I’ve got 2 degrees. I don’t consider them “success”. Mostly what I learned at uni was how much of an over-hyped over-valued haven of sociopaths it is. People who buy into it and mortgage themselves to get a degree I guess have paid so much they want it to mean something.

Sure for some professions there’s no way around it, but these are the minority.

Something like 9 of the 10 richest people in the US dropped out of uni, or never went.

I don’t consider degrees when hiring, I want attitude, experience, initiative, creativity and raw talent.

So it’s hard to know where to start with this post.. too many problems in it.

2)
From what I understand there are three learning styles that people favour, listening, looking and doing – boys tend to have a higher proportion of doer/active learners which means sitting around at university for three years is going to be pretty tough. Women tend to be more likely to be listening/looking learners which is much better suited to university. There is hands on stuff for some degrees but you often don’t get that much of it until after honours (geophysics, chemistry, physics, biology, marine science).

3)
My family tree is littered with male teachers but it’s only my Canadian male cousins who still teach. The biggest difference is income – in the early 80′s my cousin was earning $66k Canadian teaching intermediate level kids (roughly $100k NZ at that time). Two of his brothers also teach.

The hours make it great for female teachers too. They can work at home out of school hours, during school holidays, when they can look after their own kids.

4)
I think society sends 14-24 year old boys very mixed messages about what it means to be succesful. Being academically succesful it of less importance than being able to hold your alcohol, getting laid, being able to take a punch, having good yarns to tell about the time X was drunk. A quarter of males, 18-24 years olds say they get drunk at least once a week (from that alcohol survey again). How does that effect their academic success and ability to pay for their education?

Girls take worthless degrees while boys go into engineering. I’m sorry, all the uni grad women I know (who have, admittedly, professional jobs) have very useful degrees. And is an education or arts degree really worthless? Somehow I don’t think so. Is there a breakdown somewhere of uni degrees by gender?

Wolfram Alpha has an answer, although it doesn’t specify what year the data is from (looks like it could be back to 1996, but it’s hard to tell).

Summary: In science, engineering, law and business, females and males are roughly 1:1. In liberal arts, females to males is 2:1.

The market does decide who is worth more – university graduates, because people with degrees in software engineering and dentistry are scarcer and more valuable than people who can drive trucks.

The other thing is that if you have a university qualification you can still drive a truck if there is nothing else available. The truck driver, with nothing else available is stuffed. Always better to pay attention at school and do well.

ze market does actually pay professors a lot, sometimes.

And that they’re all males as well.

Someone should do a paper of you all.

The worlds most useless degree ever, I cant belive the taxpayer is funding these piles of shit for absolutely no return whatsoever

Unfortunately, those are harder to get, I imagine.

1. Boys drink more than girls at the uni level. Is that actually true? Not anecdotally in Wellington or Dunedin, where heaps of girls are profoundly involved in the drinking culture.

2. Girls take worthless degrees while boys go into engineering. I’m sorry, all the uni grad women I know (who have, admittedly, professional jobs) have very useful degrees. And is an education or arts degree really worthless? Somehow I don’t think so. Is there a breakdown somewhere of uni degrees by gender? Seems like an awful lot of spite is being spewed here on this particular topic. And most of the uni students I know who are male are completely lost about what they want to do – and their degree aims.

3. The schools teach girls better about the importance of academic achievement. This may be true (my own 12 year old son is an example, a boy who requires competition to succeed and is getting no signals about that apart from being put into advanced classes now and then) but are girls really learning about the importance of academic achievement (my 7 year old daughter is an example – she does “well” but isn’t competitive academically).

4. Parents can control the academic aspirations of children. Well, c’mon. Parents can value it and reward it – but if the system has no regard for achievement, how much does that matter? Especially for a normal student?

If a parent can’t recognise their child isn’t getting challenged in school to the limit of their ability and beyond, and consequently growing in confidence and power, they’re either thick or too busy or uncaring. And if they recognise it but don’t know what to do about it then refer to reason a.

Sure, the minefields have been laid by the PC Psychobabble brigade who’ve convinced the useful idiots in academia that it’s a good thing to make boys play with dolls and do other things that removes their natural aggression and competitiveness which destroys their inherent manly nature and makes them grow up as confused metrosexuals who want to preen themselves with the latest hair gel, but if a parent can’t recognise that at an early stage and deal with it by removing their sons from such anaethema then duh.

I can’t be your friend though. There can be no long-term relationships on Kiwiblog. Only casual one-thread stands. Meaningless marriages of convenience to score some petty point, or garner a few ticks of karma. It’s completely promiscuous around here.

LOL. Pathetic comment.
Women are free to think they are sexy if they want, even if they look ugly. What goes on inside their head is their own problem really.

Just paid $2000 bucks for a couple of spotty faced trainees to measure the height of my house.

It’s a scam.