Tough Decision -- choosing between a worthless degree and a good education

College Majors
1

So I’m approaching what could be thought of as a fork in the road, I have to choose between finishing a degree I thought I liked, but know dislike, that won’t teach me valuable skills and essentially taking classes in the remaining aid eligibility time I have left, learning a lot of useful skills, and ultimately walking away with no degree.

So, if you had to choose between finishing a dead end degree and no degree but lots of valuable skills, which would you choose?

I’m basically stuck between finishing a major in Psychology, in which I won’t have time to take important classes such as math, writting intensive courses, foreign language and cs, and simply ignoring my major and taking classes which teach me important things such as Analysis and algebra, programing, algorithms and theory of Computation, foreign language and thought provoking writting intensive classes. In one case I get a worthless degree and a poor education, in the other I get no degree but what I consider to be a strong education. Which is better and why do you think so? This isn’t a hypothetical; I’m totally serious about this.

2

How much time do you have left for aid? I would lean towards getting the degree. It’s going to be a lot easier to market yourself for jobs with an actual degree than a list of skills that you learned from various classes

3

First of all, most colleges will make you choose a major. You can’t just take a collection of classes and graduate.

Second of all, psychology is not a “worthless major” or a “dead-end degree”. It does teach you lots of useful skills - like learning to do research and analysis, learning statistical data analysis with social science data, and learning how to apply behavioral modification techniques to motivate people or change their behavior. That’s useful in marketing, advertising, management, organizational studies/psychology, human-computer interaction, user experience design, personnel/human resources, an a variety of other fields that are essentially applied psychology. Do summer internships and develop hard skills in addition and you can be a very marketable job candidate. (My undergraduate degree is in psychology, as is my graduate degree, and I work in user experience research in technology.)

Third of all, what makes you think you won’t have time to take math, writing-intensive classes, foreign language and CS if you major in psychology? You probably can’t delve deeply into all of those areas, but you could definitely take 1-3 classes in each area and maybe minor in one. I would suggest a minor in computer science and a couple of classes in the other areas, especially math and writing. Math, CS, and psychology are a good combination - there’s quite a bit in that area.

4

I’m a transfer student from a community college, now in my 3rd year. I have 7 terms of institution aid left. I only took precalc statistics for psychology and thus have not even taken basic calculus. I also never took more than two years of foreign language in high school and it’s not required given my transfer agreement with the school.

They only accepted pure ge, and required I start the major from scratch, meaning starting with freshman intro courses. I realized I had to take 16 units of the min requirments for the major each term right up to the last term before graduation. At a certain point I realized that I was simply taking the path of least resistence and it dawned on me that I haven’t received a good education, and that I won’t so long as I continue down this path. My psychology classes consist of reading, a lecture where a lecturer reads powerpoints that are basically cut and pasted from the text book, and then multiple choice scantron tests, usually 30 poorly worded questions on each test. No papers, no short answer questions. The pedagogy is particularly terrible, even as far as psych goes, and I have no doubts other schools do a much better job of teaching it, but unfortunately I have no option of changing schools at this time (I honestly expected more from this school before transferring to it, but anyway).

There is one other option which might be the solution – I might enroll half time and simply work fulltime, whether it he retail, trade or service if necessary, and I could switch majors successfully.

5

Are the 7 remaining terms of aid eligibility semesters (i.e. 3.5 years) or quarters (2+1/3 years)?

Is the following a possibility:

  • Withdraw from the current college, doing all of the paperwork to be able to return later.
  • Take the frosh/soph level course work for your new major and any desired foreign language courses at a low cost community college.
  • Return to the current college, ready to enter the new major.

It is generally better to finish your degree if it can be done so without excessive debt.

6

Are you in intro psych? Big jump as you go to higher courses and definitely math involved. While some degrees are more useful, any degree is useful because sometimes a bachelors is required for a job. Years ago I had an employer interviewing at my school say they weren’t concerned with the major. They were concerned that prospective employee applied him/herself to aa four year degree, learned how to study and solve problems, and demonstrate perseverance and self-discipline. The corporation would provide training on job specific skills.

No, that doesn’t apply to technical fields like engineering or comp sci but there are many other options. A psych undergrad paired with a grad degree in something else is an option as well.

All that said, 7 semesters means you are a new junior. what is the feasibility of changing majors and graduating on time or one extra semester?

7

7semesters = you can still do other majors.
You don’t need calculus but you do need a thorough grasp of statistics so take more classes in that. See if there’s an 'intro CS for non majors’class at your local community that could take summer session at your cc.
Is there looking other university you can commute to where your pre reqs would count?

8

It’s quarters, so 2 1/3 years. If I take a gap year at a CC to do lower div courses for a new major they take away fin. Aid eligibility equal to the units I transfer back.

I was allowed to start taking upper division classes, since they know I need to make progress, concurrently with the lower division classes, and unfortunately there are still no papers, and tests are all scantron tests, 30-40 questions. One or two tests determine the grade, grades are usually force curved to 15% get A’s, 20% get B’s, 50% get C’s, 10% get D’s and 5% get F’s. It’s very sad.

Honestly I’m pretty unhappy here and it might just be in my best interest to try a local, less prestigious college for which I could commute and manage costs by working, and thus eliminate the worry that aid eligibility runs out. Overall I’m pretty upset with how my current institution operates – it has a good name and I thought things would be different in my major here.

Anyway, given their grading policies, my chances of transferring to a peer institution are now probably 0.

9

After your studies end, what matters most is that you have a B.A. or a B.S. (or other college degree). What you study doesn’t really matter after you leave college. In my career, I have never used much of anything specific that I learned in college. I have used the general study skills and writing skills, but you can develop those regardless of major.

10

Get the degree. You can learn most of those other things on your own (foreign language, CS skills, etc). You can take MOOCs to build some of those skills (I am taking a MOOC right now on Python programming). Many are free, or pretty cheap. FYI, most people don’t use the foreign language they study on a regular basis, nor calculus.

11

After thinking about it over night I tend to agree that I should stick out my major, despite hating the idea.

I guess in the end money talks and, well :smiley:

12

Does your university offer a degree in liberal/general studies or a “create your own major” option? That might allow you to graduate on time with a degree while taking courses that are of more interest to you.

13

http://www.undergrad.socsci.uci.edu/files/degreeplans/psych_four.pdf (Is that your program?) shows a lot of room (38 units) for electives. There’s also the summers. If that doesn’t give you enough space and if you find your psychology program rather easy, perhaps you can take larger course loads to accomplish both graduation AND the useful courses you’re talking about in the time frame you have.

You should research professors and use the information about them to decide your classes, both in and out of your major.

If there’s no particular difference among professors, I would prioritize analysis and algebra, programming, algorithms and theory of computation over the others in your outside-of-major wishlist. I think learning within the academic structure is particularly indicated for them. Foreign language, as far as communicating with people anyway, I believe is just as well or even better learned outside of academia, as well as, if you’re still thinking of Japanese, less valuable occupation-wise than those math and cs subjects. Judging from this and other of your threads, you write pretty well already.

…I see (now) that among UCI’s upper division psychology courses are PSYCH 114M. MATLAB Programming and PSYCH 112R. Cognitive Robotics (“Simple robots are constructed and programmed to carry out different behavioral experiments in lab”). These provide some computer science while providing units for the major.

14

Let me add some concrete perspective, my original plan, where I thought a gap year would have no effect on financial aid eligibility, looked like this:

" Summer 2016:

Math 19: Calculus 1 of a single variable: Stanford Summer
Math 19b: Calculus 2 of a single variable: UCSC Summer
CS 106B: Programing Abstractions: Stanford Summer

Fall 2016: (Gap year away from UCI)

Math23a: Linear Algebra and Real Analysis I: Harvard Extension School
CS61: Systems programming and Machine Organization: Harvard Extension School

Phil 20a: Ancient Philosophy: Community College (quarter system school – De Anza College, Curpertino Ca)

Winter 2017: (Gap year away from UCI)

Phil 20b: Contemporary Philosophy: Community College (quarter system school – De Anza College, Cupertino Ca)

Spring 2017: (Gap year away from UCI)

Math 23b: Linear Algebra and Real Analysis 2: Harvard Extension School

Summer 2017:

Math 185: Introduction to Complex Analysis: UC Berkeley Summer
Differential Equations: Community College

Then, Return to UCI as Philosophy Major and hopefully pure Math Minor:

Fall 2017:

Language 1a Hebrew or Japanese
Logic Sequence Phil/LPS 105a Set theory
Math elective Math 141 Introduction to Topology
Math h120a Graduate/Honors Abstract Algebra

Winter 2018:

Language 1b Hebrew or Japanese
Logic Sequence Phil/LPS 105b Metalogic
Soc Sci 10b Probability and Statistics
Math h120b Graduate/Honors Abstract Algebra

Spring 2018:

Langauge 1c Hebrew or Japanese
Logic Sequence Phil/LPS 105c Incompleteness
Soc Sci 10c Probability and Statistics
Math h120c Graduate/Honors Abstract Algebra

Final Year at UCI:

Fall 2018:

Language 2a Hebrew or Japanese
Phil/LPS 106 Modal Logic
Math h140a Graduate/Honors Analysis Sequence
Math elective Math 162a Differential Geometry

Winter 2019:

Language 2b Hebrew or Japanese
Phil 102w Introduction to the theory of Knowledge
Math h140b Graduate/Honors Analysis Sequence
Math elective Math 162b Differential Geometry

Spring 2019:

Language 2c Hebrew of Japanese
Philosophy elective such as: Philosophy of Race
Math h140c Graduate/Honors Analysis Sequence
Math Elective: Combinatorics, Cryptography or Graph Theory "

This is what I want my education to be. The thing is, 6 institution quarters of aid left, and only 7.5 quarters of federal aid left, and one year plus two summer’s eats at least 2.5 quarters of this.

It’s crazy.

Without doing the above, I would have to take Psych 9b and 9c, three upper division psych core clases, three research design classes, two upper division electives and one of the CS classes listed by the previous post. The trouble is that the actuall psychology classes are terrible, and I’d only be gaining from the auxiliary statistics courses.

At any rate, as I said, it may be wisest to just finish Psychology, but this was the alternative I had in mind.

15

I mean, I guess if I could limmit my eligibility use to 2.5 quarter terms, I’d have 4.5 to 5 federal aid terms remaining for 6 terms remaining, which wouldn’t ve so bad if I worked over the last summer.

My parents are middleclass-ish with low savings, and I would be turning 24 the year after my planned gap year, making me independent from that point on (this made more sense when I thought I wouldn’t lose eligibility).

I would have 3-3.5 terms of grant money to use, and 4.5-5 terms of federal aid to use. Being independent at that point the burden should be lifted from my parents’ modest savings account, at least for one year, and perhaps they could help with the last year/term (slightly beyond the cost of housing/rent). Perhaps this isn’t impossible after all, as long as I limmit my eligibility from dropping beyond 2.5 quarters.

The end of this would be a still silly sounding degree in philosophy and a minor in math (just can’t win in this department unless one goes into engineering).

Is anyone aware of if it’s possible to front load federal loans in the first quarter of the year, rather than obligatorily spread it out over the year (particularly if I dont have eligibility for the last part of the year and my net cost exceeds the max loan I may take out for the year? I assume they are well aware of people trying to do this and probably have taken measures to prevent it from being possible… But I don’t know for sure).

16

Could you afford community college without federal aid, by working part time? You could take the pre-reqs you need for your other major there, for cheaper, without using up you 7 terms of financial aid. During your gap year, take for classes you can pay for out of pocket.
Your plans for three difficult classes over the summer doesn’t seem possible though.

17

Re: the Japanese comment: you may already be aware of the JET program. This is a great option for after you graduate. Your Japanese skills would be great, your knowledge of the culture also would be amazing once you’re finished. It’s a great springboard into other jobs in Japan or in the US and / or graduate programs. https://jetprogramusa.org/eligibility/

18

@MYOS1634 I was told that, even if I didn’t use aid money and paid out of pocket that if I took classes I lost eligibility for future aid so long as units are transferred back to my school. Is this not the case?

If that’s true then that would fix everything. I was planning on paying my way through my gap year without aid. With a combination of some money from parents and from working at best buy/geek squad or something similar part time.

For what it’s worth, I got permission from the school of Humanities to pursue this course of study if I choose. I haven’t heard back from the math department yet to see if they will allow me to use math 23 at H.E. as a prerequisite for the upper div classes I want to take.

I think it would be absurd if they object, but I sent them the syllabi to review and haven’t heard back yet :/. I’m going to follow up with them tomorrow just to make sure they are actually reviewing the course.

19

Your eligibility is in terms of aid received - ie., you have 7 quarters where you can register and be covered. If you pay out of pocket, your eligibility for federal aid isn’t affected. How could they consider you used aid when you didn’t?

@mom2collegekids @kelsmom @ucbalumnus @gumbymom @norcalparent : do the UC’s really have this clause? it’d be new and it doesn’t make sense, but with the budget cuts… I figured you’d know.

20

Do you know what you want to do in terms of a career yet?