What are you paying for school?
jaymack
5,199 Posts
And was it fuckin worth it?Cause today I just figured out that over the next 20 years I'll be paying $63,588 for an Associates Degree in Recording that I don't even use. I make more at my job now than any shitty job reference they(the school) could give me, which has actually been about one since I graduated in december '05. Granted I had a school loan left over from when I was 18/19 and I quit cause I couldn't handle it yet. Well I went back for about four more semesters to finish, and I really wish I hadn't. I couldve got a house!WTF!?!Kids don't go to communications school. Unless you wanna lug around sound equipment for a living, and live with your parent till your 40.
Comments
A Bachelor's degree ain't shit anymore for the most part. Grad schools with high job placement rates are so damn expensive though.
Anyone here go to or is a Haas alumni? Anyone go to a top tier business school?
I'd like to pick your brain if I could... PM, thanks.
I think I'll end up paying around $16,000 for tuition for 4 years of school at UC Santa Cruz, obviously not including any of the living expenses or other business during that period. (or airfare to study in Brazil, yikes!) Still feels like a lot, I'll end up with around $7,000 in loans when I'm through. I know this is peanuts compared to what some people end up with, but it feels like a lot, especially when school is so much cheaper in other countries.
I have zero interest in going to graduate school anytime soon, if at all.
A family friend of mine went to Haas about two decades ago and was making bank doing consultant work, then left to work at Haas and settle down a bit. I've heard very good things, even if the rest of the campus hates how they run things.
I literally had zero interest in grad school too... until i sat for ten hours looking for a job I qualified for in another city in which I could earn enough to increase my standard of living. Yikes.
What do you mean by that last sentence "the rest of the campus hates how they run things"?
The Haas school has opened up some controversial programs that are open to non-students and essentially only profit the business school, not Cal as a whole. They're aimed at people in the workforce looking to up their skills. While it's essentially a good idea, its been handled poorly by the ex-Dean and angered a lot of other faculty and administrators. It wouldn't be Cal though without that kind of drama.
In no way should this impact your choice of school though. Just interesting to know.
No decision at Cal would ever be seen as effective or progressive without some group claiming to be asshurt by it.
grad school for chemistry is free and they pay you.
yep. i only paid for food and a place to live at so far. i will have to pay 750 euros for my next/last semester. it's still a good situation, but the education in germany is horrible. universities over here have NO money. i'm working on ten twelve year-old machines and they are broke all the time. it's currently impossible to learn sth practical. i need to finish my studies!!!
i'm glad though. no fees so far!
This is a rather interesting piece from the Boston Globe that any of you may find interesting if you are currently employed in a career or are considering grad school:
I've been there 11 years now, I can recall some people who came and went and were only here for the tuition benefits.
WRONG!
DAMN STRAIGHT
Somebody (i'm not gonna say Michael Moore) should do a shocking expose on the tertiary education systems of different spots around the world. Seems like in the US you pay for everything upfront but all the consumable shit (food, gas, records etc) is mad cheap whereas we get free healthcare, education etc but pay through the arse for consumables. F'rinstance, I paid $20 for Nation of Millions on cassette BITD. New vinyl here costs ~$35-40, pack of cigarettes is $12, carton of beer $35-40, Petrol is roughly $4/gallon (3 litres you imperial fucks
immediatley after under grad i ended up going to pharmacy school, again to a state school. My first two years where completely paid for, third year i had a little bit of scolarship money left but not enough to roll into the second semester. Anyways, i was paying grad tuition but still fairly cheap (like 3000 a semester). I had to take loans for cost of living (was taking 20+ credit hours a semester compared to 12 in undergrad so way less time to work), fortunatley tallahassee is stupid cheap to live in. Also needed loans for my third and fourth year of pharmacy school of tuition. My fourth year was the most expensive semester cause it was three semesters instead of two, so probably paid close to 10gs in tuition that year.
anyways, definetly worth it financially for me, made a good salary straight out of college. I look at it as an investment.
Class of 95 so yeah, that's about right. What they don't tell you though is if you do another undergraduate degree you gotta pay double uni fees. coughscamcough
It was worth it only because it was so cheap and it was also one of the best design schools on the East Coast.
That's a pretty interesting article you posted Damn. Having been in the working world for a few years now, I can't help but agree with most of it, esp. the job hopping part.
Damn boomers! Damn doctors keepin boomers alive too long! My competition has been in the workforce for 25+ years! ugh. I try to convince older coworkers to retire early all day to increase my opportunities for upward mobility
I qualified for a decent bursary during grad school that almost covered my graduate school tuition. I entered a low entry-level paying field after graduating two years ago - journalism - and still have student debt. I don't regret going though.
If I was giving advice: I'd push people to really take advantage of paid internships, spend lots of time applying to scholarships, and take work/study jobs (or whatever the local equivalent is - where I went to school this means partially government-funded jobs working on campus. These positions are specifically put aside for people on student loans.) I wish I spent much more time pursuing scholarships though. My counterparts - most from far wealthier backgrounds - knew this more than me.
I'd say our generation has more opportunity than older generations for upward mobility - as example - my brother and I are reputable professionals and my parents are barely high school grads. But our generation has been shortchanged on starting wages. So many late 20 and early 30s professionals that I know in these often-highly respectable jobs are struggling to get by. I mean, I know graduates who took on unpaid internships to work at "respectable" magazines.
Ha - true but that doesn't mean all beefs are illegitimate either. No matter what though, you can't expect the business school at BERKELEY to attract much love from the rest of campus. Will never happen.
I'm inclined to call bullshit on this. I think the chances of getting a tenured teaching job is SLIGHTLY better than surviving the Titanic (just not by much).
Also, the idea that the "glass ceiling is gone" b/c less people want to make it up there is kind of utter nonsense. It suggests that barriers to promotion are somehow gone; an idea that flies in the face of what info is out there about discrimination in the workplace.
I landed a job right before I graduated, my last semester was part time.
I think with my current salary, If I budgeted right, I could pay off all of the 17K in a year or so, but I am not going to do that.
I wish to have some fun with my money right now.
my current employer will be paying for graduate school and I should be starting part time next January.
Promotions are OK but where I work, they really do seem like an excuse for the company to work you 80 Hours a week.
Fuck that, i got a family
Hey,
To respond to your point about starting wages, I know of many finishing students who are CLUELESS about the relative aspect of job search. That is, they are so egocentric that they don't realize that getting a BA (or BS) degree alone does not guarantee success in the job market. The key is to understand the competitive nature of job search, and students who STAND OUT are going to get the great salaries and perqs. Marginal ones will have to settle for what they can get.
Another issue in job search is that applicants must DO THEIR HOMEWORK. You need to do some research to find out what the "going wage" is in your field (see the Occupational Network ONET Website, salary.com, etc.), place a value on yourself commensurate with your talents/skills, etc., and determine an acceptable wage. Failure to acquire this information could result in a substandard salary, but remember, it's not the payroll department's job to make you rich. Also, at the job offer stage, you need to negotiate. Now, the success of this process will depend on your competitiveness in the job market. If you're highly sought-after, you are more likely to negotiate successfully. It all goes back to how well you performed academically, what practical experiences you culminated while in school (e.g., internships, prior jobs, etc.), and how socially adept your are during the interview process. Great grades and experience won't make up for the fact that come across like a dickhead and people don't want to work with you. So many of my students present themselves like incompetent nimrods, chocked with poor communication and social skills. Then, they wonder why they can't find a job. At the end of the day, success in the job market depends on the extent of human capital (i.e., talent, skills, knowledge, etc.) you have built up over those 4+ years of college, and whether you can present yourself competently.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
Though many graduates - which includes most people around me - are clueless at how to enter the workforce, I imagine that last generation's entry-level workers were just as poorly prepared.
Buying a home before 35 is very difficult and out of the question for most working professionals that I know. My parents - both low wage earners - bought a home quite comfortably as recent immigrants while they were in their late 20s. Comparatively speaking today's generation makes less real wages (money after adjusting for inflation) than their parent's generation. Though knowing that won't help young graduates, those are the more realistic expectations.
There was a flurry of fair talk about this during the last few years. For others - I expect Stacks knows this - this is a WSJ story on the studies that the Brookings Institution and Pew Charitable Trusts released.