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.
For sure. The price is completely egregious, and unfortunately likely outweighed the experience of college itself long ago, but it’s still important for people to understand that college isn’t just a degree at the end, it’s primarily the experiences found in the middle, which are valuable regardless of whether or not the degree is used.
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.
For sure. The price is completely egregious, and unfortunately likely outweighed the experience of college itself long ago, but it’s still important for people to understand that college isn’t just a degree at the end, it’s primarily the experiences found in the middle, which are valuable regardless of whether or not the degree is used.