You Can't Eat Pm

That is all well and good but it goes against what our young people have been told by their parents and educators for the past 20 years. The message has been, do what you love, and you will succeed. Likewise, college prep has been pushed while the trades have been eliminated in many school. The message has been that if you don't go to college you will not succeed. So now a decade latter we have way to many liberal arts majors and a rapidly increasing shortage of skilled tradesmen. My plant can't find certified welders. An ad for a certified auto mechanic has been posted in the paper for 6 weeks. $60,000 dollars, 2 weeks paid vacation, BCBS, 401k, plus a $3000 signing bonus!

On the other had, even recent grads with engineering degrees have been hard pressed to find a job. My company just hired a new grad. He is getting paid less than what I started at 10 years ago and he is just happy to have a job. Most of his friends hung their new engineering diplomas on the wall in their old bedrooms because they had to move back to live with their parents.

My company would have had openings for more engineers but they discovered that is is cheaper to pay an Indian engineering firm than to hire US engineers. A good 50% of my time is spent direction and checking the work of that Indians firm. It was similar at my last job. We had 3 US engineers and 24 in India. An Indian engineer will work for $15K a year and live comfortably in India on that salary. It isn't just textile jobs and assembly work that is being outsourced.

An old problem that's getting worse is these "schools" that offer degrees that are either worthless or won't transfer to accredited institutions. A kid goes to "quicky U" for a year or two and gets a nursing degree that qualifies her to be a volunteer at the hospital.

Meanwhile, the gubmint gets more student loans aren't getting paid off. In many cases, the schools do little more than qualify the student to borrow the money for tuition, and the heck with whether they drop out or learn anything.

Education is what you make of it not what it gives you.

College degree - yes
College major used - no

Advantages of degree - yes
Gave me my first job though not in my field. Separated me out of the hundreds applying without a degree.

College advantage - yes
Gave me better abilities to research, organize and out think most non college graduates.

A college does not owe you a job after graduation. A college education does not owe you job.

I would like to think college helped develop my ability to out reason, out think and be better organized to beat most people doing any type of job. However I still had to apply what I learned and I had to actually learn it.

College is another way for the government to attempt to get your money, plain an simple. They lay it out for you early, elementary, middle, high school, then college, a nice corporate job, and later the nice executive wife complete with split level and white picket fences, and I call this the BRAIN WASH effect, lol....

Before I finally figured out what I wanted to do, (Buy low and sell high vintage collectibles an coins, as well as bar-tend), I looked into online school. Every online college in the country called me like a telemarketer for weeks, if not months, trying to get me to sign up. Eye opening how desperate the all seem these days. Even with hunting for car insurance or try looking into a loan, same exact thing, lol. Shows just how desperate so many dying institutions are for business perhaps....

When I passed on going back into debt for school and started dabbling on ebay, BEST MOVE I EVER MADE. Find something you enjoy, and you never work another day in your life eh....

"Here you go Kev, take these GOVERNMENT loans to go back to school. Now then 6 months after you graduate or not, we want to start collecting our 100 plus grand (most likely), and we don't care if you found a job or not!" Gee thanks, but NO THANKS!

I am not saying the debt is always the wrong decision, as I think like Ed or Mkfarms are fine examples of good planned education. I am guessing you both always knew for the most part what you wanted to do with your lives, and you executed from point A to Z, MOST KEY. If you don't go through with what you started, and make the subconscious decision to succeed no matter the cost/hurdle, you will never have a positive experience in college IMO. Selecting a high demand field like medicine for example never hurts as well....

In the end, I think it is ridiculous that we don't get free education and health care here in the US unlike many country's over seas who do. The basic foundation all humans need to have any quality of life IMO, education and health care....

Well, Goldslager (peppermint schnapps) has gold flakes in it, and some times I think of using a coffee filter to collect it all from the bottles at work....

I don't know about platinum or palladium, but the first emperor of China had it all, money, wealth, power, fame. He united all the separate states into an empire, and only needed what most men dream of, eternal life or the fountain of youth. He sent his wise men out in all directions to find it. They failed of course, he got impatient, heads probably rolled literally, so his very WISE men made him a nice potion composed of jade (beautiful green stone) an mercury (unique liquid like metal commonly found in thermostats, which is also a wee bit poisonous to humans lol), which slowly killed him over a year, via agonizing pain around the age of fifty, lol....

I don't know what is better said there...."Better to leave well enough alone." Or.... "Be careful what you ask for in this world, as you may get it!" He got his eternal life eh, lol....

He was said to have looked green in the end, kinda like me after a funnel cake, two foot long corn dawgs, and a ride on a roller coaster at the local fair, and I figure that must have been the jade!

Come on, Hawk. You're making my eyes roll up so far in my head, all I can see is the ceiling.

In the technical fields, a college degree is NOT an option. You either have one or companies do not have the time or interest in interviewing you. There are simply too many other prospective applicants who do have a degree. This is not to say that anyone without a degree is worthless. Quite a few people would be good employees to hire but without the degree they have no track record of achievement and no demonstrable skills in the job area in question. Hiring is already risky enough for most employers without hiring someone who isn't even qualified to get an interview. This is not to say that by having a college degree all of your job problems are over... far from it. But it IS the accepted place to start.

One final thought here. Not everyone is college material. Going to college and getting a lot out of the experience pretty much requires that the person involved enjoys learning rapidly. Some people just do not enjoy the studying that it takes to actually learn something. The trick is that high school and college advisors should be watching for these people and guiding them into areas in which they can be successful and that they would enjoy doing. If that does not require a college degree, then so be it. There are MANY very useful and quite decently paying occupations that do not require a 4-year degree. Plumbing has already been mentioned but so is being an electrician, welder, or just about any other trade occupation. Being snooty isn't something that my family encouraged. I have a lot of respect for people who can do the jobs that I do not have the skills to do. One can have pride and dignity in doing honest and useful work well, whatever it may be.

College in general was basically a waste. Well besides the beer, the babes, and the parties :D. Iv'e sadly learned far more self studying then I ever did in high school or in college. Sure there's good teachers out there who want people to excel and push hard, but most don't give a darn and just do the bare minimum to grab a paycheck.

Really that's a huge problem with society in general today. More people then not just want to do a bare minimum to get some sort of paycheck and they think that's how life is supposed to work. 99% of people in the US and many other parts of the world seem to think you are supposed to go out, get credit to buy a car buy a house heck even buy things like a TV or a can of beans... Too many are so irrational in their spending of money its depressing to see. Next to the entire population enslaves themselves with this monster created called credit. Its no wonder why most of the finances in the world are as they are.

Just go look at a 30 year home loan on a... for example 300k house. Rather then simply going and spending 300k and buying your house. Over the course of 30 years you will end up paying well over triple its price and will almost certainly break 1 million. So now you paid 1 million for a 300k house... It just boggles my mind at how many fall into the slave trap.

Ok wasn't this a pm discussion originally lol...

Rofl good times Eddy B. I remember when I was about 8 making little chemical bombs, or vials of acidwith my chem set :D. I think I liked the blowing stuff up part more which eventually lead to my fasination with emptying tons of fireworks and turning the contents into one BIG firework mixed with some kinda fuel then blowing up something I shouldn't have :D.

Man I was a pain when I was little lol.