Posted on 02/24/2005 9:12:40 AM PST by Willie Green
A waitress at one of my favorite Strip District restaurants last week used one of the industry's oldest cliches. She delivered a meal and reminded me that she "really didn't do this" for a living.
Waiting tables, she explained, was simply something she was doing until a well-paying job opened up in the field she studied during six years in college.
While this is rote conversation for wait staff in places like New York and Los Angeles, where everyone with a tray of linguini in their hands is waiting for a slot on NBC's "Fear Factor," it's unusual for Pittsburgh.
Or is it?
The waitress, it turns out, spent all that time and nearly $150,000 of her family's money studying social sciences, but after graduating she became disappointed with the entry-level salary of her chosen field.
"I can make, like, twice what I'd make as a social worker waiting tables," she confided, "so I'm probably going to just stay here."
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
I think that these colleges are going to price themselves right out of the market. More and more students are going to turn to practical and less costly choices like tech schools.
The book maintains he did it in six months.
As to your not having a liberal arts degree, well, in America, that's allowed. LOL!
My son's college so far has been "tuition free" and should be able to continue to be "tuition free."
He's enrolled in our county's dual enrollment program (he was homeschooled up until then, but the program is open to all students, private and public).
So during his high school years he's earned his AA (tuition is free, we had to pay for books, but if you're a public schooled kid, books are loaned free).
Then the State of Florida offers Bright Futures Scholarships if you make a certain grade on SAT or ACT tests, do some community service (75 hours), and plan to attend a state university (UF, FSU, USF, UCF, etc.)
I know in some state's they have similar programs, it sure makes it easy on the pocketbook.
I've read the book.
**I graduated in 1998 with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering. The best job I could find for a year and a half paid about $19K, and I was lucky to get it.**
I graduated in 1985 with an accounting degree from the University of Oklahoma, not a top tier school by any means and receiving offers of $ 20,000 to $ 24,000 a year while the state economy was in a severe recession. The engineers , regardless of specialty, were getting offers of a minimum of $ 30,000 a year. I recall some getting mid to high 30s.
Getting offers of $ 19,000 a year today with an engineering degree must be really tough!
When I went to engineering school over half the class consisted of foreigners.
Good book, wasn't it? LOL!
As long as you're not in Kalifornia... My wife has been downsized as a k-12 music teacher, and we're thinking of moving to Las Vegas (we don't want to), and trying there. I'm semi-retired with a small business, so I couldn't cover the monthly bills on my own.
I fear music education -- especially elementary music -- will have to be done with a little innovation, like going to affluent school districts, and asking the superintendents and principals if their parents are willing to pay something like a five-dollar weekly charge for general music.
The interest begins in the primary grades; without it, there's no interest in middle and high school (especially vocal music) and it can't be manufactured.
I think, though, that where there's a will there's a way. Mrs. Mugwump is also a classical singer. You should hear her do Schubert, and Faure's stuff!
>>The truth is, liberal arts degrees from the Ivy League may carry some weight, but not from other schools.
"May" is a key word there. I've been a hiring manager, and I assure you, a liberal arts degree from an Ivy just signifies to me, that you've likely got a foolish committed Leftist in front of you. This is not someone I'd have a tendency to employ.
He said, "No one owes you a job just because you have a college degree."
His advice was to approach a job expecting to start on the bottom and then work like the dickens to move up. It's the kind of idea more young people need to be exposed to.
My wife is an RN working three days a week at a prostate cancer research institute. She earned 35K last year.
It was excellent.
But I specifically remember Alex's college education being interrupted by AmRev.
Not that he wasn't an incredibly fast learner.
Small world. My sister is doing just what you're doing. Let me send you some FReepmail.
Great point.
I knew two friends who went into other fields and both were hired at least in part because of their history/archaeology backgrounds.
One of them went into finance. His boss told him he would give him a shot because he felt that a history degree was a pretty good indication that my friend could absorb a lot of data, remember it and apply it. I don't know if the history actually paid off but he did become quite successful.
Another of my friends became an technical investigator and he got the job again for partially the same reasons. His boss felt that my friend would have an ingrained aptitude for the work since archaeology is in many ways like putting together a difficult jigsaw puzzle or evidence at a crime scene.
"good lawyer" = oxymoron. One lawyer in a small town will starve, two will make a good living.
He was a VERY fast learner - at just about everything. Including moving up in the old social strata!
Quite right. He left King's College before he graduated.
I just got, also, the new book on William Pitt "The Younger". I'll be starting that soon.
Hmmm. Sounds like it's time for me to get a Jimmy Buffett book to balance all of this off.
Cheers!
No offense taken on the history major comment.
Like I said in Virginia history jobs are semi plentiful..in other states it is much harder to find museum work.
I graduated college in 2000. The longest I've been out of work since then is one week. I've worked in 5 different museums. Each promotion brings a little more pay.
I'm still single so 30K is plenty for me. Most of my money is wasted on my library collection ;)An MA is the museum field can bring 40k - 60K around here (if you are management/supervisory). To me that's decent enough.
Besides museum work you can either teach or become a lawyer. Most of my fellow history majors in school weren't too serious about the field. It is not for everyone.
YH
My impression is the exact opposite.
Such specialized training and skills were highly valued and sought after.
However, as they increasingly became more scarce, many companies had to "settle for less".
As a result, they often became corrupted and decayed from within when the liberal arts majors began incorporating social theories into company decision making.
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