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- Anyone who is considering college minus cash is a fool ... - lwetter
- Great comments by vb above! I cannot agree more as ... - marksolarprophet
- I was offered a Pell Grant worth $3660 when I ... - vb
This winter there are 1,488 more students at Portland Community College than in the term before. Admissions are also up at other post-secondary institutions across the state — and the country. According to a recent CNN report, 75 colleges across the country have reported double-digit enrollment increases this semester. It is a fairly common belief that when the economy suffers, people go back to school. But why? To retrain for a new career? To sharpen current skills? Or just because the have nothing else to do?
Eastern Oregon University recently held a "back to school night" which was mostly attended by people who were employed, but concerned about their future, and people who were already unemployed. The common thread was that everyone was hoping for future stability. Business, health care, and education degrees topped the list of what people were interested in studying.
But of course going back to school does cost money. Abby Sewell answered a query of ours on Facebook:
Yup. I am, in fact, going back to school. Not entirely but largely because of the economy. Much like the stimulus package, we'll have to see if it does any good or just gets me in more debt.
Is the economy sending you back to school? What financial considerations did you deal with to come to that decision? Have you lost your job but found community college? Or are you using this as a time to finally go back to complete your degree? If you've recently gone back to school, what do you plan to study, and why?
GUESTS:
- Erin Martin-Serrano: Design engineer, laid-off from Hewlett-Packard
- Joe Cortright: Economist at Impresa Consulting
- Dana Haynes: Public Affairs Manager for Portland Community College
- Sharon McFarland: Director of Community Investments at WorkSystems, Inc.
Tagged as: college · pcc · recession
Photo credit: Photo credit: Darren Hester / Flickr / Creative Commons
COMMENTS: (19 total)
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If someone can't find a job, and does not want to join the armed forces, and can find a slot in college, more power to them, and kudos for making a smart choice. Colleges still haven't learned how to show students that abstract knowledge is ALWAYS eventually valuable, and they've become mills for industry and the military. Once upon a time, they were what Pirsig called "Churches of Reason."
The profession of Scholar is an honorable one, and should be encouraged. Learning new stuff on a daily basis, and passing it along after contemplation and digestion, is what our best teachers do. And we need more teachers.
Follow your bliss, though. Study according to your interests, not your career opportunities. Jobs come and go, especially now, but your life's passion belongs to you. If colleges can help you find it, and explore it, by all means enroll.
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What is the purpose of education: to train automatons to be replacable cogs in indifferent corporate engines; to help people learn who they are and how they can use their gifts to think critically and become more sensitive to the Universe's subtleties?
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While I was working for a living I had to constantly improve my skill and knowledge level just to keep my job. I know for a fact that not moving in the right direction lost me one of the best jobs I had. Now that I am disabled I want to go back to school to learn about art and photography. But the costs are prohibitive.
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After my company shut down in 2006 I went back and got my masters degree in computer engineering. I didn't expect it to help my job prospects. Hard to say if it did because this field is very depressed right now. But I learned a lot and enjoyed the experience, so it has worked out. Now if I could just find a job...
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I encourage people who are not interested in college to join a Union and start an apprenticeship to learn their chosen trade. Unions have very good education and training programs and turn out highly valuable skilled workers.
And there are many jobs in construction that women can do and make money equal to men. I have worked with women carpenters and masons and those are some of the physically harder jobs, electricians and plumbers would be easier physically and they pay very well. There are fire alarm and security system jobs, glass window, door, and wall construction and installation jobs, wallpaper hangers, painters and a lot more.
Most construction equipment like backhoes, trackhoes, bulldozers, dumptrucks, cranes, and the like are now so power assisted that they are very easy to operate and operating engineers are very well paid. And years ago I knew a woman who worked with construction explosives and made great money.
It is a great feeling to drive past a building or some other construction project and remind yourself that you helped build it. I helped build that building at the top of Mount Bachelor that houses the Summit ski lift and we hiked up that mountain every day to get to work.
Unions turn out highly skilled workers for well paid jobs that just cannot be outsourced to India, china, or anywhere else.
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Many Unions take four years to educate a person to the level of journeyman, and a great advantage is that during those years of education you are working and getting paid at each years level of training, that is, each time you reach a new level of expertise you get a raise in pay.
When you are not working you can take more classes and when you are working you take classes in evenings and or weekends.
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And in many construction jobs you get to do what I call "construction aerobics", you get paid to do exercise instead of paying for exercise classes like office workers have to do. Think of that, you get paid to be healthy!
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I have been going to school @ OSU seeking a comptuer science degree over the last 5 years and working .I have had steady work during that time. Most of the time the class i was currently taking at the time was able to directly help me at work. Also you would be hard pressed to find a computer programmer out of work even though alot of programming jobs are going over seas where a company can hire a programmer for afraction of the price you would pay some one here. I think the biggest problem is that companies that outsource thier work over seas dont pay taxes on those over seas workers. Yet when a company has an employee here they have to pay alot of taxes on them
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I am in my mid - 50s and am employed as a System Administrator for a large global systems outsourcing company. This is usually considered a young man's occupation since the technology involved is constantly changing. They prefer the young people because they tend to be more up on the current trends in technology. I have managed to hang on by always continuning to take classes. Few of them are credit classes; mostly they are just introductory classes is some new programming language (I just finished a class on the PHP language). But that is enough to allow me to keep up and remain valuable to my employers. I don't know how long I can maintain this edge as it is getting harder, but it certainly has serverd me well so far.
Essentially, I never consider my education to be complete. There is always another class I need to take.
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I commend Emily and the OPB staff for this discussion today. It is nice to see that others are concerned about employment and sustainability of life via a meaningful career. How de we connect to find school and tuition grants? As a former teacher at a university, there is a tremendous lack of information as to how to return to school for many potential students.
As I spoke on NPR’s Talk of the Nation on December 12th 2008 as the opening caller ahead of the guest (hear archives there) about the job loss dilemma in America. I mentioned that I have heard that the new Presidential Administration would like to put people to work but how do we connect with that? I spoke of losing my job, even teaching in a university recently yet my astronomy art is seen in NASA web sites but there is no work in a large community like Portland for jobs in the arts, my home town no less. Instead I arrange to do lectures about my world famous astronomy art but see no real viable income for this.
We need to see where the Presidential Administration is offering these grants for students as soon as possible, especially with the supposed trillions in a stimulus package available now.
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I went back to school, after earing 2 degrees from Lewis & Clark College in 2006, simply because I got tired of working in jobs that I felt over-qualified for (ex. office assistant). It seems that, in this generation, everyone has a bachelor's degree. A generation ago, bachelor degrees were hard to come by, so the market for jobs may not have been as competetive for new graduates. In my experience, you can't get a respectable job with a respectable salary with simply a bachelor's degree. A career requires a master's degree or better. Now I am working towards a masters in Speech Language Pathology.
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I was laid off from my job of 6 years last May. I'm 29, so I decided to return to school because I was a few credits shy of an Associate's and wanted to complete college to have a little more job security. I decided to persue a passion of mine and study Environmental Studies & Sciences, which is going to be such a growing field in the coming years.
Unfortunately, I've waited until now to try and build any sort of credit and so my student loans were pulled.. mid-term. Apparently the bank I took my loans from decided it was too risky, so what's a guy to do when a bank won't let you even go to school? There wasn't enough money from my remaining funding to pay for my class load and books, so I owe the school a tidy sum and won't be able to attend my next term until I pay it.
How could I fix this?
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One of the reasons community college enrollment is surging is because the community colleges serve all areas of preparation. They provide lower cost freshman and sophmore college classes for those who want to continue on to a four-year or graduate degree, they provide professional/technical training for those "middle skill jobs" that require more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor degree, and they provide remedial adult education for those folks who didn't earn a high school diploma but now understand how important education is to their survivablility.
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I think this is a perfect opportunity for people to go back to school and get the education and training to do something you love. Fortunately, I already planned on returning to school prior to the economic fall, so I"m currently working on my Doctoral degree in Public Health so I can follow my bliss, which is to teach in a University! If you follow your bliss, everything will work out - it's having the courage to follow your bliss is the first step! You may incur some debt with college loans, but if you leverage that with the amount you could be earning after the education, it will all balance out!
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I love the idea that people are looking at education as a lifelong mission rather than a single completable task, I just wish it was for a less stressful reason. I have a BA and have been on unemployment since I was downsized from 8 hours a day to 8 hours a week in my photo retail job last year. I'm looking to go back to school but I'd like to study sustainable issues and ways of creating or integrating these new ways of looking at our resources in current industries like construction, design and research and I am finding it very hard to find examples of jobs or classes in these new fields. How does one learn skills and get job training for a field that is only now coming into reality in an employment sense? My bliss is in the outdoors, teaching, photography and studying. I love design and organizational systems and I would truly love to help our country usher itself firmly into a new sustainable era - but how? These are big questions that only I can answer, but I think we can do better to make these new emerging jobs more visible and work on what training would be necessary to participate! Thanks for a great story!!
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I was offered a Pell Grant worth $3660 when I applied to Portland Community College in 2007 with plans to earn an Associates degree. I was unable to attend at the time, and I applied again this year hoping/expecting to be awarded some grant money, but there is nothing left! I work retail and cannot afford to get into debt by taking out school loans, especially when a college degree is no guarantee of finding a decent job. I'm in my early thirties and know plenty of smart, over-educated people my age who work menial low-paying jobs, and it's not for a lack of trying. Portland has a very competitive job market. It's next to impossible to get a coffee shop job in this town, let alone something that matches your skill set or college degree(s). There are simply too many people clamoring for the same jobs, and now that there are even less of those jobs, the outlook seems bleak. I'm hoping that the Obama administration will improve things by the creation of green jobs, more funding, etc. Also, Mayor Sam Adams wants to make Portland the most sustainable city in the country, and that should create a lot of opportunities for work, right? I'm wondering who will fill these jobs and where/how they will receive the necessary training. Are there any Portland colleges or universities that offer programs in sustainable industries? I lived in Denver before, and the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design offers a BA program in Green Design. I would love to see something like that here!
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Great comments by vb above! I cannot agree more as you touched on all of the real issues that should be working here in Oregon. The new mayor is supposed to be very intent on the local arts. If you see my comments above, we are both making the same comment here.
Why would and art major for his entire life in his home town of Portland Oregon, spending thousands of hours performing community work in art and science (this has appeared for over 8 years in the local news and abroad), spoken on NPR, exhibited here and performed many lectures about it, now at early retirement age of 54, my compelling astronomy art seen in NASA web sites but not be know by his local community? I have lectured about this art, though perhaps not enough, that local art venues have not picked it up yet. I am now categorized as an unemployed teacher astronomy teacher and/or artist that is hoping to see the new Presidential Administration say - Please come to work as an influence and inspiration for young students!"
Instead, I have to struggle to initiate lectures for schools that sometimes (most times) do not pay? How and when will this trillion dollar stimulus package work? Especially for Oregon as we seem to be the national leaders of initiation and example.
Mark Seibold - Artist - Astronomer
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Anyone who is considering college minus cash is a fool. I am learning what kind of a fool I have been. I am near graduation but if I fail one class I will have to get another loan for summer. Thing is I don't have a job. Optimissim is fine when the prospects are high and before you and there is no quick dept sand to swallow you. Start watching channel 46 and you will get a very real synopsis of the staggering level of job less rates and the fact that we are amongst the country's highest in unemployment. Tell me if you would buy a house with nothing but promises. Now tell if that doesn't apply to student loans. Don't give me the irresponsible line 'Obama will take care of it.' Wake up, Oregon he ain't the messiah!!!!
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I would be careful returning to college to improve job-related skills. I've taken several Information Technology courses that I thought would help me land a job, but employers sought verifiable current experience and minimized the value of related college work. This is especially true in Information Technology where expertise is specific and technology changes rapidly. So if I decide to return to college someday, my first priority will be to study topics that are interesting to me, then I might study topics that may boost my career. Pragmatism aside, you never know: you might meet your next friends or career opportunity while you're attending school. Learning new stuff is preferable to settling for ignorance and myopia.