LogFAQs > #965279339

BT, I've explained this before, but I'm going to do it again.

1. We, as a society, have long gone down the path of basically training kids to accept the fact that they need to go to college if they want to get anywhere in life. Whether adults in their lives push a narrative that if they don't go to college, they'll wind up working some dead-end "loser" job like a fry cook or janitor, or the job market itself insisting on a college degree for positions that, thirty years ago could've been obtained with room to advance on just a high school diploma.
2. This goes hand-in-hand with the fact that our job market has become increasingly-tailored towards the tertiary and quaternary sectors, where any applicant is going to be working some form of office job with basic computer skills. In that job market, unless your company is specifically in the STEM field, most companies aren't going to care about the "quality" of your major. Art History, English Lit, Philosophy, Humanities...all most companies are looking for someone with a college degree and decent grades, because that demonstrates that they have the basic skills needed to perform a passable job in an office environment.
3. Now, don't get me wrong. STEM is still widely going to provide better job opportunities. But a lot of college graduates were sold a bad bill of goods as to how enrolling in college was going to work out for them, and the colleges themselves do not do a good job of helping convert those degrees into gainful employment. It does not help that a lot of the office jobs that these college degrees are well-suited for have been diminishing in number and availability, because of the current workforce. People who got those office jobs thirty years ago are living longer, and have to work longer before they can reasonably retire, so they're keeping their jobs and preventing new blood from entering the job market like they did.
4. So it's really not as simple as saying "they took out a loan, they knew what they were getting into", because they didn't fully know what they were getting into. And furthermore, in many cases, they were sold a service (their education) and did not receive the full benefits to that service (gainful employment, as has been pushed as a benefit of college education for decades).

1. Societal pressure aside, what kind of brainless sheep do you need to be to just blindly follow nonsense advice, putting literally zero effort into researching what jobs are in demand. This is not a valid excuse, as you could say that "Ford commercials trick people into thinking everyone is entitled to a brand new F-150 regardless of how useless/poor they are"
2. This is not true at all. 2 candidates applying for an office job in any industry, 1 has a related degree, or a STEM degree, and the other took 3 years of "Art History", the first candidate will be hired 99/100 times.
3. 5 years ago you may have had a point, but we are at a point now where it is basically impossible to fill open positions, and this is across all industries. I have several friends that work in accounting, and they straight up cannot find people to take these well paying, easy jobs. Also, at some point personal responsibility has to play a part, as it shouldn't be up to colleges to "translate my shitty liberal arts degree into a job"
4. No school anywhere has ever guaranteed employment off of a degree, ESPECIALLY from useless programs. Schools are selling you an education and a piece of paper. Again I will reiterate that a LARGE chunk of the "wahhhhh pay my student loans plx" crowd never actually finished a degree, and dropped out after getting blackout drunk 3 times a week for 2 years.