I think a college education is a good thing PROVIDED you study something that you find very satisfying, do not have high income expectations based on a bachelor's degree, and do not incur great debt to obtain the degree.

For best results, I recommend attending an affordable college which is largely residential--many public colleges are. You don't need to live on campus, but an important part of the college experience is interacting with other students (meaningfully of course). You can live near campus, and still benefit. If you attend a commuter campus, never associate with your classmates apart from class, then you miss an important piece. On line degrees have even less interaction.

You might have to begin at a community college to keep costs down while you obtain the basic education courses. There is nothing wrong with this, provided you study seriously. Be sure the courses you take are transferable to the 4 year college you want to attend.

Whether you experience career success, and earn a good income, is largely depending on your personal drive, charm, job performance, and stuff like that -- something college isn't going to give you.

2017-18 Tuition and Fees at Public Four-Year Institutions by State and Five-Year Percentage Change in In-State Tuition and Fees provides current instate and outstate tuition and fees. Bear in mind, cost of food, clothing, shelter, books, transportation, etc. are all on top of tuition and fees.

The median cost of public college tuition and fees is about $10,000 a year for resident IN-STATE tuition.

The median cost of public college tuition and fees is about $10,000 a year for resident IN-STATE tuition. — Bitter Crank

Just checking, the tuition cost for McGill University is 3.135 $. This might be per session, as we usually break it down per semester rather than year up here in the North.

As McGill is very well seen, it might be an option if you want to cut on some costs.

I was wondering what other members think about college, if it's worth it, the reasons why one should go to college, and some such matters? — Posty McPostface

You're asking me, a high school dropout? Probably not. I don't have any experience with college. As such, there also is a distinct lack of opinions on the matter.

I always wanted to go to college, and even was at college for a brief while; but, then dropped out. Now, I want to go back and possibly finish a degree in psychology or complete my original major, economics.
I was wondering what other members think about college, if it's worth it, the reasons why one should go to college, and some such matters? — Posty McPostface

Me too. I graduated in '92 at the age of 44. Here's what I learned. At commencement, we who had graduated were "welcome(d) into the community of educated persons." A striking statement, mainly because it was true. Not so much as what it said, but what it implied: that prior to the college experience, we were uneducated - which I here and now am telling you is true. Educated not to be confused with having knowledge - lots of uneducated people know lots of things, but often enough just beneath the surface it's clear they're not educated.

Marriage is similar: many people who have never been married often claim they know all about being married from their current/previous relationships. (This is just the fallacy of ignorance: because I don't know (and have no clue), therefore I know.) Married people wake up the morning after their wedding understanding that marriage is different.

You're right in that a college education was regarded as a ticket. The problem is that, then, the education was a guarantee of being really educated. That demonstrated quality/achievement was the ticket. Now, college has become in many cases a trade/specialty school. Many graduates have knowledge, but are not truly educated. In short, we've gone from educated people who could be trusted, on the basis of their education, to handle whatever came their way, to people with a trade, who can be trusted, on the basis of their training, to do a job, but not trusted to handle anything that comes their way (although they might think they can!).

It's commendable you want to go back. It speaks to wanting to be an educated person - a good thing to want to be. It's not easy. But as what is called an adult learner, you have considerable advantages. (Just remember at times to shut-up and learn - age alone doesn't make you either wise or the professor!) And intensely enjoyable. A piece of advice: think through ahead of time what you want to invest in the lives of the children who are your classmates, or what you want to become involved in; their world is not yours.

Psych. or Econ.: I gotta go with the Econ. Maybe a minor in Philosophy?

My friend graduated from one of the top three schools in the US for the same major I originally intended to go after, yet is struggling to find a job despite the status of his school and high GPA. — Posty McPostface

Most hiring managers place work experience over education and GPA. Certainly, some companies mainly hire recent graduates from Ivy League schools, but the most important thing on a resume isn't your GPA or what school you graduated from; it's what relevant experience do you have so that we don't have to provide you with additional training.

GPA seems to be more relevant for larger companies who can afford employee training; they use GPA as a simple way of sorting through applicants, just as they do with drug tests. Seems to me that often (but not always), having a high GPA is correlated to following the rules and doing what people tell you to do - large corporations prefer these kinds of people because they don't ask very many questions.

"Undergraduate tuition and fees: In-state tuition: 2,293.5 CAD (2015)" so said a blurb about McGill. But that is in-state tuition, which Posty wouldn't be eligible for. My guess is that Quebec (and maybe other provinces) are providing a substantial subsidy to their universities. US states used to do that; not these days--it's about 25% of the cost and shrinking.

In short, we've gone from educated people who could be trusted, on the basis of their education, to handle whatever came their way, to people with a trade, who can be trusted, on the basis of their training, to do a job, but not trusted to handle anything that comes their way — tim wood

This is a distinction one doesn't see very often -- the trust to do whatever comes their way, vs. not being trusted to handle whatever...

Lots of people actually can do a lot of things, given motivation, some direction, and freedom to figure out how. The two best jobs I had operated with the assumption that I would figure out what needed to be done. The two worst jobs operating on the assumption that I wasn't to be trusted sharpening the pencils, let alone actually making a decision.

"Undergraduate tuition and fees: In-state tuition: 2,293.5 CAD (2015)" — Bitter Crank

And unless that was for a Dental program, that was more than likely per year, rather than per session. Almost every programs tops at around 1400 per session, without afferent fees.

But the 3.135 I quoted earlier was for International tuition. So, even if that is per session, that still means a 6K/per year tuition at a University which is but a step down from Ivy League.

And pot is going to be fully legal in less than 3 months! What more could you want? Okay, perhaps not attending your expensive McGill classes while domed... but still... !

You have to make college work for you, so to speak. Does that sound correct to you? — Posty McPostface

That's half of it. College is what you make of it, but that sentiment could be applied to all paths in life. Unless you are able to live reasonably by yourself right out of high school, then college is still the best option.

My personal take is, that if you are a smart, studious and cultured fella, and you don't want to become something like a doctor/lawyer/professor, then college is pretty much useless.

Hmm, shall I post stats about billionaires? :joke:

From here:

There are also more college dropouts than PhDs on the Forbes 400 billionaire list – 63 to 21.

But yes, if you are an average person who lacks discipline, lacks direction, doesn't self-motivate, etc. then you're probably SAFER with a college degree (though not necessarily better off). As for unemployment rate... usually PhD graduates are too dumb to be unemployed. It takes a certain degree of intelligence to step out of the usual, traditional way of doing things, and by the time you complete your PhD, you are usually fully indoctrinated by society. You start thinking of yourself as superior to others, now you cannot afford to be unemployed, what will people say?! You, the PhD graduate unemployed? What a shame!

By the way, are those median wages for US gross or net?

There is no disadvantage in receiving an education, and the old adage you ought to stay in school is accurate, despite the disagreement by those typically young people who simply have not given themselves adequate time to secure meaningful employment.

There is no disadvantage in receiving an education — Hanover

There are disadvantages. The main ones are:

• Debt
• Social Pressure
• Wasted energy while young (education can be very long if you do PhD, etc.)

despite the disagreement by those typically young people who simply have not given themselves adequate time to secure meaningful employment. — Hanover

Why do you reckon being young is a disadvantage when it comes to judging? Perhaps the young have their minds freer than the old, who are already conditioned by society, and hence not free.

Hmm, shall I post stats about billionaires? — Agustino

The vast majority of wealthy people have college degrees. www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/969659/despite-the-myth-of-the-billionaire-college-dropout-most-wealthy-americans-have-a-degree/amp/

Why do you reckon being young is a disadvantage when it comes to judging? Perhaps the young have their minds freer than the old, who are already conditioned by society, and hence not free. — Agustino

It's not poor judgment. It's just the fact it's hard to land that first real job and during that difficult period one questions having gone to college. The point is that that education will eventually pay off and your drop out will get further left in the dust.

As noted, this isn't a judgment call. It requires only that you read the statistics. It's a no brainer really.

The vast majority of wealthy people have college degrees. www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/969659/despite-the-myth-of-the-billionaire-college-dropout-most-wealthy-americans-have-a-degree/amp/ — Hanover

Evidently. 30% of billionaires don't have a college degree.

However, that 30% is very high, and shows that not having a degree is not a shortcoming to even making a fortune, much less to merely making a living. Think about it - if you were right, and having a PhD, etc. increased your earnings, then why are there fewer PhD billionaires and 4x more dropouts :rofl: ? It is almost a requirement to be a billionaire that you must be a dropout. Why such high preponderance of dropouts amongst the billionaires?

It's not poor judgment. It's just the fact it's hard to land that first real job and during that difficult period one questions having gone to college. The point is that that education will eventually pay off and your drop out will get further left in the dust. — Hanover

That is because college teaches you nothing useful for society. I've gone to college, and it's not about landing a job at all. I don't care about landing a job, I care about freedom, and I gained that through entrepreneurship and learning to solve actual problems and do things that help others. You don't need a college degree to do that.

I can tell you 100% that college was useless for me. Nobody ever asks me for a CV - nobody. Not even one person. Nobody knows what I studied in college, if I even went to college, etc. And nobody cares. They just care that I fix their problems.

If you want to advertise your law practice on the internet, or re-do your website, will you care what degree Agustino holds? Or will you simply care whether or not Agustino can get the job done well for you? Clearly the latter, the former would be absolutely ridiculous :lol: - who does that? Maybe if you were a middle-level manager in a multinational corporation, and you had to justify yourself to your superiors for hiring Agustino - then you may care whether I have a degree, because if I screw up, you need to cover your tracks and say that you did your best (and of course, what better way to cover your tracks than hide behind the cultural prejudice that degree = more capable).

But anyway, I don't think this college college college is good advice for young people.

It's YOUR life, you have to decide how you want to live it. It's simply a fact that if only money is your concern, then you don't need a college degree - don't waste your time. Waste your time on starting a business and learning useful skills (you can do that through the internet pretty much for free today). If I were you Posty, I wouldn't waste a second studying economics at University - you can learn that on your own, better than the so-called experts. Start trading stocks, investing, etc. that's how you'll learn practical stuff that actually matters. If you want to go to university, I recommend at least studying something where you actually need a university degree to practice.

If, however, your dream is to be a professor, lawyer, doctor, etc. then obviously you have to go to college... not because you'll learn anything useful there, but because you must have that piece of paper to be allowed to practice (what a crooked world - where the so-called experts want to monopolise the field only to themselves and others like them. This is one good thing I learned from a Professor at university - don't trust the experts, they want to pretend to know, in order to charge you - you be the expert. It's been golden advice).

What I tell prospective students:

Prior to college and university, think hard whether you want to go or not. If not, try to learn some employable skill - obtain an apprenticeship or other vocational study. Research various disciplines. Go with any strong feeling of passion for a subject, irrelevant of what it is. Having a trained skill of any sort is generally better than not having one in terms of later employment prospects.

In absence of strong attachment to a single discipline but still desiring to go to college or university to study something, compare academic subjects to vocational ones, choose what best suits you and your prior qualifications. In absence of strong preference for a single subject but you still have a strong preference for a few subjects, find out as much as you can about them - including and especially transferrable skills. Email departments and ask for advice on studying in each of them and look for free introductory texts and videos on the internet.

If at this point the only thing impeding your pursuit of a strong passion is prior qualifications, do what you can to obtain sufficient qualifications to do what you like. Also if it's a university or college email them even if you're refused initial applications asking to apply for 'clearance' places.

An important part at this stage is to have a rough 'ideal outcome' for you given your current beliefs and preferences. Also attempt to think of things which would substantially impede your goal - and in this cases work out provisional 'hedged bets' - plans for when the ideal outcome is impeded. You're still quite young, and you have a lot of room to make mistakes.

Underlying ethical principles, since this is a philosophy forum:

Don't accept reasonable risks you couldn't bear the anxiety of living under. Also, don't avoid an opportunity if it has an incredibly small chance of a painful loss - everything has at least an incredibly small chance of a painful loss, that's something you have to get used to. The idea of a 'happy life' and 'perfect job' are unrealistic, what matters is whether you are content enough and you are working towards achieving any long term goals.

Note - generally you don't have to devote your entire life to something to be good enough at it, just a high enough proportion of the time to it to satisfy your passion and drives. Unless your aspirations and passions are to be the best at something, keep something of yourself in reserve to develop other avenues - love, friends, hobbies - of life.

Also note - not being career driven is fine. If your goals are more family oriented or, more generally, are organised around something which is not easily monetised - find something you can do that supports your pursuit of those goals and you can feel ok doing.

There is a fundamental conflict of interests.

Students go to colleges because they are told that that will help them get a job. The underlying notion, however, is that students think that having a college degree and getting a job leads to safety, which humans naturally seek. In reality, is it just the illusion of safety. I think everyone knows that jobs today are incredibly unsafe, especially in Western world. If you add mortgages, and consumerism culture, it is not too difficult to assuredly say that young people are simply being fooled by just about anyone, including themselves. (So are all other people, of course. It's just that everyone feels entitled to give advice to young people for one reason or another.)

On the other hand, colleges don't care about whether the students will be 'safe' in the future. As long as there are reasonable numbers in statistics of employment of their students, they are fine. Job done. Therefore, colleges don't have any interest in whatever the students will do in the future. At the same time, everyone is told to go to college, which naturally diminishes the whole value of a college as an educational institution. The problem lies in the connection between work and education. If I fantasise for a moment, wouldn't it be better to have an institution to help young people start working separately from colleges? And colleges would then be for people who really want to be educated on the topic and maybe become scientists or professors. This example is a pure fantasy, not without a flaw, but I hope it illustrates that college education and work are violently (and to an extend desperately) forced to be connected together.

Secondly, world is globalised and the competition is too big.

In short, vast majority of people cannot expect to have a secure job. Even if I'm a manager at company X, there is incredible amount of people who could easily replace me. Which means that a) I won't get paid a lot. There is no reason for the company to pay me a lot because if I do something wrong, they can get someone else for the job quite easily. And b) I will be treated accordingly with no-one-cares attitude.

Additionally, it seems foolish to compete in a world where a lot of the competition is down to luck due to the numbers of applicants. On top of that, having to compete so hardly for entry level positions isn't the best state of affairs either.

So, if anyone is looking to get 'more' as it were, they have to become producers. If you produce a lot and affect lives of many people, naturally you will gain a lot. This is just the theory of course. The main idea is the underlying principle of the fact that if I affect lives of only few people, I will be paid accordingly. Everything is large scale now.

I agree with a lot of this. The other disadvantage of working a job is that if you lose your job, you literarily have no way to earn your money - you need to go hunting for another job. But someone who has learned to produce or create anything valuable by themselves can always make money seemingly out of nothing. So in the long-run, the one who has a job, and has been trained, over many years, to do the same things, and to work within an already created mechanism, will not be able to fend for himself if he loses that job. In this sense, he is significantly less safe than even a mediocre producer.

I don't think it was ever the case that everyone could afford a college education, although these days the costs have risen considerably, due to the student loan program creating an increased demand, so colleges could in turn raise their tuition rates.

As far as college being worth it, I think it is for a number of reasons: 1. An education helps improve a person as it increases one's ability to intellectually process what is going on around one. 2. There are greater job opportunities. Now, as far as majoring in economics and psychology is concerned, basically, you can make good money with those degrees, but you have to typically go beyond a four-year degree to do so. Most economics positions require a masters or Ph.D., and I think the same is true with respect to any decent psychology job. Although, I even know some psych techs working at the state hospital who make good money with a two-year degree. In any event, for some subjects, one has to be prepared to go beyond a four-year-degree.

My take on it?

Would you take out $40,000 in loans to take a vacation for "personal enrichment?" No? Then why are you getting a fucking humanities degree?

An education helps improve a person as it increases one's ability to intellectually process what is going on around one — LD Saunders

Would you take out $40,000 in loans to take a vacation for "personal enrichment?" — Pneumenon

Another thing many people don't realise is that you can learn those subjects by yourself. Really, even in a technical subject like civil engineering (what I studied), you end up learning most of it by yourself. Many times what is in the lectures doesn't even come up on the exam - you have to study, research and read by yourself. So really, the university doesn't do anything except tell you what you need to study and provide a framework of easy access to books. You're still learning yourself.

Having been a teaching assistant for some college classes, my take is this:

For 80% of the students, college is a waste of their parents' money. They sit there like zombies, do minimal work to just barely pass the courses, and learn as little as they possibly can. Students graduate hardly able to write a full sentence. It's not the professors' faults--they are almost all academics who care about what they teach and about the students. The administration, however, wants to maximize the number of students attending, so they admit worse and worse candidates into any given program. It doesn't take many rotten apples to spoil a whole classroom.

For 20% of students, college is an amazing experience that broadens their horizons and helps them mature into successful, intellectual adults. They use their time wisely to establish business connections and build resumes. They learn as much as they can. They participate in lively discussions in class. They are the ones that later have good careers, AND can participate in a meaningful conversation. (Not that college is the only path, but for these people it works.)

Basically, you'll get out of college what you put in.

I was wondering what other members think about college, if it's worth it, the reasons why one should go to college, and some such matters? — Posty McPostface

I think it was worth it. It costs a lot of money, but that can be managed. I wouldn't know the things I know without having had that time to study -- I'm still an autodidact but I learned more with access to knowledgeable people and adequate time to put into studying and learning. I think more clearly and rationally -- and am able to communicate those thoughts -- better after having learned in college than I could before.

It so happens to look good on a resume, some of the time. But good connections and experience look even better than an education on a resume. What I got out of college was knowledge, and I think that a worthwhile pursuit unto itself.

Economically speaking? I'm not so sure. But that was a secondary reason for going, from my perspective. I hoped it would help out, but I primarily chose to study things which I found difficult to study on my own, and felt rewarded for it after putting the work in; not because I have a piece of paper that says so, but just because I learned while there.

I think the price tag is too large. From an economic perspective I sort of wonder if it was worth it. But that's more politics, from my perspective, than whether or not I should have gone. I come from a family that values education unto itself, and it's one of the values taught that happened to stick with me.