value of education

[sstrand@bgnet.bgsu.edu (Sharon Strand)]

Jeanne said  However, I worry daily about my daughter, who
>has an excellent liberal arts education and who has had polecat hell
>finding any sort of a decent job. She types and knows about computers too.
>And there are days when I think of the pots of money spent on that fine
>education and just want to scream that no one out there values it. 

i'm not sure my experience will have a great deal of relevance here but i'm
sticking it in anyway.  my oldest son has a degree in computer
science/management of information systems from the university of delaware
-- a supposedly job-oriented practical degree, right -- but it took him
almost a year to find soneone who valued his education and offered him a
job and it has taken him three years to reach a decent level of pay in that
job.  but he loves what he does (he's the data anlayst for the
environmental working group, a lobbying organization in washington dc) and
will probably stick with it.  my second son has a degree in english
education also from the university of delaware and was one of at least 40
applying for every job available two years ago -- no one valued him or his
education very highly.  as a result he came to live with me -- we won't go
into that, i'm still getting over it -- and will graduate from bgsu in
december with a masters in technical communication.  he'll probably have
little trouble getting a job as there is a demand for technical writers
with backgrounds in management of information systems.  my third son is
enjoying earning a very expensive liberal arts education -- which his
father is paying for -- in music and chinese studies -- according to his
brothers a most impractical pursuit --  and will likely be in school for a
very long time.  i can only hope the job market for ethnomusicologists
studying chinese percussion is good in 7 to 9 years.  would i steer them in
any different directions?  i could only try since they don't listen to
their mother very well.  but i really wouldn't try.  they have chosen to do
what seemed best for them at the time and are living with/enjoying the
consequences of their decisions.  the older two got practical soon enough,
the youngest may never get practical -- but the world needs those
impractical ones, too.  

i'm not sure the point of this -- except maybe it's a mean world out there
and i'm not sure what is valued anymore.  and not a very good place in many
ways for our kids but where else are they to go.  i have some faith in the
inherent goodness left so i'm sending mine off, maybe not well prepared,
but were we?

Sharon Strand
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH  
sstrand@bgnet.bgsu.edu