<p>I get that nobody wants to believe that elite colleges don’t add much value to most graduates.</p>
<p>I still think kids should try to experience college choices and career options before they go headlong into either. You wouldn’t discourage them from going to a few lectures or shadowing a professional, right?</p>
<p>And don’t knock self-teaching. It sounds hokey, but it’s just the practice of learning something without sitting in the same room as a lecturer. MIT has videos of lectures of tons of classes. Since very few people ask questions in live lectures, it doesn’t make a difference whether you’re there or not. You get the added bonus of stopping and rewinding anything that was confusing. And it costs a lot less than $40k+ in tuition (minus academic grants and scholarships).</p>
<p>I teach myself advanced statistical analysis every day. I take tests that I find on professor websites at schools like Cal-Berkeley. College lecture halls are not magic. People learn things from books, for god sakes. You don’t even need the material spoken aloud.</p>
<p>link to one MIT Sloan School of Management video lecture: <a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-084JSpring2004/VideoLectures/index.htm[/url]”>http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-084JSpring2004/VideoLectures/index.htm</a></p>
<p>All jobs DO suck…that’s why they have to pay you to do them. That’s why it’s called “work” instead of “fun” or “pleasure” or “a resort.” You can find people who will let you beat them with a cat-o-9-tails for free, but even THEY won’t do your taxes or paint your house for free.</p>
<p>You should be happy the you have a degree form North Western.</p>
<p>My question to you is why didn’t you take part in internships, Co-op and research opportunities. Classroom learning is only a fraction of the overall experience and it is not the only thing that employers look at. Did you not have any fun at NU? Did you develop life-long frienships? If not then you lost out big time.</p>
<p>I don’t think he’s a ■■■■■. I think this same post could have been made by many recent graduates from many universities- including the elite ones. When these kids got into their highly-selective schools they thought it was a ticket to a worthwhile, challenging career and that they would have their pick of jobs and get a great salary. Things changed. I am hearing this same “song” from a lot of 2008-2010 grads, perhaps with less whining and more real fear!<br>
It’s going to take some real changes in expectations for these grads to accept their comfortable $40K a year jobs (those fortunate enough to get them) and regroup and figure out how to get what they want from life.</p>
<p>This guy is not alone. I am also one of the millions of disenchanted recent college graduates. I don’t blame my college. It’s a universal problem that society has portrayed college as something its not. American business has screwed up royally and is wasting trillions of dollars worth of young potential asking them to do high school level tasks. The economy overall has been poorly managed, and the job market reflects universal incompetence in managing the American workforce. </p>
<p>You have to have a lot of mental stamina to become the exception to the rule of being funneled into a career that sucks. The common escape routes are the basic grad school professions of Law, psychiatry, and MBAs, which is already flooded.</p>
<p>The problem is that American employers demands that prospective employees have “a college degree”, no matter how unrelated it is to the job. You need a degree. No one cares if you learned mechanical engineering or philosophy from Itunes University. And this a problem. </p>
<p>Read “Real Education” by Charles Murray. He advocates proficiency tests instead of college degrees in subjects. I think this would work. It would be a much more efficient (not to mention much less expensive) method for workforce screening. It wouldn’t matter if you learned accounting for free from the internet and the public library, in community college, at an online school, or in an actual 4 year institution. </p>
<p>The OP is complaining that he felt all the advanced knowledge he learned in college was of little value to him in the real world, and that he spent a lot of money on the “education”. </p>
<p>His degree IS worth something, but it’s not of any REAL value, it’s a false value created by employers and the government who subsidize and abuse the American higher-education system.</p>
<p>If the OP isn’t a ■■■■■ - well, the vast majority of people whether they have gone to Harvard/Stanford to UNC/UCLA to some little LAC or not having gone to college at all are stuck in “boring” jobs.</p>
<p>And the OP is fortunate to have a job at all in this market place, esp. one that pays $40k which is very good for a recent college grad.</p>
<p>Besides, if the OP really wanted to “change the world” and not take the best paying job he/she could get, OP could have just as easily opted for the Peace Corp, Teach for America or other like-minded endeavors.</p>
<p>There is a gaping generational divide between older people caring about how much money they make, and younger people painfully realizing a boring job is wasting their life away. They would much prefer a satisfying job that paid less but has a large upside for performance.</p>
<p>I also get that it seems like whining. The funny thing is that I didn’t want to whine. I just wanted kids who were in my position as high schoolers to take a second and think a little more about their future.</p>
<p>But this is the way I and many of my classmates feel. Some are in even worse situations and haven’t found a job at all. This is how you feel after you train for 17 years at the highest level for no apparent reason.</p>
<p>^ What you’re feeling isn’t much diff. from people have felt for ages.</p>
<p>Like I said, you could’ve chosen another path which was more emotionally fulfilling, but w/ less filling of the wallet/pocketbook.</p>
<p>k&s, that’s a good point. I could have applied to a volunteer program like Peace Corps. But I assumed I would get hired by one of the non-profits I applied to.</p>
<p>That’s part of what kids should know before committing to anything. You might have gone to an ‘elite’ school and you might have done multiple internships, but you might have to take an unpaid position after graduation if you want to break into a field. (Although I already had three internships with non-profits, so you have to ask yourself if a fourth after graduation and with tons of debt would’ve been a smart choice).</p>
<p>kb -</p>
<p>Sorry, but I think you just had an overly idealized view of the world post-education.</p>
<p>Aside from undergrads who get shocked by the drudgery of the “real world”, many people who go to med school and law school w/ a similar “rosy” view of life after graduation get disappointed as well (esp. since both medicine and law have increasingly become $$-focused).</p>
<p>Do you have a lot of loans that prevent you from taking a more meaningful job? Other posters have offered suggestions, such as AmeriCorps, which will forgive some of your loans, I believe. But in any event, many years ago when I graduated from college, my first job and second for that matter, were boring, but that didn’t stop me from having a lot of fun with my friends, living in NYC. It was a thrill to be supporting myself, even if i didn’t have much money or intellectual stimulation from my job. I read, went to museums on the evenings it was free admission. It was a carefree time, full of emotional growth. Spend some of your free time doing for others and you might realize why posters aren’t sympathetic to the whining. (Take a look at the amputees from Haiti, why don’t you?)</p>
<p>Hey, life intervenes. If you knew that there would be a recession when you graduated, perhaps you would have gone to a state school. But it is what is. Rise to the challenge.</p>
<p>Sorry, cross posted before seeing your comment on Peace Corps. So start the application process for Peace Corps now. And hang in there, be patient for the time it takes to bring that to fruition.</p>
<p>I completely understand your angst and felt the same way in my first job many, many years ago. I also felt the angst again many years later, and after an MBA, when I was in a position that just wasn’t right for me. What you should remember is that life is long (hopefully) and you will have time to change your course as I have done several times throughout my work life. For right now you should focus on doing well in your current job (you will likely need recommendations for anything you might want to do in the future), savng money which will increase your flexibility, and you should look for volunteer opportunities that tie more closely with your dreams. You don’t have to be in your current job forever but you do need to start positioning yourself for what you really want to do.</p>
<p>I wish you all the best and hope that you will someday find a job that you love and lets you contribute the way you want to.</p>
<p>look into becoming a Marine officer</p>
<p>I know someone who went to Dartmouth who can’t even find a decent job…he graduated 10 years ago and is working for some company that doesn’t even require a degree</p>
<p>“Like I said, you could’ve chosen another path which was more emotionally fulfilling, but w/ less filling of the wallet/pocketbook.”</p>
<p>Yeah because English majors get employed fast, research programs are loaded with cash, and there are infinite amounts of open non-profit jobs in the world. Classic blame the victim thinking.</p>
<p>The world is designed to suck for recent grads. Either take a boring job, take a no pay internship that are designed to give jobs to people with loaded parents, or work in a coffee shop while waiting to get a job you really want.</p>
<p>^ The OP wouldn’t necessarily have found majoring in Eng. “fulfilling.”</p>
<p>And it’s not blame the “victim” (what a sorry excuse for being a “victim”) - since the vast majority of people tend to be jobs/careers that they don’t particularly enjoy (it’s called ** real life**).</p>