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.
This chick got TWO college degrees, with TWO minors, studied abroad, earning a 3.8 GPA, and did all that in 3 years?
Sorry, I call BS on this one.
That includes Computer Science.
≤}B^)
Also, have you noticed that every trade school is now called a "University?" Some trade school marketer evidently made the priceless discovery that there is no law against it.
Like the "Velvet Jones Institute of Technology," I suppose.
It’s even easier than open-air basketweaving, because of the softness of the rattan. As long as you have a snorkel, that is.
Ask him, rhetorically, “What mere scribblings can give you the meaning of life? A manual can’t!”
45, even.
calculus..pshaw! Try Organic Chem, second semester. Hardest course in college. Don’t bother working that semester if you want “A” performance.
I had the same experience with physics. I made it to third year studies. That was 20 years ago and I STILL have a headache. God knows I loved the subject and couldn't get enough of it.. especially theory. But the math.. oh dear lord, the math. To this very day I get a sick feeling when I SEE a scientific calculator.
I think I'm scarred...
“Audra Armen-Van Horn, 23, Portland, worked for Victoria’s Secret while earning her psychology degree from the University of Oregon.”
A good undergrad psych program is no joke, but it’s still one of those fields where one generally needs a post-graduate degree to make it. Most of the counseling jobs in schools, etc. require at least an M.A. And I’m pretty sure you can’t become a licensed psychologist without a PhD. Psychiatrists have an even longer road to hoe, of course (med school).
Some of the folks with non-scientific degrees might look into teaching English overseas. Most of the Asian nations that hire (Japan, Taiwan, Korea, etc.) only require a bachelor’s degree and native fluency. Gotta watch out for the scams, of course. But if you find a good school, it can be a great experience and a good way to save up some cash.
LOL...now, I don’t care who you are, THAT’s funny! You could probably use search and replace in MS Word to fix certain words, and they wouldn’t know...:)
That’s too funny! A friend of mine who was a Philosophy and Psychology major told me he had an acquaintance in his classes who was a total druggie burnout, and he had to hand in a term paper for a class called “Existential Humanistic Psychology”. (It has been a long time, but I think that is what it was...
Anyway, the guy handed in a one line term paper that said something like: “Because I am handing in this report composed of one line of text, it is proof that I understand the concept of this course.”
My friend said “It was BRILLIANT, and spot on...”
The guy got an “F” on the paper and failed...:)
Anybody can throw a bunch of facts at you and expect you to memorize them all. It’s the concepts that make it difficult.
And if calc is difficult, how can somebody be expected to do complex analysis?
Yeah, but Orgo is a bunch of memorizing. I just think it’s because organic chemists don’t know what they’re doing yet.
They’ll never get anything done properly until they stop being human hard drives.
Came across this in another forum... "Hackademia"
Oh, you got me chuckling a full 60 seconds, Mr. Moto. Thanks. Probably not very PC. Other non-PC jokes seen on FR that had me laughing a full minute...
A Freeper describing how his hot half-Asian daughter was causing a lot of "Yellow fever" around the boys at her high school. Bad. Bad.
Years ago, describing the liberal Jewish vote as Temple Beth Hillary. Bad. Bad.
I was lucky. I was a horrible student in High School, got passed from grade to grade, the highest grade I ever got in Math was a “C”, but most of the time I got an “F” and occasionally, a “D”.
My mother spent several summers in elementary school trying semi-successfully to teach me the multiplication tables. I went to summer school for math nearly every summer (it seemed) and they even tried hiring a sailor when we lived in the Philippines to tutor me.
When I graduated from high school, I couldn’t even add fractions or do long division.
I went into the Navy, did very well (made E5 before I got out in the peacetime navy) and decided to get out after one hitch and go to college and do something in the sciences. But I had this problem with math, a complete mental block.
I wasn’t dumb in other things (as much...:) and I read ferociously ever since I was a little kid (I read Moby Dick when I was eight...) but I just couldn’t do math. When I was at sea, I got math books from the ship’s library, but...they didn’t do any good.
I was chosen to work one on one with a tech rep from Detroit Diesel Allison who manufactured our engines with Rolls Royce, on a special project called IECMS (Inflight Engine Condition Monitoring System) and it was great.
I spent a huge amount of time with this guy, and got to work with a mainframe computer (a PDP-11...:) to record engine temperatures, pressures, vibrations, etc. to try to predict when an engine would fail before it did.
This guy also taught college level algebra courses to guys on the ship, and when I mentioned to him I wanted to get out and go to college in the sciences but my math skills were going to probably be a problem, he said “Look. Anyone can learn how to do math. I can teach you. One-on-one, as much as you need to get it.
And I worked at it, learned it, and...I could do math and barely passed the class, but...I could to algebra! It somehow broke the logjam for me, and by the time I graduated from college and took Physical Chemistry my last year, I could hardly believe it. Math was such a bogeyman my whole life, and here I was, doing this...well...pretty complicated math! Thermodynamics, the whole nine yards!
To this day, I wish I could find that guy. I have tried, but never been able to find his name anywhere. Now, I can only remember his last name...Wouters. I wish I could talk to him, shake his hand and tell him what a difference in my life he made. Just to say thank you. Not everyone gets that kind of break.
Low demand for lawyers, lots of layoffs, record law school enrollments and graduates, and reduced pay for new lawyers now make law school a very high risk education investment; especially if you are paying your own way.
The problem is not going away because law schools are out and out lying about the prospects of employment and great salaries. This is leading many college graduates into thinking law is a great option, especially now that jobs are hard to come by for those just getting their undergraduate degrees.
Law schools are a VERY HIGH profit center for colleges and universities, so they are doing nothing to be honest with prospective students.
Odd, I put down my sociology degree every time I apply for a tech writing job.
I explain to the potential employeor/ gig master that the degree training helps me to understand people and relationships within organizations. Of course a boatload of industry IT certifications, two associate (technical) degrees and having been published for over 15 years do add to the mix.
Sometimes I tell people with “junk” degrees to put the degree information under “hobbies”
Tells them you took the time and trouble to go thru the 4 (or more) years of the education game, but are not expecting the degree to be part of the pay discussion - at least at the beginning.
A college grad should be Literate, numerate and posses social skills with a personal bearing that indicate you are worth the effort to hire.
But that’s just me and my fancy schmancy NY college degree - as always, YMMV.
Her last contract was something like $800,000 P/A. Goggle Nancy Bohl - California for further details.
LOL...put the African and Womyn Studies degrees under “Hobbies”! That’s great.
I read a book during that college level sociology course called “Walden II”. I fell for it hook, line and sinker, and I was a real conservative (have been since about the age of ten...:)
But I bought into it, and thought about it for a long time. “Wow, that’s the way to run things...”
Sheesh. What an idiot I was.
That is one of the reasons I try, somewhere in some part of my brain, not to be too hard on some college kids. They are, as Rush puts it, “brains full of mush” in a lot of cases. I was out of the Navy and pretty worldly, and I fell into it, embarrassing to say. But there you have it.
LOL.
Be careful what you're saying. That CS stuff includes some really nasty theoretical mathematics courses (if you go to the right schools).
If you took the time to go to the Career Planning office, you could have found out the projections for jobs in your area of study. If there were few jobs, why go into that field?
I don't feel a damn bit sorry for you. Quit crying and get a job doing something.
Yahoo had a story last week about a woman with $90,000 in student loan debt from NYU. She is currently living in San Francisco and using her degree in Women's Studies and Religion to be a photographer's assistant. The point of the story was she wanted Federal assistance to pay off her debt. She cried that she might have to move home to Ohio.
At what point do we, as a nation, explain to these people they are adults and have to pay what they owe?
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