Has College Education Lost its Value?

[Shinko]

So as I've mentioned to a few folks, a few days ago my younger sister moved in with me to attend the university in the town where I live. Not incidentally, I moved here in the first place to attend that same university.

Eight years ago.

I have since earned both my bachelor's degree and a master's. Yet I work the graveyard shift as a stocker at Walmart.

I can't help but think of a conversation I had with my mother a few weeks ago. She told me that when she was my age, having a college education was almost a guarantee of getting a job. That if you had a degree, even if it wasn't necessarily in the field you were applying for, it proved you were intelligent and trainable, and most places would then favor you enormously for hire.

Problem is, people caught on to this trick. Get around to the 2000s, and going to college is almost not even a question anymore- it's an expectation. Almost everyone goes. Instead, now the big buzzword is not "college degree" but "experience." I have a bachelor of arts in history, a minor in English, and a master's degree in Library and Information science. I have applied to museums, libraries, schools, and archives near nonstop for the past year and a half. None have hired me- but of interesting note, the few that interviewed me were all related to kids in some way. A school district library; two children's libraries; a daycare center. Why is this correlation relevant? Because my mother ran a daycare out of our home my entire childhood, and I list that under my experience.

All the education in the world fails to impress. Experience is what talks. Or so it seems to me. As far as I can glean, it seems that college is almost not that important anymore except as an extension of your basic schooling. You are expected to get a college degree, but having one impresses nobody.

Thoughts?

[Twillie]

It's funny, this has sort of been on my mind recently as I've been wondering who among my friends in college will go on to not even be successful in their intended career path, but just land a job related to their major. I've also looked up lists of "The Most Useless Degrees" out of curiosity, but also to see any overlap and just how many degrees are actually worth it.

Before anything, keep in mind that this is all coming from a person who has neither had a job nor sought one before, so take it with a grain of salt if you'd like. This is all gleaned from others' personal experiences and general advice I've heard X)

Nowadays, with so many people getting college degrees and entering the competitive job field, I don't think there's one key ingredient to landing a job. You need a degree AND experience AND an internship AND recommendations AND etc etc etc. Most of all, I think the biggest thing is just telling employers as clear as possible what you know how to do, and sometimes experience says that better than a degree. In your case, a BA in History is rather broad, whereas a lifetime of daycare experience says that you know how to work with kids. Employers are more likely to settle on known skills rather than risk what you might have learned from a history degree, seeing as they have a huge pool of other applicants to fall back on.

Currently, I'm studying for a BBS in Business Management, but from my hobbies and career aspirations, you'd expect me to get a BA or BFA in Fine Arts or something. Well yes, that'd be cool to study, but what good will that actually do me in the future? A piece of paper doesn't say what kind of artist I am, my art does. Even within the business world, there are some degrees that are good for jobs, but there are also others like entrepreneurship that you don't need. If you want to start a business, just do it. On the flipside, though, there are plenty of jobs that require degrees, such as medicine and teaching (teaching is an odd one, as it paradoxically requires you to invest more into your education in order to be paid more). Sometimes experience talks better than a degree, sometimes it's the other way around. I think a lot of college is knowing just which degree to get. It's a balance of not getting too specific, but also not being too broad.

College has changed from years past, but I'm not sure that it's become obsolete. It's different in that you can't just settle on a degree now; you need to put in thought and research into just what that degree will offer you. Don't just go for a BA in art because you like to draw; actually ask yourself what jobs it'll realistically get you, how many job openings of that there are, and if you even need the education in order to draw. I think if you go to college, it's all about what degree you get, rather than just getting any degree.

It's a balance of not getting too specific, but also not being too broad. Going back that art degree, if I receive that, it'll pigeon hole me into a career field notorious for its difficulty. I'm setting myself up for failure if I expect to succeed right after college with that and no backups. Likewise, with degrees in philosophy, writing, and even others like English or history, they can make too small a niche for jobs, or they don't tell employers enough about what you can actually do. A BA in Liberal Arts (like, the specific degree) may have made you a well rounded person, but what does liberal arts actually mean? To an outsider with hundreds of other applicants, virtually nothing. They don't know from that title alone what you've done and what you know. You might as well have just spent all that time working jobs and getting the experience that will tell them what you actually are able to do.

So does experience outweigh a college degree? In some cases, perhaps so. It depends on the degree. Does experience always outweigh a degree nowadays? Well, I'm not too sure myself, having never went job hunting, but I sort of doubt that's the only thing that matters. Like I said, I suspect that it's a combination of qualifiers that will look better on an application, and it's a game of telling just exactly what you're able to do.

[June Scarlet]

To me, the College Education itself was the value. I loved college, I loved learning, I loved meeting new people, it was great. I was an English Major, Art Minor, not for any particular reason then I'd collected a lot of credits in those areas. I went to a two year college my first years, and I didn't declare a major until I went to my four year school. So for two years, I just took classes that sounded interesting and fulfilled my general education requirements.

I wasn't really thinking of a career, I just wanted to learn. I tend to not to worry about my life past a year in advanced. I always figure things will happen, and there's no point in worry about it. Eventually I did start thinking about it, and I thought Library and Information Science would be cool, coincidentally enough. I had volunteered at libraries, and then I also got an internship in the campus library my last year.

So I graduated, started studying for the GRE, and in the meanwhile took a job as a cashier. I applied for jobs at local libraries, until one basically told that I would never get a job there, and that I shouldn't even apply. That sort of crushed my hopes and dreams, but I went ahead and applied to Grad School, and took some online classes. But they were kind of not well taught, and I floundered to the point of failing them. Which was really weird, because to that point, I had gotten straight A's in college. I think cashier at the time drained me too much, and also what had happened with the one library telling me not to. So then I was really low. Basically had no hope left.

So then that spring, I decided to take a drawing class at my community college, where I used to go. Sort of a last ditch desperate attempt to add some value to my life. And it actually helped. Having the routine of a college class again. Doing something I was decent at, but yet could still improve.

And then on sort of a whim, I decided to try taking computer programming. My logic was I had taken html, and I was pretty good at it, I was good at math and logic, even though I didn't end up with a degree in it, and that computer programmers seemed like cool people. That was it. I really didn't know much about it. But hey, that's what I always went to college for, to learn about stuff I didn't know about. I took a lot of English classes because I didn't know how to write very well, and I wanted to get better, not because I already knew what I was doing.

So I started taking some classes, and I was pretty decent at it, even if a real newbie who didn't even know what type of computer programming I wanted to do. But I was willing to ask questions and learn.

About a year after I started with this, and still not really sure what exactly I wanted to do, but thinking I preferred working with the frontend code as opposed to the backend code, I went to this random STEM event. I'd gotten an email about it, and honestly the reason I went was because it was in a building I'd always wanted to go inside. So I went, and they had different booths set up, so I decided to be brave and talk to people. And I showed them an app I'd made in class, it was my final project. Anyway everyone seemed to like the app, but this one booth for a software company really liked it, and said if I liked front end coding, I'd probably like User Experience, also called UX.

But she then mentioned that they only take interns that have a four year degree. And I was like, oh, but I do have a four year degree. I just went back to school to learn even more.

So I interviewed with the UX team, and I got hired as a paid intern, and I've been working at the company since last August, and I really like it there, and I feel like I'm actually worth something in a job. And they don't expect me to know everything, and help me learn. And my skills in art and english do come in use, I'm helping design how things look and feel to the user, which is what I do when I create comics too. It all blends together for me, and I feel great that it does. And it's paid, it really feels more like a part time job. I'm also taking classes part time too, so I'm working towards getting a certificate in something.

So anyway, conclusions.
1. I guess you're right. A four year degree is just a checkmark you have to have completed to get a job. Even though it was in English and not computer science, it was still enough to count for their requirements.

2. Library Science is a hard field. I didn't go too much into this, but it's really hard to get a job at a library. Even just talking to other library school students, back when I was a student with them. I never could break into anything, not even something that didn't require a degree, like a shelver. Lots of people getting the masters, not so many positions. And it doesn't help that a lot of the people getting the masters already work at libraries, and have lots of experience. In the case of library science, it doesn't seem that the degree is nearly enough. Maybe volunteer at a library? To give you something, at least?

3. Computer Science is a desperate field. My goodness, are they desperate for people. Not only do I get paid to be an intern, I get paid twice as much per hour as when I was cashiering. They're hiring a lot, experience isn't as important. Like, it's important, but you don't have to have years and years of it just to get an entry level position. The experience you get in a classroom can be enough. You just have to prove your worth, which is so refreshing.

4. So, it looks like it maybe does depend on the field. Computer Science and Library Science are sort of on opposite ends of the spectrum. Neither looked particularly hard at my degree. But yet, it was so important to shaping who I am, and what I'm able to do, I don't think I would have gotten where I am now without it.

So, worth it? Yes, but in a really roundabout way.

[Celestial]

It has definitely lost its value, though I would not go as far to call it worthless.

I graduated in June and was unemployed for over five months before landing my current job, at which I have been three weeks. I started seriously looking for employment in March, three months before I graduated, but after I graduated, I was constantly sending out applications, at least one per day, sometimes two, sometimes three. I applied for entry level jobs that I was qualified for and ones that were similar to the sort of thing I studied. What most commonly put me off applications were the very simple words "experience essential". Sometimes it was one year, sometimes two, sometimes three but the pattern was clear: experience was essential to even get a callback, and what was more, it was job experience. University experience was not counted. Whenever I spoke about how I gained similar skills in university, I did not even receive an interview.

I was not sitting on my hands all day, however. I picked up two volunteer jobs, one in a bookshop, one in a palace working as a guide. I was at them for over a year at the former and nine months at the latter before I had to leave to start my actual paid job.

Now, I went to a good university; the best university in Scotland and the top five in the UK so it isn't like I went to some backwater community college. I am sure it gave me a little bit of a boost. However, I found that the jobs that actually offered me interviews only did it based on my volunteer work. I was most commonly interviewed by museums, galleries, places where guiding and dealing with the public was an essential skill. All of them rejected me for the exact same reason: "You are good, we just hired someone with more experience." Experience, or lack thereof, was the running theme in my failure to find a job during this period of time. But the fact is, they looked at my experience first. My degree was in the background, a checkbox, as you said, that needed to be ticked.

I worked with a lot of older co-workers (retired people wanting something to do) during my time guiding at the palace and they all told me the same thing: during their days, a university education could land you a job just like that. Now, this is not the case and they certainly did not envy me.

In the end, I went to twenty interviews. Only two ever offered me a position, one of which is my current job. The one I rejected was working with autistic adults (I got it because I have a lot of personal experience with this field, enough to impress my interviewers a lot.) My current job is working as a visitor assistant and guide at a major tourist attraction. Different as night and day, right? Well, they had one thing in common; the words "full training will be provided" in the descriptions. In other words, experience was not utterly necessary.

And yet, my experience is what I believe gave me the edge over other applicants in getting my current job. For one thing, I have tour guide training and I have worked in retail. Notice where I got those? My two volunteer positions. Also known as experience. It's a position that is sort of in my field (modern history and russian lends itself well to heritage and working with tourists) and yet were it not for my experience, I doubt my degree would have been sufficient. They said experience was "desirable", but when you are one applicant out of hundreds, that makes all the difference. I believe it did for me.

So, my conclusions from this thorny path I took? A degree is a first step. Experience is what matters, and it is, sadly, often work experience. My volunteer work was not seen as sufficient to land me most jobs. Now that I have my current job, I am certain that if I stay there for a sufficient period of time, I will have a lot of avenues open to me, ones my degree would not have opened for me. Do I regret my university education? Not a chance. I loved it and I loved learning. Did it actually help me? Not really. A broad field like that did not offer enough to employers. It was a perk. They wanted experience, and they wanted lots of professional experience to boot.

Another thing is that my brother is finishing school soon and he has chosen not to go to university. We shall see whether that leads him down a better or worse path than me.

[Reiqua]

When Anne of Green Gables got her BA, it made her so employable that it wasn't even funny, and everyone was scratching their heads as to why she'd bother with a super impressive BA when she was only going to settle down get married and have kids anyway. Bit different to nowadays! (Though I think we'd still agree that you don't absolutely have to have a BA to qualify you to be a mum.)

Like Shinko mentioned, when I finished high school there wasn't really any question of whether I'd go to uni. It's just what everyone does. I had a huge question mark over what I wanted to do, though. Most of the degrees on offer looked pretty meh to me. My dad was pushing me to try journalism, but given I'd hated English classes in school (despite the fact that I can obviously write a little) I wasn't keen for that.

In the end I was tossing up between a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Linguistics, and a Bachelor of Speech Pathology. It was a bit of a no brainer to pick speech pathology, because it was going to be a lot harder on me finding a job with a broad 'BA' behind me, than a degree like speech pathology that spits you out into a very specific field. But similar to what you said, June Scarlet, I just did what I enjoyed without too much regard for where it would take me. And I also loved my uni days. A lot. I studied three years undergrad (typical in Australia) and two years Masters. Those were definitely fun times!

I wanted to work part time while I was at uni. But I was living at home* and my parents were really not keen for me to do so. I figured that part time work would be really helpful in making me more employable. After all, I was the only one of my friends who didn't work part time and to my mind that was an easy thing for employers to look at. "She has experience in a workplace, she doesn't. Hmm... I wonder which one we should hire. Not!"
My parents' view was that you should study hard full time when you're studying, and then get a better paying job once you've graduated. Out of respect to my parents, I didn't fight them on that, but I really don't think that philosophy applies the same way as it did when they were younger!
My family are all very involved in the local church, so I was already volunteering (almost full time if you add it up) with varying church groups. My parents preferred that I continue with that, rather than taking time away from it to do part time work.

*Living at home to study is very common in Australia. The population centres that are big enough to have a university are each three hours' drive apart, or more like nine hours if you want to go to a university with a name. So normally you just go to your local university, and it's a reasonable commute from where you grew up, so there's no real incentive to move out of home for it.

In the end, ironically enough, it was probably that volunteering with my church that helped me more than any part time work would've done. Most of my volunteering was with children, but it also gave me leadership, organisation, and technology skills, experience with culturally and linguistically diverse people, and a bajillion other skills that I just took for granted, but then found could look pretty good on a resume.

Speech Pathology is a kinda different field in that my degree didn't qualify me to work in any kind of job other than speech pathology, and nothing but my degree could've qualified me to work in speech pathology. That makes for a very fixed supply and demand for jobs, and when there's an imbalance in supply and demand, it's a very clear problem, with no workarounds.

In my area, the ideal is to work for a government health service. It means they won't mess your pay around, won't make you work crazy hours, and will give you decent professional development time, bonuses, etc. It also means that clients don't have to pay for your services, so you see kids who really need your help rather than rich kids whose parents pay you a lot and put a lot of pressure on you to "FIX MY CHILD NOW!!!"

Most of my peers found work in Sydney or Canberra (the only cities within a 9 hour radius), but given the current supply-demand for Speech Pathologists, maybe 5% of them would've gotten a position with a government health service.
Still, most of them got some form of work in the field (about 90%) within about 5-6 months of graduating. So June Scarlet I don't think speech pathology is as desperate a field as Computer Sciences, but it's got enough jobs available for the people who want them... just. (Though that said, the amount of people being accepted into speech pathology degrees in Sydney has been increasing exponentially in recent years, so it won't last. I'm glad I graduated when I did, and not two years later).

I guess I was lucky in that I wanted to work in a rural area, where the demand for speech pathologists is much higher than the supply of people.
I applied to four different jobs, and got interviews for three. Not in one case did I feel like having had a part time job would've improved my job prospects at all.

One place turned me down because another applicant had more experience with the indigenous community, but they sounded genuinely sad about it, and that it had been a close run thing where I was actually the better applicant on other fronts.
Another place just sent a generic rejection message. I think I'd never really had a chance with that one anyway, because it was probably earmarked for someone else. (Down side of government health services, they're required to interview two people before filling a position so sometimes you go to a pointless interview like that one.) Still, I enjoyed the road trip that I took to go to the interview!

The third place gave me a job (evidently), so pretty happy with that all up.

After finishing my studies, I was unemployed for a similar amount of time to you Celestial, but was no-where near as diligent at applying for jobs. Though in my defence, there were only a handful of jobs that I could've applied for anyway! And I think, given everything, I probably got a job relatively easily.

I think the biggest factors in me getting a job without difficulty was that I was interested in jobs that very few (eligible) people were interested in, I had a lot of volunteering experience that turned out to be way more relevant than I'd intended it to be, and I was obviously really keen about each job I applied for. I travelled six, eight, and eight hours respectively to attend my interviews in person, and took the time to look around the towns, sus out the churches, and generally show that I was really interested in moving there for work.

Because I was applying for jobs in rural areas who knew they'd have trouble filling their positions, they still needed experience in speech pathology sure, but the kind of experience you get on practical placements at uni was sufficient.
Of course that does make it a huge wheel-and-deal about how experienced you look. Our prac placements were randomly assigned to us, so if you got ones that gave you good experience, great! Otherwise, sucks to be you. (I was pretty lucky, though!)

So Twillie, I guess my field is kinda different in that
requirement for experience, since it's a relatively niche field. That
said, far more speech pathology jobs in the city required out-of-uni
experience.

I guess the short version is that I was lucky. In my specific field the decreasing importance of uni degrees didn't have too much of an impact on my employment prospects.

I suppose there is the consideration that I have the masters in speech pathology rather than the bachelors. In a government health service like I'm in, that's kindof a disadvantage to my employers because it means they have to pay me more.
In a private practice it'd be a plus, because they don't have to pay you more, and it means they can employ a more experienced person for the same wages.

[Huntress]

I feel vaguely compelled to point out that at the end of the day, the key component to landing a good job is heaps of luck. Everything else is helpful circumstances and once you actually land that job, it's up to you whether you're able to keep it with a combination of skills and knowledge and people skills and work ethic and suchlike.

The thing is, you have to prove your worth to someone before you can settle into the arguable cushiness of a blooming career.

Up until pretty recently, you'd prove it to an educational institution. You'd first have to get in - the image of a nervous highschool graduate opening letters from colleges is one of those scenes I associate with Hollywood YA movies - and then you'd pay the big bucks for the privilege to have access to piles of knowledge and the institution testing you for the acquisition of said knowledge, and once you came out the other end with more or less success, the institution would award you with a piece of paper that says "this person is worthy to have in the working adult world in this particular field with these particular results" - and that was more or less the end of it. You'd apply somewhere with your newly gained cred, you'd get the position, credits roll.

Now you prove your worth to the specific company. It's one thing that higher education is so ubiquitous that it doesn't really help you narrow down the list of candidates, that's one aspect of it and previous posts already covered that, but more to the point, the fact that you got a higher education shows essentially nothing to an employer. Well, it shows that you had some amount of money to pay, some amount of persistence to finish the degree, some amount of proximity to theoretical academic sources that may or may not have stuck to you and that may or may not have anything at all to do with what the company needs from an employee, and with any luck you can complete tasks required of you within a prescribed deadline. Mmmmaybe. A sizable chunk of the work I get comes by way of the boss sending me a panicked email to the effect of "hey, so I gave this piece of work to this other translator and two weeks passed and now they're all 'whoops I won't be able to finish it after all, lol can has extension or something?' and the client is raining fire on my head, halp?" And then I'll take it, work timey-wimey magic and work ethic and other arcane translation secrets, get it done and get the money that could've gone to the other translator if not for "lol durr what are deadlines". And since the boss knows that I know how to do good work within the accepted deadline, I get more work, everyone's happy and raining of fire is mostly avoided.

Trouble there is, there are lots of people out there who would do amazing work and add value to the company and etcetera, but the company won't have a way of knowing whether you actually will do great work or just say that you will and then cause them a whole lot of mess with money and clients lost. So to err on the side of caution, they'll take a chance on people who come with the lowest possible risks, aka actual relevant experience. Most commonly, jobs get traded within the company first and foremost, with first priority given to some intern shmuck who's already proven themselves to some nice extent, or employees with the necessary skills are lured in from other companies, or employees are asked if they can recommend anyone. Once a job posting goes out to the public, those first layers with good safety nets have already been probed, didn't produce anyone and they have to wade into the unknown, so they'll do that with as many safety nets that they can bring to those unknown depths.

College education still has value in many ways, I reckon, but as far as I can tell the loss of value that's being discussed here is the loss of trustworthiness in vouching for their graduates. If an employer knew that every single person who can show a diploma from College Whatchamaplace is an amazing smartypants with strong work ethic and flexibility in adjusting to the team and so on and so forth, the Whatchamaplace diploma would probably carry weight with that employer.

Here's what I'm now wondering: money. Them college degrees are bafflingly expensive. In just about any other field, throwing thousands of dollars at something that doesn't give you even a rudimentary guarantee of gaining something back for it is, at best, high-risk stock market activities (basically you'd be an angel investor xD) and at worst a good ol' scam. So how does that system even stay running? Is it like a lottery where just about enough people are seen gaining something from the degree that buying the ticket, ahem, access to studies is seen as a worthwhile shot, or does it have more to do with a combination of inertia (going to college on a student loan is What You Do) and the parents still thinking that if it worked for them, it'll work for you, and pushing you to get a degree with the idea that it's a secure investment (because at 18 I sure as heck couldn't calculate risks like that myself)?

Jan 4, 2017 17:41:25 GMT -5 Reiqua said:

My parents' view was that you should study hard full time when you're studying, and then get a better paying job once you've graduated. Out of respect to my parents, I didn't fight them on that, but I really don't think that philosophy applies the same way as it did when they were younger!

This one's interesting in that it sorta goes both ways. On the one hand, good luck being marketable and employable if you focus only on your studies during your, well, studies and then get spat into the great wide world with no solid experience to show. On the other hand, good luck being able to handle work and studies on any kind of productive level if you opt to do both. The way I've generally seen that go, studies start to suffer at the expense of work (because work is how you get money) and then you risk getting a tickbox education or dropping out entirely.

I went into my MA studies in 2013 as a part-time degree (cyclical studies, one week of classes per month) with the idea that I'd drop out if it got too much in the way of my life. It was effectively a spite degree to shut my mom up about it xD My field of work being what it is, I can vary my workload and working hours as I see fit, and the degree itself was something I could tie into my work, so I ended up running the two things more or less parallel, focused more on the classes I felt were more relevant, diagonal-read my way through the less relevant/more generalized/more familiar stuff, frequently did work-work during class when I had the time (read: got bored) and basically just organically fit the studies into the rest of my life as work shuffled aside a bit to make space. Graduated within the nominal two years, got the diploma, it's very pretty, etc.

My class had 13something people, all of whom already had jobs, some of them had families and little kids and such, since it was the sort of degree that attracts the sort of people who can't devote all of their time to studies. I was one of the two people who graduated on time, the other one having spent months on sick leave due to a broken leg and able to finish her thesis during that time. I still have the rest of the class in a closed Facebook group and a year and a half since my graduation and the end of nominal time of studies, most of them are still working on getting that degree.

[Shinko]

June Scarlet How did you afford to take college classes just for the sake of doing it? XDD My BA was paid for by scholarships and I'm still in debt up to my eyeballs just from my Masters.

Librarianship is a hard field to break into for certain. I find a lot of places have these insane written tests as weeding devices that basically amount to "Can you Dewey Decimal System." Which is hilarious because one of my bleedin' classes was "Systems of Organization" which amounted to eighteen weeks of corss-examining the DDS and Library of Congress systems until I was sick of them.

That said, it's a bit easier if you're willing to go further afield- I'm not attached to getting hired anywhere local, so I apply anywhere and everywhere I can. Generally speaking small towns without local major colleges have been more receptive.

It's interesting that you and Reiqua both brought up "desperate fields" because my mother has been singing the same song to me, although in her narrative it's usually nursing. There are definitely jobs you can get a qualification for that are an almost promised shoe-in because they are in such high demand and low supply. It's just a question of if you could live with working that job without wanting to tear your hair.

Jan 6, 2017 7:32:46 GMT -5 Huntress said:

Trouble there is, there are lots of people out there who would do amazing work and add value to the company and etcetera, but the company won't have a way of knowing whether you actually will do great work or just say that you will and then cause them a whole lot of mess with money and clients lost. So to err on the side of caution, they'll take a chance on people who come with the lowest possible risks, aka actual relevant experience. Most commonly, jobs get traded within the company first and foremost, with first priority given to some intern shmuck who's already proven themselves to some nice extent, or employees with the necessary skills are lured in from other companies, or employees are asked if they can recommend anyone. Once a job posting goes out to the public, those first layers with good safety nets have already been probed, didn't produce anyone and they have to wade into the unknown, so they'll do that with as many safety nets that they can bring to those unknown depths.

It's worth noting that over here in the US, it's actually law that all job openings have to be posted publicly. So even if places have an internal candidate all queued up and promised the position, they still have to go through the motions of listing the job and doing interviews. So about 50% of jobs you could be applying for (at least) are a complete and utter waste of one's time because you have zero chance.

Jan 6, 2017 7:32:46 GMT -5 Huntress said:

Here's what I'm now wondering: money. Them college degrees are bafflingly expensive. In just about any other field, throwing thousands of dollars at something that doesn't give you even a rudimentary guarantee of gaining something back for it is, at best, high-risk stock market activities (basically you'd be an angel investor xD) and at worst a good ol' scam. So how does that system even stay running? Is it like a lottery where just about enough people are seen gaining something from the degree that buying the ticket, ahem, access to studies is seen as a worthwhile shot, or does it have more to do with a combination of inertia (going to college on a student loan is What You Do) and the parents still thinking that if it worked for them, it'll work for you, and pushing you to get a degree with the idea that it's a secure investment (because at 18 I sure as heck couldn't calculate risks like that myself)?

Proooobably a little bit of everything you suggested? Also the fact that, at least on our side of the Atlantic, college degrees are generally demanded for everything except the most basic grunt jobs re:retail or similar. I applied for a Reference Librarian position a week ago that demanded a MLIS when reference librarians basically sit at the reference desk shooting off emails, updating the card calendar, and answering patron questions. As I mentioned in my OP, it's at the point now where going to college is no longer exceptional, it's expected.

[Crystal]

I opted for a first degree in a desperate field (programming! *high fives all around*) and after accumulating some years of experience, I quit to to go for degrees or training in fields I'm interested in, but which are probably not as marketable (massage, dance, etc). I've been taking night classes for years, too.

This has actually worked out pretty well for me, and if you have any interest in any of the desperate fields (nursing, therapy, computer science, etc) and especially if you happen to be a minority in that field, I highly recommend it as a career path. I was personally much more practical about my degree choice than the average 17-year-old because I was very highly aware that I would be coming out of college in need of a work visa. Even with that hurdle, I had little difficulty obtaining internships and a job right out of school, and began making >$100,000 after a few years, allowing me to pay off debt and save for "pleasure" degrees. It took a lot of time, but I like to think of that more as a benefit - my career options are much broader at 27 than they were at 17.

I'm still not entirely sure what I'm going to do after I get my second degree for fun (work in second degree? Work in first degree and pursue second degree work part-time? Try for a mash of both? Get a third degree?) but that's a problem for another day

As far as the value of college education, I agree that it's more about the experience and networking than it is about the resume value. A lot of my friends got jobs by knowing people who know people who know people, and I've been offered several jobs the same way.

Finally, I'd also like to throw in the notion that you don't have to go to college at all. In my experience of knowing people who know people, the trades (electrician, plumber, etc) are usually pretty in need of people and they often train you via apprenticeships instead of requiring a degree... again, especially if you're a member of a minority. There are half-and-half ones, too, like therapist assistants and so on, who require some training but then you start working after just a couple years.

[Huntress]

Jan 6, 2017 8:26:55 GMT -5 Shinko said:

It's worth noting that over here in the US, it's actually law that all job openings have to be posted publicly. So even if places have an internal candidate all queued up and promised the position, they still have to go through the motions of listing the job and doing interviews. So about 50% of jobs you could be applying for (at least) are a complete and utter waste of one's time because you have zero chance.

Same for us. At least, it's the law to post all job openings in the public sector publicly, last I checked. It works out pretty much the same way: they get an internal candidate all lined up, run the job posting anyway and happily shred all applications they get (or, with luck, sort of skim them when they get the chance. Made worse by the fact that in ye average government-related institution, HR people are swamped with work at the best of times and have to process applications on the side of everything else.)

Proooobably a little bit of everything you suggested? Also the fact that, at least on our side of the Atlantic, college degrees are generally demanded for everything except the most basic grunt jobs re:retail or similar. I applied for a Reference Librarian position a week ago that demanded a MLIS when reference librarians basically sit at the reference desk shooting off emails, updating the card calendar, and answering patron questions. As I mentioned in my OP, it's at the point now where going to college is no longer exceptional, it's expected.

Also same for us xD You can get by without higher education in a grunt job, or the sort of fields that get complicated specific vocational requirements, such as my dad whose on-the-paper academic education ended with middle school (8th grade at the time) but who takes exams every three years to maintain his qualifications as an engineer.

Difference there is, our higher education is either free of charge or several magnitudes cheaper depending on what you're looking at (read: we flip-flop in and out of reforms every few years and nobody can decide whether to charge money for university education or not >___>) When it costs money, it's to the effect of $4,000 for a year of studies for an MSc in an economics-related field in the country's leading university which ranks in the world top 400 so not completely a backwateristan non-degree. There are excellent universities in the States but I sorta doubt that a degree that costs ten times more is also ten times better.

So it makes me wonder how sustainable that system actually is and when the society would reach a tipping point where people opt not to go into higher education because of, well, the topic of this thread. Or because they can't afford to (tuition fees have been steadily climbing for decades, haven't they?), or they might opt to get a degree abroad because it's several times cheaper, or bring vocational education back into vogue because hey, actual job prospects. I'd have a hard time sucking up even that 4k with no discernible payout, but I've gotten the impression that people consider great big piles o'debt to be a necessary evil when education is concerned.

[Ian Wolf-Park]

In a sense, it has. I know that in Canada (and probably the US as well, we have similar education systems), some foreign degrees are not recognized/accepted. It's the reason why most cab drivers are foreigners, they're trying to save up money (for tuition and other money for university) in order to get a degree/diploma that it recognized/accepted.

I'm actually in a similar boat as you, Shinko, with me having a Bachelor's in Business Administration, yet I'm stuck in a retail job and still hunting for a job that's related to my field. Incidentally, both of my parents want me to go back to school to get another degree.

[Reiqua]

Jan 6, 2017 7:32:46 GMT -5 Huntress said:

Here's what I'm now wondering: money. Them college degrees are bafflingly expensive. In just about any other field, throwing thousands of dollars at something that doesn't give you even a rudimentary guarantee of gaining something back for it is, at best, high-risk stock market activities (basically you'd be an angel investor xD) and at worst a good ol' scam. So how does that system even stay running? Is it like a lottery where just about enough people are seen gaining something from the degree that buying the ticket, ahem, access to studies is seen as a worthwhile shot, or does it have more to do with a combination of inertia (going to college on a student loan is What You Do) and the parents still thinking that if it worked for them, it'll work for you, and pushing you to get a degree with the idea that it's a secure investment (because at 18 I sure as heck couldn't calculate risks like that myself)?

I'd be interested to hear how other countries do the whole money thing. I'm vaguely familiar with the concept of student loans, but what do such loans look like?

In Australia, the gov-mint used to pay for your uni degree, but they no longer do that per se. Instead, they pay all your tuition fees upfront while giving you an interest free loan on it (called HECS), and you pay back your HECS debt once you start earning enough. But only if you start earning enough. If you studied accounting but ended up working in a low paying retail job, you wouldn't be earning above the threshold and wouldn't be paying back your HECS debt. Or if you started working part time and thus didn't earn above threshold, you wouldn't pay back your HECS debt either. Or if you work for two years and start earning enough and paying back your HECS, but then get married, go on Maternity leave, and then unpaid Mat. leave for the next ten years while you pump out bebes (because traditional family structures), and then go back to work part time while you see your kids through school, with your hubbie supporting you financially the whole time, and then you retire on your joint wealth... well in that scenario, you never finish paying back your HECS debt, and it just sits there until you die when it goes poof.

tl;dr - HECS debts are a very non-risky student loan from the gov-mint available to all Australians that you don't even have to pay back if it doesn't work out.

Also Hunty, you mentioned in a later post that your degrees would cost about $4,000/year. Ours are more like $20,000 each year, but then that's in Australian dollars so I'm not sure how it translates to elsewhere...

Anyway, I think it's good to have uni education so financially accessible to everyone, because it makes it possible for people to break out of the cycle of poverty and get the education they need to get a better job than they would otherwise have managed. (Of course the question of whether it's an economically sensible thing for the gov-mint to do is a whole 'nother question)
I suppose this all could also be construed as making a uni education even more devalued, since anyone can get it now... but seriously, money probably shouldn't be the barrier making only some people able to get a uni degree.

I guess that begs the question, though: what should be?
Should it be intelligence? The kind of job you're aspiring to get into? Or is it okay that uni degrees are becoming so commonplace?

Jan 6, 2017 8:26:55 GMT -5 Shinko said:

That said, it's a bit easier if you're willing to go further afield- I'm not attached to getting hired anywhere local, so I apply anywhere and everywhere I can. Generally speaking small towns without local major colleges have been more receptive.

It's interesting that you and Reiqua both brought up "desperate fields" because my mother has been singing the same song to me, although in her narrative it's usually nursing. There are definitely jobs you can get a qualification for that are an almost promised shoe-in because they are in such high demand and low supply. It's just a question of if you could live with working that job without wanting to tear your hair.

I think what I was trying to get at was 'desperate areas' rather than 'desperate fields'. Speech pathology isn't really a desperate field in Australia, but there are still 'desperate areas' (as in parts of the country) which just really need a speechie. Mostly those small towns you were speaking of, without as many resources or other things to attract people there. (Possibly a little more pronounced in Australia, because my small town (eg,) is 5-6 hours drive from the nearest city with proper facilities, and I don't think you get things that spread out in 'murrica)

But yeah, I kinda agree with your answer to that story of your mothers. Working closely with a lot of nurses, at the local hospital, I doubt I could survive a month in nursing without ragequitting or just dying from lack of body clock or hatred of everything...
Here I shall pause to briefly pay homage to any and all nurses out there. You have my respect for doing a great job of something I could never hope to do!

Jan 6, 2017 13:13:32 GMT -5 Huntress said:

Jan 6, 2017 8:26:55 GMT -5 Shinko said:

It's worth noting that over here in the US, it's actually law that all job openings have to be posted publicly. So even if places have an internal candidate all queued up and promised the position, they still have to go through the motions of listing the job and doing interviews. So about 50% of jobs you could be applying for (at least) are a complete and utter waste of one's time because you have zero chance.

Same for us. At least, it's the law to post all job openings in the public sector publicly, last I checked. It works out pretty much the same way: they get an internal candidate all lined up, run the job posting anyway and happily shred all applications they get (or, with luck, sort of skim them when they get the chance. Made worse by the fact that in ye average government-related institution, HR people are swamped with work at the best of times and have to process applications on the side of everything else.)

As I said, I work in public sector, and the rule in Aus is they not only have to post the job publically, but also have to interview at least two people for the position. Even moar wasted time! \o/
(Especially when you drive eight hours each way for the interview, as I did)
Non-public sector places aren't bound by that rule, though, and often fill positions the way Hunty originally mentioned.

[Thorn]

Reiqua

It's pretty similar here, not that that's really surprising. xP Tertiary education used to be free (in terms of tuition fees, anyway) but now we have a student loan which you have to pay back if you earn over a certain amount (though as my low-paying retail job is enough to mean repayments, I think maybe that bar is set lower in our case.) It's also interest free unless you're living overseas and not making repayments for...six months, I believe it is? Then you start to collect interest.

You can also take out course-related costs, which are just added onto your loan; and if your parents earn under a certain amount you qualify also for a student allowance, which you don't need to pay back.

[June Scarlet]

Jan 6, 2017 8:26:55 GMT -5 Shinko said:

June Scarlet How did you afford to take college classes just for the sake of doing it? XDD My BA was paid for by scholarships and I'm still in debt up to my eyeballs just from my Masters.

Community College is cheap, man. I went there my first two years. My first year I paid my way from savings, second year I got a full ride scholarship because I had a 4.0, when I transferred to my four year college, I went to a state college, which was not too expensive compared to other places, and also got a really good scholarship.

Probably the other thing to mention was that I was actually homeschooled when I was in high school, so I feel like in many ways Community College was like my high school experience, taking lots of classes, not really having a focus yet. Actually did duel enrollment my senior year, and took community college classes then too.

But seriously, Community College is a really great value for what you get.

Edit:
Also, I don't blame myself for not getting into computer stuff back then. At the time, I didn't even have internet at home, that didn't happen until I went to my four year school, and that was only at my dorm and on campus. I didn't learn html until after I graduated. So it just wasn't really a thing I would have even known about at the time.

[Shinko]

Jan 6, 2017 18:09:30 GMT -5 Reiqua said:

I'd be interested to hear how other countries do the whole money thing. I'm vaguely familiar with the concept of student loans, but what do such loans look like?

Here in the US, there are two kinds of student loans- subsidized and unsubsidized. A subsidized loan is payed out up front to the college, then put on deferment until you either graduate or stop taking classes. So while the degree is on deferment you don't have to pay back on it (though some chose to in order to reduce interest later). A subsidized loan will usually have a grace period of roughly six months after you graduate/stop attending classes to give you time to find a stable job before the loan drops and you have to start paying it back.

Unsubsidized loans force you to start paying them back immediately. X'D

[Celestial]

Jan 6, 2017 18:09:30 GMT -5 Reiqua said:

[I'd be interested to hear how other countries do the whole money thing. I'm vaguely familiar with the concept of student loans, but what do such loans look like?

Here in the UK, it really depends on where you are in the UK (devolved parliaments get to make their own rules about their university fee paying). Mostly it is similar but there are a few key differences between Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England because of said devoled parliaments.

In England, you take out a loan to pay for your tuition if you need it. You probably will because the government raised fees to a maximum of £9,000 and most universities will charge that. They are going to increase that soon too. The tuition fee loan is paid to your university or college. You can also take out a loan for accomodation and food, something known as a "maintenance loan". It is, in contrast, paid to your bank account. It is means tested and you can get a minimum amount before you can apply for more depending on your household income. At the end of your studies, you only begin to pay back your loan once you are earning over a certain amount. Before that, you don't have to pay a penny.

Someone might have to correct me but I believe it is similar in Wales, with the maintenance loan depending on your circumstances and not income. Northern Ireland...beats me, I'm sorry. xD

Now Scotland...that's where I went to university so I have plenty of experience with this system. The best part of it is that if your family paid tax in Scotland for the last four years, the government will cover all of your tuition fees. 8D This is the same for EU students. English and Welsh students have to pay the £9,000 amount and do that via student loan. The catch is that you have to study in a university within Scotland. Want to go to England or Wales, as a friend of mine did? Boom! Loan for tuition fees for you because the government is not paying for you. But effectively, I went to university for free thanks to the government paying my tuition fees to my university. You do have to apply through a fairly rigorous system (I had trouble during the first year because I feel through the gaps in the government system, for reasons, and did not have a National Insurance number (Social Security is the American equivalent), which is essential) but once you're in, you just have to reapply every year until you graduate and don't have to repay that.

You can also take out the aforementioned maintenance loan, which before means testing is £4,500 and then additional money depending on your income and circumstances. It used to be £600 for the first two years of my course before being increased. Once again, as in England, once you graduate, you do not have to pay it back before you earn over £17,500 a year, before tax.

Though it bears noting that while this is an interesting discussion, I do feel like we are going sliiightly off-topic, guys. xD;; So to bring it back, the fact that they are expecting you to earn £17,500 is kind of expecting that you will use that degree to find a good job. I work full time, above minimum wage (not much but it is above) and I still don't make enough to pay it back. So even student loan companies, at least here in the UK, expect a degree to really gain you more than it does.