You read everything you possibly can and you hope that the biggest and best paying jobs that you will need an expensive education to learn will not dissolve and leave you needing further expensive education and training in another field for which you might not have the aptitude.
And your parents tell you how proud they will be of you.
So you pick a major after you have researched for months and then you find the job market has raised the bar and you have now prepared for a job which no longer exists and when you go back to get help at the campus employment network for ex-students and current grads, there is no help.
It became popular to associate college with career success and big money back in the 1920s or so. Because rich people need a finishing school so they would have the class and culture to know how to spend that money, I suppose. A typical working American in a faring or factory job did not realize that you had to have money before you could go to college, they made the fatal step to assume that just because you went to college you too would be rich and have one of those great-paying jobs just with the college diploma in and of itself... True and false.
The good jobs came from the college graduate's family connections and wealth more likely than not or through friends you managed to make while networking in those exalted social circles.
The colleges definitely profited from this belief and making education available to the masses. And as long as there were jobs, it worked.
I didn't know what I wanted to be or had any idea. I graduated from a historically underperforming high school where they had race riots —which the school authorities are now considering razing to the ground. I couldn't do math, I couldn't do science and nobody would teach me. I thought I would FINALLY learn something "in college."
I enrolled at Southwest Texas State University which was Playboy's Top Party School for several years although I didn't know it at the time and did not want to waste my time and money messing around with the stupid "social life" which was: Panty raids, streakers, stupid stunts and people drinking lots and lots of beer and other alcoholic beverages.
The particular department where I had my major was training us for our trade as practiced in the 1800s with equipment that barely held together for a job which would be totally obsolete in the 1980s. I saw it coming and I was hoping I would be able to graduate and learn the new technology on the job. I thought wrong. Other schools in other states were already training their students and there was no place for people like me.
When prospective employers found out where I had gone to school, the job interviews were no longer serious and they wanted to know about the streakers and the orgies and the dope and the beer blasts. Needless to say, I found no work there!
I graduated in 1976 and finally was made obsolete by technology in 1981 when I could not longer get a job where I needed a degree. I was considered "overqualified."
The few job offers I did get were for the hospitality industry, bartender, bar back, food, server. Bouncer, and no-tell motel clerk jobs because "we read Playboy and we know all about THAT place!" "Is it true what they say about those hot co-eds?"etc & etc.
I tried to contact the school and see if I could list my professional credentials with their employment network that helped graduates and alums find jobs but NEVER HEARD BACK FROM THEM! I always wondered why they never seemed to have the corporate recruitment fairs that other universities did and then it occurred to me that maybe they were giving the kids of the rich alums preference like the OTHER UNIVERSITY in nearby Austin, Texas.
I also could not afford to come back to San Marcos, Texas just to submit a resume that I could have just as easily mailed in. So I felt that they would NOT help me even though I tried and quit after about seven unanswered letters, it's been a while.
I was not a rich kid who needed a finishing education to help me manage my money or live a gracious life. I wanted the education that I was told would help me find a job and a middle class lifestyle supportable paycheck to go with it.
I stopped listing my degree in my resume and got minimum wage employment which almost paid my bills, considering I live very cheaply but I wondered why I had paid all that money and it didn't look like I got anything for it.
Prestige don't mean anything when you can't feed yourself or get a job, any job!
There was an implied promise that a bachelor's degree would help me to find a job after I graduated and I would have help at the university career center and have networking connections — otherwise, why bother to go to a four-year school at all?
I guess I fell for a myth that if you have a college degree you are on the fast track to make a good middle class living wage and have a job in something you can do.
I am not sure if it was because of my degree but the reaction from employers to it... Especially where it came from. It got NO respect because it came from an infamous "party school" because Playboy with its nudie centerfold said so...
I felt ripped off!
So it was no surprise to me when there was a move afoot to CHANGE THE NAME OF THE PLACE FROM SOUTHWEST TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY to TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY.
I was told it was because they were redoing the name because of their FOOTBALL PROGRAM — the only program that counts at ANY school in Texas, well, ALMOST any school that "matters"in Texas, and the name was going to be Texas State University and it was not going to be known as Southwest Texas State University anymore.
I still think they were trying to get their students a better deal and shake the party school image as part of the name change.
"The school was founded in 1899, and it opened its doors in 1903 as Southwest Texas State Normal School in order to meet a need for teachers in the southwest part of the state. Over a 100-year period, the school has gone from a teachers' college to a multipurpose university. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who graduated from the university in 1930 with a Bachelor of Science in History with a Permanent High School Teaching Certificate, is still the only U.S. President to have graduated from a Texas public university.
"The school has changed its name five times since opening:
* Southwest Texas State Normal School (19031918)
* Southwest Texas State Normal College (1918 - 1923)
* Southwest Texas State Teachers College (1923 - 1959)
* Southwest Texas State College (1959 - 1969)
* Southwest Texas State University (1969 - 2003)
* Texas State University-San Marcos (Since 2003)
"The most recent name change took effect in September. After several years of inconclusive discussion, leaders from the Associated Student Government (ASG) of Texas State convinced the Texas Legislature to pass a law changing the university's name. The new name change also brought along a re-branding as well.
I am STILL trying to find my place in the world and I FEEL that my degree was and still is absolutely worthless.
I paid my money and I took my chance and I lost. I wish I had put that money in a savings account or something instead of spent iton the B.A.
I am hoping that the students who are going to school there now will not have the "interesting " experience that I had.
I wish they would do something to help those of us who felt ripped off by the old "party school image" and were not able to get a job because of it. It would be nice if they would help me retrain for a job or help me find one.
Maybe someone from their career center will contact me since nobody responded when I contacted them. I will definitely appreciate the help and feel that my time spent there wasn't wasted after all.
When i went to college here, i did not know or want to be playing vegas odds with my life!
I know I need to do something different but I am afraid I will be just as RIPPED OFF if I go back to school somewhere else and the winds of change blow away another job I was trained to do...
I don't know what to do.
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