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For Businesses, the College Degree Is the New High School Diploma
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement for getting even the lowest-level job. Many jobs that didn't require a diploma years ago — positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters — increasingly requiring a college degree. From the point of view of business, with so many people going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less capable. 'When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out somehow,' says Suzanne Manzagol. A study by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce found that more than 2.2 million jobs that require a minimum of a bachelor's degree have been created (PDF) since the 2007 start of the recession. At the same time, jobs that require only a high school diploma have decreased by 5.8 million in that same time. 'It is a tough job market for college graduates but far worse for those without a college education,' says Anthony P. Carnevale, co-author of the report. 'At a time when more and more people are debating the value of post-secondary education, this data shows that your chances of being unemployed increase dramatically without a college degree.' Even if they are not exactly applying the knowledge they gained in their political science, finance and fashion marketing classes, young graduates say they are grateful for even the rotest of rote office work they have been given. 'It sure beats washing cars,' says Georgia State University graduate Landon Crider, 24, an in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and his company's office."
Really, does it take 4 (or is it 5 now!) years to train people to be file clerks?
'When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out somehow,'
As one professor pointed out in an econ class - the real value of a degree is the signal it sends - you are someone who at least can stick to something long enough to finish it. Simply put, it takes some of the workload off of the person looking to hire.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
What a fine way of guaranteeing every citizen massive debts (public or private) for the privilege of a job.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
...than have a massive pile of debt that I don't expect to pay off until I'm 50 and still making car washing wages.
Over qualification, if somebody is actually requiring a college degree to scan groceries (clerk), they can go shove it. Then again according to this article the people at the NY Times only have HS diplomas, so should anybody really listen to them?
Also, based on the example given, Landon Cider sounds like he went for a law degree and rather than becoming the billionth lawyer, he got stuck as the water boy.
In order to be employable, you have to get a degree, which costs a fortune, so you have to be burdened with lifelong debt!
Furthermore, since everyone needs a degree, more government loan money will be made available, which means colleges will be able to raise prices even more, which means the market will be flooded with even more people who have even more debt and hence are even more desperate for even longer.
Before too long, Americans will be as employable as foreigners!
I wouldn't use the NY Times to line a birdcage.
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
"joining The Times, Catherine wrote for the Washington Post editorial pages and financial section and for The Chronicle of Higher Education"
* The Chronicle of Higher Education
* 1255 Twenty-Third St, N.W.
* Washington, D.C. 20037
So this is basically a lobbyist for higher ed encouraging everyone to take out education loans.
No thanks.
The breakdown in parenting and education has resulted in your typical 20 year old American being a complete idiot. If you guys could stop being such idiots, we could stop using the college filter on you. Honestly, the college graduates are not a whole lot better.
Try being less dumb.
Can we mod an entire article down? How is this news for anyone?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It's a cancer. They use the idea of knowledge and education, but in reality they're just a business, out there to make money and reel in the suckers who don't know any better. Much like real estate. Why do you need university when you have libraries? Or the internet in the last few decades?
The person hiring you went to college and they have college loan debt up to their eyeballs. They would prefer to hire someone who made the same mistake of going to college as they did to justify their own career path.
Isn't de-industrialization great?
"From the point of view of business, with so many people going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less capable."
And what does it say when a person completes their college education and is satisfied getting $10/hr? Ambition and capability are defined by the job and the wages, as much as the person you hire for it. If you get a college grad to do menial labor, then one of two things are true: that person has less ambition or capability than any of his peers, or that person is going to be very unhappy working there in about a month's time or less, because they're overqualified and you'd be better off looking for someone who is a better match for the job unless you like having high rates of turnover.
I guess I'm just lucky then? I have no degree and get $20 an hour. This place isn't even the best paying company in the area either. I'll skip the indoctrination and keep earning double what these college kids get.
the real value of a degree is the signal it sends
Very true!
you are someone who at least can stick to something long enough to finish it.
That is not the message a modern degree sends.
The modern degree sends a message that you are a herd animal, to the point that you will stay with the herd even to the point of your own financial ruin.
There's no question that to some companies a docile herd animal with no instincts for self-preservation is a valuable resource. I'm just not sure I'd want to work for them given the likely expectations.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Two months ago, Hugh Pickens writes: "Just Say No to College" and today he's relaying to us 'your chances of being unemployed increase dramatically without a college degree.'
... Hugh Pickens wants everyone to be unemployed?
*head explodes*
So
My work here is dung.
It is inefficient to make everyone spend 4 extra years in school just so lazy recruiters can save themselves a couple hours, to say the least.
having a degree from GSU barely qualifies some of their graduates for shuttling documents. I think there are people that graduate that do nothing other than stare at a wall.
Unfortunately, it is also a reflection on the ease with which a lot of people make it through high-school without ever having to learn much in the way of responsibility. For example, when you work, your employer actually expects that you will show up on Monday morning and be somewhat functional. The college degree is no guarantee to the prospective employer but it usually has required more self-discipline than high-school.
The military has many programs and partnerships to help you get your degree while you are serving but most are from little unknown colleges. The oppurtunity is there though.
I could have got a Nuclear Technolgies degree using my military training, experience, and background and nothing but a few cleps. I slacked off and never did it. That was 15 years ago and I never thought i would need it. I got out of that field and I am now the network manager at a large international company. Even though I made it this far, I see our hiring practices changing to require degrees. Even off the wall degrees that have nothing to do with the job come past me. I personally still consider past work experience in the area we are hiring for as the most important criteria and military experience and college degree second but our HR department does not.
on the value of a college degree. Having just put my two kids through college I can't believe it is a "profitable" move. Of course kids now adays don't pay for their own college. They either get daddy to pay for it or amass a mountain of debt that will haunt them for ages. But we're "told" that you "must" have a 4-year degree to succeed these days. Personally I think that's a joke.
Karma: Bad
I think you need to have a Masters Degree to do Sales at the following stores:
Staples
FutureShop/Best Buy
Home Depot
If you want to be in Store Management you need a more Advanced Degree like a High School Diploma.
Well with initiatives like "No child Left behind", where you really have to work at failing for the school system to let you, a college diploma is the only standardised ubiquitous way that a HR person can tell if someone is likely not a complete waste of space.
Non-college graduate here.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I've been in tech for a couple of decades and the sharpest guy I've ever met (that includes some PhDs at IBM) didn't have a college degree.
Anyway, one day I was asked to recommend someone for the device driver team. I recommended the guy without the college degree.
MGR: "Device drivers are something that only someone with a college degree should write."
Me: "Why? The guy is sharp. I've seen him solve problems that no one else has."
MGR: "In my experience .... "
You know how it goes when someone starts off with "in my experience" or other phrases that begin like that.
He was passionate about computers and coupled with his raw talent, he was just incredible.
Last I heard (in the 90s) he was at a startup. He's either on the street or on a private island surrounded by beautiful naked women.
tl;dr - Hiring managers (who HR works for - don't forget that!) have preconceived notions about what makes a "good" employee and are under the delusion that their opinions are fact.
Without a degree, its nigh impossible to find a job that will give you over 30 hours a week, thanks to Obamacare. Not to mention the lack of health insurance.
The good news is that most non-degreed workers will now be poor enough for Medicare.
you're laid-off, chosen for that fate because you're "over qualified"...
replaced with someone with the same degree but no experience (with that employer). the degree doesn't make you over qualified, a few years on the job and making more than their starting wage for the position, does.
It isn't what you know, it is WHO you know.
Stop answering job ads by filling out forms and sending them to HR drones. Find a way to make direct contact with people who make hiring decisions. Network. Schmooze. Volunteer at charitable events -- especially charity golf events.
When I was out of work I volunteered to update the web presence of an exclusive downtown executive club in a big city. It was a horrid mess of Cold Fusion and Visual Basic -- the old kind, before dot Net. Fixing it wasn't point. Getting free invites to attend functions at the exclusive downtown business club got me to rub elbows with people who made hiring decisions -- and needed competent IT employees.
Getting ahead without a degree can be done. Yes, it is harder, but alternate paths do exist if you try. And then there is the "I have no student loan debt" benefit.
You'll also be surprised how many of the people who own their own successful businesses at those exclusive clubs never finished college.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This is what America wants for herself.
Why hire your own citizens when you can hire an H1B candidate and pay them less?
Why invest in your own people when you can offshore jobs for cheaper?
After the US have offshored all of their jobs, carved out their own middle class -- all of these companies are going to find they don't have any domestic market for their products.
This is pretty much the natural conclusion of globalization, and it's American companies who are gutting America.
In 20 or 30 years, America should have the 3rd world conditions they've been striving for -- but corporate profits will be at an all time high, and the domestic economy will be in the toilet. But as long as you keep cutting taxes on the downtrodden wealthy, stay the course.
With the (average) quality of education so low in america today, the quantity required will certainly rise.
I own businesses in the Midwest and South Florida. When I post a job listing (usually through Craigslist), I specifically request people with no degree apply.
In the past 9 years, 100% of people I've hired were undegreed. These were the people I wanted, because they specifically weren't indoctrinated into the college mentality. I want self-starters, people I can later on invite to become a business partner. I also don't want political correctness, feminism or any of the other progressive mindsets in any of my businesses. Those people can hit the road -- I don't even want them as customers.
I also hate having employees with major debt.
I pay better than average wages, and I purposely look through applications for the non-degreed folks.
I'd love to see a job search website that focuses on people bright enough to skip 4 years of college and just hit the employment roles.
Of course, I don't have HR departments, I would never hire an MBA, and I go out of my way to work with the millions of entrepreneurs out there who also didn't go to college but are earning bank.
Maybe with luck society will separate into two groups: the politically correct nauseated degreed folks and the self-driven and determined entrepreneurial type.
I have felt this was the case since the 90's and it is just becoming more true. This seems to imply that advanced degrees are the new college degrees, and those can cost as much as a house! Or more depending on your market.
Info pulled from http://www.collegesurfing.com/content/how-much-does-it-cost-get-masters/
Bachelors Degree: $105,092 in total bachelor's degree tuition at private school and $28,080 at public school.
Masters Degree: The average debt of a master's degree student upon graduation can range anywhere from $30,000-120,000, according to FinAid.org
That is $50,000 (most likely for a degree at a college that is not well known or respected) up to $200,000+. Yikes.
Actually, I graduated without a dime in student loan debt. I worked full time and went to school full time (with a very understanding employer). Now, I am a hiring manager in the world of IT. I value experience, but a degree shows that you have some soft skills to go with your knowledge. A degree with business courses also shows me that you will understand other functions of the company, and not just your own job. An engineering degree shows me you are able to solve complex problems and have learned to research well. Even a liberal arts degree at least shows me you are able to meet deadlines and focus. Certifications will get your foot in the door, whereas a degree will move your career path along.
Seriously.
It has been the case for nearly a decade that a college diploma was necessary even for low level jobs.
Food service, hospitality, factory work, agriculture, manual labor, and adult services are the only industries left where you can get an entry level job without a college degree, and those jobs suck.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
This is a clear sign that supply exceeds demand. Since unlike most commodities, we must ensure that everyone can have an income, it is necessary for us as a society to either reduce supply or drive demand until HR requirements are again aligned with actual necessities for the job offered.
Cutting the work week by just 10% (in other words, declare Friday afternoon a holiday) out to just about do it. Alternatively, we could implement basic income to reduce demand for employment.
The biggest tragedy is the debt you have to assume for $10.00 an hour job.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Yes, you are just lucky. Not sure for how long this luck will last, and how easy it will be to find another similar job. There are exceptions (like Bill Gates), diploma can be substituted by experience and references. But at the beginning, when one has nothing else, it has value. Also education helps organizing thinking process, which can be important on some positions.:)
I've never had trouble finding work with a college diploma (computer programming). Where I end having trouble is their unrealistic experience requirements. "Must have minimum 10 years demonstrated experience with Microsoft Excel, C++, Adobe ,......" plus knowledge of some obscure language like Clipper is an "asset".
The educational system in this country is BS at this point. I dropped out of college 3 times - the first time, to pursue an internship which my university didn't officially endorse, then again after returning to that same university, and then again from an online college. I began to realize that what I was learning was in no way going to help me in my chosen field, and I have a perfectly fine job which could not possibly benefit from a degree anyhow.
The problem is not that people should need a 4-year degree for basic jobs, but that the K-12 system is no longer sufficiently educating many graduates - and that HR departments are either lazy or overloaded to the point where they just slap a 4-year degree down as a minimum requirement (whether the position really needs it or not). Because I graduated from a very good private high school, and actually tried during those years, not just sliding by, I have plenty of knowledge, skill, and experience to hold myself just fine in the sorts of jobs that interest me.
I've held my current job for over seven years now, which is a good indication of interest in a career, rather than just a paycheck - and ought to be plenty of proof to any future companies I might want to work for that I can 'stick with something'... when it is worthwhile. Frankly, any company not willing to look over my full resume and consider my value without regard to my college education is one I wouldn't want to work for anyways.
William George
Slashdot is a news aggregator. The posts don't necessarily reflect the ops opinions. I for one appreciate the opportunity to hear both sides of the story.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
I will use two siblings as an example (we live in United States of America).
Sibling one has multiple four year college degrees, been trained as a air stewardess, graphics artist, bar tender, sales publishing, and a few more I can't keep track of. They have been on welfare for over 9 years, living with parents for most of time, and uses Macintosh products.
Sibling two has high school education and passed a few Cisco exams (CCNA, and a couple for CCNP). Likes routers, switches, and playing pranks on co-workers. $180K / year without bonus. Doesn't like "free loaders". Has quit jobs >100K / year without having another job lined up. Gets new job within 2 weeks. Uses Apple products at work and Windows for home.
Everyone is different.
The main characteristic of sibling one is bad attitude. The second sibling is right place at right time and charm. These are through my observations over the years.
Hard work and working your way up still works. So does trade school and CC. You may hit a glass ceiling sooner than someone with a four year degree but you can get your college degree later if and when that time comes. My son worked his way up to $18/hr as an auto mechanic while he was working on his degree and certification for HVAC at a local CC. Not bad for a 21 yo that has no debt. I paid for the 3 years of CC and that was roughly $6-7k total.
I think degrees in the US especially are a must because it proves you're a debt slave and you'll play ball out of fear of not being able to pay your debt. US businesses didn't realise the north won the war and are still trying to turn everyone into their slave.
Uh, wouldn't you then put both sources in the same article? Or at the very least acknowledge the last article submitted by the same person from the same newspaper?
... wait, are you still reading this tripe? Oh, you actually are? Okay then! ... good for you. (sale) Eggs are bad for you. (sale)'
Am I the only one around here who gets annoyed by this style of "reporting"? 'Eggs are bad for you. (sale) Eggs are good for you. (sale) Eggs are bad for you. (sale) Eggs are
Nobody in their right mind is going to take a "cargo clerk" position with a 4 yr. degree. By listing these positions as such, the employer ends up with a whole stack of vacant positions. A stack of reasons to whine for H1B visa workers. Bush started it*, and it's still rolling along.
[*] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL_fTICwFCA
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
and hardly a new phenomenon.
You need a Masters Degree in many fields to have a snowball's chance in hell of getting anywhere. This varies somewhat in technical fields, but as we see time and time again, once your age climbs over, say, 35, it can be tough as hell to get a technical job. Outside of tech fields, you need either a top flight BA/BS or a higher degree to set you apart, and there is no reason for this trend to reverse.
semantics are everything!
We need more trade and tech schools as the people with degrees have big skills gaps and people who want to non degree schools get looked over.
I have no degree and get $20 an hour.
Wow, $20 an hour. Impressive. [/sarcasm] That's about what, $40,000 per year if you work full time? The average starting salary for an engineering graduate in 2011 was around $61,000
I'll skip the indoctrination and keep earning double what these college kids get.
You make barely more than an engineering intern gets while still in school. You're really showing them how it's done.
Opinion leaders and talking heads told Americans to do nothing as we de-industrialized and sent many blue-collar jobs overseas; they said "our kids will all go to college and do smarter better-paying jobs". The truth, however, is that some portion of jobs will be for the smartest and/or most creative, but a huge portion of the jobs will always be in the basic grunt work that makes a civilization work. By encouraging all young people to get degrees (and encouraging too many to get degrees in marketing, journalism, polysci, feminist studies, ethnic studies, etc) we now have a glut of people with huge college debts, useless degrees (which provided them no skills related to the available work) and this population is left scrambling over the non-exportable "service jobs" which require no degree but for with employers now use the degree only as a filter. This was totally predictable (and was, in fact predicted by critics who opposed all the "free trade" and NAFTA talk over the past 30 years)
The generations who created this mess and who are dumping it onto their kids/grandkids are the same generations who are leaving those young people with mountains of government debt.
" 'It sure beats washing cars,' says Georgia State University graduate Landon Crider, 24, an in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and his company's office."
I work for a full service car wash as a supervisor. I wash cars. I don't have a college degree. I both make more than $10 an hour and would rather be washing cars than sitting at a desk. So this quote in the summary really made me laugh.
Why not just 2 year Community Colleges what it so big about 2+ more years?
Tech / IT needs a apprenticeship system
as the degree does not give the right skills and is loaded with theory.
I am sorry sir, your BS from Brown is not acceptable for the Janitorial position. we are looking for people from Yale to fill that position.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Traditional education needs reform do you want this to be the same 5-10 years down the road the only changes is now that you need a masters or PHD.
Just wait for jobs to need a Masters or PHD for low level work.
So where should one obtain related work experience without already having related work experience?
If degrees are being devalued then why pay for them? This makes no sense.
C|N>K
Particularly the adult services... But I do tip well afterwards.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
My girlfriend took an entry-level job with a large, established company, with the understanding that she could work her way up like everyone else did. Then *after* she had been there a few years, they started imposing degree requirements for all of the jobs she would naturally be promoted to. So now she's stuck in a dead-end position, with no way to advance unless she spends the next decade taking night classes...
As a high school graduate you can spend thousands of dollars on an education just to obtain a menial job when you're done, or you can spend that time networking, making connections, and working on what really interests you to become the next great entreprenure. If I had it to do over again I think I'd rather do the latter.
Until you discover that in a particular field, all three suppliers of a particular essential good or service deal only with companies that have already demonstrated "financial stability" and verifiable "industry experience", and the only providers of such experience require a college degree followed by an apprenticeship hundreds of miles away.
The willingness to put off gaining a small benefit now in exchange for a greater benefit later is one of the greatest indicators of potential success.
To be honest, any education such an apprenticeship or trade school education is just as valuable if you can make use of it later.
Some people just want to be doing something and earning money now. Some do fine. Others get left in the dust by those who prepared better before getting started.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
In modern days education is more accessible, and almost everyone strives to get higher education, the result is more college graduates on the market, which allows more position to require a degree which drives more kids to college and the cycle continues.
This also causes more colleges to open up, many of them sacrificing quality and it helps raise the cost of education.
The root issue is lack of feedback between the job market and the universities.
We need the number of seats in colleges and universities to be closely related with limited surplus to the job market requirements.
The colleges will not self regulate and limit the number of seats because too many of them are in the business of making money,
and though this is very unpopular I see no solution other then some sort of governmental regulation to limit the number of seats fro bachelor degrees which will both increase the quality of graduates and save a whole lot of money on wasted tuition and years out of the job market.
When I was thinking of not going to college, my disappointed father said "well the world needs ditch diggers too".
Then I found out how much ditch diggers make.
I went out and got a shovel.
Which leaves you with 10X candidates who were good enough but not chosen. What reason are you going to give when each of them makes a follow-up call to the HR department?
In the past 9 years, 100% of people I've hired were undegreed. These were the people I wanted, because they specifically weren't indoctrinated into the college mentality. I want self-starters, people I can later on invite to become a business partner.
Being a self starter has nothing to do with whether or not you went to college. Having a college degree isn't the only thing that matters but it can be a very useful indicator of what the person standing in front of me is capable of. I have several college degrees including masters in both engineering and business. I've started 5 businesses, am a certified accountant, run a manufacturing company and am on the board of a non-profit. My wife has a doctorate and does even better than I do. If you think our college degrees have held either of us back in any way you are delusional.
I also don't want political correctness, feminism or any of the other progressive mindsets in any of my businesses.
So you want to hire people who have no respect for others? Nice. I'll be sure to avoid you and the people you hire.
I'd love to see a job search website that focuses on people bright enough to skip 4 years of college and just hit the employment roles.
Good luck with that. You know a lot of engineers or doctors who picked up their profession "on the streets"? I guarantee you don't know anyone in accounting (not bookkeeping - real accounting) that does not have a college degree. Same for scientists.
Yes the college classes are boring and feel like a grind. But I got the experience, levels, and skills needed to play the game.
I agree with you completely. But unfortunately, life seems to disagree with both of us.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
passing over technical school training can be a ada eeoc issue as they are people who learn better at a technical school then in a full degree based plan.
FYI this has been the case in France for years now. I saw job offers for entry-level coding that required a masters degree more times than I can count.
Yet here I sit in one of the largest data centers in the world surrounded by (after a quick poll of my coworkers) half degreed and half non-degreed individuals, but we all make the same six-figure salaries. I just don't think these ideas hold true for IT. I've worked for some of the largest companies in the world, and haven't been asked about a college degree since the 90's.
The tech / trades schools don't have the college mentality. And they can be better off dropping out of the degree system.
I think a lot of people are getting cause and effect mixed up here. There's a glut of college graduates (the cause), so it's not surprise that businesses hire them instead of high school graduates -- even if the degree isn't needed for the job (the effect).
A glut of college students is also part of the reason tuition is so high -- simple supply and demand: increasing demand raises the price.
I hate to say it, but the solution is fewer college students. Less government financial aid (like subsidized loans) would help achieve this. It certainly wouldn't be popular, but given how heavily subsidized higher education is, it's no surprise that there's a glut of graduates.
My experience shows the exact opposite. When I was fresh out of college managers told me they didn't want to hire me because I was over qualified. I think I had three different managers tell me they were worried I was over qualified and a "flight risk" as I was likely to be offered something else if I went to work for them. I ended up dumbing down my resume to get jobs.
I put something like "Market Rate".
I'm surprised the application form allowed that to be submitted. Quite often, such forms have told me "Please enter only digits."
This is especially troublesome for US. US student has to get into hundreds of thousands dollars of (non-dischargable) debt in order to get his degree in order to have a job in a corporation (even if it means flipping burgers). On the other hand corporations are sucking nearly every bit of fresh air and war between big and small business is pretty much open nowadays with big business winning this war (as mr. Buffet told us that some time ago). In such environment getting a decent job without becoming a debt slave becomes harder every passing day. Welcome to a new feudalism.
This would be great if people would stay in their own field of study and quit stealing jobs from us that studied in that field. I know of places that have hired people just because they had a degree higher than someone who has a degree, although a lesser one in standing. One place hired a guy with a BS in History to over see a districts networking. Another place hired a person who had a BS in Biology for doing networking. Don't you think a person who majored in that field in question would be the best candidate? If that's the case I may have to get a PHD in Underwater basket weaving and apply for CEO of a company, after all I went to school. Oh and where do Certifications (like A+ or MSCA) fit in to all of this? No high level degree but you have certifications in them? Oh and no the people mentioned didn't have certifications in the computer field at all. Just a few "computer" classes.
not just boring but off topic / high level stuff that in the most part the OS takes care of. Also if you take the pure CS route you don't have the needed skills or experience to do the lower level work that is needed more then the very high level stuff.
Some do fine. Others get left in the dust by those who prepared better before getting started.
I agree. "Some" are about one in ten thousand. "Others" are the rest.
If you are Bill Gates or Eminem then no, you don't need college. If you are less great than one-in-ten-thousand, then get that degree.
'It sure beats washing cars,' says Georgia State University graduate Landon Crider, 24, an in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and his company's office."
You work for a law firm and you are publicly quoting your salary figures? Oh. I mean, you "worked" at a law firm?
If a business is asking for a degree for a position, then the position should have a salary that can pay for that degree
The ruling class in Washington has decided they prefer illegal aliens to do manual labor and Americans to go on welfare rather than work. That maximizes their chance to skim money off the system.
In addition, requiring college degrees for mindless jobs ensures that the person you hire will be unhappy with the job. "I have a college degree and I'm asked to sweep the floor? I quit!" But then, this works in favor of those doing the hiring, doesn't it? A job position that keeps coming up open means they have work today. Hiring people actually suited to their job would quickly put the HR person on half wages.
I come here for the love
It's rather funny actually.
There is a common mantra that is gradually and thankfully being eroded away... and that is EDUCATION=JOBS.
In the later half of the 20th century, many jobs did require an education and many of these jobs needed college or university. Combine this with the general progressive mentality that there isn't a problem education can solve and you got this massive push towards high education.
But the key is not so much that getting an education leads to a job. The key is that certain jobs need an education. One enough people had the education to fill those jobs, it just introduced new competition and lower wages for people with that education.
Further people who got an education without an eye on the job market just got degrees.
This worked for a while. If you got your went to college, even if you couldn't get a college related job, you still had a leg up on the high school graduate and you would get the office or retail job ahead of them.
Then more and more people got college degrees... and suddenly getting a college degree meant nothing even in the office or retail environment.
now we see the trend further... people getting their masters or PHd to out do their fellow man.
What's really sad is the big thinkers and planners in society buying into this rubish.
This idea that because something brings success to a few... it means everyone doing that same thing can also get success.
Ever heard people say things like
"we don't need to be like China and compete on the low-end, we can be like Germany and have skilled high value export oriented manufacturing"
Yes... and if the US or Canada or UK became like Germany... suddenly the German high value manufacturing would not be so valuable and it would not afford Germany a better lifestyle. We all can't be like German manufacturing... because then we'd all be like China competing with everyone.
Or we have it with the high tech areas. The creative or information economy. Just because Silicon valley provides lots of good high paying jobs for a few in the field, that means the whole of the United States can be employed in high-tech... We just need to simulate the Silicon Valley model... they don't take into account the need or supply and demand.
Create more centers of innovation and they just compete with each other and take labor from each other once any shortage is filled.
You know like how auto centers compete with each other for the next line of production.
"They'll turn us all into beggars 'cause they're easier to please."
An indebted beggar on welfare is easier to control than a free citizen with a gun.
Carrying a particular debt load will maker workers more productive. It's not about the skills learned. Too much debt and that person will steal. To little debt and that person will be regarded as a slacker.
This is what happens when you have created a pay-to-play society like here in the US.
Education these days is nothing more than another form of corporate profit and requiring college degrees for even menial jobs is nothing more than a method to force people into a form of indentured servitude.
How's that you say? Well debt == enslavement and where is most people's largest amount of debt outside of their home? Debt which can not be discharged by declaring bankruptcy? Student loans.
Now be a good slave and get in line to get your expensive degree so you can work at McCrapphole corporation.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Any idea how much colleges paid the NY Times to post that article?....
That's why I'm ambitious and hardworking! The only purpose of my life is to increase shareholder value!
If I have to take on crushing, inescapable debt so I can better increase shareholder value then I'm more than happy to do so because I'm a team player!
What is increasingly the case is that people are putting off gaining a small benefit now in exchange for an even small benefit later. Sometimes even a small loss later.
Oh, BS. What's the matter, couldn't you make it through college and get a degree. Sounds a lot like sour grapes to me.
I have a degree, from Rice University in Houston. I'm very happy with that, it was an excellent school and the degree was very worthwhile.
But that was a while ago and I spent far, far less on that degree than most people do today. When I was done I had perhaps $15k in debt, easy to work around with a CS degree.
If I were looking at college today, even for a technical degree I would have a lot of trouble justifying the cost of most colleges rather than some combination of work/apprenticeship/online local community classes (for humanities courses). They would be vasty cheaper, I'd have a lot more practical experience as I went along, I'd know just as much (or more), and at the end of the process (where I would also have much more flexibility in defining the end) I'd have either no or very little debt. You have no idea what kind of prison lots of kids are putting themselves within by acquiring a huge debt load (that you cannot even escape through bankruptcy!).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"'When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out somehow,' "
The goal is not to filter resumes. The goal is to find the best applicant for a given amount of search effort.
The problem is, companies are decidedly unserious about putting in the effort to find someone. For all the talk about how hard it is to find qualified applicants (let alone the best), companies are busy filtering resumes for typos, the currently unemployed, and past periods of unemployment.
Effing duh.
This is partly because US high schools teach watered-down pap. These pre-literate papules take to posting their ignorance-sodden prose on social media sites. They're easy to notice, and just might be in your news feed.
What financial ruin? My total student loans were about nine months of marginal earnings, or about three months of actual earnings.
Bully for you. Are you a file clerk?
No I didn't think so. For some types of jobs, like engineering, it MAY still make some financial sense to attend SOME schools. If it does, there's no reason not to go for it (well actually there is when you could have the same job a year or two earlier with even less debt, but I digress).
Remember the article is about requiring credentials for all sorts of low level jobs, where paying back $100k is debt is much more like 10-20 YEARS of marginal earnings, if that. Does that REALLY sound like a good idea to you?
It so sad when an engineer such as yourself overlooks the possibilities that technology makes possible. Being an engineer that should excite, not repel, you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Very few in the military are in combat arms. If you join the air force you will hardly ever see a firearm unless you are in the security forces or have to qualify with one. You will more likely be a technician.
Its not that much different in the navy either.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
As the summary mentions, employers are flooded with resumes and therefore need some sort of criteria for quickly filtering them down. They don't care if you have a degree in CS, French, or theater; if you have a bachelors degree, it tells the employer that you are capable of starting and finishing a long project, that you are responsible. It's "unfair" that perfectly capable and dependable people are overlooked by this approach, but it's also entirely unrealistic for employers to put an excessive number of candidates through a full interview process. Even with this filtering, the process is highly error-prone, because you get candidates bluffing through the interviews, and major portions of interviews are done by HR personel who don't have the technical knowledge to properly evaluate candidates. So, technical interviewers are an even MORE scarce resource. And then any employer who tries to get clever with this process (coding interviews, tournaments, etc.) can get into trouble for making people "do work" during interviews, which has some ethical issues. So what do you do?
It's getting to the point where even a BS isn't enough. Many jobs require Masters degrees. At that point, some employers won't give you the time of day unless you interned with them. Internships are a low-risk arrangement, because they get to pay students peanuts to work for them for 3 months. The duds are carefully noted, and the good ones are invited back when they graduate. Anyone else has an up-hill battle, because they can't distinguish you from any other idiot with a bunch of buzzwords on their resume.
Some professions have moved from Masters level to the Doctoral level. Right now, you can get a job as Physician's Assistant or Nurse Practitioner with a Masters in Nursing. But because there's an overabundance of people with those degrees, some employers are starting to require doctorate degrees. It's actually interesting, because there's more than one "Doctor of Nursing" type of degree. You can have a PhD in Nursing, where you did scientific research and wrote a dissertation. Then they've recently invented a another type of Doctor of Nursing degree, which is more like a medical doctor degree. One's academic, while the other is clinical, one has a research topic, while the other doesn't. But now nursing schools are scrambling to get their Doctor of Nursing curricula in order, because their Masters students are having a hard time finding jobs.
Let's keep going. The market in some fields is currently flooded with PhDs, like engineering degrees. Enter the Post-Doc, which is a pittance-pay, short-term job for people with PhDs. Getting a doctoral degree (medical or PhD) is no cake-walk. To get a PhD, you have to become a world-class expert in a field and contribute substantial new ideas. In academia and industry, many employers are now starting to consider only those with Post-docs. When I was finishing my PhD, I applied for nearly 150 different positions around the US, both in academia and in industry, a proproprtion of which were for more than one opening at different deparments within the same employer. It bothered me that my 15 years of prior industry experience didn't seem to count for much with many employers, but they're applying these filtering policies somewhat blindly within HR whose staff doesn't know how to evaluate this.
In the end, I got 8 interviews and 4 offers, which was relatively a LOT. I wasn't about to move my family for a 2-year post-doc then move them again when it was over, so I took an academic position in up-state NY, at a school that turns out to be a significant hot-spot for my particular specialization. Indicentally, IBM headquarters is on the other side of the river. I love it here, but I know that I'm truly one of the very fortunate ones, and there are many extremely accomplished people who are having a much harder time getting jobs.
Anyhow, a take-away principle when it comes to interviewing people is that to them, you are represented by a sheet of paper that the
people with some disabilities learn better hands on.
To bad that the tech schools are roped into the older degree system.
4+ years of theory does not work.
It's only admirable if you did something else that was good instead.
I was just reading that the glut of college graduates has gotten so bad that a high school grad that goes directly into trade work(IE mechanic, plumber, electrician, etc...) has equivalent to higher income than the 'average' college grad once you factor in loan debt, delays to the job market, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
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What does going to college tell you about a persons character? It tells me they're submissive to authority and lack initiative, which is great for many roles. A person who rejects the idea that he should sit at the feet of the wise old professor and learn and instead go out into the world and get to work making waves might not suck up what you give them and ask you if they're doing ok.
Mediocrity and reliability go to school. The worst and best reject it.
You can go about making your waves. Make big ones - I genuinely hope you do and you have a great time.
I analyze and evaluate the structural performance of supersonic fighter jets, which make waves, but of a different type entirely. My values and goals simply don't match yours.
Those of us who wish to be movers and shakers in STEM must first know the basic building blocks, and those are easily learned from the wise old professors who built these things before us. I strive for reliability in specific ways and pick an choose which authorities it is in my best interest to submit to. If you think my peers and I lack initiative and must be "mediocre," I think you need to open your eyes to different ways of viewing the world.
So let me rephrase it positively: What steps should someone take to find a junior-level position in a given company? What should one do first to earn enough money to pay the cost of living during an internship? How should someone spin, say, part-time web application development experience when switching careers to full-time video game development?
Well, by having these 2 news stories a day within each other, they've effectively done nothing for the topic or its readership. You could claim that each opinion piece brought up important facts, however since it actually does nothing to fix the problems with which they discuss, it's more food for its own sake.
If I wanted to go to college, I'd go to college. If I don't, I'll acquire the necessary skills for the jobs I seek. The more important aspect of all this discussion, is that it's far more important to know the right people than it is to have the spot on abilities for a specific job.
That is, reduce the information content, and make the courses easier to pass.
State Universities are some of the worst. Their success, in the form of federal funding, depends on the number of students they successfully herd through the program. Not enough students making it? Make the courses simpler!
If degrees are to mean anything, they must have enough information content and be challenging enough that not everyone can complete the course or the degree. That creates competition for only the best and finest to finish, and creates graduates whose degrees mean something.
I realize this runs into the face of equal opportunity, and the idea that everyone deserves a college education. If that is the approach which is to be taken, why not just pass a law declaring that everyone over 21 is issued a bachelors' degree from the university of their choice in the field of their choice. The diplomas could be printed on toilet paper, so they are biodegradable. It would save the government money, and be a lot more honest.
If you're very happy with what you do and such, great, but don't shut college out based on that cost analysis. I finished my BS with $10k in debt and could have done it with none. Your college costs are not equal to your final debt. I did a community college AS degree and then finished my BS at a state school. (I did work, 20 hours a week at ~$6-7/hour.) There are many good schools, so you can filter them based on the best cost to education ratio and come up with reasonable tuition rates - just google it and see what you find. And college life can be a lot of fun depending on what you make of it.
I did a technical degree in engineering. Six years after graduating (B.S.), my salary equates to $35 an hour, I have health insurance, a month a year off, and other benefits, and in this career path, I expect my salary will double over the course of 15-20 years and then cap out. Today this buys me a nice new home, a nice new sports car, and I have enough money left over to take vacations and to save as well. Importantly, I generally like what I do at work every day and enjoy talking with and learning from intelligent peers.
If you're on the fence, remember that you can always do community college part time, right now, so you don't need to quit the job you seem to be happy with. It certainly wouldn't hurt you. If you don't like it that well, just finish the 2 year degree so you get something out of it and call it a day. You'll only have spent a few grand, you'll have learned a few things along the way, and from then on you can list a college degree if you ever need to find a new job years down the road.
Because some of these comments are in serious need of more education...
Normally, employers would be able to hire the high school graduates for jobs that require minimal skills for less pay. What happens when you can't pay people less than $9? Well then they might as well only hire college graduates if they *have* to pay $9/hour.
The real problem is that it seems like most people are not learning anything useful in college. If they were learning useful things, they could demand more money in the job market. But instead they are learning things that have no utility, so they end up being managers at department stores even though they (allegedly) know about Asian American history. The only people know need to know about Asian American history are Asian American History professors.
Why do mechanics and plumbers make so much money? They don't even have college diplomas! Well it turns out that knowing how to fix cars and stop leaks is almost infinitely more useful to society than a random humanities degree. This is not to say that people with random humanities are useless. They are often very talented people. But this is talent in spite of their degree, not because of it.
The people with just a humanities degree (i.e. it's all they have) are pretty useless. The people with just a diploma from plumbers school (i.e. they know how to stop leaks) are still pretty useful.
A person with a college education (and no useful skills beyond dressing themselves nicely and speaking english with mostly correct pronunciation and grammar) has earned the right to the easy jobs where they can surf the web most of day in a climate controlled room, but they don't get to command much more money than a day laborer. On the other hand, day laborers don't have to dress up in a suit, or be nice to a lot of people. Fast food people have it the worst. They get the worst of both worlds.
4 years of theory is very necessary for some roles, my job is hard to do without that theory, but my job is 1 for 200 in your average EE company. Most of the people who I work with do not need their degrees, and have benefitted very little from them. It was a giant waste of time and money, has done nothing to weed out the troublemakers, and has created numerous employment issues.
Problem with a mortgage is you can declare bankruptcy to get out of it if you quit or get fired so young people who don't have to have medical coverage are more difficult to threaten with firing. Student loans? No bankruptcy allowed. Gotem by the ballz!
Seastead this.
Where do you see your self in 20 years WilliamGeorge?
answer:
unemployed
Passing the contract to Legal is the appropriate answer. Hiring someone else because of that is not. The idea of insisting that people sign an unmodified contract is reprehensible. If you can defend that, you simply haven't seen very many contracts. People put all sorts of stupid things in them, ranging from the unenforceable to the illegal, and just as often leave out crucial details (e.g. severability).
Turning down an otherwise qualified candidate because they happen to have a clue about contract law is a poor business practice -- the same goes for writing your own contracts. The appropriate thing to do when presented with a contract you don't like, is to give it to your lawyer so that he can make the appropriate changes. In point of fact, it's probably a good idea to have a lawyer check out any employment contract whether or not you like it.
Lawyers draft contracts to protect their clients. Essentially that means screwing over the other guy, to whatever degree they can get away with. Lumpy is perfectly correct: only a fool signs a contract as written, because it is guaranteed to have been written with someone else's interests in mind.
If all of the above is unconvincing, working freelance will quickly cure you of any inhibitions regarding modifying contracts.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
In most developed countries, raising the percentage of high school degrees has been a desirable goal. High school degree level was therefore decreased so that 80% of the youngsters get their high school degree. And now businesses raise the bar to college degree.
The biggest difference, at least in the US, is that more student debts to pay college years
No, answer: at the same company I'm at now, hopefully! My father has worked at Boeing for over 30 years now... why do people not think that spending most of your working life in a career at the same company is viable or a good idea?
If for some reason that didn't work out, I'd consider self-employment as a consultant in my field. After all, that is really what I do for my job now, just in the service of a great company.
William George
There's just too much competition anymore. So many people exist and the only way to manage this is with more and more computers, applications, etc.
Not sure about you all, but I personally feel like it just sucks right now in IT. If you're a programmer, web developer, et al, you're in a fight for your life. Sure, much of this depends on specifics, but generally-speaking, there's so many things every business expects from you coming out of the gates that if I could go back in time knowing what I know now about IT, I'd run far and fast away from it.
Learning all the languages, system architectures, applications... I spent the past 'X' number of years learning and trying to master about 2-3 languages and every day it seems like I'm constantly throwing everything I have at my job just to hang on to it. It seems that's where everything is anymore with all this, too... At least with IT crap.
Well, ever since the dotbomb years, a CompSci degree guaranteed a burger flipping McJob. This is probably because one needs to understand binary to do a flip. Also knowing primitive languages helps to deal with phrases like "ya want fries wizzat?".
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm a director in a medium sized company. I needed to build my team from nearly scratch. I'm doing this in a country where I don't speak the language and where CV credentials are known to be highly inflated. You better believe I read each and every single one.
The results I will get from my team depends on who is in it. I read well over 100 resumes to interview 20 people to hire just a few people. A manager's most important job is to find talent that produces. HR never has a clue of what each team needs.
Now, I spent a lot more time at this task than I would have liked but the team is solid and it was worth it.
I was born in a non-American western nation, and am an orphan from birth. As an infant, I was raised by a very elderly Russian babushka. My first (and only) language was Russian. Then she died (I assume) when I was around four or five, and I was taken into "care". By care, I mean years and years of every kind of abuse imaginable, by every kind of person imaginable. You name it, I suffered it.
At some point, I was shoved through a series of schools of varying quality and worth, but, with little support from any quarter, it's no surprise I didn't exactly excel. Still, it was probably better than nothing, even though - and here's the thing - almost everything I ever learned that has ever been useful, I learned on my own, out of school hours, any way I could.
When I was taught enough English to be able to function at a rudimentary level of menial labour, I was tasked with eradicating noxious weeds from the farms of wealthy people, something I did from sunrise to sunset every day. I was not yet a teenager. And the abuse continued at the hands of various farm foster parents, and others. They were paid to have me, but I saw nothing. No allowance, no Christmases or birthdays. The farmers' kids had great lives.
Eventually, when I was twelve, I ran away and lived under a bridge in the first city I came to. (Yes! A real life troll!) That was no more or less pleasant than anything else I'd experienced, and I can't say it harmed me at all. At least most of the abuse stopped for a while. But the authorities don't like it getting around that children are living rough in the nation's largest city - it upsets the tourists - so I was shipped back to another fun-filled stint with another wish-you-were-dead farm "family".
When I was old enough to get out of that Dodge, I did what I could for myself. Tertiary education was out; I know everyone thinks to themselves, "Oh, there's always a way to get what you want! You obviously didn't try hard enough, slacker!, but rest assured it's bullshit. When you're down and out and at the bottom, people prefer you stay there and out of sight. So a degree in medicine or law was never really an option.
It took years of being perma-broke and moving between friends' couches and garage squats before I got anywhere anyone would consider civilised, but with no useful education or credentials, the chances are incredibly slim of really getting anywhere truly comfortable, getting to the kind of place most people - certainly most Slashdotters - would take for granted.
Now here's the thing: over the years, I've taught myself many high-level skills, the kind for which employers pay a lot of money. Well, a lot as far as I'm concerned. And when I did my High School entrance tests at the age of 12, my IQ scored above 170. But the reality is I will probably never have a decent job, because I was never in a position to get the oh-so-important pieces of paper.
So shove your must-have-a-college-degree-just-to-sweep-the-fucking-hallways ethos so far up your arse that it bursts out the top of your empty fucking head, you spoilt, shitty little Mummy's boy..
This is exaxtly why I started my own business. I have a 2 year Associate degree in Electronics Engineering, and a 4 year BSc in Computer Science. And I have experience. And its absolute shit finding any kind of half-assed job, and has been for a long time. I was tired of not getting paid for what I know and listening to people with less than half of my education guessing and guessing, but in charge. Now they have to compete against me. I find it a very useless exercise when people demand qualifications well beyond those that the job requires. Sure its some kind of 'buyers market', but it really is a waste of talent, time, money, energy, and education. Unfortunately, in another 5 years, you will need a masters degree or two bachelors degrees to get a job, and in 10 years, either two masters degrees or a PhD., and 5 years after that, multiple PhD.'s. Of course, if you have a rich family, you need grade school to inherit the family business, and if its a large family with others who are more hands on, then you just need not to burn up too much of the trust fund.
And this is why I am slowly deciding to give up anything tech related and pursuing becoming a RN. I have a few close friends who drive big rigs on local dedicated and OTR that make a lot of money each year and schedule their own home time. I'm just to damn old to play office politics or have someone tell me I need to have a Bachelors for a fucking $10hr job. Fuck.That.Shit.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
A diploma is just a crutch for lazy HR people. They figure anyone can get a diploma who has neither a mental or character deficiency, so why look any further into the true ability or potential of an applicant. It takes time and effort to assess a candidate properly so just go with the paper qualification. Most jobs today of a non-specialized nature do not require a college education: Just literacy, an enquiring mind, and good work habits. And in that I certainly include teaching, nursing and a host of other "professions". College is overhyped but the game has to be played as there is no percentage in being the only sane person in an insane world. Whatever did you learn in college that has been important in your work? Be honest. On the job experience is everything if you are just reasonably intelligent.
It's been there for a long time in other countries and now with the recession America too is catching up. (I m from India).
It shows the dumbing down of educational standards. America is on the verge of replacing quality with quantity - as we in India have due to the clamour for a BA (Pass) or even a BA (Fail) . It used to be said of America that you did not need a college degree to get ahead but that isn't apparently true anymore.
Looking at it from the point of view of employers, a college degree is probably a way to filter out those who don't know their 3 R s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_three_Rs and thus will need further "on the job" training before being able to work in an office environment.
OK
Both articles are by the New York Times. This is why I stopped reading newspapers years ago. When I did read them, I generally caught contradictions of "facts" within the same day's newspaper. In the middle of the week.
Not that I'm a resume expert, but if one has lots of experience, once should either do a functional resume, where all ones achievements is listed in the front section, followed by a chronology of jobs held. You want to know more than that, call the guy! Or alternatively, list the achievement only in the current jobs, or last 5 years, since that's what most employers are interested in. Beyond that time, just list the companies one has worked at, not one's activities there. The resume should have enough to make an interviewer curious, but not so much that it tells him everything he needs to know, making the interview redundant.