How others think of college degrees...

[bjcheung77]

Hmm... What do you think? I would recommend going for it if you can afford it, otherwise, work on the trifecta of certs, degree, experience...

Link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstori...s-AA153ldq?

[posabsolute]

I don't know; so many factors at play.

For one, I don't think, as a 19-year-old, you are qualified to make all those decisions, including the amount of debt you can incur for life going to college. If your family is rich, I guess it's easier, but otherwise, you need to think long and far about what you want to do. The worst thing you can do is start university not knowing what you want to do and end up racking debt while not gaining any skills, I blame more the system than the people on that. Then there are other options:

* There are trade schools
* Community College, later up to University
* Do like us, although I don't think it fits most 19 years old.

In Canada, in some provinces, we have "technical degrees" which amount to associate degrees basically, but they are professions you can get a job in, I really like that, worse case you can later them up to university afterward.

[davewill]

Community college. Spend those first two years getting GedEds cheaply and trying your hand in courses for different majors. Work in jobs close to what you think you want to do. Hopefully find something you really want to do.

[nykorn]

I disagree about the community college. The reason why I say this is I got an Associate's in "mixed studies" (I took all kinds of classes - English, Health, Math, Science, Economics, Computing (Photoshop, Powerpoint, Excel), two Foreign Languages, etc), it was $500 per class at the time (4 classes being a full course load), quite expensive although obviously not as much as a typical university. None of those classes opened up a career path or got me to figure out a viable career. I ended up majoring in a language, that turned out to be a useless degree. Then I went to trade school twice afterwards in an effort to find a job. We had technical colleges too but they were even more expensive than community college, certainly nothing you would take if you didn't already know you liked the subject.

What they need to do is 1) colleges need to stop offering useless degrees, and stop advertising useless degrees as if they are worth something in the job market 2) colleges, trade schools and grade schools need to make kids take sample trade school classes for at least 2 months of each. Cooking, baking, electrical repair, motor repair, phone/computer repair, plumbing, phone sales, reception work, accounting, etc. This should ideally be done as a teaser in jr. high and then more seriously in high school. Community colleges should offer a "figure yourself out" course package that does this kind of thing as well. And you should actually get companies to get involved in this so even if the kids don't get a proper internship, they are doing very light tasks for companies and the companies help pay for the education project to make it something any student can afford (similar to the old prison system where prisoners actually made products that got sold). However I know that day will never come.

[LevelUP]

I'm pretty gung ho about college, as I believe 95% of people should get college degrees.

There are three main directions you can go for college:

1. STEM
   
2. Non-STEM Liberal Arts
   
3. Business
   

Non-STEM Liberal Arts is a fine choice, as long as you understand its limitations. People who are creative and/or have good communication skills can do well with a Non-STEM degree.

The other most common complaint I hear is, 'Why don't colleges teach me more practical skills that I can use on the job?' The reason is that colleges don't know what career you are going to pursue, and practical skills tend to change quickly over time compared to theory.

College is the beginning of your learning journey, not the end. It's meant to help build you a good foundation to grow on. Plan on spending several months learning on your own after college to acquire the skills to perform well in the career you are seeking.

[natshar]

I actually think there are FOUR categories of degrees:

1. STEM
2. Liberal Arts Non-Stem
3. Business
4. Vocational/Technical(for Bachelors think social work, nursing, education, welding, respatory care, graphic design and a lot of AAS degrees)

You are missing the the VoTech catergory. This is more degrees that job specific and things like nursing, social work where you can't do the job without that degree.