this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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GenZedong

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

i hate everything here, from the ridiculous price to the guy treating a degree like a simple matter of value exchange

it's like even the pursuit of knowledge has become just a tool to help or hinder your survival under capitalism and i really fucking hate it

"a degree is like a car" no it fucking isn't??

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

Commodity fetishism has entered the chat

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

The goal of capital is to commodify everything. Neoliberalism is the speeding up of this force.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

It's treated like one by institutions even though there is much more value you can gain in terms of education and personal growth. In many fields, they don't give a shit what you actually learned at college and if it applies to the job.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I went to school for programming and left a political nerd. I could have learned all the programming in my free time, on my own. Which is what I mostly did since my professors sucked. It was $70,000 for me to learn that the political system in the US fucking sucks. I got stuck with crippling debt for learning that this system only cares about the rich elite. I enjoy the irony for what it's worth.

Kids, don't stay in school.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I started as PoliSci and once I hit American Government, I got so sickened by what I was learning that I had to switch degrees. Didn't stop learning about politics, just didn't want anything to do with them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

For like a few years after I graduated I was going through my reformist phase and sort of wanted to go back and get a minor in PoliSci or something, but after I started getting more into theory I moved to the revolutionary camp and am at least thankful for not going further in debt.

It's funny because I had 2 history professors and a econ professor that were all fairly cynical and jaded and I think they are partially responsible for my college era radicalizing. My econ prof was a former banker and was like "this is stupid and we just make money by using your money to make more money and it's all stupid." One of my history profs basically taught the same material you will get from reading "A People's History of the United States" and watching the documentary "The Untold History of the United States."

I also had a PoliSci professor that I appreciated because he taught in a fairly unbiased way that I was unable to peg if he was Dem, Rep, or other. It was a rarity since the college I went to was in the TX panhandle.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 5 months ago (3 children)
  • take out as much as they'll give you in loans for undergrad
  • leave the US and never pay them back

quagsire-pog

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Just leave the US for school. It's free in so many places, even for Americans

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Ah, It’s for Americans. Though, this did help me search for places that are free for Canadians but I don’t know if any of them are worth it (currently and in the next few years): Germany, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland and the Czech Republic.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

You actually can do this (I think), if you claim the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion on taxes and earn less than like $110k/yr abroad, your adjusted gross income is 0 and with an income-based repayment plan you don't need to pay back anything until they get discharged after like 35 years I think

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yes, they are. University tuition has an inflation curve similar to that of Disney World.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (2 children)

my friend's wife went to school to be a veterinarian and she's still paying off her loan. She graduated ~15 years ago.

I dropped out of college back then and just lied on my resume to get an IT job lol sicko yes

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

just said I had an unrelated degree because the position required a degree of any kind

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Years later…

You never did tell us what degree you had.

Degree?

You said on your CV you had an unrelated degree.

I said I was unrelated to a degree.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

lol I haven't worked there in years but I believe the actual degree I put down was psychology. I think they were just desperate to fill the position because at the time their IT dept was like 2 people

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

where can I get a used degree?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago

You can just have mine.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A cheaper school costs 120,000 for four years, a mid range school is closer to 200,000 and a T20 is around 320,000. Although the only people who pay the sticker price are usually kids whose parents are making over 110,000 a year.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

Which is a paltry salary for a family raising multiple kids and sending them to uni.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

geordi-no "Learn to code!"

geordi-yes "Learn to weld!"

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

My oldest brother ended up learning welding from a community college, it was a great career move initially. Unfortunately he immediately ended up surrounded by far-right extremists in the first job he took and became a literal neo-nazi. Like joining neo-nazi marches and posting swastikas level.

We aren't on speaking terms anymore. It obviously isn't the trade's fault (and is more on him always conforming to whatever he is surrounded by) but I have maybe a slightly visceral reaction anytime I hear welding.

Learn welding, but maybe vet your future employers too.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

The "academics are for liberals" and "trades are for conservatives" is a fucking horror that should have been erased from the world forever ago.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Just don't learn to code in community college (unless you plan to transfer to university), just self-educate if you can't afford university, and learn a different trade to make life easier. Community college coding is good experience as in skills, but school is abysmal, and you'll be learning everything on your own anyway as community college professors typically half-ass their courses and give the crappiest, contradictory, low-effort assignments and sometimes with little to no reading material, especially online. Make sure to research good practices and common pitfalls as you will not learn this in community college. Also, good luck, as you are competing with thousands and thousands of laid off tech workers. You'll be lucky to have an entry-level IT contract job with no benefits and no guarantee for future employment.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Also doesn't require school! But to be honest, as cheap as community college is, learning to weld there is a dilly of a deal. Contrast the, what, $800? spent on tuition per semester with at least double that for the same time period in welding supplies and electricity bills alone if you were learning at home. And that assumes you already have a welder.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

that's like full tuition and fees at harvard, most state schools are more like $50k for a 4 year degree

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Add on-campus housing and food plan and it's another $8-15k per year on top of that for in-state, maybe more now. And that covers the two main semesters only, summer and winter sessions have their own extra costs.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

yeah 100k wouldn't surprise me when it's all said and done, and either way it's not something 18-year-olds should be forced to go into debt to obtain and shouldn't be treated like it's a car purchase

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago

Yeah I think your numbers may be about 5-10 years out of date

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

Take out whatever you want, you'll never pay it back. Wish I did that in retrospect, I owe under 10k but I'll never pay it back, the degree was entirely useless for employment purposes.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If I ever became dictator, my first and only move before handing power over to someone more competent would be to raze all ivy league and private institutions to the ground, especially their poly sci departments.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

how could you forget econ and business, both are ground zero for hitler particles in universities.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

True, those also have to go.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

My undergrad was...I think 50k/year? At the time, I think it is closer to 70-80k/year now. My graduate degreee (which was not in the US) was like...5k/year, and that was at one of the more expensive private unis in my country.

I don't regret my time in uni, it was extremely valuable to me besides the piece of paper I got at the end (which I do not use in my current career at all anyway). The cost is absolutely ridiculous though, I was in an extremely privileged position to be able to go and would not recommend many people do the same when they could make much better career choices.

Which is depressing. Education should not need to be a luxury.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

MURICA!!!!!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

My undergrad is not that much, thank god! What undergraduate degree is 300k???? I don’t even think a masters degree is that bad where I am.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Tuition where I teach is more than my salary

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I remember talking to out-of-state students about this and being blown away by their tuition costs.

Without room and board, tuition for me came down to $3,000/semester and could be reduced by half for a year or two by doing a transfer program from a community college.

Out-of-state students were paying over $30,000/semester. It made me wonder why they came here at all. This was not a particularly prestigious college. They were paying almost double what my starting salary was at the same college per year.

This is at a public, state college in one of the less-populated states.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

My state school (CSU system) is around 20k / year. 300k sounds like a fancy shmancy private school or something. Also, depending on your income, FAFSA will also give more aid to help cover costs, some schools may also give you scholarships and stuff based on academic merit.