patrick.net

Strategist says

If you must go for a worthless Liberal Arts Degree, please make sure the tax payer isn't paying for your worthless education.
I don't give a damn what year Julius Ceaser was killed. And if I did give a damn, I could just google it.

Julius Caesar is a Dead White Man™, so the current crop of students isn't learning about him at all. That's too bad, actually, because Caesar was a pivotal figure in the development of Europe. Instead, the liberal arts classes focus on women, LGBTQXYZs, and/or people with high amount of skin pigmentation, which aren't exactly indications of historical significance.

Think I'm kidding about Dead White Men? Type "American inventors" into your google search and see what pops out in the pictures at the top of the page. I get 13 across my page. 2 Dead White Men, 2 women (both with high levels of pigmentation) and 9 (yes, NINE) men with high levels of pigmentation. Check out Lonnie Johnson (listed right there with Edison and Bell); he invented the Super Soaker. I mean, how could you have a pool party without Super Soakers!

You mean in the HMH textbook, they dedicate more paragraphs to an apocryphal figure, Betsy Ross, than to the biography of George Washington?

(Seriously, we know Ross had a contract, but there's no primary sources that his daughter Betsy designed and/or created it).

HonkpilledMaster says

You mean in the HMH textbook, they dedicate more paragraphs to an apocryphal figure, Betsy Ross, than to the biography of George Washington?

(Seriously, we know Ross had a contract, but there's no primary sources that his daughter Betsy designed and/or created it).

Betsy Ross is in trouble now, too. Don't you know that that flag is racist? (At least when Trump or Trump supporters are flying it; it's OK that the Obama inauguration had two of them flying right behind him.)

d6rB says

Not so sure, all of my students are getting well-paid jobs in oil industry or commodity chemicals production.

You need to talk to members of other generations, not just the current one.

I was an infant/toddler during the oil patch bust of the early 80s.

My father and many of his former colleagues, who had related jobs in the energy sector, were scrambling nation-wide, for any place which would take 'em. That's circa the time when hi-tech took off in Massachusetts and those in the Oil Patch, who had any physics a/o computational training, were able to find entry level work in MA but were forced to carry a mortgage or two in Houston or Dallas while renting in the northeast. A lot of them left the petrochemical sector forever, as there weren't equivalent jobs in that sector, until the next oil boom of the 2000s.

I suspect that in a short while, you may start to see the same phenomena with your crop of students. This has happened before and will probably happen again.

d6rB says

Having said that, most friends of mine who went into pharma have been fired at least once by now

Even in MA, pharma which was a stalwart since the 80s, is now finally seeing its first generational wave of layoffs and offshoring. A lot of that is due to the notion that the age of a blockbluster pipeline of drugs is over and that incremental progress doesn't justify extensive headcount.

In contrast, most nurses, PAs, doctors, etc, are still employed regardless of boom/bust a/o financing cycles.

If we try to bring back Tech Schools, it will be claimed that it's RACIST to shunt minorities into Tech Schools and "prevent" them from having a Liberal Brainwashing.

Rin says

I suspect that in a short while, you may start to see the same phenomena with your crop of students. This has happened before and will probably happen again.

In '79, my birth year, my dad had job offers in Houston/Galveston, New Orleans, the Delaware Valley, and Alaska. He decided to stay in Mass while his friends moved elsewhere.

Only three years later, his friends were looking for jobs in Mass, in the new industries led by Digital Equipment Corp & Raytheon, because all of them got sacked in the Oil Patch.

Fortunately, back then unlike today, it wasn't too difficult to make a hire of a tech person, even though the background was slightly off vs today, where everything has to be an exact fit.

Rin says

I suspect that in a short while, you may start to see the same phenomena with your crop of students. This has happened before and will probably happen again.

Possible, but did not happen in last oil price crash. Also, ones working in commodity chemical synthesis did pretty well in last downturn.

d6rB says

Rin says

I suspect that in a short while, you may start to see the same phenomena with your crop of students. This has happened before and will probably happen again.

Possible, but did not happen in last oil price crash. Also, ones working in commodity chemical synthesis did pretty well in last downturn.

We're still in a low interest rate environment so the situation is not the same. Plus, understand, many of these are big companies which over hire during good times and have access to easy capital, along with defense work.

I recall the batch which graduated in the early 90s, after that Oil Patch shock, thinking that the good times returned and shortly afterwards, Dow & DuPont (along with others) started to consolidate and sack ppl, esp R&D, throughout the eastern seaboard.

anonymous says

50 years ago Americans who didn't have materialistic status would still pride themselves on having high literacy and perspectives on cultures. Dignity. Kindness. That's Heart and Soul.

50 years ago, "having high literacy and perspectives on cultures" meant knowledge and pride in the history of Western Civilization. Today, "being educated" in a liberal arts diploma mill college means being brainwashed in anti-Western and anti-civilization atavism (aka "Marxism"); how can any youth brainwashed in that have any pride of his/her own culture? It's literally an exercise in self-hate and hating all those around him/herself.

SunnyvaleCA says

Strategist says

If you must go for a worthless Liberal Arts Degree, please make sure the tax payer isn't paying for your worthless education.
I don't give a damn what year Julius Ceaser was killed. And if I did give a damn, I could just google it.

Julius Caesar is a Dead White Man™, so the current crop of students isn't learning about him at all. That's too bad, actually, because Caesar was a pivotal figure in the development of Europe. Instead, the liberal arts classes focus on women, LGBTQXYZs, and/or people with high amount of skin pigmentation, which aren't exactly indications of historical significance.

Think I'm kidding about Dead White Men? Type "American inventors" into your google search and see what pops out in the pictures at the top of the page. I get 13 across my page. 2 Dead White Men, 2 women (both with high levels of pigmentation) and 9 (yes, NINE) men with high leve...

We have liberal arts degrees, combined them with technical training in the mid nineties and have made six figures each for so long that we can't remember when we didn't. I wouldn't change a damn thing except for graduating sooner. We were working class kids, trying to get through a university program at night. Took me five and a half years.

d6rB says

Rin says

I suspect that in a short while, you may start to see the same phenomena with your crop of students. This has happened before and will probably happen again.

Possible, but did not happen in last oil price crash. Also, ones working in commodity chemical synthesis did pretty well in last downturn.

I think we're looking at one hell of a downer, courtesy of all the debt and then changes that are coming to our banking and monetary systems. If you have debt, for God's sake get rid of it or at least make sure it's pared down and you'll be in a position to service it. If it gets as bad as I'm thinking it might, we might be in a position to hold our Danville house as a rental and buy a single story in Alamo. Two story houses are awful here in summer.

The Millenials have never experienced a cyclical recession. It'll be very interesting to see which ones swim and which ones drown.

anonymous says

It's not. Welding is done by robots now.

Somebody has to set up and service the robot. There has never been a technology that got rid of the need for work.

True, new technologies tend to create more jobs than they destroy, but also require more training.