are there universities that actually prepare you to get a job?

[luvcraft]

Maybe I'm just being myopic, but I can only think of two or three people I know who have graduated from UNM and gone on to find a job actually related to their degree. The vast majority of college graduates I know have jobs that don't require a college degree at all

Comments

[auberondreaming]

I got my current position by answering a posting on our department's mailing list, so I owe UNM big time for having that sort of system in place. I use the skills I got from my latest degree on a daily basis.

Maybe its the degree you are interested in getting as well though. My bio and chemistry degrees were kind of the same way; there are not as many people in the hard sciences field as other disciplines, thus employers tend to target those students because that is generally the only place you can find people with the skill set you are looking for.

If you get a popular degree(literature, business, english), you might have a hard time finding a position in your field due to competition.

Also, breaking into certain fields without a degree is impossible or next to it: you will not become a gel electrophoresis technician by practicing and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. For many jobs a degree is the only way you will land them.

[luvcraft]

And I put to you that in only two weeks I can take an uncultured cockney flower girl off the streets and pass her off as the finest gel electrophoresis technician the biotech industry has ever seen!

What shall we wager?

[auberondreaming]

Only if you create a clone of Audrey Hepburn a la Jurassic Park to be the flower girl.

[7ghent]

This is what I'm going to tell my children:

If the plan is going to college without a specific goal, don't bother. Get a job and read some books.

Going to college with a specific goal is fine as long as your goal is wage-slavery. If that's not your goal, and you still want to go to school then you should go to as prestigious a school as you can so you can meet people who will be successful and have money but drop out as soon as something more interesting comes along.

[elijahdprophet]

I think 4 year degrees are pretty much gateways into graduate degrees, rather then an end onto themselves. If you get specific enough, like Computer Science, then sure, you might go into a career that is related.

The problem is a BS or BA in any field isn't enough to get you the kind of job people associate with those degrees. I can't be an archeologist with a BS in anthropology. I might get to be a museum tour guide...

[anda]

The Bachelors is the new High School Diploma.

Not really the point.

[synk]

Going to a University isn't about getting a job, it's about thinking at a higher level. The honed ability to think is what allows people to get better jobs in any white-color field and go further in them than their uneducated counterparts. It's a demonstration of the ability to learn.

In those cases where people are looking to get a job in their field, their best chance is to get into an internship or other program that the department offers. What a dept may offer is pretty variable. CS at UNM, for instance, is a good doorway into SNL or LANL. Whereas CS at NCSU is a doorway into Red Hat. It's all about what employers are near at hand.

Re: Not really the point.

[brianarn]

While I would generally agree with what you say, I would also say that many people don't have that same impression.

I recall being told multiple times throughout high school by various educators that college = pathway to job. I've also heard that passed from parent to child many times. It's a common conception, and in the case of some degrees, it does hold true.

Re: Not really the point.

[_wirehead_]

yes. it teaches many skills that are not directly related to the classes you're taking, and those skills are the ones that you demonstrate to potential employers that you have by showing the piece of paper you earned thereby