Bones7599 said:
BG - I don't think that you're the only PhD holder not making a lot of money. I do empathize with you 100%! ... [snip] ... Don't blame mom and dad, they thought they were doing the right thing at the time. Even at 40, there's still plenty of opportunities out there for your skills. Just have to keep looking, digging, and sending dozens of resumes out.
AbbieNormal said:
BG, don't come down too hard on education. Mom and dad are right, statistically. Overall the wage gap between high school and college graduates is huge. The median wage for high school dropouts is about $20,000/yr, for high school graduates it is about $30,000. The median wage for college graduates is over $50,000 and for people with advanced degrees a bit over $60,000. Looked at in that way a college degree is THE key to a more prosperous life. However not all degrees are the same, and an educational establishment that acts as if they are is doing it's students (and customers) a disservice. A PhD in romance languages or philosophy is useless outside a university when applying for a job. A B.S. in electrical engineering is just about as close as you can get to guaranteed high salary employment. Ask lopaw. My guess is that she out-earns most of us on the board (except maybe Chitown).
What I want to know is, how come you guys KNOW this stuff. I find out the hard way. :(
I am the equivalent of the PhD in Romance languages, and I have to admit that it's continually a surprise to me, how LITTLE I am valued by the marketplace. I took college Economics and thought it was a load of hogwash -- the rules apply all the time, except for the 99.9999% of the time that an exception applies instead -- and then I see these fellows who also thought it was equally silly being able to take advantage of it to their own benefit, salary-wise. I just kept on doing what the "adults" (mentors and peers in positions where they should have known better) suggested was a wise procedure, and yet my procedures turned out not to be very wise. In fact, I can pretty much draw a 1:1 link between dudes who totally slack off all their lives, and dudes who make a helluvalot of money. It seems to me, when I think about the guys like that whom I know, that the task of "going about things in the cheapest, simplest, stupidest way, with minimum effort, and absolutely no self-respect" is the quickest way to high amounts of cash ... FOR THEM. When I try that? I get fired for producing inferior work, of course.
Argh, I'm just venting. But I do know that the "frat boys" and campus drunks are actually quite well-heeled now, because of the social skills they honed in college. They made friends, learned how to make friends quickly, became charmers, got Cs, didn't get into grad school, and are now making $100K. I made good grades instead. :(
Another point to make about "mom and dad" is ... yes, DO blame them. I mean, don't HATE them, but it's their slavish adherence to "the system" that got me started on the wrong path in the first place. Dad was a company man, and when push came to shove during a big crisis, he'd always be there for the company. But the company wasn't there for him (gee what a surprise, why would he think a major corporation's raison d'etre should be to provide its employees with salaries!). I at least am not making that much of a mistake.
In the Victorian era, there were lots of "rules" about what was the right or wrong type of sexual activity to have. Only married couples were "supposed" to have sex, and it was officially supposed to be a very socially restrictive society. But actually, there were thousands of prostitutes throughout London, totally unregulated, and men got their cojones off probably MORE then than we do nowadays.
There were the written rules, and then the unwritten rules.
I think I'm in a similar position about employment. I only know the written rules, and I therefore keep having a very unfortunate experience, over and over again, of being quite surprised that my skills and qualifications don't provide me with a decent existence. How do you FIND OUT that a BA in electrical engineering (just as an example) is lucrative? My college TOLD ME POINT BLANK not to get a vocational degree or an engineering degree BECAUSE it was job-oriented and therefore not likely to provide a high income, given how jobs can change much more rapidlyl than degree programs can. They also told me to work hard all day, get good grades, etc. How do you know when they're saying a (false) written rule, as opposed to a (true) unwritten rule?
Argh argh argh. I'm sick of being the poor smart kid. I wanna be stupid for a while.