Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Swartz
That's too broad of a brush to really tell us anything significant though. I don't think anybody would dispute that there are a number of college-educated people who did get valuable education and preparation for the work force, and certainly there's a self-selecting property at work in that the highest achievers will tend to be more concentrated in that group. I'm not aware of any studies on this, but perhaps you can educate me; what I'd be more interested in is how those who graduated but couldn't get work in the field in which they studied fared, compared to if they tried to get into one of the vocations that are constantly short of qualified workers. I.e, for sure college is very valuable for some people, but I would say the facts I'm aware of indicate it's not valuable for a large group of others who still go.
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I think that's picking and choosing where your data is though. Sure, how many Art History majors (hell Psych majors) are out there working in their fields (I'm not and I have a Sociology degree too), and if it's low, could they have done better with a vocation. I don't think that question hits the mark, and I think we know the answer, but it won't necessarily tell us what we really want to know. We want to know how people with degrees do in general versus vocations across the board. Have they advanced further in their chosen career path? Are more managers college educated than not? Are they more successful? I am sure that there are some college educated people working in vocational fields, but there's probably only a few non-college educated people working in higher level fields that simply demand that. Where are there more job opportunities? If the vocational fields were flooded with people working would they still be able to make ends meet? Or are we seeing a big push right now, because those fields are short staffed at the moment, and demand for their services is higher than they can supply? I just think that when you look at the bigger picture of overall job demand, that the benefits of a college education simply open more doors across the board. Whether or not someone takes advantage of that, shouldn't really be on the degree itself.