OSH;1618989 wrote:There's a lot to be said about this statement in being true. A friend of mine said his 12-month internship while in undergrad (both will be finished in December) could lead into a $30-35,000 salaried position. He asked if it was a good thing and what I thought about it. Shoot, he's done more in his years as an undergrad than the majority of students I've come across have. I said, look around, none of your friends or classmates are probably in a position to even get an interview with anything. He'd be living at home and pocketing everything. Perfect chance for him because of what he's done.
Not everyone comes out of school making $60,000 a year. Gotta start somewhere.
I don't know exactly what you are getting at with the "degree" part (type of degree or school where degree came from), but I've stated before in discussions like these: I know that "psychology" degrees have all kinds of unemployment associated with them, but what's the numbers like? There are more people graduating with business, education, sports management, exercise science, and "valuable" degrees like that have all kinds of unemployment too. What exactly is considered "valuable" in a degree to you or anyone else who makes similar statements?
Sure, psychology has high unemployment, but business majors have a hard time finding a job too. I would bet, numerically speaking, business majors outnumber psychology (or, any other "worthless" degree) majors in terms of unemployed.
There's a lot that's wrong with this...
What major you choose? So, everyone should be picking their degrees based on what pays good? People should choose their degrees based on employment opportunities? People should only choose "valuable" degrees? If any one of these questions is the right one, then where is the variance in career opportunities? There's value in art degrees...maybe not to you, but to many there are.
Why can't someone "be whatever they want to be?" We should be like Africa where the government dictates the direction of a person's career? That sounds excellent. Why can't people be what they want to be? Everyone can and should do what they want, if they choose...but they should know the expectations and opportunities. Some careers do require more work and/or "luck" to get into, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with chasing the "dream."
Reputation of the school...doesn't [really] matter unless you are going to Harvard, Yale, or some other extremely prestigious school. And, even then, if you did NOTHING during your college career, it probably still won't help you. I coached a player in HS who ended up at St. Andrews in Scotland. He was unemployed after graduation because he spent the summers just working youth camps at Duke instead of pursuing his career field. He is employed now thanks to his brother at Tempurpedic. He is a genius of a kid when it comes to the books, but he did nothing to help his career outside of getting a prestigious degree (actually a double while he was there).
It's easy to do a simple Google search to find out all the studies that show that WHERE you got a degree doesn't really mean much (
here's a recent one). We don't even need a recent one,
here's 2004. If the school actually mattered, why would anyone go anywhere else? Why do other schools exist? Why don't all the major schools buy up all the lousy schools? Who exactly is a "good" school? What qualifies a "good" school?
There are just as many "important" people out there who graduated from lesser known schools as have graduated from known schools -- or that haven't graduated from either. Either way, I wrote about this stuff in my
blog about 10 days ago as semesters were wrapping up around the country. I'm just tired of hearing the same stuff. It's not about the lack of jobs, it's not about the degree, it's about the 4 years (or more) of what one does to make oneself more marketable/hireable to the potential employer. As athletic recruiting starts earlier and earlier, being prepared for careers and resumes should start earlier and earlier too.