The Useless College Degree

hey, school was awesome, it's the working world's lack of willingness to hand out fantastic jobs to new graduates that sucks! and this is why some of us end up right back in grad school.

not to play devil's advocate, but ... what kind of fantastic job SHOULD be available to an English Lit major?!?

that said, i have known English and French Lit. majors who went to work for hedge funds and i-banks -- they also went to Ivy League (or Ivy-caliber) schools, and that's another debate altogether, but i know for a fact that it's happened.

not to play devil's advocate, but ... what kind of fantastic job SHOULD be available to an English Lit major?!?

As an English major, I assumed that since it was a major, that meant that it was preparing me for some kind of job market. People tried to warn me. People tried to warn me.

fwiw, the only "real" (non-service, non-dirtbag) job I had between college and medical school was a job that actively sought English majors. i was a copywriter for a small "creative" agency in Chicago, and, you know, writing was something i'd done a lot of as an undergrad

dunno about in this economy (thanks, grad school!), but the world needs competent writers and editors more than it needs academics. just don't expect to write about cool awesome stuff you're interested in, maybe? like, look for a job as a technical writer or as a copyeditor or whatever, and learn your craft

I'd love to see a new major that sorta between an English major and a major in another language, that would emphasize skills in translation (verbal and written). There are jobs doing this (especially in text translation), and a shortage of qualified people, and it's a nontrivial thing to do, so college-level training is a big plus. For one, it helps to understand what you're translating (though this sometimes takes more than college if you're translating something really serious). Plus the pay is pretty good, at least over here in Europe.

I'm kinda half-terrified for my daughter, who will be freshly degree'd next May. gbx, I hope you're right, because she's an excellent writer -- and beyond that, she's the go-to grammar nerd and prose mechanic for all of her friends at school who need help with their work.

be fully terrified

then encourage her to look for less glamorous prose wrenching jobs in markets that are not NYC

i dropped out of high school and didn't go to college til i was 22. i went to a pretty good school and through ridiculous katrina circumstances ended up with a BA in english and then a master's in english. i am working on a master's in library stuff. i spent a whole year after grad school #1 trying to get a grownup job with a tie and a cubicle and a water cooler and all that.

i am a bartender. i have one person in my bar right now (because the saints have a bye). i get pissed when people bitch and moan about their useless degrees because hey guess what if you paid any attention at all in college your interior life is probably way richer than it would have been otherwise.

i mean to say: learning is good for you, no one has a good job, everyone is poor, there are worse things than working in some debasing servile capacity and knowing a lot about keats--like working in some debasing servile capacity and not knowing shit about keats.

yall should be scientists

both of my degrees are ones got for the experience rather than guarantee of jobs. i don't think you can really place too much importance on the degree getting you the job if you're not doing the requisite networking and relationship building to excel in your field. in fact, i went to grad school more for the networking opportunities than the piece of paper (because no one even knows what my piece of paper means!).

yeah, kinda wish i was a physicist! though i met a guy who does rocket science and apparently the job prospects in that field aren't so hot, either. being in the pnw now, i realllly wish i had more tech experience. thinking of taking some technical writing classes on the side.

i wish i could have gotten a liberal arts degree (or linguistics or geography or something like that) in addition to or instead of my stupid math degree. i'm not using the math degree anyway. i also wish i had gotten a physics or chemistry b.s. instead of a math one. i wish i wish i wish!

btw i took technical writing and i promise you already know all there is to know about it! but it sucks because you can't just tell employers that. they wanna see you took the course.

i have no idea what to do with my math degree :(

can i be a detective who uses clever math tricks to solve mysteries

<3 mathnet!!

do the quarterback's homework

i mean to say: learning is good for you, no one has a good job, everyone is poor, there are worse things than working in some debasing servile capacity and knowing a lot about keats--like working in some debasing servile capacity and not knowing shit about keats.

i like this way of putting it! i'm really not hot on the idea of college as vocational training-- okay, in college i learnt to write clearly and quickly and to deadlines, and how to structure arguments, and some facts and a foreign language and etc, but the thing i really treasured was learning a whole new way of understanding a wholly unfamiliar kind of poetry, and even if i don't go academic places w/ it it's still something really important to me.

that said i often wish i'd done engineering instead.

Euler, the problem with translation work at the moment is that companies like to get a machine-translation done and then ask a translator to "proof-read" it, which basically means doing the translation all over again bcz guess what machine translations are shite, but they don't have to pay for a proper trans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/nyregion/11twins.html?_r=1

c sharp major: yeah, totally. My wife is doing some translation work now that I think is exactly as you describe. On the other hand the pay is good! Or at least it seems good to me, compared to my shitty prof salary.

ive already said too much about that twins article on the ny times thread but: fuck those girls

dunno about in this economy (thanks, grad school!), but the world needs competent writers and editors more than it needs academics. just don't expect to write about cool awesome stuff you're interested in, maybe? like, look for a job as a technical writer or as a copyeditor or whatever, and learn your craft

― a perfect urkel (gbx), Sunday, October 11, 2009 3:31 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

fwiw been freelancing & resume bombing mad firms for like the last year with no real bites

and this is in austin, which is supposed to be ~insulated~ from the recession

trust me, i long ago got over the idea of being paid for doing what i want to do

i'd just like to not actively hate what i do and maybe have my work have some kind of relevance to my skills & talents

Good kids who went to good schools, the brassy, effervescent Barry twins, 24, always envisioned their young adulthood in New York City as a lush time of stimulating work, picturesque travel and a rich social orbit.

LOL rubes

sorry hoos :(

i got my job in 2006, at a time when this firm was in a period of expansion, so i lucked out for sure.

hoos weren't you going to move to china? then you can have a useless degree and a shitty job but be in china /:

As a credential I don't think my degree could be any more worthless than it is. I went to a state college (The Evergreen State College in WA), where one did not declare a major and I was able to design a course of independent study which centered around writing. No one in the business world would have a clue what any of this could mean. To them it probably looked like a generic community college BS.

Otoh, my college studies did exactly what I wanted them to do. I learned a ton. I studied like a demon because it interested me intensely. I read only what I wanted to read. I must have written a million words in 2.5 years. I never expected my degree to open any doors for me, and I have been very satisfied with my life and how my college experience enhanced it - more than almost anyone I know.

i feel you by the way, graduated with my useless english degree OH GOD TWO YEARS AGO done very little since. i am qualifying to teach english to foreigners soon so i can, basically, move to china and have a useless degree and a shitty job

xpost

English/Comp Sci--where it's at

also thomp, i have a friend who did basically the same thing but in Japan--he said he hated it because he was "that asshole who could speak English but not Japanese" and i said "go figure." do you speak Chinese?

that well-known language 'chinese' ~

i'm actually dithering between a bunch of places whose languages i don't speak. i intend to try and pick up at least a six-year-old's vocabulary when i get there, though, wherever there turns out to be.

Euler, the problem with translation work at the moment is that companies like to get a machine-translation done and then ask a translator to "proof-read" it, which basically means doing the translation all over again bcz guess what machine translations are shite, but they don't have to pay for a proper trans.

― eazy e street band (c sharp major), Sunday, October 11, 2009 2:37 PM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have a friend who does this a couple times a year for a lol hueg telecom manual for which she doesnt understand any of the technicalities - she hates it

hoos weren't you going to move to china? then you can have a useless degree and a shitty job but be in china /:

― thomp, Sunday, October 11, 2009 6:55 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, but 15 months feels like a long, long way away atm.

my mandarin is coming along slowly and i have a damn fine tutor, so that's a plus.

you guys are awesome and encouraging btw. it's comforting just to know that i'm not alone in the whole 'degree i'm not really using atm' thing, that it's not some personal deficiency i guess. thanks to everybody.

ftr i was just being general w/ "chinese"

hoos youre moving to CHINA tell me abt that

jho there is more info at Living/Working in China

but in brief i'm gonna go over and teach and apply for grad school at hku and generally do the 'pack up and go places cause i feel like it' young adult thing cause if i don't do it now then when

raad

I have heard over and over the statistic that 70% of people don't have a job in the field that was their undergrad major- anybody know if there's a way to check whether or not this is true- what it suggests to me is not that all college degrees are "useless" but that it is better to pick a flexible degree than a hardcore specialized one because you're not all that likely to hop straight into whatever that degree is even about . . .

unfortunately saving money necessitates that a lot of the big dreams of STEENDRIVING AMERICA--A Hoos Hits the Road are necessarily falling by the wayside :/

dude u r going to CHINA now

hay how good is hku? i saw an article the other day about asian universities making themselves known as a presence in the top 100 worldwide and started wondering whether i should follow that.

ooh, 24th apparently

what was your idea of what your degree was for when you were degree-ing, by the way? 'cuz (no offence intended here) i kind of doubt you went to class every day going "yup, only two and a bit more years and this effort i am making now in a think i am interested in is going to lead to a job"

I was told going into college (by parents, college counselors, etc.) that a college degree is what you need for a full time, salaried job with benefits, basically, and a liberal arts degree is fine for this because nobody cares about your major. So when I graduated, I didn't expect to get a fantastic job in anthropology (what would that even BE?), but I was surprised that it was so insanely difficult to even get an interview for a full time job, and that I ended up with multiple part-time hourly jobs instead (and not $400/wk like that bartending girl!). This was the case for a lot of people I knew - I don't know to what extent we can blame it on structural issues or luck (the job market kinda sucked last October/November, and still does) and to what extent it's our own fault, but I don't think "useless major" really factored into it at ALL.

This thread is depressing.

I didn't expect to get a fantastic job in anthropology (what would that even BE?)

Management consulting.

what was your idea of what your degree was for when you were degree-ing, by the way? 'cuz (no offence intended here) i kind of doubt you went to class every day going "yup, only two and a bit more years and this effort i am making now in a think i am interested in is going to lead to a job"

― thomp, Sunday, October 11, 2009 8:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

that was part of it for me, actually. "i'm gonna teach or i'm gonna get paid to write, even if its soul sucking writing its writing and itll keep those muscles limber."

going to china to teach (& assuming i stick around for a longer term maybe doing marketing work) is a way of getting to teach--which i've wanted to do since about 6th grade when i thought "man i could teach this class better than this clown"--without having to go through the expensive process of texas cert requirements,for which i've neither the money or free time atm due to shit pay job unrelated to degree.

plus obv marketing experience there gets me a decent foot in the door if i come back and want to do it here.

there was a whole weird psychology to my last couple years where i was trying to get it done within a 4 year deadline so my loans would be forgiven under this program, so i just pushed as hard as i could to get it done so i'd be ~finished~ and finally be able to get a job where i could actually use the skills & talents i have that are unrelated to how good i am at being a fry cook in a suit.

"fry cook in a suit" is my current euphemism for my "manager on duty" position in the hospitality industry btw

btw this whole souring thing kinda started this week when i realized that an entry level admin assistant job ("applicants must possess a high school diploma or GED") i applied for with the city has a starting pay higher than i'm making with the ~big raise~ i just got