The Cynic Says……

I just got to thinking about this today, really. My girlfriend and I were sitting around eating Chinese food when she informed me that one of her friends that she met at her short stint @ the University of Tennessee had just dropped out of college as well. I dropped out after 2 semesters, my girlfriend called it quits after one semester and her friend made it through 2 semesters. All 3 of us had one thing in common: our parents seemed to want us to go to college more than we wanted to go ourselves, really. When all 3 of us came to the realization that college isn’t what we really want to do and go to tell our parents, we’re all met with the same thing…. If you drop out, I’m going to take your (insert priviledge or posession here) away from you and you have to (move out/get a job/other seemingly bad thing). It’s almost as if parents these days haven’t come to grips with the fact that a 4 year degree isn’t what it used to be. Once upon a time a four-year degree from an institution of higher learning pretty much guaranteed you “success” and a great job in your field of study. These days, just because you have an electrical engineering degree doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to be raking in 100k a year working your dream job for a large multinational corporation. You’re just as well off taking courses in a more specific field of study and getting certifications and perhaps an internship of some sort. Especially if you’re planning on getting into the IT field, a computer science degree really isn’t going to do you all that much good. Taking Cisco or Microsoft certification courses, for example, are much more likely to net you a good job and they’ll take a helluva lot less time. If you can actually tough it out and get a CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) certification, you’re pretty much guaranteed six figures yearly and a job with damn near any IT department you want. Hell, only 3% of people who go for any level of Cisco certification ever attain CCIE. Granted, it’s a lot of work but it really pays off and all the work you do is specific to your field of study as opposed to having to take courses that have absolutely nothing to do with your “major”. Granted, those going into tech fields in general are the ones that are most often better off at a vocational-type school or curriculum but it’s still contrary to the belief that many people from the older generations have. A field like nursing, yeah I can see going to a four-year university… maybe even teaching/education. However, for a large portion of us, vocational training and on-the-job training are really the way to go.

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