Back in May NIA or National Inflation Association a group of austrian economist themselves released a shocking video regarding the "College Bubble"
Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZtX32sKVE&feature=channel_video_title
To summarize college tuitions/cost are skyrocketing, despite the advances in technology. With online colleges and self teaching methods, colleges/universities have to compete with such entities which should mean lower tuiton/cost rates. Also the scandalous recycling of text books in such a way that uni staffs line their pockets with money. There is also the vast amounts of debts that young men and women burden themselves with believing that a degree is a passport to a prosperous future. Essentially becoming indentured servants.
Then there are useless degrees. Such as those pesky law students whom really contribute nothing of real value and help create laws that lead to regulations. But they are also some of the bigger earners amongst majors.... Here in NYC if you attend college you should not be surprised if a class peer wants to major in of all things...... <cringe> Theatre <cringe>. Given the culture of new england, there is no need for such a major when one can just get involved with all the theatres in the area like Apollo theatre.
Now lets just toss all the garbage degrees aside to their rightful places. Where would that place science and enngineering degrees? I know that the guy whom rammed his plane into the IRS building in Texas, Andrew Joseph Stack was unable to find a job with his engineering degree.
Currently i have no debts to worry about and my primary interest are in physics and especially Robotics. Should i even bother getting a degree to get into the field of Robotics? Is it also possible that given how the free markets ALWAYS win out in the end shouldnt the free market regulate law degrees from most to least desirable and raise degrees accompaied by special science/engineering skills to most desirable as the college bubble bursts?
There is some good in NIA but I have lost much respect for them after the whole Schiff/NIA fued
My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/
Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises
peter schiff rocks. props to him for ousting a scam wrapping itself in the nobility of sound money and schiff's advice.
Eating Propaganda
What do you mean i don't care how your day was?!
I have been following NIA for years and even put up a link to the channel on my own site. After listening to Peter Schiff interview the founder and finding out that he has left and how he left. It has realy changed my mind about the organisation. The main reason I used to like the channel was the founders vlog posts where he used to document and report on the state of housing reposessions and food stamp situation and just the general impact of the economic collapse of 08. He used to visit people that had lost their homes due to devaulation etc and interview them. Was good stuff. I wonder if that guy has a new channel now?
Aiser:Currently i have no debts to worry about and my primary interest are in physics and especially Robotics. Should i even bother getting a degree to get into the field of Robotics?
I doubt the school would teach very much robotics, you would be better off buying kits and building the stuff on your own. If anything the school MIGHT have some sort of robot competition, but most likely very puny (you would learn more on your own) or not at all.
AI and Robotics from the programming perspective is "so 90s" (schools don't teach it much if they do at all, and advances haven't really happened in the subject).
The only thing the school might potentially help with is spare parts/machines, which is the biggest pain I have run into, when you just need one little specific tool which you will use once, or a drill which is just a hair bigger.
From the actual building and getting a job perspective, I have no idea. Although I doubt the potential for employment isn't too high in the first place for someone who builds robots, a business would rather just have an overall mechanic or call in a specialist to fix that given machine.
Have you bought a robot kit before?
Do you have lots of tools, or access to them (lots of different screwdrivers, spare screws, drill press, etc.)?
Are you interested in programming?
Aiser:Is it also possible that given how the free markets ALWAYS win out in the end shouldnt the free market regulate law degrees from most to least desirable and raise degrees accompaied by special science/engineering skills to most desirable as the college bubble bursts?
The market does already win out in the end by having unemployed or underemployed english/art/theater/geography/philosophy majors... doesn't change the state from spewing the propoganda/subsidies and doesn't stop this "you MUST GO TO COLLEGE" view.
But education is highly controlled by the state and defies logic... There are plenty of laws already in place to entrench the way it is. At least half your time (probably more towards two thirds) is completely wasted on classes to create a "well-rounded" student/citizen. Getting rid of whatever laws entrench that would handle most of these unmarketable majors immediately. Pretty hard to justify paying Philosophy/Geography professors at every single college when only a few kids decide to take the major.
Chances of that happening though? Zero.
Well currently the college that i attended for just 1yr did not have any courses based on robotics but instead a Robotics club. That is fine since robot building/programming will always involve some kind of team work? I know NASA does this.
Some of the drilling, screwdriving, sparescrews and other misc tools i already have. As for educational methods, i just use books that i buy or check out. I always watch the Robotics lecture playlist from Stanford University on youtube. As well as other videos.
I am interested in every aspect of robotics from the entensive math. the manufacturing, physics aspects, and programming features of Robots. I also use the 'Microsoft robotics studio book guide" as well as the MRS simulation which can be download off the website. I use this in place of kits since currently i don't have the means to buy a bunch of physical kits. Although now that i landed a decent job, i should be able to buy all the kits i need from a great website called Lynxmotion.com
Surely there must be some great career opportunits for someone who can uild and program robots? From exploring the surface of mars to building machines for retiring babyboomers much like in Japan must put some great value in these skills?
I also get what you mean being forced to attend none-marketable garbage courses such as choosing between psychology or sociology( i randommly chose sociology). Such useless courses lasted about 3 hrs and a half while being spoon-fed direct marxist propaganda from a self described marxist professor. While math and chem about 1 hr and a half.
At least half your time (probably more towards two thirds) is completely wasted on classes to create a "well-rounded" student/citizen.
Such as?
Aiser:I use this in place of kits since currently i don't have the means to buy a bunch of physical kits. Although now that i landed a decent job, i should be able to buy all the kits i need from a great website called Lynxmotion.com
Wow, good good. I had to build an AL5C... and personally it was a very frustrating process. The biggest problem I had was probably just a lack of overall tools, and not the greatest interest in Robotics.
The lack of the correct tools, and frustrating instructions (the images on their website, could they make them any smaller?) probably lead me to have a sour taste in my mouth with all thing Robotics. If you are very interested in the topic (which you seem to be), and you have lots of different tools and machines, then you probably would not be as effected by those problems as I was.
Aiser:Surely there must be some great career opportunits for someone who can uild and program robots? From exploring the surface of mars to building machines for retiring babyboomers much like in Japan must put some great value in these skills?
As I mentioned, that field is not one that really interests me, so perhaps my view on the actual jobs in the Robotics field is skewed.
Caley McKibbin:At least half your time (probably more towards two thirds) is completely wasted on classes to create a "well-rounded" student/citizen. Such as?
Just pick any GEs which you are forced to take which are not related to your field of interest (mine is Computer Science)... Psychology, Sociology, Literature, Foreign Languages, Geography, Art History, Musical Theater, Biology, etc., etc.
NIA is not a "group of Austrian economists". They are a bunch of pump and dump scammers that know how to regurgitate Schiff, Rogers, Faber, and Paul. The group was exposed at least 2 years ago.
And here's a nice one were some random host of some no-name financial show exposes Jonathan Lebed, the mastermind of NIA:
As for College Conspiracy, I have to say it was really disappointing. Having watched all the NIA documentaries more than once, I've seen how their production values have gone up, and the content has gone down. They've gotten much more focused on their strategy and are much more interested in ginning up fear rather than educating. When the videos started being released with Hyperinflation Nation, the content was basically a well-done compilation of everything Schiff and all the others listed above say. It was more just a nice promotion piece for them. In fact, all four of those men were named specifically and their pictures flashed on the screen as being "good men, warning about the coming crisis".
As the focus of generating fear became more dialed in, NIA got farther and farther away from this education approach, and more into a "be very afraid" approach, with films like End of Liberty...and even Dollar Bubble before that, showed signs of movement in that direction. That was actually the transition film. It was the last one that had any significant resemblance to the first two films in terms of quality content and education focus.
Of course, even with this latest film there is some good info...but the whole thing is tainted with enough pure propaganda that is nothing but embellishment at best, and outright lies at worst, simply to invoke fear in viewers. At the very least it's a total missed opportunity. (Much like Michael Covel's film). But then again, unlike Covel, I don't exactly believe the motive of NIA was to educate people in the first place. Half the "info" presented in the film is hearsay and anecdotes from nameless "NIA members" about how terrible things are for them. If I had a gram of gold for every time I heard: "One NIA member...." I'd be set for actual hyperinflation.
The film is peppered with little comments like "Goldman Sachs has never created one dime of wealth for our country" and similar nonsense. It claims "the only way for a country to produce real wealth is by farmers growing food, miners mining for gold, silver and other precious metals, drillers drilling for oil, natural gas and other commodities, and manufacturers manufacturing real goods that can be exported to the rest of the world." And while there is a lot of truth to that, it comes right before a barrage of implications and outright lies, like the previous statement about Goldman, as if there is no social function for stock speculators, insurance, futures markets, credit default swaps, and even banks. Sure there are too many people on Wall Street and in the financial sector, but that doesn't mean that GS "has never created one dime of wealth for our country." It's miseducation like this that does us no good, and actually just creates more populist syndicalists like Michael Moore.
Yes, there was plenty of blame and attention paid to the Federal Reserve and federal government, but there was enough pure propaganda and misinformation to make the majority of the film useless. If someone would just take the decent parts (like the incredibly well-done intro animation) and edit them together, cutting out all the useless hearsay and fearmongering, they might actually come out with a decent 10-12 minute film. But otherwise, much like Covel's Broke: The New American Dream, and the Oscar winning Inside Job, it's an overall disappointment, and on net, a waste of time.
I have a degree in computer engineering and I've worked for the largest chip manufacturer since I graduated in 2005. I have some regrets and I'll pass them on in case you find them helpful. Bear in mind that my experiences are just anecdotal and not normative.
My first surprise was when I found out that there was a difference between a Computer Engineering degree and the "Computer Engineering Technology" degree I earned. Essentially CET means that I spent more time in the lab and less time in lectures (I didn't really know this when I signed up, I was pretty naive). The lesson here: watch out for gimmicks of all kinds. Fortunately, my degree is a real 4-year bachelor's engineering degree but employers searching for recent graduates treat it as a "less rigorous" degree, which I find rather ironic since the degree program I went through is brutal by comparison to similar programs at the other universities in the state - there is an 95% attrition rate... only 5% of freshmen who initially chose the CET major will graduate the program... that's worse than the Navy Seals BUD/S school which manages to graduate 20% of entrants. But the fact is that nobody cares how hard you worked in school, they just care about the grade (bachelor's, master's, etc.) and the brand-name value of the school.
Student loans are a real nag that just keeps hanging on and on and on. It's been 6 years since I graduated and I've got well over half of my original student loans still hanging around my neck. Of course, this is partly a result of other issues in my life (divorce) which have made me cash-poor for the last few years so I'm not in a position to shake the student loans once and for all. If you're going to self-sponsor, you will never be able to pay your way through school, earning as you go. However, if you are disciplined, get all the Federal "grants" and take on only the bare minimum student loans and actuall work hard (full-time school + part-time or even full-time-off-hours job), you can get through with manageably sized student loans. You will also need to shop since many schools are way over-priced.
After working for a few years, I began to realize that the people higher up than me - in terms of engineering responsibilities - mostly walked in over my head. They started out at a higher position than I did when they walked right out of school. The recruitment is done in a manner very similar to how people shop for clothes: brand names. Michigan State is good, MIT is (of course) good, Cornell good, and so on. Graduates of these schools walk right into better jobs than graduates of other schools and the chasm separating the "lower" positions from the higher positions is inexplicably un-bridgeable. Hard work, long hours, dedication, smarts, technical depth and experience, all-round usefulness as an employee all add up to a pretty small weight versus the brand-value of a big-name university.
I've come to the rather cynical opinion that part of the purpose of the degree system - at least within the orbits of the large corporations - is to prove that your parents were rich, that is, that you deserve to have your position. Of course, this is insane from the point-of-view of a profit-driven corporation which you would think would be merciless in preferring the best talent regardless of "status". However, I am also of the opinion that the whole idea of a corporation has more to do with making sure a business is not excessively profit-driven for the comfort of the powers that be. The most important reason is to ensure that businesses enforce the tax codes but I believe a side-benefit is to create cushy private-sector positions for the children of the already-wealthy to walk into. To put it too simply, the children of wealthy Democrats go to college, get a Masters and manage a government bureau... the children of wealthy Republicans also go to college, get a Masters degree but they walk into a position (probably management or some other kind of "lead" role) at a major corporation. There is definitely a synergy between the corporate world and the government.
However, despite all the games, at the end of the day, there has to be people who just get shit done. Surprisingly many of these people do come from the ranks of the entitled, but not all of them. So, whatever you may think of what I'm saying here, don't get tempted to "play the game." By "playing the game", I mean racking yourself into debt to get a degree from Brown or Duke and pretend you were born into money... then white-washing your roots when you get into your career to pretend you've been high-brow all along. I see people do this and a few even succeed but most people just get chewed up and spit out.
The school system itself has become so twisted and perverted from centuries of subsidy and meddling by the State. 250 years ago in Europe, if I wanted to be an engineer, I would have to earn some sort of university diploma but that would just be to show my future master that I am a literate - my real education would begin the day I started work as an apprentice for a real engineer. As an apprentice, I would have made no money or, at best, a pittance - despite my fancy diploma! I believe the apprentice system is far superior to what we have today. Today - at least where I work - there is no concept of apprenticeship and engineering skills are "siloed". Siloing occurs when information that would be useful to others is hidden in order to protect turf within the organization. Basically, information sharing does not occur at the company I work at. It's only through a combination of luck, carefully chosen questions, strategically self-assigned reading and other jujutsu techniques that I've managed to learn what little I have in the six years I've been working.
You are apparently fascinated by robots. If that really is your true love, I would recommend that you go to some conferences (you will probably have to pay and it might be pretty spendy up-front) and just talk to some people in the industry. Take notes, take names, take business cards and email addresses and ask for additional contacts. Then, follow up with emails and phone contacts afterwards to scope out the terrain of the robotics industry. Who are the players, and I don't mean names of corporations, I mean the names of the big-shot principal engineers with R&D budgets and the small-time startups with genuine niche markets. You can't find this information on Google and probably can't find it for free anywhere. Of course, you should start with any internet forums to bootstrap the process... how else will you find out which conference you should attend?
After doing your "recon" work, you will be in a better position to decide what sort of degree you're going to need. The path of least resistance if you had rich parents would be to go to MIT and earn a Ph.D then start working for the R&D department of a major Japanese corporation that develops robot prototypes. I'm assuming you don't have rich parents so you'll have to use a lot more cunning. Your best bet is to go to a low-cost yet stolid college which has a reputation in either the mechanical or the digital electronics/AI side or both. Talk to the faculty and find out who hires their graduates. Don't be impressed by the big-name corporations, you'll be lucky to be a low-level engineer in one of those because all the "hot-shot" jobs were already given away to the Cornell, Brown and Duke graduates. Instead, find a school that hires into lots of smaller companies. This way, you'll have more of a chance to really work on something you find interesting. This was another of my mistakes which I dearly regret... I got a (better!) offer from a smaller company and turned it down for a smaller offer from the big-name corporation because I felt it was more "stable." The other company is still around, doing great business and I'm a nobody at my "stable" job. Derp.
Finally, when you get to your first job, try to find someone who is willing to apprentice you. Nowadays, people don't think of it as apprenticing but that's really what it is. What this means is that you purposely let yourself be taken advantage of... find someone who is senior and will use all your spare time on their pet projects in order to make themselves look good. This is what you want. Don't try to stand out at first. This was my second mistake. I thought I was all that when I started. I still am. ;-) But I'm the only one who knows that and that's because I didn't do the needful and let myself be taken advantage of by a senior engineer. Don't be full of ideas. Find out what their pet project is - however lame you know it really is - and do all the leg work for them. In the process, you will have ample opportunity to learn the senior engineer's voodoo. I never got the chance to learn the black magic tips and tricks by osmosis. Instead, I was thrown in to sink or swim and I've had to teach myself to swim... a very painful process to do while you're drowning. I'm still behind my peers who started at the same time I did and had the humility to put themselves under a senior engineer. That is how apprenticeship works in the modern, corporate world. It's stupid because nobody just comes out and says what it is and I'm kind of dense that way, I pick up on those kinds of things slow-like. And now it's kind of too late because I'm experienced. Anyway, milk your greenness, find a senior engineer, do his dirty work, make him feel smart and look good to his boss. You will learn far more that way.
Clayton -
So, if I did a 3 year chem eng diploma program at a college I would be pigeon-holed into spending time on things like that and paying the tuition for it? I thought that was only university.