reply to post by starwarsisreal
I am a college professor in the social sciences. If you elect to go to college, stay far, far away from liberal arts educations unless you're going
into a 'hard' science (microbiology, etc., or some math related fields....some types of engineering, for example). Social science degrees are
becoming useless, and within 10 years all these people currently in process for Bachelor's degrees in communications, psych, sociology, anthropology,
etc. are going to hit a very brutal brick wall. I teach at a comm. college/tech school now because I saw the writing on the wall for the 4-year
universities (they're profit centers, not places of education, and thus they don't tell their students the hard facts about their majors).
As I've told my own children, go with a tech degree. Learn to be a plumber, an electrician, a mechanic, or a skilled builder.....skills that cannot
be outsourced and even in the most dire of circumstances will be in demand. Yes, there are gluts in these fields as well, so you won't make as much
as you might have 10 years ago, but you'll be able to at least earn a livable wage and have some semblance of job security. Most 4-year degrees are
all but useless now and unless you're planning on going into one of the aforementioned 'hard' science fields and get a Ph.D., you're wasting your
time and money and you're going to get out to a bad job market with a huge amount of debt hanging over your head.
While I certainly enjoy what I do, many days I wish I had listened to my grandfather who, when I was about 16, gave me the same advice I'm giving to
you. He worked his entire life building water treatment plants and retired extremely wealthy. My uncle owns my grandfather's company now and while
the big municipal projects are few and far between now, he makes a very comfortable living working his own hours doing minor but always needed
infrastructure repair.
Your guidance counselors aren't intentionally misleading you, at least not in most cases, but you have to remember that these people are heavily
invested in a system that created their job and many of them don't have a lot of 'real world' contact once they get secure in those academic
positions.
