME is a good thing!
GT BME ‘82
I enjoyed getting a philo degree, I just knew that I was not interested in making it a career. I went on to other things.
“I’ve often wondered what one does with a degree in African Studies.”
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Elementary, one studies Africans, what else?
Studying women is VERY demanding and challenging, by the time I developed an inkling of understanding of the subject I was too old to benefit from my knowledge and now I don’t even have a sheepskin to show for it.
Fifty years ago public high school graduates had more of a liberal arts education than most college BA recipients today.
They even knew the difference between their, there and they’re, I am amazed how many people can’t crack that nut now. We have a large group on FR who have not a ghost of an idea which is which.
Let’s not even talk about to, too and two, lose and loose or the proper usage of I and me, the list goes on and on.
Remember when Obama said, "President Bush has invited Michelle and I to the White House." or his constant misuse of the word enormity? Did he really get a degree from Harvard? Was he really editor of the Law Review?
I wouldn't think there is much of a demand for studying Africans.
or huge and hugh, or than and then, or it’s and its... No telling where the list would end at. ;)
The problem is in ordinary day to day conversations conducted without benefit of a keyboard we don't make any distinctions among or between any of those words.
We look to the context.
There's no reason whatsoever to maintain the different spellings.
What does one do with a major in “Womens’ Studies”?
“There’s no reason whatsoever to maintain the different spellings.”
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I totally disagree, they are unrelated words with different meanings, they’re is a contraction, they actually have three different pronunciations, the fact that people can’t differentiate just illustrates what a poor job the schools are doing. Nobody seemed to have a problem with it until fairly recently, back in the fifties any fifth grader who didn’t understand them would have flunked English.
Get thee to the public sector, young liberal!
BTW, the fact that we use context to fix the meaning is the reason you know the wrong word was used.
In speaking we make no distinctions. The written language should follow spoken usage.
Then logically you must advocate a wholesale slaughter of English words, why maintain bear and bare, bow and bough, hair and hare, raise and raze etc? Then the next question is what to do about all those words that are pronounced two or more different ways with the same spelling depending on context like bow and bow.
By the way I do pronounce their, there and they’re all differently, it may be subtle but I don’t pronounce them exactly the same. In fact I grew up hearing them pronounced differently.
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