IMO Liberal Arts degrees are useless in and of themselves for earning money. They are useful as an undergrad for a advanced degree. I knew a lawyer that took Art History as it was the easiest thing he could take so he could apply to law school. Worked for him. He also ate himself into morbid obesity to avoid Vietnam, the was less successful, he carried excess weight for the rest of his life.
I think community college associate degrees are a perfect way to start. I would be fine for publicly funded CC programs as long as the students kept their grades up. Here in Utah, you can get an associates while in high school for free. But you have to be determined to do so. I really disliked those monster sessions. I had one general ed government class with at least 1000 or more students in it. The instructor had roving aids with microphones so students could ask questions. I got pell grants, student loans and worked as much as I could. It didn’t seem all the difficult to do. So I have always had a bit of a dismissive attitude to people who say they can’t afford college. I was married with 2 kids when I started University and had 4 kids when we left. My wife did not work. No other revenue to help. Ate a lot of ramen but it was totally worth it. Not sure of the economics today. I am sure rent is a much large source of pain then when I was doing it. From: Ken Hohhof Sent: Saturday, July 6, 2024 12:03 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT Happy Holidays I think like medical care, a good question is why college has become so expensive. How much goes to actual costs of education vs. sports, fancy food and housing, etc. I would also argue that the first two years where big lecture hall classes predominate should cost less, that would also be fair because colleges try to flunk out a percentage of students in the first year or two. Why pay full freight if you’re just attending a lecture with 200 other students and then getting tossed out without a degree. Another strategy some people recommend is first 2 years at a community or junior college and then transfer. Also when I went to college, I worked 20 hours a week making pizzas, and was in a cooperative education program where it took 5 years to graduate but you had semesters as basically a paid intern, colleges today could try harder to make it possible for students to pay their own way rather than take out loans. As far as a test determining who should go to college and who should become an HVAC tech, you have more confidence in standardized tests than I do. Success in college and a career depends at least as much on effort as aptitude. A hard working person of average intelligence will outperform a brainy slacker. But what do I know, apparently “I like beer” makes you qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. And as far as people with liberal arts degrees having little chance of being a high earner, what is in the category “liberal arts”? Does that include the people getting political science degrees or who are pre-law or pre-med who go on to be politicians, CEOs, lawyers and doctors? BTW, Steve Jobs was a liberal arts major (actually a dropout). https://www.reed.edu/steve-jobs.html Warren Buffett reluctantly got business degrees but doesn’t think highly of a college education. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of ch...@go-mtc.com Sent: Saturday, July 6, 2024 12:29 PM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT Happy Holidays Maybe student loan availability should be based on ROI calculations. If you want to borrow to get a liberal arts degree with little chance of being a high earner, you are very limited on the amount and the interest rate is high. Ditto pell grants etc. Useless degrees (speaking only from the greed is good strictly - capitalist perspective ) could be had but not at taxpayer expense. Kinda like getting a line of credit for your business. You gotta prove a path for repayment or you ain’t gonna git it. From: Ken Hohhof Sent: Saturday, July 6, 2024 11:16 AM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT Happy Holidays Seems a tad dystopian. Wasn’t there a TV show or movie where at a certain age people were assigned a role in life, whether that’s what they want or not? Or I guess they could use the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter. From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of ch...@go-mtc.com Sent: Saturday, July 6, 2024 11:35 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT Happy Holidays I have two British grandsons. They are tested at 15 to determine whether they take a vocational track or an academic track for college. Seems to work out pretty well for them. Best Regards, Chuck McCown McCown Technology Corporation 8401 N Commerce Dr Lake Point, Utah 84074 801-250-9503 Office 435-830-4306 Cell www.mccowntech.com www.microtrench.pro www.terabitnetworks.com From: Chuck McCown Sent: Saturday, July 6, 2024 9:53 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT Happy Holidays Only for BS degrees. Sent from my iPhone On Jul 5, 2024, at 5:24 PM, Steve Jones <thatoneguyst...@gmail.com> wrote: I think im one of the only conservatives that is pro free higher education. More as an investment than as an expense remove all liberal arts, STEM, not STEAM only (you want an art history degree, you can pay for it), 1:1 community service requirement per classroom instruction hour, manual labor or degree related community service only, 90% mandatory score, 95% mandatory attendance, 100 percent drug and alcohol abstinence during the school year, tested biweekly. Zero criminal tolerance. You pay on the loan until youve completed the mandatory community service and repay all deferments from that time period. Then each year you maintain full time employment, 10 percent is waived for 10 years. but that would actually require something, so of course it would be too unfair. On Thu, Jul 4, 2024 at 12:52 PM Forrest Christian (List Account) <li...@packetflux.com> wrote: I feel that it's time for college to go through a major revision. First, I lean quite strongly toward the Mike Rowe worldview in that we need to quit telling our kids that they need a college education to make it in this world. Right now if you're in one of the blue collar trades you're far better off than a lot of the people who have ms or bs degrees. There will always be a demand for plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and so on. On the college side, we need to adjust what we teach to provide for a condensed program where you cut out most (but not all) of the non-relevant programs. Yes, it's hard to learn certain trades without college, but a degree in computer science shouldn't need a lot of the liberal arts classes. Finally, we need to reform the student loan program so that we quit graduating students with degrees in underwater basketweaving with 6 figure loan balances. Right now, lenders are able to loan to anyone without risk and as such there is no incentive for lenders or schools to ensure that the students will be able to repay their loans from a typical job in the student's chosen degree program. This has led to ballooning tuition and overall school costs since there is no pressure to keep costs low. On Thu, Jul 4, 2024, 10:36 AM <ch...@go-mtc.com> wrote: With the risk of starting something, I thought I would inject some observations: I do watch Charley Kirk on YouTube for a quick fix of watching him dissolve some of the woke ideology being spouted by young college kids. For me it is like junk food for my worldview. Can only take so much of it, like eating too many sweets. And he can get a bit too alt-right for me at times. Yesterday he was preaching something that I think he was partially, perhaps mostly wrong about. He is a college dropout and preaches that college is a scam and you would be better off just learning to code and find an internship that does not require a degree. I think he is only partially right. By and large, most BA programs are probably not worth the money unless they go onto grad school. A BA in art history doesn’t have much value when searching Indeed for a job. It can however get you into law school. And we all know that if you start and successfully run a WISP you absolutely must be an autodidact. An autodidact with ambition. Cannot pick up either of those at a college. And do not need college to be a superior ISP or WISP. It does however take a special type of person. But there are a couple of areas where I know, from personal experience, that you really benefit from formal education: 1) Computer Science – the part where you learn hardware theory, operating system design, compiler design, advanced data structures, OO methods etc. Really hard to pick up this stuff by watching youtube videos. And really hard to get any good at it unless you are forced to do homework and labs. Understanding what happens with the hardware, the stack and OS during a hardware interrupt is important and not so easy to learn on your own. Try to write some DSP functions from scratch on your own... or perhaps some machine code to hand optimize a MCU routine. Much easier if you had a class on assembly. 2) RF and antennas. Reflection coefficients and the mastery of Smith charts. EM simulation software and optimization. S11 and PCB stripline and microstrip layout. Etc etc. Again, a good autodidact can teach themselves anything. But I tried for years to master Smith charts and it was not until college that I finally got to where I could use them. Now-a-days the software does it all for you but you still need to know. 3) To understand some of this stuff, like DSP etc, you also need some upper level math, calculus and trig. Hard to do on your own. I also imagine that if you want to get into medical school, classes on chemistry, biology etc are essential. All PE programs will always need degreed engineers. So yeah Charley, if you get a liberal arts degree, I would tend to agree with you that your fathers money was probably wasted. But many of the BS degrees are not a scam or waste. -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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