fuck this job.com

Advanced degrees are generally toilet paper, but they didn't have to be.

Schools have become way too greedy when it comes to dipping in the financial aid bucket. As long as they can turn away the majority of paying customers at the door, they can charge whatever they like and they know it. They'll find a way to spend it because it works like any bureaucracy with departments pitted against one another. their greatest fear is that if they don't spend every last dime they get and ask for even more money for the next fiscal year, their budget is going to get cut and the money given to somebody else. as a result, everyone turns in a budget with thousands more tacked on. they always ask for more people, more funding, more training, more raises, more books, and so forth, but the schmuck college student doesn't notice the difference because they go up to the desk and are greeted by some butt picker playing solitaire who can't be bothered to deal with them.

still, in the defense of getting an advanced degree, i'm working as an intern at an office where they recently fired an attorney who wasn't half as bad as many of the people i used to work with. the people i worked with are so bad that i'm still shocked that THIS woman was fired.

Xstate,

At least you point out that we don't have much time left... that's a relief. I feel like maxing all my credit cards and wasting away as an international scam artist on some pristine beach in Antigua.

I'll admit, I was totally suckered into a graduate degree and the loans that accompanied it. Woop-de-doo--so I have impeccable grammar, (which drives me and everyone else nuts, actually), and it only cost $50K, which I can hope to be my salary in another 2-3 years.

If only my parents had sculpted me to be a cardiovascular surgeon instead of playing up my creativity and composition skills...

f8_smyled

Guess what, half the newest billionaires in the last 30 years have something in common, they're all DROPOUTS! Look at Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Richard fucking Branson... >:( The first two did it because they knew how to exploit the market, were born to lower upper class parents, and college actually held them back. Whereas Branson was a HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT in Great Britain, usually a one-way ticket to permanent welfare in that country, but look at him now. Runs the world's coolest airline and has a music empire under one name... What do 99.9% of people with bachelor's degrees have to look forward to? JACK SHIT! You're stuck having to go into more debt to make the first degree worth it by going back for a Master's or PhD in order to not die in debt or have your kids take it on after all that new Chapter 13 bullshit turns them into indentured servants. What the hell is the point anymore?.. >:(

I don't have a degree. I have read where people with a couple degrees are making less than I do. I look at employment ads that require a degree. These are jobs that when I started working did not require degrees. I saw one place that wanted a degree for accounts payable, an entry level job I think it paid around $12.00 an hour.
If I was starting out today, I would go to a trade school, learn HVAC or plumbing or electrical and work towards my own business. That is the only way I see to be free by the time you are in your 30's. A degree isn't going to be your ticket to fortune anymore.

There are times where I think that a trade school may be better than college. Problem is that many of your trades are usually related to the real estate market and it's obvious that's taking a dive.

Electrical work involves many areas, hell even the maintenance monkeys without a license make like 25 bucks an hour in my spooge-stained mitten of a state. Just stay the hell away from carpentry and millwrighting, they're the dead-end trades. I'm about ready to ditch that asshole Local 58 for a pipe-fitting or HVAC union if it means I can make 30 grand or more a year and afford to move on with my life. I think the electrical labor committee is just using me as a statistical placeholder in their apprenticeship, yet I'm NOT FUCKING WORKING FOR ANYBODY and I'm NOT IN CLASSES! Hell, don't knock a plumber, you don't always have to get covered in shit, there's water, steam, fire-suppression, pneumatics, and hyrdraulics. Next to electricians, journeyman pipefitters make a SHITLOAD of money. As for HVAC, as long as conglomocorporatocracies build gigantic offices and their asshole yuppie employees buy 4000 sq. ft. McMansions, there will ALWAYS be somebody doing heating and air conditioning. Don't blame the Mexicans for the shit wages, the unions are actually trying to get them amnesty! Here's the logic, more naturlized skilled employees= union dues at living wages= more campaign money = more lobbyists to counter the anti-labor mother-fuckers that have been running the monkey farm for 30 years. We're at the cusp of an interesting age in everything from labor to politics. At least we'll have some drama before Chindiajapan calls on our debts and we're all indentured servants in a ex-sovereign nation or turning the greater Middle East into radioactive obsidian glass. Keep it evil.