I love it when people, on their own, through logic, thought, and studying come to the same conclusions I did, albeit years ago. It not only boslters our ranks, but confirms that there is a logic and reason behind the thought for separate people to come to the same realization or conclusion.
Today's newest member to the (very important) Battle Against Worthless Degrees is Gucci.
And we welcome him to the fight with our honorary John McClane salute!
I figured I'd post this as a reminder where you can send the OWS kiddies when they complain about their degrees:
Disappointed that one of the idiots commenting over there said our military budget was $1.5 trillion and nobody called them out on it.
ReplyDeleteI try to fact check every statistic somebody spits out; it's worthwhile to verify if it's true, and if it's not there's nothing sweeter than humiliating an idiot who makes up statistics.
Philosophy is not a worthless degree. There are probably 25 or 30 people in the country who earn very good incomes from philosophy. And it is possible to make very large amounts of money from fine arts. There may well be 10 or 15 artists who do. In the whole world.
ReplyDeleteNot for the great bulk of people, of course. One needs practical parents. Around 1918 in Budapest, young Eugene Wigner was asked by his father what he wanted to become. He said, "a theoretical physicist". Right, said his father, and how many of those are there in Hungary? Two, said young Eugene, exaggerating. Right, said his father, now what, seriously, do you want to do? And so young Eugene became a chemical engineer. And later, one of the leading theoretical physicists, and one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project.
I don't know what the moral of this story is - pick your father and mother wisely, I suppose.
The true worthless degrees are not philosophy nor fine art, which can teach useful skills and knowledge, and lead a very very very few to lucrative careers, but the garbage degrees, which addle the brains and fill them with misinformation: women's studies, sociology, political science, conflict resolution, economics of nonprofit organisations, international management, and English. English was the original soft option, the degree without merit. All the others followed.
ReplyDeleteCaptain:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the links these past few days. Much appreciated.
I've definitely moved hard towards criticism of our education system. It has really come to a head since OWS popped up and it became clear that much of the anger behind the movement stems from graduates and students owing a lot of money for worthless degrees. And of course, the cost of the degrees stems from gov't meddling in college financing - yet another example of liberal do-good policies having unintended consequences.
But the student debt bubble fascinates me. It seems so clear to me now that I've sat down and thought about it; I feel like the message needs to be spread.
Thanks again.
I am in agreement with Anon 7:21. Mostly.
ReplyDeletePhilosophy is a legitimate field of study. I will not make the statement that it is not a worthless degree.
Same with womans studies, hyphen american studies, fine arts, whatever. They are all legitimate fields of study.
What makes them useless degrees is that there are very few, I mean extremely few, jobs out there in those fields. Add to that, the expectation from the people holding these degrees that the degree somehow makes them a more desirable candidate, and you have Occupy something other than my Mom's basement.
Bill Gates is not likely to hire a philosopher to do his deep thinking for him. He may hire a sociology and/or psychology major to provide some research into human nature, and (hopefully) make the next version of Windows a blow out success.
But, it is highly unlikely that psychologist will get paid anywhere near as much as a programmer.