Why the us should cut useless courses from college degrees.

[Katganistan]

I know of one actor who had to work as a carpenter until he hit the big time.

Jesus of Nazareth!?

Oh wait, that was Jesus Christ Superstar...sorry.

Nah, Han Solo.

So we can be in agreement that ‘useless’ is defined, here, as just the arbitrary metric of the OP.

Pretty much.

Pretty much. It's sort of absurd when you consider people choose their degrees, it's not like you get assigned to them.

People get tricked into choosing the wrong degree, there usually isn't enough information to make a truly informed decision ahead of time because the market/economy may change whilst you're putting in all this effort/time to finish what will take 2 or more years. Its often not quick enough to be truly efficient in terms of career preparation.

Because of sunk costs, it sets them back if it doesn't pay off; compared to just not going. A work history gap is just as damaging as having no degree for a lot of career fields. You have to present yourself in arbitrary ways to be competitive or seen as still relevant.

Oh that's utter bullshit.
You read the damn college catalogs, you read the papers/journals for the career you're interested in, you choose.

Don't blame others for the path you chose.

[Forsher]

So have we defined what makes a degree "useless" yet, aside from "the OP does not like the classes" ?

I mean, most business and management degrees sound like a waste of time and money to me. All you really seem to learn is how to kiss some corporate fatcat's ass, or kiss the ass of whoever's kissing the corporate fatcat's ass.

Sort of.

Most of it is applied common sense... for example, the sunk cost fallacy... married to preaching about the value of networking, personal marketing (although this might count as applied common sense) and meeting people who want to work at a Big Four accounting firm. And then, after years of this, they try and backtrack to get you to come back and be a postgraduate.

Source. (The MBA esque stuff seems mostly to consist of people who are already in business so the courses are basically a type of networking function. I don't actually know what content's in those but I imagine it consists of jargonified common sense all the same.)

[Saiwania]

Oh that's utter bullshit.
You read the damn college catalogs, you read the papers/journals for the career you're interested in, you choose.

It's not, in that the catalogs and brochures for college programs are full of false advertising and unproven claims. Yes people choose, but it is under predatory circumstances more often than not. Of course a college is going to screw someone over, if it makes them more money than telling them any information that could make them get cold feet and not enroll.

[Katganistan]

Oh that's utter bullshit.
You read the damn college catalogs, you read the papers/journals for the career you're interested in, you choose.

It's not, in that the catalogs and brochures for college programs are full of false advertising and unproven claims. Yes people choose, but it is under predatory circumstances more often than not. Of course a college is going to screw someone over, if it makes them more money than telling them any information that could make them get cold feet and not enroll.

I'm not sure what kind of college you enrolled in then. Was it accredited?
Predatory? What do you mean by that?

Did you check out the college's reputation before you decided on it?

[Imperial Joseon]

It's not, in that the catalogs and brochures for college programs are full of false advertising and unproven claims. Yes people choose, but it is under predatory circumstances more often than not. Of course a college is going to screw someone over, if it makes them more money than telling them any information that could make them get cold feet and not enroll.

I'm not sure what kind of college you enrolled in then. Was it accredited?
Predatory? What do you mean by that?

Did you check out the college's reputation before you decided on it?

One should always check on college reviews and accreditations. Some rip people off for money and teach them nothing.

[Katganistan]

I'm not sure what kind of college you enrolled in then. Was it accredited?
Predatory? What do you mean by that?

Did you check out the college's reputation before you decided on it?

One should always check on college reviews and accreditations. Some rip people off for money and teach them nothing.

That is true -- but that is not all colleges. Saiwainia seems to think it's all colleges.

This is why you research the schools.... My high school basically has a bank of computers for kids to do the common app, counselors to help them navigate through info on the colleges, etc.

[Imperial Joseon]

One should always check on college reviews and accreditations. Some rip people off for money and teach them nothing.

That is true -- but that is not all colleges. Saiwainia seems to think it's all colleges.

This is why you research the schools.... My high school basically has a bank of computers for kids to do the common app, counselors to help them navigate through info on the colleges, etc.

Yeah, most colleges don't do that. However, there are some shady ones in disguise of appealing TV commercials and newspaper articles.

[Grenartia]

An MBA *is* a business degree. And as far as I'm concerned, its not immune to being as useless as any other business degree.

It's the basic foundation for entering a top-notch company, I believe.

And? That doesn't tell me anything other than "top-notch companies" want their new hires to kiss their bosses asses all the time. Capitalism is fundamentally broken like that.

[Grenartia]

I mean, most business and management degrees sound like a waste of time and money to me. All you really seem to learn is how to kiss some corporate fatcat's ass, or kiss the ass of whoever's kissing the corporate fatcat's ass.

Sort of.

Most of it is applied common sense... for example, the sunk cost fallacy... married to preaching about the value of networking, personal marketing (although this might count as applied common sense) and meeting people who want to work at a Big Four accounting firm. And then, after years of this, they try and backtrack to get you to come back and be a postgraduate.

Source. (The MBA esque stuff seems mostly to consist of people who are already in business so the courses are basically a type of networking function. I don't actually know what content's in those but I imagine it consists of jargonified common sense all the same.)

Imagine paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to make friends and prove you have common sense.

[Salandriagado]

Math probably is a useless subject.
That also leaves out 5-8 hours for sleep, too.

As someone who dislikes Math (and someone who also has struggled at teaching it before, as I'm more of an English-minded person), I'd say the problem is not that Math is "useless". Rather, the way that it is taught makes it useless. If the Math problems and formulas we were required to learn were connected more to the real world, they'd be more graspable. Instead, Math is taught mostly as self-contained formulas and theories learned for standardized tests, and the methods proposed are generally unfriendly toward children with special needs or learning disabilities.

Kids are also not taught how to approach problem-solving. Word problems did not become easier for me until I took a Math Pedagogy class in college. It's telling that I only became aware of how badly my foundation in Math was when I got to college. Imagine the large number of kids who never realize it, reach 9th grade algebra, and give up because they've just fallen too far behind. (You teach middle school though, you probably see that more often than I do anyway.)

Anyway, this is a rather short summary of my problems with Math. But I don't think it's useless.

The mathematics taught in schools is applicable to the point of having had essentially all of the mathematics removed to squeeze in more applicability.

[Salandriagado]

Oh that's utter bullshit.
You read the damn college catalogs, you read the papers/journals for the career you're interested in, you choose.

It's not, in that the catalogs and brochures for college programs are full of false advertising and unproven claims. Yes people choose, but it is under predatory circumstances more often than not. Of course a college is going to screw someone over, if it makes them more money than telling them any information that could make them get cold feet and not enroll.

This is what we call "lacking indepdendent research skills".

[SD_Film Artists]

Oh that's utter bullshit.
You read the damn college catalogs, you read the papers/journals for the career you're interested in, you choose.

It's not, in that the catalogs and brochures for college programs are full of false advertising and unproven claims. Yes people choose, but it is under predatory circumstances more often than not. Of course a college is going to screw someone over, if it makes them more money than telling them any information that could make them get cold feet and not enroll.

I didn't have to time to go on a tour of universities so I literally just opened google maps and looked for somewhere near the centre of the UK* and looked at the websites, then visited it. It turned out to be a good choice if you ignore the left-wing bias of the lectures.

*As lovely as Norfolk is, it can feel rather boxed-in with sea to the north and east, the untamed Essex badlands to the south, leaving a corridor of relative civilization to the west.

[Saiwania]

This is what we call "lacking indepdendent research skills".

I did plenty of research to have made a decision. It was a fully accredited in state community college, still sucked in terms of return on investment. It was located where I lived, for better or worse it is what I had to work with at the time. We need to just find full replacements for universities/colleges in general that take significantly faster to complete for substantially less money.

Besides which, traditional higher education usually forces students to buy these stupid books/classroom materials that're hardly used that're overpriced. These places are in on a conspiracy to enrich book publishers off the backs of struggling students.

The 2 year degrees shouldn't be worthless compared to the 4 year degrees but apparently it is in a lot of circumstances. Well, I didn't want to spend that much time and effort on a piece of paper anyways. If a 2 year degree doesn't benefit, why would a 4 year degree? The costs of failure are steeper if you go for 4 years compared to just 2 if it doesn't work out afterwards. Maybe I'd go for a greater degree if a lesser degree had a positive enough return to justify upgrading. But it doesn't seem to be the case.

I'd glad that fewer people are going because its getting too expensive and I look forward to many colleges closing in the coming decades. I say good riddance. Maybe for once, they'll have to be competitive on price.

[Katganistan]

Saiwania, really now. A 2 year degree is not worthless, but how you managed the mental gymnastics to decide that it was the same as a four year bachelors shows an incredible lack of basic common sense.

Most people buy used books if they can to save money. They also sell their new books back to the college so they can get the money to buy their next batch. There is no saying you HAVE to get them from the college -- there is this amazing site called Amazon that has prime priced as a student discount so you can get your books faster. There are also sites that have books, free, especially for college students -- which did not exist when I went.

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
https://bookboon.com/en/textbooks
http://www.openculture.com/free_textbooks
https://www.ereader-palace.com/14-sites ... ooks-free/

Undoubtedly they wouldn't have EVERYTHING, but enough so you could significantly cut your book budget.

[Cisairse]

Saiwania, really now. A 2 year degree is not worthless, but how you managed the mental gymnastics to decide that it was the same as a four year bachelors shows an incredible lack of basic common sense.

Most people buy used books if they can to save money. They also sell their new books back to the college so they can get the money to buy their next batch. There is no saying you HAVE to get them from the college -- there is this amazing site called Amazon that has prime priced as a student discount so you can get your books cheaper. There are also sites that have books, free, especially for college students -- which did not exist when I went.

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
https://bookboon.com/en/textbooks
http://www.openculture.com/free_textbooks
https://www.ereader-palace.com/14-sites ... ooks-free/

Undoubtedly they wouldn't have EVERYTHING, but enough so you could significantly cut your book budget.

Lib gen got me through freshman & sophomore year, after which point none of my classes really required textbooks.

[Fahran]

And? That doesn't tell me anything other than "top-notch companies" want their new hires to kiss their bosses asses all the time. Capitalism is fundamentally broken like that.

Depends on the MBA, really. Finance and accounting skills are extremely useful in almost any business environment and do not amount to kissing the boss's ass. You can be an amazing brown-noser and a poor accountant or financial analyst. Marketing and business administration, on the other hand, seem more nebulous and dependent on one's ability to communicate and inspire confidence. These are still useful skills though - they're just not concrete or subject-specific. I don't think capitalism is broken because some business majors do well. Really, most do about average. In any case, I think that's as much a symptom of administrative and bureaucratic tendencies in our institutions as anything else.

[Imperial Joseon]

It's not, in that the catalogs and brochures for college programs are full of false advertising and unproven claims. Yes people choose, but it is under predatory circumstances more often than not. Of course a college is going to screw someone over, if it makes them more money than telling them any information that could make them get cold feet and not enroll.

This is what we call "lacking indepdendent research skills".

Da-tum-chi!

[Grenartia]

Saiwania, really now. A 2 year degree is not worthless, but how you managed the mental gymnastics to decide that it was the same as a four year bachelors shows an incredible lack of basic common sense.

Most people buy used books if they can to save money. They also sell their new books back to the college so they can get the money to buy their next batch. There is no saying you HAVE to get them from the college -- there is this amazing site called Amazon that has prime priced as a student discount so you can get your books cheaper. There are also sites that have books, free, especially for college students -- which did not exist when I went.

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
https://bookboon.com/en/textbooks
http://www.openculture.com/free_textbooks
https://www.ereader-palace.com/14-sites ... ooks-free/

Undoubtedly they wouldn't have EVERYTHING, but enough so you could significantly cut your book budget.

Lib gen got me through freshman & sophomore year, after which point none of my classes really required textbooks.

My college offered rentals.

And? That doesn't tell me anything other than "top-notch companies" want their new hires to kiss their bosses asses all the time. Capitalism is fundamentally broken like that.

Depends on the MBA, really. Finance and accounting skills are extremely useful in almost any business environment and do not amount to kissing the boss's ass.

You don't need an MBA to know basic math and common sense.

You can be an amazing brown-noser and a poor accountant or financial analyst. Marketing and business administration, on the other hand, seem more nebulous and dependent on one's ability to communicate and inspire confidence.

Get a comm degree, then.

These are still useful skills though - they're just not concrete or subject-specific. I don't think capitalism is broken because some business majors do well.

I didn't say that. I simply indicated that its one of many symptoms of the problem.

Really, most do about average. In any case, I think that's as much a symptom of administrative and bureaucratic tendencies in our institutions as anything else.

Its a symptom of the endless pursuit of profit for a minority of the population at the expense of the majority of the population, and of the exploitation of the people doing all of the real work of actually earning that profit.

[Imperial Joseon]

Get a comm degree, then.

Communications degree doesn't do much, to be honest. Get a science degree or a license to a professional degree.

[Grenartia]

Get a comm degree, then.

Communications degree doesn't do much, to be honest. Get a science degree or a license to a professional degree.

Well, for the purposes of what she was saying, Communications is the degree to get. Also, as a science major, I'm going to go out and say that science is not for everyone, and there are a lot of good career paths a communications degree opens up.

[Post War America]

Communications degree doesn't do much, to be honest. Get a science degree or a license to a professional degree.

Well, for the purposes of what she was saying, Communications is the degree to get. Also, as a science major, I'm going to go out and say that science is not for everyone, and there are a lot of good career paths a communications degree opens up.

Can confirm the second from personal experience.

[Fahran]

You don't need an MBA to know basic math and common sense.

Time value of money is pretty simple but the formulas are not widely known by everybody. It's tougher mathematics than people'll usually learn or use. There's also some statistics wrapped into finance, I believe. I'd argue accountancy encompasses a bit more than simple mathematics. Hence why the CPA exam is so challenging for the majority of people who pursue public accounting as a career. You have to know how to do legal research and a bunch of other stuff.

Get a comm degree, then.

Jack of all trades, master of none. But still better than master of one.

I didn't say that. I simply indicated that its one of many symptoms of the problem.

I don't really consider requiring different skill sets and degrees for different functions a problem that we should strive to fix. Diversification of labor has been a trend since we had the means to feed ourselves reliably.

Its a symptom of the endless pursuit of profit for a minority of the population at the expense of the majority of the population, and of the exploitation of the people doing all of the real work of actually earning that profit.

This does not logically follow unless we accept that MBAs have less to offer employers while accepting that they're hired merely to stroke their egos. Really, I think this is an altogether distinct issue. Businesses (and all other organizations) want generalists but they also want accountants, financial analysts, mareketers, operations managers, etc. A lot of these graduates are very good at what they do. I can do organic chemistry and virology all day long. I don't think I'd have a good time making an annual balance sheet for a large company or managing a supply chain. We have different skill sets. I don't get why so many people in this thread are eager to downplay the accomplishments of educated people who simply got a degree distinct from their own.

[Fahran]

Communications degree doesn't do much, to be honest. Get a science degree or a license to a professional degree.

Or get the degree that speaks to your interests and that you believe will make you marketable. If everybody becomes a biochemist, engineer, plumber, or electrician, we're going to over-saturate those fields as well. MBAs have a skill set and viewpoint that we STEM and professional degrees often lack. It doesn't mean that they're stupid or chose the wrong field of study. They do have something material to offer depending on what they studied - business administration, finance, accounting, etc. And their skill set is still a bit distinct from communications majors even when it incorporates a little of that when it comes to business administration.

[Saiwania]

Saiwania, really now. A 2 year degree is not worthless, but how you managed the mental gymnastics to decide that it was the same as a four year bachelors shows an incredible lack of basic common sense...

The book publishers change editions every year, even though there are barely any meaningful changes, for the express purpose of making the page numbers not line up, and thus making the syllabuses require different editions each year for assignments. The used books are worthless if they're too expired by the time you get it.

A 2 year degree was comparatively worthless in my case, in that it failed to deliver 50% of the value of a 4 year degree. I don't begrudge higher education for existing, what I begrudge it for is that it costs too much, takes too long, and is too elitist. But most of those issues could be resolved if it were affordable or if there were real competition and alternative pathways besides traditional colleges/university.

Its a glorified racket at this point and has taken so much from so many. That is my position on it. I'm not just going to back those places getting more money from the government when they get enough as it is from fleecing people who don't just have everything paid for, such as if they have a scholarship. Like I said, campuses are too busy spending on lavish amenities instead of the actual education.

If the government does give higher education money in general, it should be vetted. The colleges can't be trusted to spend the people's funding responsibly. If they're given a blank check, they'll take it for granted and just want more the next year and so on.

[Imperial Joseon]

Well, for the purposes of what she was saying, Communications is the degree to get. Also, as a science major, I'm going to go out and say that science is not for everyone, and there are a lot of good career paths a communications degree opens up.

Such as...?