Is a College Degree/Advanced Education Expense Worth the Price?

[Lanolin]

the other thing is, is this a calling or just a way to be higher paid

OP needs to ask her friend this. Is this actually her vocation. Because the way she goes about this will affect her motivation. Or his.

Bachelors were orignally only men who studied and they did not think about marrying because being a bachelor meant you stayed single. it was for the purposes of scholarship NOT as a means to an end. Teachers were origninally not allowed to marry because they were neant to be dedicated to their profession.

if the OP is just doing it for the wrong reasons then they may not even complete the degree. Its hard to study and have a family at the same time. I know several who dropped out cos life got in the way and never finished their degree,,,that is always going to hang over them. You have to be really sure not just the cost of it but the time.

when I did mine I was 17 years old and didnt really know what I wanted to study. I wanted to do everything I never learned in school lol. Also I wanted to get away from home! I leaned toward social science, did my first year on campus but at the end of that year discovered I really wanted to read literature and another university had a better English department so swtiched to doing an arts degree there. Say what you want about the arts and humanties faculty but this was really my jam. I got to read great books all day and mearn history through literature.

The MLIS was a differnt beast altogether, it wasnt just cataloguing it was things like information retrieval and management and computers, and some of it was like what this is so boring but it was like a baptism of fire. You never know when it will be used in your life but I have to say it is really worth it in the long term.

I have recalalcrant friends who balk at getting a teachers registration simply cos of the cost. but once they did it, they found they loved it becase teaching was what they were meant to do! rather than some mindless job that doesnt require any qualifcation or expertise. and in the end, the minsitry was going to PAY for it all anyway! Employers dont always have the time to train up their workers in house.

I know many ppl study law and then dont practise...
as for MBA often its the employer will pay for that. If they send you to Havard then its not likely you turn it down. another who did social work now has a better job that pays more since she compketed her degree. . You dont want to be just an assistant all the time, Sometimes you need to be the one who REALLY knows what they are doing. Its a privelige.

 

[Lanolin]

just want to say the getting away from home thing

God intervened in that one. He led me to his real home. And its not far from where I live
I was considering giving up libraianship altogether when I couldnt find a decent job, everyone had way more experience than I did and there was alot of nepotism and politics in public libraries at the time. there didnt seem any way to move UP. I had hit that glass ceiling and it was frustrating. I did other jobs. I did mindless factory work. I worked in gardens because i just needed to be outside. I tried my own business (entrepeneuralism I discovered, requires capital) but after doing a lot of volunteer work it seems God had other plans for me ...the one job that came up for a library at a catholic school up the road for BOYs (I even applied to do one in the mens prison) I was turned down for but that librarian who got that catholic school job had keft a vacancy at a local primary school and said would I be interested?

so thats how I got that job I have now
I was right in the middle of doing a business certificate when I got offered that role. lol really it is like my dream job

If I didnt who knows what I would be doing with my life. Hustling!

 

[Lynx]

Advertising reported.

 

[tourist]

I went to a community college in the mid 70's. Partly paid for with a Pell grant and the rest I paid as needed per semester with no debt accumulated.

I would say that today, with the high cost of education, it is probably not worth it. For one thing, while you are attending classes you are not a work earning money, whatever the job may be. Yes, as you mentioned, you are not guaranteed a job if and when you do graduate.

Regardless, you are still stuck with a mountain of debt you may never pay off. Financially, in a lot of cases, you may never catch up to what you could have had if you just worked a typical job.

Best option for a young person is to join the military and let the government offset some or most of the expense of college courses.

 

[Magenta]

I went to a community college in the mid 70's. Partly paid for with a Pell grant...

At first I thought you said, party paid for

 

[posthuman]

even though i was employed far below my aptitude ((as measured by the amount of post-secondary education i had)) during the 2008 recession i know for fact that i was kept on the payroll while the majority of our staff was laid off because of my education. my college background was a firm indicator that i was able to take on the roles of other people when the staff shrank, where others - even people with a great deal more experience and seniority - weren't.

you might say that made it 'worth it' or you might not. but i do know that if i had not gone through all those years of college, i would have been laid off too.

obviously that isn't the case in every vocation or every company, but where i happened to be at the time, that was the case. people with a lot more expertise were let go because they were 'specialized' but they knew from my background that i had the ability to learn and pick up new things in short order, where the 'specialized' people who had spent a decade or more honing a single skill would take years to pick up anything else.

not every employer will recognize that, but mine at the time happened to.

 

[posthuman]

I went to a community college in the mid 70's. Partly paid for with a Pell grant and the rest I paid as needed per semester with no debt accumulated.

I would say that today, with the high cost of education, it is probably not worth it. For one thing, while you are attending classes you are not a work earning money, whatever the job may be. Yes, as you mentioned, you are not guaranteed a job if and when you do graduate.

Regardless, you are still stuck with a mountain of debt you may never pay off. Financially, in a lot of cases, you may never catch up to what you could have had if you just worked a typical job.

Best option for a young person is to join the military and let the government offset some or most of the expense of college courses.

i agree about the military. it's a good option
in my case i was blessed to be both needy - so that things like Pell grants covered a lot - and also very good at making good grades on tests, so that academic scholarships covered the rest. i had comparatively very little debt, and for most of my undergrad actually got more than tuition, enough to live on, from scholarships.

if someone is very good at "school" then it's a different situation than someone in the middle of the pack or lower; college cost is effectively prorated by how much scholarship money you can get.

 

[tourist]

At first I thought you said, party paid for

I had to double check my post to see if there was a typo.

 

[Magenta]

i agree about the military. it's a good option
in my case i was blessed to be both needy - so that things like Pell grants covered a lot - and also very good at making good grades on tests, so that academic scholarships covered the rest. i had comparatively very little debt, and for most of my undergrad actually got more than tuition, enough to live on, from scholarships.

if someone is very good at "school" then it's a different situation than someone in the middle of the pack or lower; college cost is effectively prorated by how much scholarship money you can get.

My student loan was 8k and I also got a grant for $1,200.00 //

At first they granted me $800.00, then they added half as much again.

When I say the loan amount, it sounds like a lot, and I wonder if I am remembering it correctly, though
I know now-a-days people's loans are in the tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands.

That's insane! The grant I did not have to repay, and I did repay the loan, eventually.

 

[Magenta]

I had to double check my post to see if there was a typo.

Perhaps it was the grape juice

 

[Magenta]

I had to double check my post to see if there was a typo.

I drank a lot of Ouzo in collegeAnd red wine out of a wicker casing around the bottle. Chianti

Those were what my best friend liked to drink...

 

[Magenta]

My student loan was 8k and I also got a grant for $1,200.00 //

At first they granted me $800.00, then they added half as much again.

When I say the loan amount, it sounds like a lot, and I wonder if I am remembering it correctly, though
I know now-a-days people's loans are in the tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands.

That's insane! The grant I did not have to repay, and I did repay the loan, eventually.

I don't think 8k is right. My rent was under $100.00 a month. My brain fails me

 

[Lanolin]

I was reading this memoir about this poor girl whos family didnt have enough $$ to pay for college

apparently...if you can swing it, enter all the beauty pageants you can while you are young, win the prize money and use that to pay for college!

 

[stilllearning]

um
I dont think college degrees affect who you marry, you dont do it primarily as a way to meet someone, that is not the point of an education

Not what I was trying to get across. Was pushing more for the unintended consequences of a decision. In fact since I have been here have found some questions very interesting and they do truly go hand in hand with each other. Those questions being are men attracted to independent women, what is feminism, and why do men and women hate each other. While this question was not specified as one of the others. If I may quote myself showing I did recognize that, however, did want to take it that direction for the reasons stated in my following quote of myself......................I think the points I would have brought up have been hit on. So to just point out another variable and the cost in terms of the human perspective and how it is directly effecting women folk............. So that was my intention and goes along with previous comments I have made in the threads of the questions that were asked.

In fact my comments in all these are consistent with my world view that ultimately concludes that it all boils down to love and the necessities it takes to have love. I have stated that the Garden of Eden was a test of love which we failed. Not to rehash what I have said and concluded. Mainly what is pivotal to my conclusions and analysis as it would pertain to this recent comment by me is that love demands freedom to be love.

We known this as mankind and have even stated such in sayings like if you love something set it free if it comes back to you then it was yours if it don't then it was never yours. To have love you have to have freedom to make a choice to decide between one or the other. Such is the garden to have love you have to have freedom of a choice. The tree was the choice and absent freedom of choice you can't have love.

In the feminism thread I said the problem with that world view is that it wants the power of a man and the privilege of a woman absent the responsibility of either. I have also stated the big lie and cruel lie in that world view is selling the idea you can have it all. Simple observation shows that is a lie because there are only 24 hours in a day and you have to make choices to what you truly will pursue and determine in life what it you truly seek to accomplish.

Every choice comes with a cost and every decision shows what we love and person we are at our heart. We know this is true by Christs very words that whatever is in mans heart will come out. I have also put forth that Christ said before we do anything we should weigh the cost because everything has a cost and a responsibility. So ultimately in keeping with my world view, ultimately the question comes back what is it a person truly loves what is it you want your life to pursue and what cost are you willing to pay to achieve it and will we accept the responsibility for the God given gift of freedom of choice to direct your own life. Or when we find we don't have the results we sought will we look at our own hearts or blame it on the latest scapegoat the world says is acceptable to blame it on.

Do we truly weigh our decisions or just make them and expect someone else to bail us out. If so then have we truly learnt anything. So ultimately this post and question was used by me to keep with what I said in others. Ultimately there are only so many hours in the day and what do we truly want and if we truly want and place value on it. Then as Christ said if a man finds a pearl in a field he sells off all he has so he can buy that field. So the choice and time and energy we spend pursuing something is ultimately our decision and we should weigh every variable so we don't end up eating the bitter taste of regret and found we wasted something we will never get back which is time. A fool never learns from his mistakes a smart man learns from his mistakes a wise man learns from others mistakes.

So which of these do we wanna be and what decision do we want to make for ourselves and what is the cost and what lesson will we learn from our decisions. Any joy we feel or frustration we will feel will ultimately be on us and the decision we made and how we weighed the cost.

Here is a example of what I have said. Candace Bushnell who wrote Sex in the City and here are her words in the aftermath.


Her best-selling book and the racy TV series it inspired taught a generation of women that they could ‘have it all’.

But Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell, 60, has admitted that she regrets choosing a career over having children as she is now ‘truly alone’.

The TV series starred Sarah Jessica Parker as a writer in New York who famously chooses her independence over motherhood.

Miss Bushnell, pictured, divorced her husband – ballet dancer Charles Askegard – in 2012 and said it made her realise the importance of starting a family.

The former sex columnist, who is worth around £18million, told the Sunday Times: ‘When I was in my thirties and forties, I didn’t think about it.

‘Then when I got divorced and I was in my fifties, I started to see the impact of not having children and of truly being alone. I do see that people with children have an anchor in a way that people who have no kids don’t.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowb...-regrets-choosing-career-having-children.html

 

[stilllearning]

I drank a lot of Ouzo in collegeAnd red wine out of a wicker casing around the bottle. Chianti

Those were what my best friend liked to drink...

I never had Greek Ouzo, but had its equivalent Turkish Raki when I was stationed in Turkey. Clear till you added water then turned milky. Hated those hangovers cause a black licorice taste is not all the pleasant going down, but that taste is downright unbearable, tasting black licorice coming back up..............LOL

 

[Greedyman]

I won't answer each question separately, but I can generally tell you about higher education.

 

[Greedyman]

I won't answer each question separately, but I can generally tell you about higher education.

I won't answer each question separately, but I can generally tell you about higher education. A college degree will be useful to you because employers are looking for people with higher education everywhere. Suppose you want to manage something, for example. In that case, if you don't have a college degree, you can forget about an entire department or a group of people. If you want to be an ordinary working guy in the office all your life, you won't need a diploma. I can also say this about paying for college: if you don't have the opportunity to pay for the tuition of some cool university or college, then just find a less well-known educational institution, as I did, and when I left Harvard, I immediately transferred to asa miami college.

 

[Lanolin]

I worked in higher education and though sometimes it was a bit of a racket, graduates were respected in the field that they chose because people are more confident about trusting someone whos done the hard yards of studying than someone who doesnt know a thing about it and doing things by trial and error.

In some fields you need to learn all the history of why things were done and then BREAK those rules, thats the course of scientific inquiry, or maybe artistic endeavour. Its not actually to copy what ppl have done before, but to build on it.

In higher education, you are free to experiment and research what interests you ever your chosen field. the point is YOU choose. The teachers dont force you, you can turn up to lectures or not. Up to you. Do you want to learn or not.

it is not like high school so dont expect it to be like that.

 

[Lanolin]

sex and the city is a bunch of elite manhattanites agonising about life, you dont need a higher education to be a sex columnist though lol

If you want to be a hardnosed lawyer than be one but most of the lawyers I read about wanted children as well so they could send them to expensive private schools lol

 

[Lanolin]

I couldnt help bit wonder, why I didnt become Erma Bombeck

mused Candace Bushnell/Carrie Bradshaw

and why....am I wearing this ridiculous tutu?