Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I just talked to a retirement guy the other day.  I'll get like 55% of my pay if I retire at the youngest age possible.  I'm going to want more than that, lol.  Do you guys know anything about an inuity or a 401 b? 

If it is offered. What you want is a sec 457 Deferred Compensation plan. It is basically a public sector equivalent to the 401k plans that are common in the private sector. There are two major differences, one good and one bad.

Good:
There is no penalty for withdrawal before a set age. Unlike a 401k where you can't withdrawal until a set age. With a 457 plan you can withdraw anytime after you leave your employment. 

Bad:
The contribution cap is the same but with a 401k your employer can contribute beyond that, with a 457 they can't. 

Your contributions reduce your taxable income when you make them.

I see two problems:

• It would encourage worthless degrees. That is already a problem. How many kids graduate with unemployable degrees? There is no reason for the people to subsidize worthless degrees.
• It is almost Robin Hood in reverse. The people who need the help the most are the ones that don't graduate not the ones that do.

Having a useless degree is better than no degree, no?  It's a magical piece of paper that gets you through the initial cut list, no?
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On your second point, I agree.  I was suggesting it in tandem with what's been said here - a de-emphasis on college-or-bust and getting HS grads into trades.  I was thinking the 'get your degree or dick around and get debt' once you've decided to go to college would decrease the number of people going to college.

Did that make sense?

Lots of good jobs out there for people with associate degrees. And those are "cheap" degrees.

Not many good jobs out there for people with useless degrees. And those are not "cheap" degrees.

Part of me thinks we need more humanity degrees.  Basic history, fact and fiction, and critical thinking have not flourished lately.

Basic history can be self-taught, rather than be taught by some clown who re-writes it.

Basic history can be self-taught, rather than be taught by some clown who re-writes it.

Heh, everything can be self taught.  But history is tough because it is difficult to track down primary sources, so most people are more or less reliant on what they are told by somebody.  People like to take advantage of that weakness in our country.  

people that borrow things from others should be taught to pay them back in a timely manner

Not really. A degree in Ancient Chinese Literature or Drama and Theater Arts will not get you through many doors.

You'd be surprised.

Many jobs don't really "require" a college degree in the sense that you use any particular skills you obtained in college, but a lot of jobs REQUIRE a college degree just to get through the first pile of resumes. 

It's a simple first cut. If you have 50 resumes on your desk, and 35 of them have a college degree and 15 don't, that's an easy way to narrow it down. It may mean that you're missing out on the best candidate for the job, but if you're a hiring manager and you pick a BAD candidate without a degree when 70% of your applicants had degrees, you'll get more scrutiny from your bosses than if you hire a bad candidate with the right credentials. As they said in the old days, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM...

I'd say this might be even more of a thing as we've moved to more online and automated hiring platforms like indeed.com. Let's say you're looking to post a job and you're in a meeting discussing requirements... How much pushback will you get for saying "well, maybe we should restrict it to those with college degrees, which will probably limit our applicant pool to the best"? None. So then you put that as a filter on the job, and you only see resumes with a college degree. 

My wife dual majored in history and cultural anthropology. She's the office manager at an internal medicine practice and has been working in medical offices since before she graduated (did so part time and summers during undergrad). 

Right now, if she was looking for a new job in the medical field, she's far enough along in her career--not to mention being a rock star at her office--that she'd have about 100 references and would get her foot in the door anywhere in Orange County in a second without relying on online applications. But if we moved to Austin and she wanted to get an office manager job and *didn't* have a degree? She might have a difficult time getting her resume noticed even if the rest of her work experience and qualifications were stellar. 

Those humanities degrees probably won't help you perform a job in any better way than having an additional 4 years of work experience from 18-22 would do so, but I think it gives you a leg up on getting a job than 4 years of work experience w/o a degree would give you.