Those poor souls who burn away part of their soul to complete grad school deserve all sympathy, but you shouldn’t go and get a PhD in sociology or English Lit or something else “soft” with the expectation of being immediately handed the keys to the executive washroom (unless it’s to go clean it). Those are sadly the sort of fields you pursue out of love, not to get rich.

I rode the bus the other day, the driver in conversation mentioned his MFA in music, and his wife a short bus driver the same. Stupid people for wasting time in a non-business degree. Stupid colleges for even carrying non useful education.

… immediately handed the keys to the executive washroom … in San Diego, CA.

I have a very good friend that finished her masters degree in sociology and was nearly immediately hired (with student loan forgiveness after three years) as a therapist for all manner of hoodlums (including violent sexual deviants and predators alike) because she was the only applicant for the job. Besides the nature of the job (she wouldn’t be counseling cute little rich kids whose parents were divorcing) it was in upstate NY, which – while pretty – ain’t San Diego.

Sometimes people need to to temper their expectations regarding job location a bit. I’d love to live in Santa Cruz or San Luis Obispo, but there are no jobs in my field there that pay like they do in upstate NY.

However, all of that doesn’t change the fact that since the late 1960s we’ve systematically improved things for the wealthiest people in the US at the expense of the working and middle class (globalization, deregulation, tax cuts, financial bailouts, etc.). Heckuva job, America. Hey did you hear about Lil’ Wayne or A-Rod?

What do you call 1,000 MBA holders chained together at the bottom of the ocean?

Insufficient.

Just for the record, the lady with all of the degrees was a medical translator converting pharmaceutical information into Spanish and Italian.

Stupid foreigners should probably all learn English, particularly when it comes to medical interactions…

No, she just needs to take a lesson from a mid-20th century immigrant from Germany, and stay up to date on her language skills:

In German and English I know how to count down, and ‘I’m learning Chinese’ says Werner von Braun! [- Tom Lehrer]

“These people obviously need a tax break.” Stupid communist. Of course they don’t. The rich people in their community need a tax break, so that their wealth can magically trickle down and bless the masses. That’s why Obama’s BFF Geithner is making sure there’s no cap on the bonuses for Wall Street: he cares for the little people, who will get a fraction of that money and, thus, become wealthy by osmosis.

The currently floated argument that the bonuses can’t be cut because then we’ll miss out on the taxes they’ll (maybe) be paying on those bonuses is a contender for the most insane BS ever served up in Congress. If I insist on paying you a dollar in order to ensure that I’ll get 30 cents, then I deserve to go broke. Stupid America.

Some pretty infuriating comments here. Only thing worth doing is the collegiate/grad school equivalent of borrowing money to become a trog slave in the belly of the Big Capitalist machine?

Fuck that noise. Go discourage someone else.

Paraphrasing Rumsfeld (of all people): As you know, you go to work with the Job you have. It’s not the Job you might want or wish to have at a later time.

I too am disurbed to see people who are underemployed, but in the current environment, pragmatism is a virtue.

I hope that both women TBogg mentions find employment.

I have worked at the highest end of high tech, making the machines that make the machines, making the networks that connect the machines, and all working in tolerances measured by millionths of seconds. The absolute best engineers I’ve met along the way were graduates in “Liberal Arts” most often linguistics, but more than a few lit majors.

I look for problem solvers, for insight, and the ability to extrapolate into the future. Anyone who can follow the evolution of English from Indic roots (follow the path of the bee my son) is a heck of a lot more useful in tracking down the latency killing a network than someone who can recite the newest release schedule of Windows service patches.

And I hope some day to get big enough to employ someone like Ms Thompson in Sales. She’s pushing the toughest product in the world, herself, with nothing more than a “shoeshine and a smile”. (That’s for the American Lit grads)

“I look for problem solvers, for insight, and the ability to extrapolate into the future.” — you’re obviously not a politician, then. They appear to prefer rancid has-beens, who can serve up little more than platitudes and vapid sound bites, able only to look of for themselves and their own kind.

Wow. What occurs to me is – how the heck did the liberal arts majors get hired? My observation has been that no one wants to so much as interview someone who doesn’t have every single credential.
I’ll spare you my stories of trying to persuade people my own skills are transferable.

And of course, the two ladies TBogg writes about are overqualified! They might quit a lower-level job because they’re bored, you know!/s

These people obviously need a tax break.

Well, maybe not those people. The tax breaks should go to people who’ll appreciate them.

Jack Kemp, for example. Tax breaks cure cancer.

Serendipity is a capricious career counselor.

I forgot to mention that I am a border line Liberal Arts major, in Urban/Economic Geography. In my senior year I filled out my classes with Structured Programming, Operating System, and Database development (working on early version of Ingres).

It was easier in the early days, but it’s still possible. I once had the receptionist transferred into my customer support department based on her people skills. Within a month she was taking engineer level calls, and ended up running the department.

I am very bitter about my liberal arts degree from Tulane.

Political Economy majors were kicking the B-school kids ass in my Economics class.

So how come they get the jobs and the golden parachute and we get the shaft because no one told us the key to getting a job is a fing business degree?

when the economy tanks *all the jobs* go away. These women, and all those other imaginary phds out there, *had* jobs, ok? They didn’t “think that they’d be given a golden key to the excutive washroom” because of their degrees. They had jobs. There weren’t better jobs out there, they took them, and now those jobs are gone. That’s as true for people who had english lit degrees and law degrees as people who had biotech degrees or engineering degrees but were replaced by Indian engineers at lower pay. There. Are.No.Jobs. You can be unemployed and undeducated, or unemployed or educated. Those are the choices of the post bush years.

aimai

sorry, that should be “you can be unemployed and uneducated, or unemployed *and* educated.”

aimai

Same was true at Oregon — the big micro/macroecon classes were the ones b-school folks were required to take, and they were much easier to ace. I think it’s that emotional intelligence/schmoozing thing, business and interaction vs. econ and analysis. [offering myself as Exhibit A]

More anecdotal evidence (and therefore rises to the level of proof, at least if you the one and only Pantload): the worst students in all my econ classes were the b school majors; the best were poly sci and sci in general. The student pres of the business club (what a wanker position) nearly burst a vein in indignation during the unit on Marxism; that was fun to watch. The very act of assessing an economic system other than capitalism was a most grevious sin in his eyes. Free thinkers they are not.

Yeah, I’m afraid the crummy, shallow, misogynistic attitudes of the business majors/frat boys probably prejudiced me against business.
Unfortunately, in my few forays into for-profit employment that prejudice has not been much disturbed. I suspect this is why I have never advanced in such places – such as the last one. I’m not good at the stuff they rate highly, and I guess I really don’t want to be good at it.
Much of my job at the credit card company (yes, confession is good for the soul) was to not-answer questions in the politest possible way.
I was lousy at it – took me 2 years plus to sort of get the hang of it.

Still, they were willing to hire me without any “overqualified”, “why are you even looking for this kind of work?” crap at a time when I desperately needed steady work and benefits. Actually, most of my co-workers and immediate supervisors were quite nice; just the core principles of the job sucked.

JonGal, if you check back – I just re-read your first post – very interesting – I majored in foreign languages, after considering linguistics. (I love etymology and tracing word roots, even phonetics was pretty fun, but went for the regular language and lit path)

Any recommendations for tech paths/courses that might make use of that bent of mine?

TBogg, has anyone done an analysis of the “tax cuts” that larded the stimulus bill?

The only ones I’ve heard about are the “credits” for the purchase of a car or house. Hello — you need a JOB to buy a car or house!!!

WTF are these idiots thinking?

I live in Santa Cruz and have a Masters in linguistics. What’s this job thing you’re talking about?

Yeesh. The whole “English majors can’t make money” thing is so 1980’s. Speaking as one, no, I personally don’t make a lot but that’s because I’m a teacher. But friends of mine who went into advertising or, indeed, finance without a business degree did just fine, if that’s how you want to measure things. (They started out as secretaries, but advanced quickly when their bosses realized they could write, speak, and communicate much more effectively than most B-school chumps.)

Things are tough all over right now though. I really doubt having the “right” degree is all that helpful once the pink slip comes, no matter who you are.

I still believe & will rise up with fists.

As one who kept getting degrees from fancier places till I was guaranteed lifelong employment due to my total awesomeness, and who came directly out of the fanciest place onto the top to a ladder to nowhere (clueless about how to jump to the next one – my way bad, but it wasn’t covered in school, dammit!), let me just say amen!

Another post-70s benefit of this is that all those hyper-competent, un- or insufficiently-degreed women who were effectively COOs from their Secretary/Admin Assistant perches now can ascend, so offices across our great land now have org charts that actually (or at least better) reflect the company’s true dynamics.