I think just like these stories show some employers are looking for experience, there are also stories that show some employers are looking for the degree and using it to filter out candidates. It's not just the students that need to stop thinking about an undergraduate degree as job training, it's also employers who need to change.

The reason people feel societal pressure to get degrees is jobs. It's how universities market themselves and often the only way to justify the cost, in either a public-pays or a user-pays system. So, it's rather disingenuous to turn around and say, well… it's really more of a general education thing.

Whether the method is specific career training or general education, a very big part of the end goal is employability. Otherwise we're talking about a completely different (probably much smaller and certainly worse funded) tertiary education system to the one that exists today.

Employability is important to people. That's reasonable. People are going to universities for this reason. They are taking loans for this reason. They are being funded by States for this reason. Unemployable graduates is a failure for Universities.

I think comments about general enrichment are moving the goal posts. That type of University is an extreme luxury item that only a few can afford.

I definitely agree that the societal pressure for a degree is largely based on getting a job, I just argue that we should acknowledge that the role of the university isn't job training. We're misleading young people.

University makes you more employable in the sense that many companies are looking for well rounded individuals that show they have a dedication to learning. Did I need to take courses in studio art, afro-am, and comparative literature for my job as a programmer? No, but they made me a better person, citizen, and probably employee.

We also need to do better at advising young people about the debt they're about to incur before they go ahead and take those loans. It's very difficult at 18 to comprehend what having $28k in debt, on average, is like.

I'm not trying to move the goal posts, I'm just arguing that we need to set expectations a lot better.

If that's really the case, then perhaps universities should just dump all their humanities departments, fire the faculty, and re-purpose the buildings, along with any other department that doesn't produce "outcomes".

And how do you measure "outcomes"? If you measure it by the first job students get out of college, that's very sad and short-sighted. To really understand the outcomes of education on careers, you need to look at the entire arc of a career-- NOT just the starting point.

Employ-ability is really up to the students themselves, NOT their university, and definitely NOT the particular department.

Perhaps, less the arson. ;)

I don't know how you measure outcomes. As research facilities, employability is not a factor. I don't even know that studying anthropology and behavioral psychology is not effective at making people employable.

What I am saying is that the students, their parents, their government, society, expect that employability is an outcome of undergraduate education. This is why they are pouring so much resources into it. This is why it exists in the form that it does.

There is certainly room in the world for enrichment. I wish we had more of it. I'm always happy to hear about people taking time to do gap years, study tangental to career career goals. It's great. But, this is a consumption. It needs to be balanced with what you can afford and I think most undergraduate students cannot afford an undergraduate degree that does not leave them more employable in the long term. I don't think they signed up for that.

Lets be friends though, even if we disagree.

Of course :)

I agree that employability is something the students, parents and society _want_ after college.

But look at it this way, if a student decides to major in philosophy, whose fault is it if the student graduates and ends up as a admin-assistant on the first job out of college? It sounds like some want to blame the university system and that's wrong.

I believe the price of an undergraduate degree is only justified if we assume some sort of real return (i.e., jobs that pay money) on the substantial investment of time and money.

Middle-class people don't typically spend years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars on structured self-betterment activities.

The price is high because people expect to get money out of it, and more importantly to edge out other people for jobs because of having it. If people treat it like a certificate that says "I'm allowed to make X money" then it has high objective economic value and will become very expensive. In fact, more expensive degrees will signal more wealth and success.

If we treated it like a necessary component of responsible citizenship, the duty of society to generate an educated voting populace, it would be a lot cheaper and people wouldn't be so upset walking away from college "just having become educated and being better, wiser people" without a job-training certificate.

Alternately, we could remove art/non-engineering science/humanities and give up on the idea of education and just have vocational training camps so every citizen can become a happy capitalist worker bee doing whatever their betters see fit to train them in.

That's patently false. Skiing, painting, home woodshop, hobby farms, gardening...

Many people believe that an education is a good thing in its own right. Its a sad view of life that you're own betterment isn't worth any price. I guess its all for hedonistic pleasures then? Video games, movies, fancy car - those are the meaning of life?

I think you missed a couple words there:

  * middle class
  * structured

The children of public school teachers don't go into debt to spend five (or six!) figures on all-inclusive ski tour packages (complete with certificate!) as part of a pursuit for abstract self-betterment.

Also, if it were all for self-betterment, why have degrees at all? Why not just take classes that seemed worthwhile? Why have grades for that matter?

Over a period of 4 or 6 years? Sure they do. Personally, I've gone to Scout meetings for 2 decades, and spent a fortune on structured outings, uniforms, materials and supplies. Its something I enjoy and has a good result.

We have degrees to satisfy the need for some for closure, to recognize accomplishment, and to get old students out of there and make room for new ones. That a degree has been fastened onto as a job-training certificate is just unfortunate.

>Middle-class people don't typically spend years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars on structured self-betterment activities.

But they really wish they could, and they actually believe they can, because there are always loans available to them.

I think the useless degree is an extreme form of luxury. You get to show others that you are rich (otherwise you would work or go to a vocational school) and that your money doesn't define you (because otherwise you would study something useful to make more money).