The Joys of Graduate School

Continuing the discussion from Life Update (Reunions thread?!):

It entirely depends on the school. I was paid a salary for my MSc, and I’ll be paid a larger one when I go back for my PhD. You pay tuition either way, but some programs at some schools pay you enough to cover your tuition plus (a grotesque underestimate of) your living expenses.

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Do you work through a university of tutoring company? Or is it just you finding people and soliciting yourself :smile:

It was not my intention to sound elitist at all, how does it sound that way?

To clarify: I was just speaking from experiences from where I grew up that a higher level education is either the shit, or shit. Depends on who you talk to - and this is true due to the reasons you’ve already said. It isn’t what degree you get but rather if you enjoy it and how you use it. However, it seems like a lot of what I’ve heard is that while it can be beneficial, it’s a waste of money because "even if you(r kids) do get a degree, you(they)'re still stuck coming home jobless and are forced to work entry level/minimum wage jobs. If anything I felt I was painting education in more of a negative light because of that stigma. I suppose interpretation could be lost, or I could be wrong.

I’m purely independent. I could get more hours through the universities services, but they restrict what I can charge to $15/hour. The school pays me $27 for teaching labs, so I do t see why I should get less for 1 on 1 tutoring.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were being elitist. It’s the very idea that we, as a society, have that certain (or even most) education paths are worthless. It’s a damaging idea that’s propagated by the system as much as it is held by individuals (because the system is made up of individuals).

It doesn’t hold to just “worthless” degrees, either. I went to a job fair 6 months ago or so, and every time I told people I had an astrophysics degree they kind of looked at me with shock and immediately told me that they didn’t have anything for me (well, except for the atomic energy guys; they showered me with pamphlets) . They assumed I wouldn’t be interested in anything that they had to offer. They didn’t know of what to do with me. They made certain assumptions about my skills, desires, and needs that weren’t true. I just wanted a job that paid out every two weeks. I think they thought I wanted to build space ships.

Well, remember that having a degree in your chosen field is a means of demonstrating your skills. My family treated our state university as a jobs program. Electrical engineering, software engineering, nursing and accounting. Those were our degrees and those were our professions.

If you want to walk into the world of the unwashed masses, having the standard check marks next to your name can carry you a long way. If you lack those check marks then it’s time to fall back on raw talent, personal connections and an employer with some insights into people. A clod of a boss is going to look for the check marks whether he knows you or not. A creative, insightful boss is going to be looking for a mix of talent in a bunch of people who can operate as a team. Bosses occupy a bell curve of competency just like the employees.