80% of aspies fail out/unemployed after 4+years of college

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Space
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14 Jul 2009, 12:37 am

raisedbyignorance wrote:

So it was very unpleasant for me to get this bachelor's degree and find that it has no value. Perhaps I was making mistakes left and right in college by not preparing for the job market or by hanging on to my silly expectations that my dream of being a tv/film producer would happen in stride.

I'm pretty convinced that America right now is being set up to get as many people under poverty level as possible. That's why it's so easy these days for so many fully trained, experienced, well educated, degree holders to be out of a job.

I agree and I did the same thing... having a bachelor's degree is ok, but you need the connections, people skills etc. to get you the job and for you to succeed at it. Hence what I said in my post... take the jobs that most NTs won't.

Bataar
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14 Jul 2009, 10:23 pm

I didn't go to college right after high school. I didn't know about Asperger's back then and I was miserable in high school. I did poorly grades wise and my parents didn't want to pay for me to go to college without any kind of scholarship money or at least the belief that I would be able to succeed. Anyways, I worked various jobs for a few years and decided to go to ITT Tech. 4 years, later, I have a Bachelor's of Science degree, but computers are no longer an interest of mine so it's kind of useless.

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15 Jul 2009, 1:00 am

I'm unemployed and unemployable, but for very non-AS reasons.

Insomniac (at night) + falling asleep during the day + debilitating headaches.

I had a freaking 3.9 GPA (out of 4) in my major (Computer Science dept) in undergrad.
I got a freaking Master's degree after that.
I was successful at a full-time job in my field while finishing the Master's degree; in itself, proof that I could have had a good career.

Then, things went to hell last year.

ruennsheng
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15 Jul 2009, 5:58 am

What happened dude?

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Learning2Survive
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15 Jul 2009, 6:21 am

gsilver wrote:

Find a support group like I do. It helps you have more fun and you can help other people too. Take it one small step at a time. Being an insomniac is a plus in some computer science jobs - like the night shift at the college computer lab which is open 24 hours. Also, computer maintenance is usually down during off hours such as at 3 am at night.

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ruennsheng
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15 Jul 2009, 6:23 am

Yeah, that's why I don't see a reason why are you still unemployed with your wonderful qualifications... and habits that can lead you thrive as a IT professional...

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15 Jul 2009, 6:27 am

raisedbyignorance wrote:

My problem has never been dropping out of school. (I've never flunked a grade though technically there were a few years where I should've.) My biggest issue has always been the fact that I accomplished all the things that I've been pressured, bullied, and forced by society to do. I get through high school, get through college only to find that none of it did anything for me. Not one thing.

It's one thing to fail...it's another to suceed and find it makes no difference.

When I was in high school, we had these Hall Sweeps where people were being severly punished for being tardy. I felt that being in class on time would be my only accomplishment. In fact I freaked out and started lashing at my mom one time because she didn't get me to school on time one day. So yeah, I was too blind to realize that schools dont award that kind of s**t. They dont award you for suceeding...they only punish you for not suceeding. I find that kind of approach to be very horrible...especially when people like me have to endure much more in order to accomplish what seems easy to everyone else.

So it was very unpleasant for me to get this bachelor's degree and find that it has no value. Perhaps I was making mistakes left and right in college by not preparing for the job market or by hanging on to my silly expectations that my dream of being a tv/film producer would happen in stride.

I'm pretty convinced that America right now is being set up to get as many people under poverty level as possible. That's why it's so easy these days for so many fully trained, experienced, well educated, degree holders to be out of a job.

oh how i wish i did not go to college.. it's so unfair to FORCE high school kids to be shackled with debt when they are only 22 and shame them if they don't go to college.

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15 Jul 2009, 6:48 am

Learning2Survive wrote:

oh how i wish i did not go to college.. it's so unfair to FORCE high school kids to be shackled with debt when they are only 22 and shame them if they don't go to college.

I wholeheartedly agree.

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15 Jul 2009, 7:46 am

But how to get a job without the degree? Unless we wanna flip burgers...

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15 Jul 2009, 12:24 pm

I don't know how other's insomnia works, but mine works such that I NEED to sleep when I'm tired, which could happen at any time. Then, I seldom sleep for very long.

If I get under 8 hours of sleep (which happens all the time), I'm a complete wreck. It's really difficult.

Like last night, a rather good night all things considered. It took an hour to fall asleep, I woke up after about 4 hours, couldn't get back to sleep for another 3 or so, then slept another 2. So, that's 10 hours out of my day to get 6 hours sleep, and I'm nowhere near 100% since I'm still 2 hours behind in what I need (even ignoring that the disjointed nature of the night makes what I got be less efficient). All this, on what's a GOOD DAY for me.

Anything other than a consolidated 8 hours leads to headaches that make it incredibly difficult to function. Forget mental tasks (like WORK), even eating three meals a day or simply leaving the apartment is extremely difficult. In each of the past 2 weeks (since I've been writing this stuff down), there's been 3 days when I didn't manage to go outside at all, and one day that I was practically bed ridden due to exhaustion (and still not getting the needed sleep).

If I were working, I wouldn't even have the chance to catch up on any of the missing sleep. I'd need to operate on half the sleep I needed for the day, and I'd spend the entire day simply trying to keep awake (often failing), nevermind get any work done. That's what happened all the time at my job last year.

Does that sound like a plus?

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15 Jul 2009, 2:14 pm

ruennsheng wrote:

But how to get a job without the degree? Unless we wanna flip burgers...

That's going to change.

Job market is not going to ever pay these new graduates the money they need to make to repay their college debt. Supply vs. demand.

The new angle is that you get technical training (2 years max.) and go to work making decent money because you have the relevant JOB SKILLS they are hiring for. The average college graduate has little more than 30 semester hours of education in their major field (1 full year of classes), so the actual knowledge of a BA/BS degree is really quite limited, and more and more graduates take jobs wherever they can...often outside their field of training.

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15 Jul 2009, 5:54 pm

zer0netgain wrote:

Learning2Survive wrote:

oh how i wish i did not go to college.. it's so unfair to FORCE high school kids to be shackled with debt when they are only 22 and shame them if they don't go to college.

I wholeheartedly agree.

I wish I would have gone into a trade. I didn't go to university until age 21. I am almost 26, and am finishing my BA right now. I wish I would have gone to tech school and learned to be a welder or a pipefitter... But nooooo, I had to go to university, because I'm smarrrrrt.... by the time I realized that I hated university and thought it was useless I was already in too deep. At least I'm graduating on time...

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15 Jul 2009, 6:43 pm

This is one of the reasons I'm against more government spending to make colleges lower cost or free. Not everyone needs to or should go.

Hmmmn
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15 Jul 2009, 6:48 pm

Bataar wrote:

Not everyone needs to or should go.

That may be true but why should money be the deciding factor? How about academic merit?

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15 Jul 2009, 7:30 pm

Hmmmn wrote:

Bataar wrote:

Not everyone needs to or should go.

That may be true but why should money be the deciding factor? How about academic merit?

It shouldn't be the deciding factor. Here in Washington State, there's talk to make the state pay for all people to get a free Associate's degree from community college. They basically want to make it an extension of high school. I'm against this because I don't want the state to spend hundreds of millions of tax payer dollaers for people who have no drive to go, have no motivation to go and only go because it's "expected" or required.

There are plenty of programs in place already to help poor people who do well academically. Our current president is proof of that. All a program like that will do is inflate degrees. I think we, as a nation and society should do more to encourage trade schools and apprenticeship programs along with colleges/universities. Many people go to college who don't really belong. They have no motivation, they don't know what they want, they're not mature enough, they just want the status, etc. All they do is rack up a huge debt and many of them don't even complete it. How is this helping them?

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15 Jul 2009, 7:59 pm

Bataar wrote:

This is one of the reasons I'm against more government spending to make colleges lower cost or free. Not everyone needs to or should go.

That, or you can take the opposing angle...make college/university free for anyone so that there is never a shortage of "trained" people but if the workforce isn't absorbing them and paying great wages, at least none of them are strapped down so bad with debt that they are not contributing to the economy.

Believe it or not, every penny spent to pay down on outstanding debt is hurting the economy because it's not spent on goods and services that put people to work. Being debt-free is actually beneficial to the majority of the economy while being in debt only favors one segment of the economy.

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