Well, I'm finally back on ATS after a long break. With college work and such, I rarely have time to keep up with what's going on around here, and that more or less relates to the subject of this rant.

I've been on quite a few 'field trips' for my environmemtal engineering classes, and had the opportunity to talk to the people I might be working with in the near future. However, one annoying subject that always comes up in our conversations is the subject of college classes and work. Every single envi.engineer I've talked to admitted that nothing they've learned in college (calculus, differential, fluid mechanics...etc) was of any use to them at their jobs. Lab techniques and interpretation of results are important because half of an environmental engineer's time is spent in the lab, but a solid understanding of advanced mathmatics and other subjects is virtually useless. Because time is money, and companies strive to make the most out of the time their engineers have, programs have been developed which transform the skilled labor that once existed, into unskilled labor that anyone could do with a program and a few numbers to punch in.

I've got some friends who want to go to law school, and are stuck in a similar situation. One of them is majoring in geology, the other in astronomy. After asking what significance geology could possibly have in relation to law, they replied that they're able to major in anything they want before going into law school. They're spending somewhere around 22K a year just to take useless classes, because a bachelors in something is needed to gain entry into one of those schools. Granted, a geology major might not look as good to a law school as a psychology or math major (which are both related to law), but the 3.95 GPA my friend has might make up for that fact.

So what can be done about this? Not much it seems. If a high paying occupation like environmental engineering were reduced to unskilled labor, then demand for those jobs would be too high. You need something like college to reduce the number of people in this field. While I personally take an interest in the maths and sciences and enjoy learning these subjects, it annoys me that I need to spend so much of my time studying for tests and doing work when it won't really matter in the end. College is also a financial strain on myself and my parents, and when all is said and done, what do I have to show for it? I'm sure I'll feel better when I'm taking home a decent paycheck for minimal work...its just something that's depressing at the moment.

[edit on 10-10-2005 by zhangmaster]