I thought there was nothing special about getting a Bachelor's Degree?

[Anonymous]

A Bachelor's Degree is the modern equivalent of a high school degree, more or less.

[Anonymous]

Well, no. High school degrees rarely came with a mountain of debt. And college attendance isn't legally required.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A Bachelor's Degree is the modern equivalent of a high school degree, more or less.

I know. Therefore, people should find it difficult to become independent of their parents immediately after getting their B.S.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you need a B.S. in order to work for the Feds.

Not true. Experience will substitute for Bachelors degree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bachelor of Science in math - the world's your oyster

Bachelor of Arts in communications - you will be shucking oysters

BA in communications right here, and I'm a 6 figure marketing director, 4 years out of a state University.

That's a lot of oysters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, no. High school degrees rarely came with a mountain of debt. And college attendance isn't legally required.

You know what I meant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A Bachelor's Degree is the modern equivalent of a high school degree, more or less.

Given that only 36% of adults have a bachelor's degree, I'ma go with no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A Bachelor's Degree is the modern equivalent of a high school degree, more or less.

One earns a diploma from high school, not a degree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, no. High school degrees rarely came with a mountain of debt. And college attendance isn't legally required.

You know what I meant.

These are important differences if only because they suggest that BAs will inherently be a smaller percentage of the population than HS grads and because they mean that people have more of a choice (and more of a reason for questioning) whether they should pursue a BA.

It's also that case that BAs have certain "reserve army of the unemployed" strategies that are not available to people who didn't go to university (e.g. grad school, TfA, internships), so their difficulty finding employment may be less obvious. And if their parents have money, the degree to which recent grads are or are not self-supporting may also be less apparent. I definitely know people who are paying their kids' rent or subsidizing their kids' business ventures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A Bachelor's Degree is the modern equivalent of a high school degree, more or less.

This. My DH taught on the college level; he realized that material he was teaching was being watered down so much it was the equivalent the of material he learned in high school 30 years before. That's when he moved on to another career and stopped teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A Bachelor's Degree is the modern equivalent of a high school degree, more or less.

This. My DH taught on the college level; he realized that material he was teaching was being watered down so much it was the equivalent the of material he learned in high school 30 years before. That's when he moved on to another career and stopped teaching.

I wonder how his experience (which I'm not discounting) squares with the push for acceleration in K-12 education. We expect kids to read earlier, take Algebra earlier, and take more APs (nominally college-level courses) during HS, so how/why do they come to university knowing less? Could be different demographics (depending on where PP's DH taught), but when I taught at a top 20 U. DH and I were struck by how much better the (older) HS-educated workers he was deposing in the ArkLaTex region wrote when compared to the A/A- grads from MoCo and FCPS (and elsewhere) whose essays I was grading.