@purplepadma I did a degree in physics. Am I now a physicist? No. Am I earning a good salary? Also no. Did I study a subject I was passionate about? Also, also no.

@purplepadma As someone with a degree in Celtic Studies, I absolutely agree with you.

@purplepadma yes!! Education is not a tool to just support the economy, it is so so much more than that

@purplepadma Your son will use his education throughout his life and no job position will hinder or help that. He'll use it because he learnt stuff and that stuff is now part of him. He is composed of that knowledge. And the world should be terrifically pleased that this is what he now offers in his very being. (I work at a factory and my degree and post-grad are music based, unlike my minimum wage job, and I definitely use my education all the time, so this isn't a guess, lol)

@purplepadma Sadly, that purpose has been priced out for the vast majority of us.

@purplepadma but part of it is also to discredit fairly important academic fields -- media studies was the big one when I was a teenager. Ha ha ha imagine learning critical media literacy ho ho. Hmmmmmm.

@purplepadma Conservatives want a lot of unthinking drones, while their kids get a quality education.

@purplepadma This! A thousand times this!

@purplepadma @allenstenhaus #lifelonglearner

@purplepadma
Most of all, did he do it for himself? Yes.
Did he do it for nay-sayers and according to what other people think?
No.

@purplepadma and I bet he’s the person at work, and elsewhere, that people like to be around.

@purplepadma I wish everyone could go to university for at least one year, just for the experience. You meet new people, new cultures, are introduced to new subjects...Study anything.

@purplepadma The best advice a college dean ever gave me, when I was 18, was this: "80% of US college graduates wind up working in a field other the one they majored in. What you learn in college goes far beyond your major."

@purplepadma
Well said

@purplepadma

Very expensive vocational school! People with humanities degrees are objectively excellent employees. Creative problem solvers.

@purplepadma I think the predominant western attitude is that doing ANYTHING that doesn’t directly contribute to capitalism and/or making money is a complete waste of effort. You must make money, anything else is ultimately harmful to capitalism so therefore worse than doing nothing. Do not learn for fun, learn to work.

@purplepadma I wish I had the knowledge back when I was in college to do the same. I forced myself into a career I hated because it payed the bills(and my student loan). I wish I had taken time off instead.

@purplepadma that makes me feel a lot better about my Victorian Studies degree I took! Thanks.

@purplepadma The 8 years I wasted in business school by parental mandate were the worst mistake of my life.

@purplepadma

Not to be forgotten, Mickey Mouse did pretty good for himself too. Solid earner, world famous and with a really long career.

@purplepadma I have a degree in Theater. That's not how I ended up making a living, but it vastly enriched my life and helped me in the career I eventually landed in. #education

@purplepadma This annoys me intensely. All education is good education. Full marks to your son for doing what he wanted to do rather than spend 3 years hating what he was doing.

@purplepadma
I agree with you there. I've been to colleges at various times and have a few certifications and associate degrees but no actual 4 year degree. They could never keep me interested long enough and I've always had to work full time to support myself.

In the end I used my several education attempts and life experience to land a job with a reasonable salary. I'm not making millions but for zero degree, $70k a year plus overtime isn't bad.

@purplepadma

@purplepadma Education is important for it's own sake but unfortunately the society we live in only prioritizes what makes money and for whom... that's why they always ask what you do for a living (like a job is everything) when really education is everything.

@purplepadma I did a computing degree and have used it throughout my life.

But I also did a theology degree, because I wanted to, and that served me really well.

And I did a PhD because I wanted to stretch myself. And I did.

Education is not job training. Education is brain training, mind training.

@purplepadma I went to a vocational college as opposed to a university with the idea I'd get a Practical Education ™️ and a job, only to have the industry I was training for suffer a major crash 9 months before I finished my degree. My current career has nothing to do with anything I trained for and now I recommend strongly that kids follow their hearts rather than some sure thing idea for a future career

@purplepadma @allenstenhaus
I dunno, Mickey Mouse seems to be doing a decent job of beating DeSantis.

@purplepadma The unfortunate situation is that education is so expensive, the only way to rationalize it is for it to lead directly to a well-paying job. I agree that this harms our society in the long run. I wonder how many Steve Jobs and Albert Einsteins we lose out on because we don’t have a path for the non-conforming.

@purplepadma There is NOTHING wrong with learning for learning's sake EXCEPT for those who did that are now complaining they can't pay their college loans.

IF they find another way to pay for that education, be my guest, but I know three friends who got "useless" degrees and are bitching about the amount of money they pay to loans cos they didn't get jobs with those degrees.

You can't have both - and they all knew that.

@purplepadma My degree is in radio production. I’m a former welder who works in quality and training management.

Are those connected? Nope.

But boy did I enjoy those three years spent having fun and broadening my horizons.

@purplepadma I have a degree in probably the most useless subject out there (Religious Studies: not even theology, but mainly religious art and architecture). I ended up teaching English to refugees, where a little bit of knowledge about some Asian and African culture, history and languages came in quite handy.

@purplepadma totally agree! And I bet he made great friends in the process too

@purplepadma There are also major issues with the lack of access to education for older people who want to learn for fun. The days of evening classes at colleges are long gone. Even the OU has become more work orientated.

@purplepadma my wife works in HR. She says the rise in using software to sift resumes means getting the highest qualifications you can afford to avoid being auto-dumped before a human reviews your job application.

@purplepadma I love this take. I don't know when it happened or if it has always been like this but, did we forget the joy of learning something and seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge? It feels like every single thing we do needs to be justified by economically motivation now.

@purplepadma it's that time of year: there needs to be something to fill the time between "exams are stupidly hard because teachers are evil" end of year season and the results day "exams are much easier than they were in my day" special when the GCSE & A-level results come out.

@purplepadma @r_chirgwin I did a Bachelor of Computer Science, but every free elective I had I allocated to Philosophy. I remember my first philosophy lecturer opining in the very first course, “University is the last time in your life that you can learn simply for the sake of learning”.

@purplepadma i am surrounded by smart women with law degress and science phds who neither practice law nor wear lab coats. they're all whip-smart and critical thinkers and while that leaves me as the dumb dude in the room — fine, i accept this

@purplepadma there are specific technical institutes for people who want to spend their years learning guaranteed marketable skills. Education is and should be a separate thing though, of course, some education will come with marketable skills and some won't. But that's not the point.

@purplepadma You're right. It's not supposed to be job training, anyway. It's supposed to be about learning and learning to learning. Even the grad school degrees.

@purplepadma There's nothing wrong with it in principle, but if you don't have any practical skills, it's a very costly choice.

At least here in the USA.

I'm a professional artist and theatrical performer, and I wouldn't recommend anyone pursue a degree in the arts unless you have some real technical skills to fall back on, because this country does not give a fuck about you and will starve you if you can't fend for yourself.

@purplepadma The fault is not the students', it's businesses that won't hire anyone with less than 5 years experience.

@purplepadma Especially when there are so few people out there with degrees in ethics.

Your son isn't a capitalist predator with a certificate of excellence in predatory behavior. Reasons to be proud.

@purplepadma I did a degree in Fine Art Painting. I’m not a millionaire as a result. At the time I was pretty agnostic about that BA’s worth but looking back I’m glad I got a long stretch of time to grow and meet both different and similar people to me. The ideas and conversations I was exposed to in art school are fairly current now in wider society and culture. Fear of this kind of insight is a big factor at the heart of reactionary political antipathy to third level education.

@purplepadma I dunno. Money for that means less money to train nurses, engineers, scientists, people that contribute to society? I just dunno...

@purplepadma At least for me, lifelong education is a gift, something everyone should be able to enjoy. I don't think that there is anything wrong with education for the sake of self-interest, but what I see amongst my children's friends is the idea that a (ANY) degree means higher salary and better job prospects. This is something they're being sold by the high schools, colleges and universities and it's absolutely false.

@purplepadma my daughter dual majored in European Studies and History, almost got her Jewish studies major from a prestigious program. Her focus was fascism and the Holocaust because it interests her. She works in human research grants. Education sometimes just needs to be edifying for oneself.

@purplepadma Going to school/university purely with a view to preparing for a career is training, not education.

@purplepadma

Once upon a time, at the cusp between “Employees Are Our Greatest Assets” & “Employees Are Financial Liabilities” (thanks Harvard & Reagan, you greedy jackasses) … the corporation I worked for encouraged employees to constantly learn AND to follow their passions - even if their tuition-reimbursed education ended w/employee leaving.

They wanted employees to find their passions & strengths & do what they loved to do. Most stayed. Some became circus clowns. All good!

Weird, right?

@purplepadma that's very correct! I just hate when it gets sold to people as a path to a great paying job and they end up with huge amounts of debt and not a great paying job. The cost and mystique of advanced education is where I have an issue, and don't get me started on for-profit colleges, it can be a predatory industry but so long as the student has realistic expectations and understands the financials, education for its own sake is an incredible thing!