The DeBeers-ish sentimental marketing is also a bit of a scam, which ends up working nicely with the cost being a scam. I am very happy with my 25 year old English Lit degree; it was was what I was able to get through with where I was discipline-wise, and I did learn all those critical thinking and life skills, and it even opened adequate doors, career-wise. I reckon my grades were inflated somewhat by my professors’ sheer relief that I was engaging with the material and, for all their flaws, my papers were obviously my own work. Still, I think my memories would be very different if I had graduated with $180k of student loan debt from a bucolic college somewhere in the New England hills instead of a $2k balance on a Discover Card, incurred over 4.25 years of nonsense at local state U.
I’m all for college, and not just STEM and business. Frankly some our current generation of tech leaders could use to have taken a few more philosophy classes (except for Peter Thiel… oh my) or at least smoked a few more bowls with the liberal arts kids. Still, people need to be clear-eyed about what a degree will and won’t do, and they need to understand that you absolutely can and should put a price-tag on the experiences.
Krono@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
You’re mostly right about the benefits of college, but this idea of a transition into functional adulthood is outdated. It reflects a bygone era of the job market.
After graduating college and being unable to find a job, I am much less functional and significantly less adult.
Signtist@bookwyr.me 2 weeks ago
Having a job may be functional on a practical level, but in today’s job market, employability is no longer a reflection of who you are as a person, and shouldn’t be used to determine whether or not you’re an “adult.” By “functional adulthood” I meant things like the ability to socialize, and the ability to think rationally about complex problems like politics and religion instead of just blindly following whatever your parents said was right. People don’t always learn those skills, but there’s a reason that republicans often think of college as “indoctrination,” because their kids keep coming back with different beliefs than the ones they left with.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thank you! Yes, college was important for me to do that sort of thing. I think another part of the problem is that some people see college as entirely about career aspects and don’t engage with it as a holistic experience. Like yeah part of college was the classes, and those were important, they challenged me to learn how to think, how to defend my statements, how to write well, how to do my career, and more. But college was also hanging out chatting with other people interested in knowledge, other people of varied backgrounds and experiences, and just other young people who were interested in living like young people in a relatively low structure environment.