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Comments
I was in one of the relatively few majors where you actually need a degree (CS) because high school will teach you maybe a term's worth of Pascal or some shit. Even then, the credit bloat and sheer amount of BS they force you through outside your major is disgusting. It took me six years to get my degree, and I could've cut two years of that altogether in completely useless garbage.
What are you doing at school?
I graduated Computer Science, with a ton of stuff in Physics too. I'd have a degree in that too if my advisor wasn't an SOB who told me to take classes I wasn't supposed to, failed to inform me of the one left that I still need, and then ran off to Switzerland by the time I found out.
But like, almost my entire fourth year was general ed, none of which was even worth the oxygen to attend, much less a year's worth of paid tuition, rent, and joblessness from being a full-time student.
Holy fuck.
As far as self directed learning with qualifications are concerned there seems to be a big move by universities to increase the number of online courses/subjects, which of the subjects that I've completed tend to be fairly easy to do well in. So it might be possible in the future to complete a mainstream degree entirely online. Although this might remove the advantage of being able to build a professional network to assist with job hunting post graduation.
Supposed to take five years, but turned out the transfer program he was advertising wasn't actually run past anyone at the other university who had any power over what transferred. So it got bloated into six years and change.
I had a similar situation. During my first year at university, my psych degree had a couple of major subjects not covered by the prerequisites, leaving me pretty much afloat. So, deciding that I was done with that, I took my second year in a different direction, towards journalism, which probably has more synchronicity with my skills in any case. Except the guy handling the subject transfer stuff didn't deal with the second semester of the year and then went on long service leave, leaving me to work all of this out for myself and beg teachers for a place in their class. After about a month of running around trying to track down teachers, getting into classes and whatnot, I decided that enough was enough and left.
So I have pretty significant sympathy, if not empathy for your situation. It sucks something bad.
All Nines,
Considering how essential it is to entering certain fields of work, I'd go as far as to call it criminal that it costs as much as it does, in some places.
Yeah, I agree that the cost in terms of money is pretty high in the U.S., but I feel like the high cost in terms of time is an issue too. Not everybody can afford to take four years or more off for school, especially when they are older and have children or other responsibilities like that. I think the online courses that Gaijin0 mentioned might help deal with both those issues, though I am not really sure if they (rightly or wrongly) have the prestige of a traditional college degree at this point.
A related issue that bothers me is requiring or encouraging higher degrees than are actually necessary to do a job (i.e., degree creep). Granted, there may be some benefits to requiring more people to have college degrees even if they might not need them. I guess learning about and broadening your awareness of different stuff is worthwhile. That being said, I find it unfortunate that more and more it seems like people are limited in what they can do without a Master's, PhD, or multiple postgraduate degrees.
I suppose a lot of those requirements are just there because the job market is competitive. Still, I think degree creep definitely ends up leaving out certain classes of people who would be very capable yet cannot afford to have one or two graduate degrees. I hear that the problem is even worse in developing countries, since requiring a college degree for a job can mean excluding huge swaths of the population who are not wealthy enough to avoid the otherwise very poor quality primary and secondary public schools.
On the actual topic (sorry for blabbing like that), I hear that having a college degree often gives you more opportunities than not having one. It is certainly still possible to have some success without a degree. At the same time, I think that having a degree is a decent fallback in case something goes wrong or you change your mind about what kind of career you want.
I agree with all of that.
Insofar as (at least here) the market is currently saturated with people who have them, so employers will basically throw out your resume without reading it if you don't have one.
That is very true.
Also, I've heard of companies having word finders for the applications that come in, that single out specific applications that have words like "college", "university" "graduated" "B.S", etc. Or they will take out the applications that don't have certain words.
Education is a right that should be free for anyone who wants or needs it. In Scotland education is free, so long as you are actually progressing through the system. It shouldn't be forced on people who don't want it obviously.
Dear OP,
What do you want to do with your life and do you have a backup plan in case you can't do what you want to do in life
regards
The Champion of the Whales.
I've mentioned a few times already, but I don't mind repeating.
I want to be a screenwriter working in television and film. I'll write, try to get it noticed through contests, queries and things. If I do get noticed, I'll move to LA and pursue that. My backup plan is a more safe route of going to community college for two years then transferring to a state university, graduating with a degree in Television and Radio production, where the technical skills I'll have, combined with the fact that I have a degree would be able to get me some kind of job.
Being a screenwriter is very hard but if you want to purse it then kudos to you.
What kind of job do you want with your degree?
Just something in television production I guess. Like I said, it's a back up. Screenwriting is the thing I want to do.