May 5, 2003

• Higher Education
  
  Why do people go to college? I went to college with a specific goal in mind. I wanted to get a degree that would help me learn the things I needed to become a good doctor.
  
  But when I went to college, I met a lot of people who had no idea what major they wanted to complete. They said they were looking for themselves, learning about new things. Then they would decide.
  
  I personally hold to the view that going to college is a very expensive way to "find oneself". Remember, each semester is approximately $3500 in tuition for a state school. That doesn't even include housing. If you go into the dorms to "have the dorm experience", that's another $6000-7000 a year. If you choose to live off-campus, a studio in Berkeley cost me $580/month.
  
  In other words. . . there are better ways to find oneself than to spend 4 years hemorrhaging money.
  
  "Oh, but I need a college degree to get a good job," you say.
  
  Hoo hoo! Did you know that in the U.S., approximately 25% of us have bachelor's degrees? Uh huh. So that means, the anthropology major who lived in the dorm room down the hall from me is now helping to stamp processors. It's good that he knows how to do that, because I wouldn't want to breathe that stuff all day. I just hope he's making enough to pay off his $60,000 in student loans, and still afford the apartment and utilities.
  
  Does it really take a degree to make it in the world?
  
  Ask Bill Gates.
  
  Ask the guy who founded J.C. Penney. He didn't finish college. Heck. He didn't even finish high school. He didn't have a business degree. He was just smart.
  
  So was the guy who founded Wal-Mart. He didn't finish high school either.
  
  The guy who founded the Marriot chain of hotels didn't finish high school either.
  
  Anyway, I'm just venting because I'm really annoyed that I wasted so much time trying to get my Ph.D. It wasn't worth it in the end. And it's not because all my high school classmates are having babies and sending me their baby pictures. It's not that I spent most of my waking hours working in a microbiology laboratory for the last 7 years. It's simply that, you reach a point where you look back and go. . . Hell. Maybe I should have gone in anthropology after all! At least, maybe then I could have been the one to develop in-the-field-PCR machines.
  
  *end rant*
  

  • 8:02 pm
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