Posted by Rick Denney on December 18, 2003 at 18:24:10:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Teaching and reality posted by Mary Ann on December 18, 2003 at 17:00:45:
I'm going to take you on here, Mary Ann.
You say you had no expectations that your music degree would provide you with employability, but then you say that you worked as a professional musician for 15 years. Clearly, you had the idea that you were choosing a degree path that would lead you to a job, even though you also loved it, and even though you hadn't explicitly considered it. But for those expectations, you might have spent those 15 years doing something else, like working in a library, or managing a grocery store, or taking wedding photographs. None of those really require four years of classroom study (just as being a professional musician doesn't), but all are usually done better by people with college degrees, because of what they gain from a higher education.
Really, you have demonstrated my point. I don't know anybody with a college degree and the willingness to work who doesn't make a decent life for themselves. Some of them, like you, changed directions requiring new job training, but they all did so while standing on that educational foundation.
I worked with a guy many years ago who has a EE degree from the University of Texas. He worked in the same agency I did for several years, making a reasonable amount of money for a fresh graduate, as we all did. But his first love was acting. After about four years as an engineer, he quit that work and went into acting. Last I saw him, he was waiting tables. I didn't, however, detect that he was unhappy or in any way bitter about his lot in life, though he complained that it was hard to get good acting gigs.
He had approached his education as job training, choosing the topic that would make him the most employable. Again, the problem was his expectation. Had he chosen EE because he was fascinated by electrical stuff (as are most EE students), he'd likely still be doing it. Had he already been educated when he decided on that job training and career path, he might still be doing it. Ken and I aren't opposed to job training, we are opposed to expecting an undergraduate college education for 18-year-olds to be job training. Adults who go back to school after having been fully educated by whatever means (such as I did for my graduate degree) have a different expectation, and we know how to realize that expectation. That's when it is and should be job training. But it comes after the education.
Rick "who thinks hindsight is not 20/20" Denney