The Hospitality Management Anecdote
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You have died of dysentery.
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Interesting thread. I think universities are very different in Europe. They're not businesses to start with, although they're increasingly being run that way in the UK. Despite us moving ever closer to the American system, I think the concept of a university education is still that it develops character and broadens the mind. It is not job training. My degree was nothing to do with IT, but I still feel it helped me in my career. It is partly why, in the UK, we feel that a degree in History from Oxford is perfect training for being the Chancellor of the Exchequer (George Osborne).
I had no idea what career I wanted when I went to university. But I was definitely a different person when I graduated thanks to making new friends (I met my wife there), moving away from home, and just studying full-time and having the chance to read great literature (in my case the likes of Karl Marx and Adam Smith) and sit around and think and discuss things with like minded people.
That might not be the case with a degree in Hospitality Management, to be fair. But there is also the contacts you make, which probably is useful for hospitality. I'm crap at keeping in touch, mind, and have only stayed in contact with a tiny handful of people. It'll be different now with LinkedIn and Facebook. Certainly in IT, I find that getting a job is more a case of who you know not what you know, and the bigger your circle of IT contacts the more opportunities you will get.
But then university was free when I went. I might think differently now. But I'm certainly not writing them off for any career.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I think the concept of a university education is still that it develops character and broadens the mind. It is not job training. My degree was nothing to do with IT, but I still feel it helped me in my career.
And that's why I tell people who are getting a degree and want to go into IT that IT is the wrong degree field and shows a misunderstanding of the purpose of university. In the US people "always" go to college specifically to get prepared for a job but that's not how university is designed. I tell IT people that they should get business, English, history or other liberal degrees that will broaden them and not treat it as a technical training school because that is not what universities are designed or meant for. If I have to look at university training for someone, I want to see a BA in an liberal study.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Certainly in IT, I find that getting a job is more a case of who you know not what you know, and the bigger your circle of IT contacts the more opportunities you will get.
The problem there is that professors and IT students have no contacts. I hear about the "who you know" effect happening in certain "deep pockets" schools where you find investors to help you later in life. But for IT, I've never heard of anyone making contacts that would help them later. Same for hospitality. I had way more contacts in both fields during the time my counterparts were in university than they had while there.
It's never that university does "nothing", the question is, what would you have done otherwise. That's what people often miss. I had, as an example, experience with at least four hotels all in management, with lots of managers, assistant managers, regional managers, a few different companies and a couple of cities during that time and had I been interesting in hospitality could have had much, much more. The university students got no such contacts.
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Just found this very interesting video on Facebook. Worthy watch for just over 4 minutes... (grabbed the YouTube link for convenience)
Youtube Video -
If they think that $28,000 is heavy debt, they are sadly misguided.
My truck new in 2005 (2006 model) was $38,500. It's been paid for for almost four years...
Other than that one lady who stated she has a 17 yo child, these are all young people. In the past 25 years I've had two homes, car(s), heavy car repairs ($1500 and up) student loan, a few things of personal nature and a failed business.
ETA: Didn't get past 2:02min
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Great post. I always wanted to be an engineer, but somewhere around 9th grade I decided I wanted to teach guitar. I went to college for classical guitar, and have not done anything with it ever. I worked nights in the lab for a paving company until my Jr year and ended up being promoted to project engineer the summer between my Jr and Sr year. I'm not really that much better at guitar and I don't really have anything to show for it other than a piece of paper.
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@johnhooks said:
Great post. I always wanted to be an engineer, but somewhere around 9th grade I decided I wanted to teach guitar. I went to college for classical guitar....
That's what I went to college for!! I worked for a few years as a guitarist, though.
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@scottalanmiller That's awesome! I admit, I really didn't try to find one but I did have a steady job at something else. I had planned to teach, but I dropped the education part halfway through because I didn't want to deal with the politics of teaching. I just finished out with a performance major.
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@johnhooks said:
@scottalanmiller That's awesome! I admit, I really didn't try to find one but I did have a steady job at something else. I had planned to teach, but I dropped the education part halfway through because I didn't want to deal with the politics of teaching. I just finished out with a performance major.
I never wanted to teach. I only went to school for performance, not education. I got a job playing guitar for a corporation.
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@scottalanmiller That's really cool. Ha, I hope I make it to your level of expertise in IT, I've always been interested in it and finally started my own business a few years ago.
