Does college make you a “better” person?

[65refinyellow]

I am in the trades and while we build houses we hire dozens of subcontractors and I have seen so many people with so many wildly different points of view. I love it.

It’s the most diverse group of people I have ever seen but down to the last worker who is a parent, none want their kids to go into the field.

They push their kids to college and say,

“College will make you a better person”.

Previously I have come from fields where all of us had four year degrees and never once heard this statement or goal for their offspring.

 

[blackspider57]

It might and it might not.
But LIFE will make you a more interesting person.

 

[strat_strummer]

The question would be, am I a better person?
I let everybody else make that judgment and I won't tell you yay or nay on the College.
On the serious side, it is a interesting question.

 

[65refinyellow]

Also as an observation I see that we have plenty of coffee bars and restaurants with waiters populated with college graduate workers making very little, so nobody I talk to in the trades believe college will make you any more cash.

So that argument is out.

Overall the income is about the same in this area.

We have two graduate schools who put out grads, if they’re stay here in paradise which is often the case, where grads very seldom make any living (military grad school and also foreign language school). They’re prestigious but fur instance don’t teach accounting, medicine, or dentistry like all the nearby urban colleges. You end up with grads with highly proprietary knowledge not too useful in our small town of Monterey, CA.

Still, however, the draw of tradespeople like I these days is overwhelmingly to get out of the trades in the next generation and make a better, smarter, more tolerant, and well rounded group of people that somehow college will turn them into.

 

[jdean074]

'Better' is subjective. Not like you can't be a good person without decades of a student loan.

Got to feel 'better' about it somehow I reckon! You'll be a Better person when you pay it all off there Sonny!

 

[65refinyellow]

The question would be, am I a better person?
I let everybody else make that judgment and I won't tell you yay or nay on the College.
On the serious side, it is a interesting question.

I am not against college and did many years while in high school even (2 1/2 years AP stuff), through college years, and many years after I finished as 1/3 of our junior college students are older with 4 year degrees.

Education is huge here but maybe because there’s nothing else to do here, lol.

My belief is how you are raised and your experience makes you better if you let it.

College anymore is either extended high school and often job training.

 

[AxelMorisson]

that's a blanket statement if I ever heard one. Better? Define better. For whom? By what standards? I have also met people form all walks of life- some did not have time for college but were good people and general decent guys and gals- and also I've met real academic a$$holes and a$$hats too. Far more important than formal education is .. the at-home-education... some folks don't get that at the proper time and years after, regardless if they have been through college or not, you can tell . And yes do take into account the time and place as for anything. Better for NASA work, research, academy, etc? Sure! Better- in general? Hardly. Plus skilled workforce is ,by definition.. a FORCE that does WORK so...

 

[65refinyellow]

J

'Better' is subjective. Not like you can't be a good person without decades of a student loan.

Got to feel 'better' about it somehow I reckon! You'll be a Better person when you pay it all off there Sonny!

Debt is hard but in the last few thousand years it’s been the chief innovator for invention and production.

I believe humans are naturally lazy.

Debt usually allows most to get education, housing, and create entrepreneurial enterprises, the hallmarks of our modern society.

I owe I owe so off to work we go (like the bumper sticker) and in that moment we invent agriculture, modern chemistry, and cars.

 

[duceditor]

Knowledge, including exposure to what otherwise might be considered “foreign” ideas, can make one a ‘bigger,’ if not ’better,’ person.

At one time that was what college was about. But such is really no longer so. One can favor, or not favor, what today is presented in college, but few with any depth of ‘knowing’, be it of a specific subject matter, or simply how college curriculum has changed in recent times, will mistake this for real, in-depth, learning.

A high school diploma from many of our grandparents‘ day typically demonstrated far more exposure to ideas and real, disciplined, learning than a college diploma/degree represents today.

In journals and websites directed to, and written by true scholastics, there today are regular articles, letters and personal postings about all the above. And a sad number tell of its writer feeling no reason to continue in the teaching field. (And leaving it they are, in large numbers.)

Job or career choices — college or an alternative (a trade or business startup [or purchase] — is rather a subject of its own. What looks good from outside is often quite different from what those ‘inside’ themselves experience. Just as some of us here on S-T know to be true about the music ‘biz’.

-don

 

[Diavolo]

no it doesn't. college doesn't make you a better person.
experiencing life, loss, seeking knowledge and skill, and overcoming challenges while maintaining an open mind can.

 

[Radiotech]

Originally planned to go for engineering, but my Dad said he was retiring/moving, and whatever I was going to do, I’d better do in two years tops.
I went to a tech school specifically for computer, Industrial controls, and radio communications , but eventually ended with a union electricians card… so much of what I did overlapped with the trades, it was inevitable.

Back OT.

I had to take summers off to work full time to pay for tech school, so it took me almost a year longer to finish. Those (almost) three years were the most transformative of my life, because I was paying for them myself. My parents provided a place to live, a not much else during that time (and almost retired/moved twice while I was going).

Being up and on a bus to downtown every day at 6am, then after 5 hours work, again on a train and bus to the North side (to DeVry), six hours of school, and then an hour plus (in the winter, hours) ride home to the southwest side. I did my Homework on the Bus home, and studied on my morning/noon commutes when I could. I worked a second job in the summers. I organized/planned all this because I couldn’t afford a car, much less insurance during that time.

The thrill of doing all this, having it work out, and doing it well was a feeling I couldn’t get enough of. In the summers I rode my bike to both jobs, and still found time to see my fiancé on the weekends. It was to that point the most alive I had felt in life yet.

I had friends who had similar runs in college, and those who just disappeared after their freshman year (including our class valedictorian).

The classes weren’t what made me a better person, it was the experience of organizing my life, my friends who joined the service share similar tales.

 

[eps1]

A better person. No
Better educated somewhat
To me a better person is a person with morals, character, respect,etc
I know they teach alot of different things in college today.
From what I have seen from SOME recently graduated college students those are not are not on the list.

 

[65refinyellow]

that's a blanket statement if I ever heard one. Better? Define better. For whom? By what standards? I have also met people form all walks of life- some did not have time for college but were good people and general decent guys and gals- and also I've met real academic a$$holes and a$$hats too. Far more important than formal education is .. the at-home-education... some folks don't get that at the proper time and years after, regardless if they have been through college or not, you can tell . And yes do take into account the time and place as for anything. Better for NASA work, research, academy, etc? Sure! Better- in general? Hardly. Plus skilled workforce is ,by definition.. a FORCE that does WORK so...

It is a blanket statement but I don’t want to piss off my subcontractors, lol.

It is a sentiment on the jobsite here in the trades.

Grass is greener argument?

I think a lot of it is optics.

For whatever reason society has looked down on blue collar workers and for decades after WW2, trade school was seen as some consolation prize behind the real prize of college.

High school guidance counselors made it sound like one has to achieve in life or else, God forbid, you’ll end up in the trades.

You walk into a grocery store covered with cement dust or paint and it’s interesting how people look down on you. It’s a dystopian Brave New World type of of feeling and I think deep down that’s what motivates the people in the trades to get their kids into college, even if that means no really good job because you picked the wrong major.

I knew a commercial paint contractor who was the richest guy in his neighborhood but he felt out of place in a neighborhood of white collar workers who made their living wielding a pen. He pushed his son to a PhD and his son needed more cash and ultimately returned to the family painting business. The son got tired of existing in the the asshat, backstabbing world of competing for increasingly smaller grants.

 

[Uncle Joe]

No. College will not make someone a better person. Love will make someone a better person. Doing what you love is another excellent choice that will keep a person happier than most, and theoretically a better person, as a result.

 

[SoCalJim]

College didn’t make me a better person, but coffee does.

 

[dbrian66]

That’s a great question and a very real topic in my house right now. In my opinion, no, college does not make you a better person. Only you can make you a better person.

I am a mechanic. I started turning wrenches professionally in 1988. The same year I graduated high school. My wife is also working with just a high school diploma and she does payroll for a small business. Am I rich? No. But I own my house outright and literally have 0 debt. So the trades have been good to me.

I have two sons. I have always encouraged them to go to college. Not to make them a better person, but to have more doors open to them as they find their path in life. I am paying for their college, so there is no reason they shouldn’t. My oldest is currently at UMD with a chemical engineer major. My youngest is getting ready to start high school, and if I had to guess, he will go into the trades. He is every bit as smart as his older brother, he is just a lot more hands on. A lot like me! Even though I will still keep encouraging the college path, I will be proud of him and support him regardless of which path he chooses.

Good decision and hard work will make you successful in life, regardless of your education.

 

[blackspider57]

but coffee does.

Whooo Hooo COFFEE!!!!!

 

[65refinyellow]

College could become the next bitcoin or confederate currency over the long haul where 35 percent of jobs ask for it, with likely fewer really needing it, and with 40 percent of population having them.

It’s unsustainable the amount of kids getting that education vs the actual need.

What I don’t want to see is a nation divided by education like it’s a barometer on the elite. Political parties will have pendulums swing and court the college caste every few decades as has been the case for centuries. Division is a result.

 

[Davis Sharp]

Short answer - no.

College can make you more well-read and expose you to different ways of thinking faster than if you didn't go to college. You can meet different types of people and realize that they are mostly just like you, instead of what you may have heard from other sources. But you have to take advantage of those opportunities.

College can also be stressful to the point that students' mental health suffers.

I've often wondered if Bill Gates' parents had a bumper sticker that read, "Proud Parent of a College Dropout"

 

[SoCalJim]

Bill Gates parents were well off and helped him get started. I think many of us would love that kind of start, college or no.

I had help from a rich uncle named Sam. GI Bill.