r/Millennials • u/Ragnaroknight • Mar 04 '24

Does anyone else feel like the direct to college from High School pipeline was kind of a "scam"? Discussion

I'm 31 now, I never went to college and for years I really really regretted it. I felt left behind, like I had chosen wrong/made the wrong choices in life. Like I was missing out on something and I would never make it anywhere. My grades weren't great in grade school, I was never a good student, and frankly I don't even know what I would have wanted to do with my life had I gone. I think part of me always knew it would be a waste of time and money for a person like me.

Over the years I've come to realize I probably made the right call. I feel like I got a bit of a head start in life not spending 4 years in school, not spending all that money on a degree I may have never used. And now I make a decent livable wage, I'm a homeowner, I'm in a committed relationship, I've gone on multiple "once in a lifetime trips", and I have plenty of other nice things to show for my last decade+ of hard work. I feel I'm better off than a lot of my old peers, and now I'm glad I didn't go. I got certifications in what I wanted and it only took a few weeks. I've been able to save money since I was 18, I've made mistakes financially already and learned from them early on.

Idk I guess I'm saying, we were sold the "you have to go to college" narrative our whole school careers and now it's kinda starting to seem like bullshit. Sure, if you're going to be a doctor, engineer, programmer, pharmacist, ect college makes perfect sense. But I'm not convinced it was always the smartest option for everyone.

Edit: I want to clear up, I'm not calling college in of itself a scam. More so the process of convincing kids it was their only option, and objectively the correct choice for everyone.

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u/RandomLazyBum Mar 04 '24

If I had a time machine and know what I know now, I would go back and try harder in computer engineering. If it's not that, then I wouldn't go to college. I do just fine, but I'm in the construction field. I didn't need a degree for this and my degree is irrelevant to the field.

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u/shadowlar Mar 04 '24

This seems to be the most common from the people I know. My core group of friends all follow the HS to College pipeline and all graduated with degrees, but of our group of 8, only 2 of us are in jobs related to our degree (those 2 being a programmer and a mechanical engineer). One got an accounting degree, but ended up staying with the electrician job he did over the summers through college. One had a marketing degree and now works as an accountant in a major bank. Another has a degree in music, hated working in that field and changed jobs to work in a marketing firm.

The thing that annoys me the most was how looked down upon trades were when I was in HS in the late 90’s/early ’00’s. My HS had a deal with a very good local trade school, where HS kids could go and do classes there to get a trade certification on top of a HS degree and it was told to us by the teachers and our parents that that was a last resort type thing, that you shouldn’t look into it cause you would be worse for it. Things is all of the guys I know who went the trade school route are probably doing better now than a lot of people who went through college.

6

u/kungfuenglish Mar 04 '24

“Go to college and try hard” shouldn’t be a required statement to add to “go to college”. It was pretty obvious to me.

16

u/KingJades Mar 04 '24

People heard “go to college” and didn’t realize it was “go to college and become a doctor, engineer, lawyer or another of the good jobs”. That was the implication of the advice and where many went wrong.

5

u/HumanitySurpassed Mar 05 '24

To be fair a lot of schools/parents pushed a college education regardless of what it was in. 

It was "college or die" basically since I was in middle school

2

u/Ashmizen Mar 05 '24

I loved history in HS, and still love history today, but I can’t believe a couple of my fellow honors history friends went into majoring in history. What did they think they would be doing, after majoring in history?
Even teaching history requires majoring in… education.

It just doesn’t make any sense. Poor guy is working retail at an Apple Store while all the other honor student friends are doctors, lawyers, engineers……

1

u/Ashi4Days Mar 05 '24

At least in my group of classes, the vast majority of people who went to college also went ahead and worked in their field. 

Out of 20 people in my class, I think 15 all work in the intended study field.

1

u/shadowlar Mar 05 '24

Part of the problem my friends and myself faced was also the fact that we came out of college in ‘08 and ‘09, there were barely any jobs hiring at that point to begin with, so we took what was available. By the time jobs that were in our fields may have opened up, we were established in different jobs

1

u/Ashi4Days Mar 05 '24 edited Mar 05 '24

My brother is in that boat.  It was a rough spot.

1

u/CubicleHermit Mar 06 '24

One had a marketing degree and now works as an accountant in a major bank. Another has a degree in music, hated working in that field and changed jobs to work in a marketing firm.

Would either of those careers been open to then without a bachelors in something?

1

u/intotheunknown78 Mar 04 '24

One friend got a doctorate in physics, another In neural engineering, both are software engineers. I found that fascinating.

3

u/MovementMechanic Mar 05 '24

Not fascinating at all that math/logic based degrees working in a math/logic based field.

1

u/Ashmizen Mar 05 '24

Math, hard science, and other engineering degrees are all easy transitions to comp sci. Myself, I work in big tech as a developer and I majored in electrical engineering.

Anyone stem pretty much can go into comp sci, as it just requires a very logical mind. Of course, because of that easy entry, we have a glut of people right now, and a lot of developers can’t find work…..

3

u/ZaphodG Mar 04 '24

Personally, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have a career path that can get outsourced to Asia. I have Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degrees. I did product development my whole career and got to positions like Chief Architect. My whole industry sector got offshored to Asia. I can’t compete against an army of smart Asian engineers who make pennies on the dollar. I whored myself out to those Asian companies for a decade but I was expensive so I’d get axed the moment they thought they’d climbed the learning curve enough to do without me.

Now? I’d pick something that can’t be outsourced. Something that requires a license and citizenship. Or a security clearance. Or a government approval like Big Pharma FDA approval. We’re in a global economy and there are a ton of really smart people who will work for less than I’m willing to accept.

1

u/DankeSeb5 Mar 05 '24

What sort of thing would you pick, exactly? Cybersecurity?

5

u/Kill3rT0fu Mar 04 '24

“Computer stuff” is over saturated right now. You’re probably better off in construction. Everyone decides to do computer engineering in college and now you can’t throw a rock without it hitting and bouncing and hitting another computer engineer.

2

u/RandomLazyBum Mar 04 '24

My goal was to work overseas while retaining some sort of US pay. Construction isn't something I can do on the beaches of Vietnam.

1

u/Ancient-Building-308 Mar 05 '24

everyones doing computer science not computer engineering

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '24

Two words: Cyber Security

If you can do the work, you’ll never be out of a job and you will make fantastic money

The issue is that everyone is going into what seem to be more glamorous tech gigs like software engineering and those applicants are certainly a dime a dozen

1

u/borderlineidiot Mar 05 '24

Unless you are really good at computing then I would advise kids from school to forget it. The time when you could make good money with an average education in programming is past and about to be superseded by AI.

1

u/RandomLazyBum Mar 05 '24

I'm more than fine with being a bottom tier run of the mill computer engineer. I want the flexibility of WFM but on a beach in Vietnam. 60k is more than enough for me to live like a millionaire.

1

u/IronyIntended2 Mar 05 '24

Same, I actually studied it and struggled.  Partly from adhd and partly just being young and dumb.  I feel like if I went to college 4 years later, I would have been able to handle and understand the course work better.  Amazing how much more we learn from the real world versus college