I think in this economy it has to be both, because the cost of education is rising so much faster than average salary. I'd love to go back to school but unless a decent job is going to come out of it, there's no way I can afford it.

I will add, though, that I'm also lucky that I can take advantage of programs like Coursera, and I know enough about what I don't know to use the library to my advantage.

It is so fucking cold in the building I can't think.

OMG my hands ache so badly from the ridiculous AC. I keep hiding in the non-AC pockets between theaters for as long as I can get away with.

Suzy, re: your cousin (?) going home tomorrow

there is talk of her going home tomorrow (I think that is crazycakes).

Fairly typical, these days, actually. Hubby went in one morning with chest pains, they got him into the cardiac catheterization lab to see what was going on, didn't see anything that needed dealt with, we had lunch at our favorite restaurant on the way home. Stents without complications can easily be an overnight stay.

It's a brave new world. They used to do the catheterization through the femoral artery. The last time they went through his wrist. I remember my FIL in bed for days with a sandbag on his hip holding the incision in the femoral artery closed.

We have a sort of schizophrenic perspective on education that articles like that don't help. Do we want people to study what they are passionate about or is college meant to be a jobs training program? Is college an important part of citizenship from a learning the world perspective or is it merely an investment in the work force? And if it is both, then to what extent?

Kat,

since this is my area of expertise, I have a lot to say about this matter that will go on and on and bore you all to tears and you will block me from buffista-land.

Suffice it to say that four-year college degrees (liberal arts education) confer a lot of benefits, many of which are not job training. this has become less so as many degrees become more vocational in nature, but even the vocational degrees (e.g. engineering) aspire to something more than "make this widget"

Eater had a interesting thing about culinary school the other day that sort of speaks to art school in general, I think. One thing I thought was interesting was someone saying it depends on the kind of person you are -- if you can learn under fire with people yelling at you, maybe you should just work your way up in a restaurant, but that doesn't work for everyone.

Timelies all!

It's too warm to have a cat in my lap, but here I am.

I love people to geek out over their area of expertise.

I learned most of the skills I've made a living with from working on a top-rated student newspaper at a school with no journalism courses. I considered transferring to j-school, but I talked with several newspaper editors first, and they said they're rather have reporters who could understand issues rather than ones who had only learned how to plug facts into a story.

My English major and graduate work have given me high scores in those "100 books you should read" memes.

Good news, Suzi!

Work ended on a downer when a coworker vehemently claimed that we were not a horticultural institution, and so whether my potential new boss was qualified for that part of her job (as Director of Hort) was irrelevant.

I almost cried.

Thanks, I feel unvalued and obsolete. I'll go find another job and y'all can hire contracted landscrapers. Glad to see you've caved to the unofficial mission that is not board approved. I'd like to stand my grand while I'm still here.

Suffice it to say that four-year college degrees (liberal arts education) confer a lot of benefits, many of which are not job training. this has become less so as many degrees become more vocational in nature, but even the vocational degrees (e.g. engineering) aspire to something more than "make this widget"

I'd assume that's the case. I think most of my students would benefit from college not because it increases their job chances (though it certainly does, in looking at unemployment rates of those with 4 year degrees and those without), but because there is something ineffable that matters in being an educated person.

But I'm an educator so I fall in the school-is-good camp pretty unsurprisingly.

But 100% of my students will be, if they go to college, the first person who attends college at all from their family. Demographically the education rate of the parents of my students (at least those that are self reported to the District) is less significantly less than 10 years of formal schooling. So that means most finished 8th grade and were out. Those families see education as primarily something that should relate to making money.