I have a lot of regrets about my college education.

I regret that tuition was $40,000 a year, so that my classmates were mostly rich, white kids. I regret that I am paying back thousands in student loans. I regret that my journalism program forced me to take an introductory class on reporting, even though I’d already written articles for my hometown newspaper for two years. I regret that I took two different photography classes, but haven’t snapped a single freakin’ photo since. I regret that I wasted time, money, and precious sanity on a required math class that gave me the anxiety attacks of your worst nightmares.

And most of all, I regret that I took as many gender and sexuality studies courses as I did.

Gender and sexuality studies classes ostensibly teach you to analyze the world with a critical lens, focusing on how one’s gender or sexuality impacts their life. Some classes deal with theoretical issues; others focus on literature, history or religion. Lots of gender and sexuality studies students go on to work in law, labor organizing, or social work. (“Women’s studies” is a slightly different field of study, as is “gay and lesbian studies,” but the career paths are basically the same.) The Gender & Sexuality Studies Department at New York University has been revamped since I attended from 2001 to 2005, so I can’t speak for the quality of the current education. However, my transcript from that time includes gems like the History of Prostitution, an introduction to grassroots organizing, and a class about pop culture where we talked about Eminem, O.J. Simpson, and the 1992 Watts riots.

I did learn stuff, of course: The history of prostitution class taught me about sex work, the grassroots organizing class educated me about labor abuse, and the pop culture class exposed me to the work of Anna Deavere Smith, who wrote a one-woman play about the riots. I can say it was all interesting.

But I could have benefited from more politics, history and literature classes—to learn more about the world in general, rather than one tiny little sliver of the world. There’s a difference between what I thought was “cool” to learn about at the time and what has actually proved useful in life. The lowbrow-yet-stylish topics we discussed — whether or not Eminem is sexist and racist, for example — will be out of date 10 years from now. I probably could have learned a lot about sex work and labor abuse by reading magazine and newspaper articles on the subjects. But learning more about colonialism? Globalization? The World Wars? Important books? Religion? Supreme Court decisions? That knowledge would have provided such a better foundation for me as a writer than what I think I received from gender studies classes.

Maybe this is just a case of the grass being greener elsewhere. In any case, I can’t very well go back to 2001 and change how I spent my money and my time. Today I just find myself playing catch-up, reading the great books and researching great moments in history that I should have learned in school.

Quoted:


The cold, unforgiving fist of reality craters the gut of another incompetent loon.



_MaH

I regret that tuition was $40,000 a year, so that my classmates were mostly rich, white kids.

I regret that tuition was $40,000 a year, so that my classmates were mostly rich, white kids.

Quoted:
why go into debt for an education?

Quoted:
Once again, I refer you to my niece, with her NYU BA in "Collecting and Displaying Cultural Objects" degree.  About $100,000 debt, and slinging hash in Brooklyn.

Quoted:
This reminds me when I was in the Army and got to go Central Washington University with a Army recruiter.  God it was beautiful, the recruiter was having a killing there.  About a dozen kids with those "underwater basket weaving degrees" came up to get the ball rolling on how to join the Army and have Uncle Sam pay $50,000 of student loans off.  They had come to the realization that they were never going to get a job.  My buddy and I laughed our asses off, quite a few these kids were going to have a rough time in the Army.  

It was nice gig for a few days, quite a few hotties to be seen there.  

Quoted:
why go into debt for an education?

Quoted:
I run a gender and sexuality corporation and we're hiring.  We're laying off in our Hindu Studies division though.  Been a tough year for those guys.

Quoted:
My sister is elbow-deep in debt for her degree in "Women's Studies".

Quoted:







So you can get a better paying job!



So you can... pay... more taxes... on that higher income...



And afford to pay back all that money you borrowed, to pay more in taxes...



And to pay for all those materialistic status symbols you financed out the ass for the rest of your life...



Fuck it.  You're right.  I'm gonna go beg.



_MaH



ETA:  And my post is something that the author of that article, with her illustrious college education, probably considers to be a term for a leg-humping follower of a former Governor of Alaska –– PALINDROME!

Quoted:
Degrees like that can still be useful as stepping stones to advanced degrees - provided you have an excellent GPA in the end.

Quoted:
Don't you hate it when colleges and universities force you to take classes at gun point?  

Quoted:
I tried my darndest to get into a "History of African Dance" class for an elective.  It always filled up before I could register.

Quoted:


Tyler Durden, is that you?
 

Quoted:



What annoys the crap out of me is how they market these useless degrees. Posters on the wall that say "What can you do with a ______ degree?" Then they list off a whole pile of jobs that some schmuck, at some point in time, happened to luck into, frequently after further education.
Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

Quoted:


"What do you do with a BA in English?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4GwrEuULwY

_MaH
 

Quoted:


I actually got a lot of good education out of college... I could not do my job today without that experience. It was not liberal arts. Suckers.

Quoted:


So you can get a better paying job!

So you can... pay... more taxes... on that higher income...

And afford to pay back all that money you borrowed, to pay more in taxes...

And to pay for all those materialistic status symbols you financed out the ass for the rest of your life...

Fuck it.  You're right.  I'm gonna go beg.

_MaH

ETA:  And my post is something that the author of that article, with her illustrious college education, probably considers to be a term for a leg-humping follower of a former Governor of Alaska –– PALINDROME!

Quoted:


There has to be a better way to write that statement.  You would think a journalism major could write more clearly.

Quoted:

I will not pay for a liberal arts degree for my children.



Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

Quoted:


Once again, I refer you to my niece, with her NYU BA in "Collecting and Displaying Cultural Objects" degree.  About $100,000 debt, and slinging hash in Brooklyn.

Quoted:


that's a shame––i personally like the idea of children who are actually educated, instead of merely being fed into the apprenticeship system of trade schooling.

the liberal arts:

-grammar

-rhetoric

-logic

-arithmetic

-geometry

-musical theory

-cosmology

to which is commonly added:

-literature

-history

-philosophy

-life and earth science



without a basic study of these things, one can hardly consider himself to be educated.  well-trained, perhaps, but certainly not prepared for life in the same way that...say...the founding fathers were.  

a trained person is a tool.

an educated person is his own master.

Quoted:


Wow, that is very insightful.

Would you mind telling me where you work so I could stop by. It would be nice to have a waiter that can carry on a good conversation for a change.

Quoted:
My sister is elbow-deep in debt for her degree in "Women's Studies". She very much regrets it, and is back in school to become a math teacher.