Go to College To Get a Job, Not an Education
College vs Education
These days, it seems like you go to college to get a job, not an education.
I read all these newspaper stories about recent college grads unable to find a job, and the details indicate that they majored in something difficult to market. “Higher Education” institutions will happily take your money and teach you things about political science or classic poetry or whatever the heck “Liberal Arts” is … but the prospective job pool for someone with those degrees is rapidly shrinking into something more resembling a puddle.
You almost have to decide what kind of job you want, and work backwards to find out what major would get you there.
University
University is expensive.
If you have an interest in anthropology or creative writing but you plan on being a programmer, you’re not really encouraged to take those classes. Sure, you get a few electives to play with, but nothing that would really let you sink your teeth into the information. Even aside from that, courses depend so heavily on exams and grades that you spend more time worried about memorizing facts than drinking in new information.
You need a diploma to get certain kinds of jobs, and it’s really not worth while for you to rack up more debt by staying to learn more things.
Result
The result of this mentality is a rushed, incomplete education.
I’ve taken nighttime college courses since graduating in an attempt to increase my knowledge on certain subjects and it was even worse than I’d remembered. Rush, rush, rush, and it’s okay if you don’t understand it so long as you finish it in time to get a good grade.
Technically, I have a certification in Linux administration for a LAMP server setup, but I still only know the most basic Linux commands.
Education
Before you think I’ve gone all doom and gloom on you, I’d like to point out that I have gotten a pretty impressive education on a number of topics within my fields of interest, all without paying the exorbitant prices for a college course.
I’ve learned about square foot gardening and taking care of apple trees and dog training and horse training and novel writing and cooking and exercise and organization and home renovation and calligraphy — so many varied and different topics.
My teacher was the internet and the library.
We live in the future, folks. A future where teachers can write down their lessons and publish them in a book or on a website. A future where anyone with access can reach this information and learn from it, with very small barriers to entry.
Yes, I have paid for some of these “classes”, but never even close to the kind of money I’d pay for a college course, and always with much richer benefits than if I had a time limit and a set of exams I needed to pass to “prove” that I’d learned something.
We live in a world where it’s easier and more accessible to learn something outside of a classroom. All you have to do is be curious enough to find a book or do a search for the information.
Job
I still went to college and got that expensive diploma. I love my job and it was worth the student loans to be able to secure it.
You
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?
26 Comments
Oh, for the love of all things wonderful, it is a MONDAY morning! Are you serious with this kind of a post on a Monday morning???
I will answer briefly. This is the message we have given our children since day one.
“If you don’t know what you want to do, college is not an option. Get a job, get some experience, make a plan and THEN go to college if you need to.”
The expenses incurred in higher education are too vast anymore. I know people who have spent over $100K to get a degree that give them a job that will only earn them $35K a year.
It cost me very little to get my degree, just under $18K. For the whole thing, folks, not just one semester. So when I got the job of my dreams that only paid $16K a year, this was not a total waste of my time and energy. It took my only 2 years to gain back my investment.
And the college experience is the same as the elementary and secondary experience. Shove a bunch of stuff in your head quickly and superficially, take a test and move on.
And then the other thing we tell our children:
“Most of learning happens outside a classroom. Seek out your own sources and learn what you want when you want.”
Lastly, our oldest wants to get a degree NOT so much to have a job, but to be in an environment where he can discuss his thoughts and ideas with other people who share those interests with him. Again, that is not a CLASSROOM experience. And for that, we are spending tons of money on education.
*laugh* If it makes you feel any better, I wrote it a few weeks ago and just randomly scheduled it. /sheepish
Far as your oldest — we’ve got a free “club” here in Madison that is actually kind of like what you’re talking about. There are tools and computers and equipment and like-minded people get together to create and talk and test things. It’s awesome, and would provide the social aspect that is often missing in book-learning.
Not completing my college education is one of the bigger regrets of my life. I’ve thought about going back a couple of times, but I left for work when my daughter was asleep and when I got home from class she was already in bed. That wasn’t going to work.
I’m blessed to have the job I do. I really shouldn’t have it without a degree, but along the way I’ve been fortunate to have hiring managers who were willing to look past my lack of degree to my experience and work.
Even now that my daughter is older, I think school might be one flaming bear too many. I’m not sure which other one that I truly love that I’d have to drop.
*Nod* the value of the education is directly proportional to how much it matters to your bosses, at that point.
My favorite education story:
I had to take a Scientific and Technical language class for my degree. I chose to take German.
The first day of class, the professor, an Austrian, told us that he was would not teach us German. He had, after twenty years, decided that it was futile to teach a class to students who were in his class NOT out of interest or desire to learn, but because it was required. We would have a test every Friday and he took attendance and deducted points for absences and that was he effort in fulfilling our reqirement.
Since he was insistent that we attend class, he assured us that every day we would have a lesson. Just never about the German language…unless we asked.
We learned about architecture, history, philosophy, art, music, biology and viewed many of his slides from vacations. He was fascinating. It was the best class I have ever taken. And I learned enough German to read scientific papers and make an A in his class…all done on my own time with my own resources.
(I also learned that the reason I get frustrated with the English language is because of the Germanic contributions.)
That sounds fantastic, and I am immediately jealous of your class.
Really great point. I originally thought I was going to college to learn, but quickly realized that I was only going to college to get a job. I changed majors more than twice to find a field that would -probably- net me a job more easily than art. So now I have this undergrad degree that is 110% useless without a matching master’s degree to go with it. And yeah, it only takes two years to get a master’s, but that’s two more years of college I can’t afford if I want to also pay bills in the meantime. I’ve often cried on Zach’s/my mom’s shoulders about the fact that I did not choose to continue in art, since that is the majority of what pays my bills right now. Alas.
I didn’t come here to lament my education, though. I don’t know if you use Reddit, if you love it, hate it, whatever, but the University of Reddit is really great for education without the $$ and learning on your own time at your own pace. (( http://ureddit.com/ )) There are tons of topics, many with video and interactive classes. I haven’t quite figured out the entire system, but it’s my understanding that a lot of these classes are live for a “semester” and you can sign up and participate in class with a personalized class schedule. If you can’t make a class, the materials should be available online for everyone relatively quickly. I haven’t spent a ton of time with it, but it seems so nifty, I wanted to let other people who love learning that it exists.
You definitely can’t take your Reddit diploma to an employer and expect to get hired on anywhere, but the sheer amount of information you can get there is amazing, and it’s NOT $2700/semester! Plus, as more and more people learn about it and use it, more classes should become available in more subjects. Yesssss! Nerds unite!
Also, I forgot to mention that my brother is a great example of someone who has all of the necessary education but still can’t get a job. He has a master’s in computer…something, but despite it being a “hot field,” and not for lack of trying, he just can’t find anyone willing to hire him. In his case, I think it’s mostly an issue with the fact that he has zero work experience. So see, not only do you have to devote 7+ years of your life to something that costs ~$3k every few months, but somehow, somewhere in there, you better have had a job, cause you’re not getting one without that experience. It’s a weird world we currently live in.
LOVE the Reddit diploma stuff, thanks so much for the link!
Also? Too true on the job experience. Easier to do that while still in college, ridiculous as that sounds. As soon as you graduate, it’s all “why don’t you have two years experience yet?!”
I feel like I’m about 180 degrees from you on this one.
Go to a university to get an education. Work with your professors more closely. Take a directed studies class. Learn about a broad set of things from people who’ve studied them intensely. They’ll force you to look at things your self-directed studies won’t. If they’re really doing their jobs well as educators, you’ll learn all kinds of stuff and they’ll often have more knowledgeable, or at least verifiably knowledgeable, resources than the internet. How good your education is will be a factor of your involvement and the university’s involvement (but it will mostly be you).
Here’s where I think people get stuck/upset. Your parents (and their parents) were wrong when they told you to go to college to get a job. A university is not a trade school. It doesn’t really gear you towards contributing to the workforce in any practical way. Furthermore, it’s immensely expensive compared to something like ITT Tech or a community college. Furthermore, it doesn’t entitle you to anything. At best, it helps you get an interview, but often times, jobs that require a higher degree are willing to substitute some number of years of experience. And as someone that’s been hiring developers for the past 5 or so years, we look for experience over everything (including your hobbyist WoW scripting and that dumb program you wrote in Java to help you with your finances). I’ve talked with other hiring managers in and outside of my field, in small, medium, and large companies, and we all agree. Go to a trade school to get a job.
To be fair to you, your parents, and their parents, the university probably lied to them. I’ve seen professors tell Information Services undergrads, who have geared their education towards managing IT people, that they will be able to immediately get jobs in management and that those jobs carry nice salaries. A company I worked for donated a large sum of money, alongside a series of other companies (some known start-ups, some fortune 500 companies, some wealthy companies in the area, etc.), and that gave us the opportunity to better recruit their people. As a part of that, the department tries to sell us the same bologna they sell the students. Curious, I asked around, and no one hires them for anything but entry-level IT. The same entry-level IT position they could have gotten with a trade school degree and some self-directed study.
And to be fair to the university, the value of an education is debatable. It’s not a simple numbers game. I highly value my philosophy degree in spite of the fact that I work as a software developer, but I couldn’t reliably tell you whether it was worth the money (I tend to think that it was, but how would you even quantify it?). And I’ve seen the computer science and information science programs here evolve quite a bit over the last 10-15 years as a response to criticism from people in the industry.
I sort of agree with both sides on this one. Now, let me explain that I went to university a loooong time ago (there were NO cellphones, NO laptops, and only a few people knew about the internet, which was used mostly for file-sharing), and I know things are much different now. However, I think it’s still relevant.
I also admit I was an education “snob” so I went to a big-name Ivy League school for Mechanical Engineering. I wanted to be a big-shot!
When I graduated, I was able to get a job because I happened to find someone willing to hire new grads. It was an entry-level position, and right away I realized my fancy degree hadn’t taught me a thing about REAL work in the REAL world. I wish I had taken Brad-o’s advice and gotten more involved in my own education. The fancy school couldn’t do that for me, I should have done it myself. I’m trying to keep this short, but let’s just say in the 20+ years since I graduated, I have never once worked as a mechanical engineer. I found things I was good at and followed where they led.
I think the degree is necessary, but it will still only get you into an entry-level position initially. In addition to it, you have to pursue an education to supplement your degree, since you never know where opportunity may take you. For example, I love computer programming, but there was no such degree in my day. Despite that, and not through any great forethought but only because I liked it, I became a very good programmer (two of my all-too-rare A’s came in computer programming courses). Today, this skill allows me to learn new programming languages easily, even though my experience is in old-fashioned, obsolete ones. I can make spreadsheets and databases that amaze my co-workers and make me look good. Something I pursued on my own turned out to be my most valuable asset.
Why am I boring you with this? Here’s my point: a degree is required to get in the door initially, but performance keeps you there and gets you promoted.
This is where I repeat myself to say I whole-heartedly agree with Brad-o’s second paragraph. If I had it to do over again, I would get myself more involved with the professors and broaden my education.
Ahem. A college degree is not necessary to get a job. I think this is a ridiculous bill of sale that employers/colleges/parents propagate.
If you are worth hiring, employers train you and educate you to suit thier needs. Any field, any job, any position.
Oldest child is going to college NOT because any of us believe that he will get a great job doing so. Because his dream jobs??? Clock maker or a bureaucrat in standardized measurements. And I know that those jobs do not require a physics degree.
He is there because he loves learning. He has already approached professors about what research projects they work on and what he can get involved in. That one wants to talk about physics, learn more about it, and work with fun equipment. If after all that, he buys a small pair of pliers and fixes broken clocks, his head will be filled with happiness and all sorts of knoweldge. Good for him.
Where I do not support an education is if you have no goal…no reason to be there, expect if you think a business degree can get you a good job.
Go get a job. Learn how businesses work. If that employer thinks you would be a better employee if you had management classes, okay. (But really???) You learn a lot more about what kind of jobs you like and which ones you are well suited for BY WORKING. Not by taking a class.
It makes no sense for people to believe, let alone continue to sell, the idea that an education is the only way you can find employment. For most degrees, the investment in the education is NOT outweighed by the income you are bound to make. Furthermore, few of the skills or knowledge one learns at college are useful in the work place. A much better investment of you time and money is to actually GET A JOB and WORK YOUR WAY UP.
Husband eschews institutionalized education. It is a poor fit for him. So, he has no degree.
Years ago I asked him how he would feel if the next step up the ladder was closed to him because he did not have a degree.
“I do want to work for that company, so it will be good for me to find that out. Any employer that values a rubberstamped piece of paper signed by someone who never, ever met me over what I have actually done as an employee in thier presence is not an employer I am interested in working with. Ever.”
Call me young, naive, and brainwashed into thinking that the only thing that mattered was a degree, but I was floored by this attitude. I was sure he was wrong and arrogant.
Surely one of us is/was. :)
Sorry – I really didn’t mean it exactly as I wrote it. I have worked with many amazing people who did not have degrees (and many lousy people who did). Some of my best bosses have not had degrees.
Can I edit my statement to say “many jobs require a degree to get in the door…” (this is really how I was thinking, but I didn’t express it correctly)
There is the rub. It is so often said that a degree is necessary, that it is accepted as true and unquestionable. And the reason it so accepted is that your next comment is accurate. “Many jobs require a degree to get in the door.”
Here are at least two degrees that I….la la la la lala lala la…think are terrific: Law degrees and human resource degrees. la la la lalala la la
College degrees are not job experience. Why they are required to get in the door is unfathomable.
I think my experience proves YOUR point. I’ve never used my degree, but I needed it to get started. Of course there could have been other paths to where I am now.
*extremely cynical Anne appears*
Would you not have rather just paid a large sum of money directly to the employer for the right to interview?? Think about it. It takes you four years and a lot of money for the right to an interview?? Four years where you are earning no income and miss opportunities to excel and get promotions. How about you just pay them the money and forget about the four years of wait time?
I like the points tht both of you are making but I think that yours about the paying an employer for the right to get interviewed is more of an ideal world situation.
It is true that in most cases, it’s the nature of the person an not a diploma tht tells you whether they’ll be worth hiring or not, and ideally, we’d be judged on those merits durin interviews.
But given the environment of fairly mass interviewees, I think a lot of businesses use the diploma/education requirement as a way of weeding out the majority of applicants that wouldn’t be the right fit for the job and just jumped on it because the money.
You are missing a major point that I did not make clear. I did not say my time was wasted, I just did not use my specific degree. What I DID use out of my four years was maturity and some wisdom. I also learned that I had to work HARD to stay in the program, which by any measure is a valuable lesson. I learned how to interact with others who may be more interested in themselves than in me. I wouldn’t give up my college experience for anything, I would just do it differently.
I agree with half of what you say, but not at all with *extremely critical Anne* Sorry!
As Anna mentions, I think it’s mostly a matter of the number of applicants and the quality of the people you’re drawing to your pool. Some resumes get dismissed out of hand by necessity and a particular university degree with a particular GPA might just be the bar that gets set. The more competitive the pool, the more likely good people get weeded out by potentially bad criteria. I could understand the idea behind paying a decent amount of money one time to get a good education and keep some doors open.
“If you are worth hiring, employers train you and educate you to suit thier needs. Any field, any job, any position.”
Yup. I’d say that’s true for just about anywhere you’d want to work (and even some places you don’t).
I’d stress, though, that someone has to demonstrate that they’re worth hiring (and therefore worth going through that expense) and what training and education really mean for the position. I’ve passed on people that were fairly good and showed potential to be better, but they weren’t going to be able to succeed well at their current state (or, at least, not as well as others). On the other hand, I’ve hired people that didn’t have the skills I needed because I knew they could get them and that it would pay off.
And there’s always a training line you won’t cross that ties into whether or not that person is “worth it”. I’ve hired for companies that would train people how to code and I’ve hired for companies that wouldn’t. I’ve hired for companies that cared about a particular skill-set and I’ve hired for companies that didn’t. It’s all about finding a good fit where someone can be successful and happy.
But, you’re still basically dead on there.
I kind of wish I could go back and tell myself something very much like this…
When I went to school, I did it without a very clear idea of what it was that I wanted to do with my life.
As a result, I kind of feel like my education hasn’t nearly paid itself off yet, and to be honest, I’m not all that sure that it’s going to.
I feel like I would have been better served figuring out what I wanted to do and taking a very narrowly focused course stream aimed at getting me there instead of the general education that I did receive.
*smiles*
Extremely cynical Anne is impossible to get along with and knows that the things she spews forth are impractical and snide. And she shuns everything conventional and status quo.
Optimistic Anne loves education, even when it is faulty.
I find the many sides of Anne interesting, and I always enjoy reading your comments! :)
*somewhat cynical Anne*
Oh, that type of flattery will get you Cheerleader Anne. (she thinks you are cute, but wonders what kind of car you drive.)
I loved getting my degree. I loved the learning, I loved the environment, I loved the work, I loved the relationships with my professors. I could not have gotten that on my own. Though I could probably have read and studied the textbooks, I would never have gotten into a situation where I wrote articles about opera and looney tunes. I learned a LOT in those four years, and I learned a lot of it because I was in a classroom/forum environment. Sure I did most of that learning in ways that didn’t involve listening to lectures, and you’re right, I could listen to lectures online. But I can’t duplicate the environment in my living room, no matter how hard I try.
I got my current job because I knew someone. It had nothing to do with my resume. And less to do with my education. The job I had before that, I worked retail.
I am not of the opinion that having gotten a business degree would have fixed anything. My best friend has an MBA with honors from a highly reputable school, and her best job since graduating is “assistant shift lead” at a department store, and not for lack of applications. She can’t get entry level jobs because she has an MBA, and she can’t get upper level jobs because she doesn’t have any experience.
Getting a “trade” certificate or degree doesn’t guarantee you a job any more than getting a piece of paper that says you graduated from Q-berts University.
Unfortunately, in the days of mass recruiting, where a computer is most likely going to read your resume because the recruiter is getting 400 job applications /a day/, not having the right letters after your name (BA, BS, BBA, or whatever technical certification abbreviations you need for a job) means you get thrown out. Something like 70% of people get jobs because they know someone, which doesn’t come with your degree, and is often a huge barrier to entry of any kind.
And after all that? I still don’t regret my education.
This was more or less what I was about to start driving at before I had to go to work. I’m just too long winded. ;)
Personal, reputable references usually carry significant weight, far and above any certification and can also outweigh experience. Certifications can be weed out factors in some places and that can keep you from getting your foot in the door. But, once you do, if you can be successful where you go, it can carry you a long way.
And I think you’re right about the structured environment too. Some people need it. But there’s a point beyond that I was trying to focus on. By chance, a friend posted the following this morning on Facebook and I’m going to steal it (he’s very engaged in higher ed).
” ‘Where professors are losing out, and where universities are losing out if they want to actually exist in 50 years, is that you have to provide a meaningful experience which you cannot get online, which you cannot get from electronic media.’
My critical response to the message of this video is that it seems to be missing a discussion of the relative value of information. Yes, we should be teaching students how to learn, and part of that is where to find information, but part of the process is also evaluating the quality of the information. While I wouldn’t advocate that anyone uncritically receive information from the professor, it seems to me that at least the process of completing an advanced degree and competing for a teaching position gives some weight to perspective espoused by the professor. I don’t think that that gravitas is easly replaced.”
My comment about trade school was more that it tends to give you more practical knowledge, assuming you aren’t going into academia or some highly academic area. A technical trade school program geared towards software development might teach you how to program something, how to use a debugger, how to use different IDE’s and compilers, and dabble a little in the theory along the way. A university is going to teach you humanities, arts, language, health, history, science, math, theories about computing, a historical account of the development of the computer, and, oh yeah, a little C/C++/Java programming in Vi or EMacs using GCC. If you’re lucky, your prof will teach you how to use GDB and talk about code construction techniques. You’ll learn more about what a database is and ideas on how to build them than you will engaging with a database. All really valuable stuff, in my opinion, but not necessarily so for the workplace. Then again, the best people we had would talk about these kinds of things, could develop anything we wanted, and were able to apply this kind of thinking, these kinds of ideas, to the projects they were working on.
For me, the university taught me how to think better and both broadened and focused my thinking. I’m positive it makes me better at my job and opened up possibilities I wouldn’t have typically had, but it’s pretty hard to quantify exactly how much it did that in terms of a dollar amount.