Further Thoughts On The Big Score: Education

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A few days ago I look a look at “Big Score” mentality and leadership.  It’s time to look at Education.

Lately I’ve been contemplating the “Big Score” mentality, the idea that one’s activities lead to an enormous payoff, or one gambles on an enormous payoff, but in all cases ignoring larger, sustainable practices and results.  It’s the IPO release, the hit novel, etc.  Just take a look at politics and ask yourself how many people think their candidate will make It All Perfect Forever.  That’s the Big Score.

The Big Score is unsustainable and irrational, and economically is a form of extraction economics; it’s about drawing in enough money and resources for a financial payoff without necessarily doing anything with long-term value.

Now we may complain about people who look for the Big Score, but a very common idea about education is a form of widespread “Big Scorism” and that’s the Degree.  Or the certification.  Or the class.  The idea one thing will Change It All Forever.

I know plenty of people who got degrees, especially lately, and aren’t getting any use out of them; in fact their student debt may be erasing any value they could get out of it.  In short, the degree is not a gateway to prosperity; it’s often part of “Big Scorism.”

I am in no way blaming the students who got degrees and can’t get work; in most cases they were a victim of cultural problems.  I want to explore just what happened and where the Big Score mentality affected education.

Economics is one reason the degrees don’t pay off; the world economy crashed thanks to bad regulation and greedy people.  The Big Scorism of economics, from the money-shuffling to the house-flippers who fell for it, meant economic catastrophe.  That affected the value of degrees since the economy of the world doesn’t have as much money to invest and spend on people with, well, degrees.

The changes in the world reveal the Big Score approach in education because the many students who had prepared with what they thought would pay off now find that it doesn’t work.  There’s ways they could have been better prepared, from internships to alternate degrees, from good advice and help relocation.  Instead they weren’t prepared and many a student listened to the Big Score approach – get a degree all is well – because it’s what everyone was saying.  It didn’t pay off.

A lack of sustainable, long-term thinking has also played into the Big Score approach; how many people pursued degrees because they figured it would pay off, without knowledge of the bigger picture or the career options?  I still recall the (many times) law school was supposedly the key to a career, which isn’t quite the case.  I still can’t get over the comptuer/science decline DARPA saw a few years ago.  How many people, in fact, actually are taught or learn how the economy works?

Historical change is finally another issue.  Really, there have been times where a degree in this or that was a career guarantee, or at least a guarantee of a job right out of college.  Not the case now.

Time and again I hear people who got degrees wondering what happened.  What happened is they got sold a focus on one thing, a Big Score, and it missed long-term planning and economic reality.

Solutions-wise, I think beyond all the economic and political fixes, a focus on education needs to cover two sides.  The first side is the liberal arts to create a well-rounded person capable of learning and communicating.  The second needs to be a sustainable career focus on how a person can play a role in society (or invent their own).  Degrees, classes, etc. are just a part of this two-sided larger picture.

And we need to forget the Big Score.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

 

 

Status On My Next Book

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Well my next book – which is really more of a booklet  – is out of editing.

My plan is to take some of my past Fan To Pro columns on job searching and improve and enhance them to form a tight guide to oddities on the job search.  It’s gone pretty well, and I expect to be publishing sometime in November.

I’ve had great feedback from my pre-readers and I think it’ll be very useful for folks on the job search, especially those who want to try and get out of a rut or take their job search skills a bit farther.  I’ll probably be pricing it pretty cheaply as an e-book.  Not sure I want to do a physical book, but more on that later.

It’s a bit under 40 pages, and doing it’s been interesting:

First, I really feel the idea of using blog content as the seed for a book actually works.  I wasn’t initially sure about the idea (I mean, why not just do a reprint?), but instead it’s like the original posts are the basis for another useful form.  What works as a blog post in my ranty-coach didactic style doesn’t work as a book, and what you can do in a book and a blog differs.

Secondly, after you get feedback on a series of blog posts and/or look over your work, you can incorporate that into the based-on work, and this ads a lot of value.

Third, it’s a way to make your content accessible in a  different manner.  People don’t want to have to go back to your blog all the time, or have to find printouts, or whatever.  You can give things to people in a different useful format.

Fourth, and something I hope to explore later, if you’re producing a physical object (a book or magazine), there’s something new to leave for posterity.  Something that can be passed on, put on a shelf, gifted easily.  There’s something satisfying about that.  This may not happen with this book – but we’ll see.

So hang in there, it’ coming . . . and starting to wonder how I present these books on my sites, so suggestions welcome . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

Politics and The Psych Degree

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I got a degree in psychology back in college, looking for a science career, though I eventually went back to my first choice in computing.  Still, I don’t regret the degree at all (a psych degree is actually good as a minor or a complimentary degree for most anything), as it helps me get some great insights into human behavior.

One insight that comes to mind this holiday season is that Freud would have a field day with U.S. politics.

First, there’s the bizarre sexual issues, issues that indicate a kind of regressed or immature sexuality for so many people.  We’re actually to the point where rape being a bad thing is something people discuss as opposed to going “yeah, it’s bad.”  People are freaked out over contraception, something you think we’d be used to by now.

Secondly, there’s the daddy issues, and the press is really bad with this.  There’s the bizarre fawning over machismo which is often false machismo – and then just as soon as people show any machismo, there’s fear of angry daddy.  There’s an acceptance of adolescent posturing on war, and little thought on actual repercussions – I mean seriously, if there’s a war with Iran there will be impacts we have to cope with, whether a war is, was, or will be necessary.

Third, and related, there’s really little talk of long-term planning.  How do we get from A to B?  What of the repercussions?  What of sustainability?  What do we really want to do as opposed to say we’ll do.  Is this policy or that real long-term planning or a dodge?

Now I could have a Freudian field day with a lot of politics, but I suspect one of the big issues is that we don’t want to take a look at the pathological state of our own politics.  We don’t want to confront the immaturity, the parental issues, the regressed adolescent sexual issues, etc.  We know it’s there, but it seems we’re happier playing the games.

I’m not.  A lot of people aren’t.  Perhaps we need to get the media and politicians to catch on . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.