Did you research your degree before you pursued it?

[Cynical]

I only went to 12th grade(And it shows)But I make a lot more money than people with and education.I narrowed my choices down to 3 careers.Drywall finisher,gynecology or hvac.Figured I'd stay cleaner doing hvac.Been doing it for over 40 years now.

Many of these kids today who go to college and spend another four years of sitting in classrooms don't come out much more intelligent than when they graduated high school. They do procure a lot of debt though.

 

[Superfly]

I read the following article and it brought me back to a discussion I had with my mother when I was about 16-18....My Mother was a meteorologist and I wanted to be a light house keeper ( it was a phase, dont judge)….she gave me the bottom line up front speech I have pretty much memorized and have since repeated to my brats.

Do a job you have to do so you can eventually do the job you want to do.

At the time, I was pretty much of the opinion that she had no idea what she was talking about ( the angst of youth ), and I was going to do as I pleased and become a rich light house keeper.

Cue the bounced reality check and fast forward several decades.

Mom, I get it now.....I took that wisdom and imparted it to my offspring; research the jobs and career fields before you plow into it head first.

Its easier to do so in this day of internet data at your fingertips than it was in my day of going to the library and spending hours looking over old micro fiches; but, the bottom line is this....due diligence and research.

The 20 highest and lowest paying college majors

When you went to school ( college, trade, apprenticeship, ), did you look at the look at the career field outlook before you took out student loans, or paid your quarterly tuition?
Did you fall victim to the " I wanna work with dolphins so I will be a marine biologist" syndrome that I saw nail so many of my friends in the 80's? ( just an example)

What did you do to prepare yourself for the future?

When I first went back to school, I went because nobody in my family had ever finished college. Honestly, most never even got past first term. I chose my degree based on what I would enjoy doing every day for the rest of my life. My girls, who are both now in college, were told the same. Do what you will enjoy. Don’t try to get rich. Try to get happy. Work won’t suck nearly as much as a result.

 

[Carjosse]

I researched my major and discovered it was something I had a interest in, pays very well, and there are plenty of jobs. What no one told me and what seems to be a common issue with a lot fields today is that there is only a lot of jobs if you already have years of experience, no one wants to hire and train new grads at all but all these companies want years of experience in their very specific technology which you cannot get unless a company is willing to train you.

 

[Mortician]

I read the following article and it brought me back to a discussion I had with my mother when I was about 16-18....My Mother was a meteorologist and I wanted to be a light house keeper ( it was a phase, dont judge)….she gave me the bottom line up front speech I have pretty much memorized and have since repeated to my brats.

Do a job you have to do so you can eventually do the job you want to do.

At the time, I was pretty much of the opinion that she had no idea what she was talking about ( the angst of youth ), and I was going to do as I pleased and become a rich light house keeper.

Cue the bounced reality check and fast forward several decades.

Mom, I get it now.....I took that wisdom and imparted it to my offspring; research the jobs and career fields before you plow into it head first.

Its easier to do so in this day of internet data at your fingertips than it was in my day of going to the library and spending hours looking over old micro fiches; but, the bottom line is this....due diligence and research.

The 20 highest and lowest paying college majors

When you went to school ( college, trade, apprenticeship, ), did you look at the look at the career field outlook before you took out student loans, or paid your quarterly tuition?
Did you fall victim to the " I wanna work with dolphins so I will be a marine biologist" syndrome that I saw nail so many of my friends in the 80's? ( just an example)

What did you do to prepare yourself for the future?

I researched both my masters and bachelors and both were labeled "high demand" fields. What I fell victim to was marketing, in reality both fields were oversaturated and hard to get into which was the opposite of what colleges were saying. College is a business that labels some degrees as "high demand" so they get a lot students and thus make a lot of money off those students. After being in both fields I realized how oversaturated both fields are and I have seen many grads not make it in these fields.

 

[Cynical]

I researched my major and discovered it was something I had a interest in, pays very well, and there are plenty of jobs. What no one told me and what seems to be a common issue with a lot fields today is that there is only a lot of jobs if you already have years of experience, no one wants to hire and train new grads at all but all these companies want years of experience in their very specific technology which you cannot get unless a company is willing to train you.

What higher education needs is partnerships with businesses so that people can genuinely know what jobs are in demand and can get practical on the job training so they can be ready to produce when then finish their education.

 

[Integrityrespec]

I read the following article and it brought me back to a discussion I had with my mother when I was about 16-18....My Mother was a meteorologist and I wanted to be a light house keeper ( it was a phase, dont judge)….she gave me the bottom line up front speech I have pretty much memorized and have since repeated to my brats.

Do a job you have to do so you can eventually do the job you want to do.

At the time, I was pretty much of the opinion that she had no idea what she was talking about ( the angst of youth ), and I was going to do as I pleased and become a rich light house keeper.

Cue the bounced reality check and fast forward several decades.

Mom, I get it now.....I took that wisdom and imparted it to my offspring; research the jobs and career fields before you plow into it head first.

Its easier to do so in this day of internet data at your fingertips than it was in my day of going to the library and spending hours looking over old micro fiches; but, the bottom line is this....due diligence and research.

The 20 highest and lowest paying college majors

When you went to school ( college, trade, apprenticeship, ), did you look at the look at the career field outlook before you took out student loans, or paid your quarterly tuition?
Did you fall victim to the " I wanna work with dolphins so I will be a marine biologist" syndrome that I saw nail so many of my friends in the 80's? ( just an example)

What did you do to prepare yourself for the future?

Good post. I'm afraid I had not idea about job availability or income or standard of living. I just figured I'd get a job in the field I studied in college and be comfortable the rest of my life. LOL. Well, I was mostly correct but not because of planning I just stumbled into a good career that includes with it a good retirement and I don't have to worry about how I will live out my life at this point. It's all covered, and it's all covered for my family if I pass early.Unless the democrats get ahold of the economy and want to redistribute the wealth.

 

[Drawdown]

I read the following article and it brought me back to a discussion I had with my mother when I was about 16-18....My Mother was a meteorologist and I wanted to be a light house keeper ( it was a phase, dont judge)….she gave me the bottom line up front speech I have pretty much memorized and have since repeated to my brats.

Do a job you have to do so you can eventually do the job you want to do.

At the time, I was pretty much of the opinion that she had no idea what she was talking about ( the angst of youth ), and I was going to do as I pleased and become a rich light house keeper.

Cue the bounced reality check and fast forward several decades.

Mom, I get it now.....I took that wisdom and imparted it to my offspring; research the jobs and career fields before you plow into it head first.

Its easier to do so in this day of internet data at your fingertips than it was in my day of going to the library and spending hours looking over old micro fiches; but, the bottom line is this....due diligence and research.

The 20 highest and lowest paying college majors

When you went to school ( college, trade, apprenticeship, ), did you look at the look at the career field outlook before you took out student loans, or paid your quarterly tuition?
Did you fall victim to the " I wanna work with dolphins so I will be a marine biologist" syndrome that I saw nail so many of my friends in the 80's? ( just an example)

What did you do to prepare yourself for the future?

Some colleges now have degrees in nothing just so when the person hits 120 hours they can graduate them and get rid of the permastudents.

 

[Bum]

Some colleges now have degrees in nothing just so when the person hits 120 hours they can graduate them and get rid of the permastudents.

Which makes them as marketable as mud pies.

 

[Drawdown]

Which makes them as marketable as mud pies.

Maybe it isn't about marketability but about checking the minimum requirements box on applications for jobs. Ultimately relevant work experience will open more doors than degrees but before you even get to that point, gotta check the box. These Interdisciplinary Degrees, however, are a bit weird to me. How would you even explain that to an employer? "I just took ALL the easy courses and stretched my degree out over 6 years, but I was like really important as social chair in my frat so I didn't have time to do it faster."

 

[TheEconomist]

Where I live, the education system is a bit peculiar and that context is relevant for my reply.

Our first 6 grades are in elementary school and our next 5 grades are in high school. At this point, if you do not want to study to become a mechanic or something like that, you graduate and you attend something that's not quite high school, nor quite college. There, you have the choice between a professional degree (3 years) or a preparatory degree you take prior to attending university (2 years). The professional degree is basically like the preparatory degree, plus professional courses and internships. Then, if you go to a university, a bachelor's degree usually is 3 years (except for a few programs like teaching which is 4 years), a master's with thesis is 2 years and a Ph.D would be 4 years, usually done after you have complete both a master's and a bachelor's degree.

When I graduated high school, I studied for a professional degree in architecture. There is a kind of architect-like job which affords you restricted privileges for designing building and approuving plans. That's what I did for a while. But, going through the mandatory core curriculum, I had to take philosophy courses and I just fell in love with debating ethics, politics and other issues in philosophy, so I had my degree changed for a humanities degree, specializing in individual studies -- i.e., my primary coursework focused on psychology and economics. It forced me to study geography, sociology, psychology, political science and economics. I absolutely obliterated the economics courses and I just got interested in the subject. Talking with the teachers, I learned that in Canada, the market for economists requires a master's for most jobs and a Ph.D. for jobs involving research, so I applied for a course in applied economics, knowing I would do at least a master's. Late in master's, after considerable hesitation and time, I opted to apply for a Ph.D. and this is what I am doing right now.


The reason all of this is relevant is because I ran in circle for a while after high school before I settled on a very specific career path. If I was in the United States, that circling would have likely been costlier or it would have taken place outside the academic world. Also, if anyone needs some help figuring out how they can make a good choice for themselves, I can expand a bit on why I picked economics. I absolutely love digging into the details of a problem and I like trying to figure out how people behave on a large enough scale to be able to say something useful to people who need to make decisions in the private or the public sector. Moreover, of all the social sciences, economics offers you the chance to get a good job thereafter because you're forced to acquire very technical skills as you study and those are useful in a lot of contexts, even outside the field.

This semester, I'm taking my last "real" PhD course and I took a course on the pricing of derivative securities in incomplete markets. It might sound a bit daunting to outsiders, but it's the kind of course where the professor goes through models that try to explain facts, points out all the implications, looks into the litterature to see where are the problems and moves on to proposed improvements. That's something that is very fascniating about economics: the theory is known to be off, but the predictions are so sharp you can have a dicussion about what could make it better. Financial economics is also specifically fascinating because limits to arbtrage binds a lot of prices to one another: option contracts on the S&P500 of various maturities and strikes are tied together by the fact their value at maturity all depend on the same underlying price. So, they all contain some information about expectations and "fears." It gives you a very broad spectrum of things you can use to think about how market digest news, how policy changes impact stock markets, etc. as opposed to when you just look at a stock market index like the S&P500 (because you have one index and a plethora of option contracts on them).

I hope it helps. Of course, I'm not suggesting that the only valid reason to pick a career path is that you're fascinated with what you're doing. Other people might choose a career because it's something that pays well and they do not mind doing. If you can have a job that offers great advantages, it doesn't need to be all that interesting. It can simply be the means to an end, the way you get the funds to do things you love outside of work. It's not what I opted to do, but it's not a bad plan either. As long as you don't put yourself in a position where you hate your life because of your mind numbing job, it's all fine.

 

[TheEconomist]

I was in the same boat; math was never my strength in High School, and I tried to avoid it. When I did settle on a degree, it was heavy in statistics, and I was a late arrival to college; fortunately my wife excels at math and helped me extensively.

I absolutely hated mathematics in my last two years of high school, especially when statistics was involved. It's not because I wasn't good. I remember one of the top student got mad at me because I was never paying attention or doing any coursework, but I still finished exams early with high scores. It was just so mind numbing and seemingly pointless.

The irony is that I ended up studying economics and doing a lot of statistics (my expertise is mostly in econometrics). But, you know, studying statistics with a purpose makes it a lot more interesting.

 

[Moonglow]

Of course I researched and spent my jr high and high school years working in the field of radio//tv/film and theater production and performance.....And I also did photojournalism.

 

[Fiddytree]

Oh Yeah. Massive growth was projected for a career with a comfortable, not extravagant and secure middle class lifestyle. Then the economic crash happened just in time for most of my colleagues to graduate. Government support fell, boomers refused to retire, younger potential employees were instead pushed into temporary one year contracts that were not continued. Then we were treated to waves of "why didn't you pick a major that had prospects for jobs! stupid millennial....durrrr." Only in the last few years have boomers decided to retire, and you're finally seeing "younger" people getting into the profession. :2wave:

Meanwhile, I moved on and am much happier.

 

[Divine_Wind]

I read the following article and it brought me back to a discussion I had with my mother when I was about 16-18....My Mother was a meteorologist and I wanted to be a light house keeper ( it was a phase, dont judge)….she gave me the bottom line up front speech I have pretty much memorized and have since repeated to my brats.

Do a job you have to do so you can eventually do the job you want to do.

At the time, I was pretty much of the opinion that she had no idea what she was talking about ( the angst of youth ), and I was going to do as I pleased and become a rich light house keeper.

Cue the bounced reality check and fast forward several decades.

Mom, I get it now.....I took that wisdom and imparted it to my offspring; research the jobs and career fields before you plow into it head first.

Its easier to do so in this day of internet data at your fingertips than it was in my day of going to the library and spending hours looking over old micro fiches; but, the bottom line is this....due diligence and research.

The 20 highest and lowest paying college majors

When you went to school ( college, trade, apprenticeship, ), did you look at the look at the career field outlook before you took out student loans, or paid your quarterly tuition?
Did you fall victim to the " I wanna work with dolphins so I will be a marine biologist" syndrome that I saw nail so many of my friends in the 80's? ( just an example)

What did you do to prepare yourself for the future?

Yes, I researched it but my chosen career field wasn't in my major but my major did help with my career field.

Agreed that people should research and use wisdom before paying more money for a college education than I paid for my house.

 

[Divine_Wind]

I researched both my masters and bachelors and both were labeled "high demand" fields. What I fell victim to was marketing, in reality both fields were oversaturated and hard to get into which was the opposite of what colleges were saying. College is a business that labels some degrees as "high demand" so they get a lot students and thus make a lot of money off those students. After being in both fields I realized how oversaturated both fields are and I have seen many grads not make it in these fields.

All good points. That didn't happen to me, but since my college days, I've seen several fellow coworkers fall for the "brochure" and rack up huge debts, on the order of $150-200K, in a field that wouldn't start paying well for 10-15 years if they stuck around that long.

 

[Divine_Wind]

Which makes them as marketable as mud pies.

Students can cut costs and explore career opportunities through community/junior college. The first two years are core classes anyway even though they can use some of the electives on their chosen field. TBH, I changed my major a couple of times moving from a community college to a four year university. My Master's wasn't even related to my eventual BA.

IIRC a statistic correctly, about 80% of STEM graduates find jobs, but most of those aren't even in their major's field. Obviously that's more management rather than becoming biochemists or NASA engineers.

 

[AGENT J]

I read the following article and it brought me back to a discussion I had with my mother when I was about 16-18....My Mother was a meteorologist and I wanted to be a light house keeper ( it was a phase, dont judge)….she gave me the bottom line up front speech I have pretty much memorized and have since repeated to my brats.

Do a job you have to do so you can eventually do the job you want to do.

At the time, I was pretty much of the opinion that she had no idea what she was talking about ( the angst of youth ), and I was going to do as I pleased and become a rich light house keeper.

Cue the bounced reality check and fast forward several decades.

Mom, I get it now.....I took that wisdom and imparted it to my offspring; research the jobs and career fields before you plow into it head first.

Its easier to do so in this day of internet data at your fingertips than it was in my day of going to the library and spending hours looking over old micro fiches; but, the bottom line is this....due diligence and research.

The 20 highest and lowest paying college majors

When you went to school ( college, trade, apprenticeship, ), did you look at the look at the career field outlook before you took out student loans, or paid your quarterly tuition?
Did you fall victim to the " I wanna work with dolphins so I will be a marine biologist" syndrome that I saw nail so many of my friends in the 80's? ( just an example)

What did you do to prepare yourself for the future?

Did you research your degree before you pursued it?

yes i did . . .electronics, computers and architecture were always what I liked in high school. It also helped that math and creativity were a natural strong suit with me.
In the end I decided to go into engineering as that gave me the broadest ability to branch out into multiple areas

while my parents played a role in this so did my school and my own natural curiosity

 

[Dacke]

Nope. I wasted three years on a, next to, useless Liberal Arts degree simply because my uneducated parents oversetimated the value of a degree and told me to "just go".