Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
Web of links
Thanks for those who commented and did not right off start bashing the humanities. I get it the sciences are better paying ( or they use to be) but the humanities have a roll in creating well rounded and thoughtful people. If this was on reddit is would be nothing but shitting on art majors.
I get it the sciences are better paying ( or they use to be) but the humanities have a roll in creating well rounded and thoughtful people.
Plenty of people who graduate with a humanities degree make money. Sales and Marketing make tons of money. Lawyers make money. Linguists make money. PR and other Communications make money. Art and Design make money. Anyone who works for a sufficiently wealthy (and not particularly thrifty) client can make a ton of money in the humanities.
Unfortunately, the humanities majors who make the most money are often leveraging their skills for nefarious ends. Not unlike STEM in that regard.
but the humanities have a roll in creating well rounded and thoughtful people.
Definitely. I would have love do arts and humanities. But to be blunt, it would be hard to get a well paying job if one graduated with humanities degree.
Liberal arts and humanities initially started to provide well-rounded education to the privileged back then, to prepare and groom them as potential future leaders who need to be broadly knowledgeable and make well-informed and wise decision. And unfortunately that's the key word there: privileged. Education was reserved for the privileged and those who could pay. However, from what I can see, as education became more available to the public, the arts and humanities education lost its goal. Education as a whole really became a way to indoctrinate and condition children and young people on how to be obedient workers in the current capitalist system. Doing homework and projects after school, is really training for young people to bring their work to home when they finally enter the workforce.
Historically yes. I was hoping we could provide a soild education to the peasantry but here we are. I am still proud of being a poor kid who pushed himself beyond his upbringing.
The Trump administration past: just about everybody in this administration has a college degree from an ivy league university, but it's ok because we're the ruling elite. It's time we took those academic "elitists" down a peg or 2
The Trump administration present: You can wipe your ass with that degree and get a job working in a factory, like many of your parents did.
The Trump administration near future: The economy is still shit because we wrecked it, automated or outsourced everything we could, and put all our eggs into one shitty AI basket that didn't pan out. Now there are way too many people with degrees competing for the few remaining jobs, most of which don't require a degree.
Resources are becoming scarce, disease is rampant, American children are dying at an unprecedented rate, disasters can't be prepared for because we fired all the people that did that, and we keep pushing policies that increase unplanned pregnancies. In short, shit sucks but is mostly just going according to the original plan.
All the immigrants have been rounded up and trafficked to El Salvador, so, who is left to act as the scapegoat for the ruling elite?
You know why things are so bad in the very near future, America?
"It's because the educated elite were rewarded for so long for being fiscally irresponsible and went into debt over useless college degrees. Now they're taking all the American jobs, they're eating the cats and the dogs, and they are milking this once great country for all its worth."
Now there are way too many people with degrees competing for the few remaining jobs
That's honestly not the future I see going forward. The future I see is one where colleges begin to close en mass, foreign students stop coming to the US for high quality education, and educated professionals leave the country for lower cost of living and better amenities abroad.
Education, as an institution, becomes a series of high end social clubs on the high end and a bunch of debt-trap MLMs on the low end. Increasingly little is actually taught at any of these schools, and the only real purpose of the campuses is to organize upper-middle class failkids into the various regionalized ideological cults.
Meanwhile, the demand for real labor continues to decline with the falling birthrate and the enormous volume of legacy infrastructure that continues to need support. Efforts to extract labor by force, rather than by promise of higher quality of life, only result in deteriorating work quality. We become even more addicted to imports as our position as global financial hegemony melts away. And eventually, we go into the same kind of debt crisis that plagued Germany after WW1 and Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
All the immigrants have been rounded up and trafficked to El Salvador, so, who is left to act as the scapegoat for the ruling elite?
You're never going to get "all the immigrants" because we're a nation of immigrants.
The War on Immigration has better parallels with the War on Drugs. Lots of moving goalposts. Lots of propaganda as a stand in for policy. Lots of big splashy media pieces on how we're "Losing" or "Winning" in dramatic fashion.
But the economic incentives don't change. Consumer behaviors don't really change. And mostly we create a giant Make Work system for thugs to harass people of color.
College was always intended for the kids of rich folks to get cushy high paying jobs doing nothing
Honestly it took war with Russia for people to see scientists as valuable despite them underpinning basically everything in modern society
The GI Bill allowed soldiers that fought Hitler the opportunity to obtain the same level of education previously reserved for generations of the ruling class.
That was the first real instance of DEI in America, and the ruling class has been doing everything in their power to take back their exclusive club ever since by dividing and conquering.
I know people think Russia is trying to infiltrate the U.S. because the cold war never really ended, but I'm pretty sure we've been thinking about it backwards. I'm starting to believe that our elite knew they couldn't topple American democracy to regain power from within without making it too obvious, so they purchased/privatized post Soviet Russia so they wouldn't have to say the quiet parts out loud.
I know your intentions were to inform but reading that has made me hate the Heritage Foundation three times harder than I was just an hour ago, and that's been enough to make me want to bite through a broom handle
I put myself through community college, got 2 AAS degrees. I'm doing pretty good for myself. Before college, I usually worked around minimum wage and hated every single soul sucking job I had just to barely scrape by. This was early 2000s... we had real dollar menu meals and $5 footlong subs, ya'll who be out there surviving these days you're built different and you have my respect.
Anywho, if I hadn't gone to college and did something with my life, I promise you I would have ended myself. That's not hyperbole, I had 2 failed attempts before college already.
I wish people would stop demonizing college. Especially in the US, we have more and more uneducated people because you have people on the internet (mostly on video format) telling people, "Oh yeah, college was a scam, I dropped out and I make millions, and speaking of millions, this video is brought to you by....."
It saddens me to see terrible advice like this meme, implying college was a waste. Or that hundreds of people upvoted it.
And yes, I know, college is fucking expensive in the US. It was expensive when I went and we were arguing about it then and I know it's gotten worse. But we shouldn't be celebrating ignorance, we should be fighting to get our education back.
People say that because going to college is becoming exponentially expensive. It gets meaningfully worse year over year
Education is great, learning is more then half of the joy of life. The education system in our country is absolutely broken. Both these things are true
You can still come out on top in a broken system. I did. I have no regrets, no debt. But as a whole, it's just getting worse all the time
Yeah college is only a waste if you don't have a game plan for what you're doing with it. People who say it was a waste either didn't plan, didn't realize they weren't interested in what they thought, or overpaid.
I see it differently. Plenty of people do non training subjects and employers are rarely interested in that. Loads of people plan and do everything right but buy a product which is little use in the job market
I hate the idea of considering college/uni as just job training. Seriously, why can't our society just encourage people to go learn just to LEARN. Oh yea because wage slavery.
If I'm going to spend a few years of my life in full time study, I'd expect there to be a payoff in terms of future income.
Learning for the sake of learning is good fun, sure, but life is expensive.
That's exactly their point. The pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge should be encouraged. Whats considered mankind's greatest societies all encouraged the pursuit of knowledge not only for financial gain but because it's important for society as a whole
Oh, for real! I went to school for pharmacobiology/biochemistry (very affordable in my country) and it changed my outlook on life, my thought process, my ideas, my horizons, etc. Even if I don't use any of it at my current job, I don't regret it one bit. Life is too big to live it in ignorance is my motto.
The primary goal of a university is teaching the next generation of academics. That's it. The entire goal is teaching and research.
But like everything else in this society, it must become a profit-driven endeavour and if it doesn't contribute with the revenue of some company, it's not worth it.
That's a bit OTT IMO. You don't need to become an academic for knowledge of the world, the ability to digest information, and the ability to effectively communicate, to be useful. I think it's valuable just as, like, life enrichment, too. Not to mention that spending the first few years of your independent adult life around people going through that same transition has other value - socialising, shared experiences, it's not unusual to make many friends for life.
You're absolutely correct - but what you're describing is a learning institution in general, not a university. That's the fundamental issue.
Universities have a very specific purpose and it's academic. Unfortunately, our society not only shoves a bunch of commercial values in the mix, but also eliminates most of the other learning opportunities, which turned universities in this weird mix of conflicting interests and unrealistic expectations.
Is this some American usage of the word University as opposed to College that I'm too British to understand? I don't think I quite followed your second paragraph; unless you mean that a university that doesn't support genuine academia over conflicting interests is undeserving of the name, in which case I agree with that much... But I would say that as far as value goes, it should also have those same benefits I mentioned for those as attend it.
I worked at a gas station while I was in college so I could pay my rent. I remember my girlfriend at the time was in the store talking to me and some bitch was like "I wish my boyfriend worked at a gas station". She went to the same school as me but didn't know and had the nerve to treat me as less than her because she was in school. People are fucking idiots
Yeah, they are. I don't think people understand the fiscal realities of living in America, but I'll tell you one thing. I just get gas at the gas station. Maybe some sigs. No Red Bull, no Monster, I go home and make instant coffee. If this is the nation of the lowest common denominator, then I'm gonna fucking lean into it. I don't eat fast food. I don't go to the movies. I don't go to the mall. I don't do any of this Yankee shit. I constantly educate myself 24 fuckin' 7. It's the only thing that keeps me sane. Relative to what I do mostly, the library is one of my frequent places though. No Coachella for me. No Disney land. No toys like Star Wars figures. Just integrated circuits, code, and knowledge. With some mathematics that I fucking stumble the fuck through. If something breaks, I learn how to fix it. I go outside and pick the weeds before I would ever spray. I plant food. I eat that food. I grow my own weed in a legal way. I cook my own food. I am 40 years old. The world just gets worse. And I feel it's because we feed the problem. No more fucking war. Israel is committing a genocide. Religion is for Idiots. If I buy music, I have to have a hard copy and I rip it to my devices. If I cannot do this, I will sit in fucking silence staring at the wall. For I am an unmovable object. I am not perfect. I don't want to be perfect, I also don't want to be a cuck. or an insensitive idiot. But I will tell you the truth.
Sir, this is a Wendy's, and I already cucked you, sorry.
I remember working retail and having angry customers tell me to go to college and do something with my life when they didn’t get their way. Little did they know that I, like a majority of the workers there my age, were in college and just working a summer job. Some people are just dicks and my experience in retail has shown me that anyone 50+ yrs old is most likely to be an asshole for no reason. Idk why but the older generation here in the US is full of self-centered cunks.
Lead poisoning damage to their brains has made them genuine psychopaths.
I too believe this is a major reason for the downfall of society
They are probably full of regret around their younger years and just projecting their own bullshit onto others.
Here’s the thing… I remember some years back that (I think it was) Denmark had the best educated population or the most college degrees or some such, so your cashier or barista could very easily have a college degree.
The difference is that they get paid far better than retail in the US, get all the benefits of social policy, and from unionization. Vacation time, health care, maternity leave, etc. that retail positions in the US would be highly unlikely to have. I’m sure there’s some social stratification to blue collar positions vs white collar in such a country, but I’m sure it takes a lot of the sting out of it when you’re taking your two weeks vacation on the mediterranean coast.
I live in Austria, where it's not even quite as nice (well, similar benefits, but no federal minimum wage). It's deeply engrained in our culture that education doesn't have to be prep for a job. I personally know many people who pursue or have completed uni education that's completely unrelated to their like of work. Some have degrees in other areas, some don't. We have some pretty 'bad' statistics for how long People take to finish their degrees because people are, like, full time kindergarten teachers and taking 10 years to do a political science degree on the side purely because it interests them. People value education for its own sake and I love it. Unfortunately though, capitalism has this culture on the decline, and not even that long after education became open to most people.
I graduated 20 years ago with a really good mark from a really good uni and shitloads of extra curricular stuff. It was worth nothing then and I deeply regret doing it.
Yes it’s an arts degree, and yes the arts are in dire straits right now, but uhhh I at least feel fulfilled having tried to make the most of my passion— which I recognize doesn’t pay the bills, but made me feel validated and boosted my self-esteem, which I don’t think any job would’ve ever done for me nearly as much.
…so anyways, how’s that reset going, is your machine back up and running? Great. Thanks for calling tech support have a nice day.
Society prizes art above all else (its like 90% of what we remember about ancient cultures if you count stories as art) but hates artists with a passion.
Everyone had their own experience.
My degree got me into "real jobs"/career jobs. Before that I even with nearly 2 decades in IT I could barely make headway.
Getting my degree let me actually pursue my passion in environmental work.
I still hate I NEEDED to get the degree and loans and and whatever but it DID help. Also I did enjoy school. I like learning.
School was bad ass! I would go back if I could. But now I have bills to feed and kids to pay