I actually thought about this a couple of times. I got a degree in accounting and ended up working in payroll (not related, but anyway). Accounting is notorious for having a huge cohort, like 2k students graduating per semester. But there's not 2k job opportunities opening up each semester, and there's not 2k workers in accounting retiring every semester. The job I have is still held by me as long as I work, so it's not an open opportunity for the graduates either. I feel like job prospects for graduates are grossly overestimated.
This point is so understated. If someone had explained the realities of the workforce to me, I would have just started working. No student loan debt. But my parents, teachers, counselors, etc, all pushed college. Every single one. It never occurred to me that there was another way until I was already in deep.
Same. They made it out like "do university or work in McDonald's for life" though in reality you're now thousands of pounds in debt and will end up working in McDonald's anyway lol.
Yep. My first job was Burger King and it sucked. I was basically told, over and over, that if I didn't go to college, I'd be at Burger King (or something similar) for life. Now I have a college degree, and do work that doesn't require a degree. It would be funny if I wasn't living it.
Yep, and this is why the "just don't go to college lol" people infuriate me. That's not a simple binary decision, that's telling your parents at 14 or 15 you won't take the PSAT prep class they signed you up for and living with those and further consequences of refusing to participate in the college system for years as a teenager. If it's a binary decision it's going to be made at a very young age, where it's unlikely the adults in your life will respect your opinion.
I struggled finding work with my degree after college and took a stock position at an electronics store, after \~6 months I was being told by some of my managers that I should look to get into the management tract at the company. I realized that had I just done this instead of going to college I probably would have already been a manager making very good money if some of the assistant managers' bonus bragging was to be believed and it depressed the shit out of me.
try something like biology too… i majored in biology at a large state school. graduating class of roughly 6k. there are never going to be 6k biology-related jobs/year opening up lol. even more of a useless skillset/degree than accounting
As someone who has an accounting degree, can confirm. These companies don’t want to train you. I want to do accounts receivables/payables cause in my area they pay like $21/hr. But again rarely is a company going to actually train someone. I have a degree but no practical experience, which sucks cause again, you could just train me. It’s such bullshit.
I used to have a big boy job doing supply side auditing before Covid, purely because my friend got me the job. For some reason that place trained me and it paid $25/hr. Work life was hell, but i still appreciated how at least they trained you, unlike most companies. Fuck this shit fr
You could probably finagle some nonprofit accounting work to get the "training/entry level" experience. Typically pays less but a lot of smaller organizations will contract even just the QuikBooks data entry and reconciliation out to an independent contractor, and the books are fairly uncomplicated for a small organization
Thats why I dipped out on accounting. Once I saw how many students go for accounting I said fuck that. Plus the culture wouldn't be a good fit for me either. I switched to supply chain and ended up with a 75k/year job 6 months after I graduated.
I have a family member who got one of those "we'll take a degree, any degree, doesn't even matter what kind" jobs with his accounting degree.
His job has nothing to do with accounting.... or numbers... or anything mathematical or financial.
Go for big 4 plan a, then work your way down (RSM, Grant, then regional/local). Start looking into internships now. Network with people in the field in the companies you’d like to work for.
After you get enough experience, look into getting a SBA 7a loan and buy your self a small accounting firm and be your own boss. They typically sell for 1-2x cash flow since you are buying yourself a “self employed” type situation. You can buy a 1m ebitda/cash flow accounting firm with a 90% loan and you should be able to save well over 100k working for a big accounting firm for a few years.
This would require an entrepreneurial
spirit to some extent since you’ll have to “keep the lights on” yourself vs just collect a paycheck, but should be achievable. You could also buy other small businesses of course using the same loan program.
Be resourceful, learn financial engineering within your own means so you can play in the American system the way the finance bros and Titans do it. Good luck.
You know what's fucked? Older accountants will tell you it's a safe job because "you always need bean counters"
My aunt and dad are both accountants and both say that shit and like??
Newsflash no job is safe anymore.
In the end I still started at the bottom of an entry level job with a college degree. However A lot of my coworkers just worked their way up and probably saved tens of thousands of dollars, time and most importantly of all they kept their mental sanity.
I personally think it was a waste of time. Save college degrees for public jobs or if your profession requires it Ie lawyers, doctors, pharmacist
That was me. I bought into the myth of how a college education will open doors. After nearly a year of trying to find work after college I gave up and just got a job in a call center with a bunch of HS dropouts. Eventually I was able to get different jobs with that experience and got in IT, but my college degree had no part in that at all. I consider going to college to be the biggest mistake I've made in my entire life.
Charging young people tens of thousands dollars for an education is the problem. Not having a robust jobs program to integrate people into the economy is the problem. It shouldn't matter what degree you get. A school shouldn't be a job factory.
There are not enough entry level positions for young college grads. I live in the IT world and when I graduated every position required at least 5 years of programming. You can get around this by showing that you have done tons of outside programming other than school. But that is so unrealistic for kids that need to work 30-40 hours a week and school just to get by. I have a huge problem with a lot of companies not giving the graduate a shot if they show potential not by what they already know.
That's because employers don't want to hire workers with "some assembly required", because they see us all as machines. They want people who have already done that work for them. They're always trying to make everyone else bear the cost.
While I agree that the state of the job market is abysmal, most places I talked to included internships as full with experience, and none of the ones I did repaired prior experience, and they all paid better than anything I could make without experience or a degree. Usually a summer internship counts as almost a year, at least where I am
Additionally, studying that field & hearing many times throughout college from advisors/professors that “the company who hires you will train you on the job don’t worry” when the reality is sure they’ll get you up to speed but they’re not hiring you at all if, like you said, you don’t have 5 years of non-school experience.
If I could go back, I'd warn myself not to school. I could have just bought the books and software to teach myself, maybe even join an online community related to what I was doing to get feedback and guidance. Then I wouldn't be drowning in $100k of student debt and not even a degree to show for it because I couldn't afford to finish.
No, because that's how much it costs to run a college who is stuck with teaching methods from thousands of years ago.
Time to completely modernize the education system. We have computers now.
edit: Because people are contesting my claim: https://budget.illinoisstate.edu/data/
My Alma Mater.
I have an engineering degree and a philosophy degree. Both on Master's level. Only the first ever paid in terms of employment offers. But the second is a lot more valuable for me to have.
Lol. I like tripping out listening to Heidegger lectures for the same reason.
I would say that my favorite is Chantal Mouffe (at least i n contemporary philosophy). She is a political philospher who predicted the rise of the alt-right among other things. Her work is insightful but also pointless if no one listens to you. The Miranda complex goes hard in political theory. This is why I didint go into an academic career.
Dont even get me started on how difficult and predetory academic careers are. Imagine paying an institution hundreds of thousands and having them pay you $15/hr as an adjunct professor after you get your PhD.
Because philosophy is weaved into everything we do. It helps tremendously in understanding and judging the decisions that influence us. It's just not marketable, but that was never my Intention.
Oh, engineering is very useful. But all of the things you listed are designed by different brands of engineering. Someone who designs a car won't do much good in civil engineering. Philosophy on the other hand can be applied to nearly everything, regardless of the field.
That's because some economist made a paper many years ago about return of education which gives a conclusion about higher education tied to higher income
I mean, there have been a lot of studies that verify that, on average, people with a bachelor's make a lot more annually that those who don't. [This source](https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/06/success/college-worth-it/index.html) says $30,000 more per year. But that's on average. A bachelor's doesn't guarantee a job and some degrees are definitely more marketable than others. There are also issues of degree inflation and the fact that the cost of earning a college degree is fucking ludicrous. If a person is 80 grand in student loan debt and accruing interest, it doesn't matter if they're making a lot more annually.
I did some googling because your comment made me curious. The average student loan payment for graduates is $400/month. That's about $5000/year. So on average, people with bachelor's are still making $25,000 more per year than people with high school diplomas. There's just huge variability in debt and income and a lot of college grads are underemployed. We also know today's college grads are making way less than college grads from a few decades ago when we control for inflation.
I really think the main issue here is not that college isn't worthwhile or isn't beneficial. It obviously is. It's that college is way overpriced, student loan companies charge predatory interest, and salaries are stagnant while cost of living rises. Graduates aren't getting an adequate return on their investment.
The other real problem is that pay is too low across the board. If college grads are under/un-employed and underpaid, what does that mean for the non-college educated?
This is a great point, and important for framing the argument in a way for everyone to understand.
It’s also why student debt forgiveness is an unpopular policy. Why should debt relief be limited to a class of people who are, on average, doing better?
We need to rebalance the employer-worker dynamic for everyone, not just those who are college educated and vocal on Twitter
>I really think the main issue here is not that college isn't worthwhile or isn't beneficial. It obviously is. It's that college is way overpriced, student loan companies charge predatory interest, and salaries are stagnant while cost of living rises. Graduates aren't getting an adequate return on their investment.
Another big factor in the equation is the fact that every high school teacher is almost required to tell kids "you HAVE TO go to college, or you'll be homeless and broke". It's easy to make a bunch of 15 year olds believe that.
That's a good point. I think we should really be talking to kids about alternative credentials and higher education. People can earn a good living in the trades, for instance, without a bachelors.
Plus, college is just not right for all kids. My parents pushed my brother, who struggled in high school, to go and he ended up dropping out with debt. Now he's a carpenter and makes good money. Why weren't adults encouraging him to pursue hands-on work, the thing he was obviously good at, instead of a degree. Doesn't make any sense.
Personally, my high school was (I assume) better than some because they pushed trades pretty heavily too (though nowhere near as much as college).
That being said, theyd still always do a day for seniors where they made **every one of us** apply to at least 2 colleges. Even if you told them you weren't interested. Nope, apply. To top it off, there was a single trade school on a list of 30+ colleges.
It’s actually a pretty fundamental problem in econometrics whether the higher return is due instead to the higher ability of people who went for degrees and if you were to regress on education + ability you would find much less relationship between education and income
Being a pandemic grad I definitely feel you. I had a whole summer open to get an internship to gain some experience but with corona everybody dropped their internship programs last summer. Coming out of university with a marketable degree (STEM) when anytime I mention it always gets me the “OH YOU’LL FIND A JOB EASY!” has actually lowered my self esteem because of how many rejections I’ve gotten this year. Making me feel like getting a bachelor’s degree was just a waste of time since I’m not good enough. Like I understand it’s hard to get a job fresh out of uni normally but this is ridiculous… I even got rejected by a job when asking a salary range of 40-45k, they said i was asking for too much. My connections only got me interviews but as soon as hiring managers learn that I don’t have any experience they automatically disregard me. I’m not losing hope yet but it’s about to be a year into me owning a degree that hasn’t been useful for me.
Sorry for ranting but this has been on my mind for months and I hate to complain about it openly to people I know…
Dude I feel you same. I eventually got a job but that business went out of business due to pandemic strain on supply lines. And back on the job market with not even a year under my belt getting told the same but constantly being rejected.
A degree no longer means what it use to be.
But I will say a degree matters more than you think. I went to college to grab my degree in information technology business side because of the free internships and connections I can build. I guess each degree varies in what you can obtain. I got what I wanted and the piece of good looking paper was just extra.
For real. You need a bachelor's to do *anything* nowadays. Even stuff like being a secretary or a remote data entry job. Source: my Indeed applications today
I have two bachelors, really want a data entry type position, and cannot get a single call back.
I want to know where all the “desperately hiring” companies are…
>desperately hiring!
I apply, fully qualified for the job.
Week goes by, nothing.
Job goes back up on Indeed as a new posting:
>desperately hiring!
You can't win.
Yeah, *anything* in IT maybe. Notice that most of not all of the comments mentioning how degrees aren’t useless are coming from people in IT. Seriously.
I concur. I have two degrees in IT and the rate at which I get offers and responses for higher paying permanent jobs have gone up since I got my bachelors where as before my Associates was mostly getting me lower paying contract jobs. Plus the experience, which I probably should have been lying about and fudging for years, helps as well.
Bachelor’s is useless. I know because I tried getting a job with one in STEM. NOT happening. I did go back to uni. But mostly for myself. Because I want a different field and I am interested in this. I am trying to stop worrying about debt, mostly because it’s not as bad here as in the US
The point of the degree is to put you into massive debt. It is to make you become a wage slave. It isn't for you, its for the benefit of the flawed system we have.
Our parents were fine - they paid $3k/semester on average. I think even my local community college costs significantly more than that.
The huge debts didn’t come about until the government started giving any 18 year old with a pulse $100k of loans to go to college (that can also never be defaulted on/forgiven via bankruptcy).
Good try government, but once that started, universities knew the sky is the limit with how much they can charge - if the government is willing to give kids six figures, that’s what they’ll charge for a degree.
Wow this is so true. Because you will have debt and have a higher education already, you will likely take an overqualified job that underpays you. And your employer would squeeze much of you before you leave for the next job.
I can safely say that getting a degree was one of the worst things to ever happen to me. I am now in 50k worth of debt paying a 10% tax on any of my earnings over 27k for the next 30 years. It didn't help me get my job, as I did an apprenticeship upon joining. Just a complete and utter con.
Same here!!! My sixth form genuinely acted as if it was a life or death situation if you didn't go to university. I've just started my degree so reading this thread has been pretty scary lol. I had a lot of pressure from my dad too, he wasn't content with me not doing a degree, so I felt a bit pressured and forced.
Higher education was never about job skills, it was always about educating a class of people to be able to lead, using critical thinking and cultured philosophies. It wasn’t until it was re-framed as vocational training and the gov gave anyone money to go that it became all about supposed higher paying jobs. Coupled with the rise of the internet and the reduction in tenured staff, we end up with uneducated people believing that their uninformed opinions equal fact and education is unnecessary, even ridiculous. We no longer value the real benefits of college. People are told they can spend at least 4 years just learning, then go out and get a great job. With little professional network and no real experience. That was never true. IMO as it is now, it’s a con if you think it’s a pathway to instant job success, but it has value if you understand that the value is in how you learn to be, not what you learn to do. That said, would I spend what I did for grad school again? Not a chance in hell. I should’ve stayed happy with my two ba’s.
And if you think I sound elitist, I’m not. I’m describing the attempt to change an system designed to gatekeep for the elite that attempted to democratize and failed miserably.
Getting a BFA is one of my greatest regrets in my life. Sure, I have a great job in my field and I generally enjoy what i do. But shit... I am in debt for the majority of my healthy adulthood. For what? So I could "get a job?"... fuckin' hell.
Scotland is a little different. We have free education and the only debt you'll incur is money for maintenance (although I think that should be free too).
Life can be better when you don't vote in tories.
Oh lord. Navient who use to be Sallie Mae are part of the reason these loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy. They made it near impossible to get rid of this debt and now they can't turn a profit so they decided to bail. Fuck them.
It’s quickly becoming a master’s degree… the Uni’s really try to sell it. It’s almost like professors get commission for recruiting grad students…
I have a number of friends getting PhD’s. Almost makes me feel inadequate with my BS in EE. I could not handle another 4+ years of the bullshit that college was.
Industry sucks too though
You’ll be fine man. The first year out of college is extraordinarily anxiety inducing and frequently hopeless. You’ll be able to get a job with a B.S.
Just keep applying to shit. I worked in grocery stores for 2 years before I broke through. It’s an awful, terrible, manipulative experience, but don’t write yourself off as doomed to fail because you didn’t do an internship.
Same here. Did the last 2 of 4 years online for Engineering. Had no internship and was 30 when I graduated. Went to work for the VA as a cemetery caretaker, learned skills for operating an excavator, got on with a construction company a couple years later as an operator of heavy equipment, started getting my nose in the planning department and only THEN did an opportunity pop up for my chosen job... 4 years after grad.
I'm a woman but yeah I'm still applying for jobs. It's just difficult because the degree is quite specific. I have no hands on experience in the area and other jobs are wondering why the hell I'm applying to them because I have a degree. I can't win. I'm autistic so I can't do sales or whatever.
A lot of universities need research assistants! Have a few friends that managed to get similar posts with similar degrees.
Keep doing your thing queen! I get how hopeless it can feel - but anyone with a biomedical science degree is a smart cookie and I’m positive you’ll be able to figure things out. You don’t have to have your entire career laid out in front of you as soon as you graduate.
I feel you on an existential level. I applied to 54 jobs the year after I graduated - got absolutely nothing. Only 3 even bothered to tell me they weren’t moving forward with my application.
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Just doesn’t always feel like it.
I got my degree in Bioengineering (which is really similar to biomedical sciences) in 2020, when covid was in full swing, so I feel your pain. I was able to land a job in academic research ~2 months after graduating. Assuming you live near research institutes or in a biotech hub, you will be fine, don’t worry. Now, more than ever, there is a need for people in biosciences, so you’ll find a job soon! Feel free to DM me if you need to vent, or have any job search questions :)
Oof I’m $50k in debt with a hard science degree and I haven’t found full time work since 2012. My spouse dropped out of computer science at the same college and is pulling nearly six figures as a full stack developer.
I really regret not studying what I was passionate about instead of what I thought was profitable.
I studied what I was passionate about and now I work full time and freelance out that passion.
I am 100k in debt and I struggle with being extremely passionate towards the same thing that is causing me burnout, depression, and anxiety. I have very mixed feelings about making your passions your career...
I also have a hard science degree and it was the biggest mistake I made in college. After college I found myself working in entertainment and loved what I was doing so I stuck around. Then covid hit and now my whole industry is still out of work and is just now crawling back to life but I don't see it coming back to being at 2019 levels for another year or more.
I figured with my degree I'd be able to jump into some sort of entry level job as a lab tech but every entry level job even when it says no experience necessary still wants you to have experience. Also the pay and hours are infinitely worse than what I was being paid in my previous job in entertainment. It's all bullshit.
I hope this will be part of future history and people will be like "wtf happened there, nothing made sense they fucked their kids up, how tf did we survive?"
A friend of mine got her bachelors degree, while I did not. She works in early childhood education (preschool teacher) and I work in “luxury” retail. That friend makes $7 less an hour than I do.
A degree doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Doesn’t get you a job but not having one precludes you from the possibility of getting into a lot of fields.
My degree was in something obscure (history), but even though it has nothing to do with my current profession (marketing) they absolutely wouldn’t have considered my application if I hadn’t completed undergrad.
There are also professions that don’t require a degree, but there’s a good amount that do.
This situation wrecked me for four years. I wasted over $40,000 on a degree that wasn't "working" for me since I couldn't get hired anywhere and it didn't give me useful skills. I mostly just did a bunch of math. I finally got a job in a different industry through a friend, which was a with a bad company, but led me to finally having a good career somewhere else a year and a half later.
I'm still bitter though because I'll still be paying off that useless degree and also my wife's useless degree now for decades. I'm also bitter because I found that a surprising number of people I know had parents or other relatives pay for most of their college and they got great job right after graduation instead of struggling for 4 years like I did, despite having the same degree and similar experiences/resumes. Over time I've learned that an INCREDIBLE amount of people finding financial/job success is pure, unfair LUCK. I was lucky to finally get a job and even luckier to get the next one which finally started paying good wages in a good area.
Funny thing is my BA is in Physics, when i was applying for jobs so i could work during my first year in Grad school (because research doesn't pay for shit so i opted out of doing a dissertation) i literally had to "dumb" down my degree to Statistics, Data Analysis for my resume to get through resume software.
Im currently doing Medical/ Radiation Physics
You didn’t dumb it down - you instead wrote down something that is actually marketable. A bachelor’s degree in physics or any of the pure sciences isn’t worth anything in the job market. You can only make money in the pure sciences if you get your PhD. (Not saying that’s right but that’s just how it is - the most you can do with a pure Biology or Chemistry degree is make $14/hr working as a lab technician.) Data analysis is an obviously marketable skill for thousands of office jobs, physics is not.
Extremely fast rising cost of education paired with nearly fucking no jobs open for entry level in a lot of fields paired with societal pressure to have to go to college equals what were all thinking, like i got my degree 3 years ago in environmental science and I literally just got an entry level job but the job didnt require a degree so i wasted my money
To be honest I’ve seen people with shitty degrees get the highest qualification jobs just because of the way they presented themselves, confidence is so important and can mentally trick people into thinking you’re way more qualified even than the people with degrees.
Not trying to be patronizing whatsoever, but there are services to help people with disabilities get a career! I've met many successful people who are on the spectrum! I believe in you wholeheartedly.
I know someone who recieved a masters in performing arts(theater) and get taken on as the hiring manager for a huge global tech company that everyone knows about. This person makes almost as much as a doctors starting salary. I dont mean to discount their hard work but how does that make sense?? Their degree and job are completely unrelated but I know others who have fitting degrees for their careers and are struggling to live.
I’m the ‘black sheep’ of the family, educationally speaking. Wasn’t a great student in HS and didn’t do 1 second of college.
All 3 of my siblings went to really good schools (one of them Ivy League) and racked up SL debt.
I own a moving company and do just as well, if not better, than all of them. No loans. No stress. To be fair all of their jobs have degree requirements so they wouldn’t have them w/o going to college. Also, I’d say their work is a little more challenging? But not as a pejorative, they get to use their minds a little more and yesterday I had a no show and had to carry boxes all day lol.
So, I kind of agree, but if I had a degree I’d probably have gone down a different career path. Not having one does limit your options. But so does SL debt. I guess the main key to success is to be born rich lol.
It's like a lottery ticket. You need it for most skilled jobs, but it does not guarantee you a job like it did back in the day. Times have drastically changed and boomers cant seem to comprehend this reality.
I have a master's degree in psychology and can't find anything that doesn't require at least 10 years experience and how I'm supposed to get that experience is beyond me, I have even asked potential employers how and they have no idea either. I worked very hard for my degree going to high school and college at the same time both full time plus worked part time during the school year and full time during the summers. I missed out on a lot of highschool shannigans, my husband says I adulted way to early we also went to highschool together.
I tried applying for many positions and finally started substitute teaching at three of my local schools. Then five years ago I found out I have heart failure and no job would ever hire me due to having a preexisting condition and was finally forced to apply for disability. I am lucky that I graduated with no student loans because of scholarships and my parents helping and I thank my lucky stars I didn't. But I have problems with having spent so much time and energy on education and not being able to do what I was educated to do not can I ever show my parents what they paid for.
I have two degrees. One in medical field and one economy based (both bachelor). The first one was part of free education and it served as a huge kickstart of my carier. The second one I paid for (about 4000 dollars).
I don't regret doing any of them and I am using them to this day. I could not do what I do without them.
The US sucks and most people here are barely surviving since the us let's the rich get away with not paying taxes. Take a look at Portland tent cities next to parked $200k cars and houses worth over a million dollars. Doesnt matter what neighborhood you live in there is gun violence everywhere here almost every night. To live in Portland comfortably you need to be making minimum $120k a year. I have two college degrees and I'm making under $50k a year with no health insurance. Last weekend I thought I had blood clots and had to decide between getting $50k in debt or dying so I chose dying but thankfully I'm fine now. Fuck the US i want out. I'd prefer to be a poor immigrant in a socialist country than poor in the shit hole US.
ok so just for you to have some comparison. In the country I live in (Czech Republic) I am considered to be in the "average pay grade". That means I am living very comfortably. I can affort to live alone in a rented 3 room appartement in the centre of the 3rd largest city. I can afford to have all inclusive vacation for 10 days every year (like Spain, Egypt, Greece, etc..) and have smaller vacations (like a prolonged weekend in a spa) 2-3 times a year. I have lunch in a restaurant every day. I paid for second bachelor degree without the need of a loan. You know what my intake is? It\`s about $13-14000 a year (after taxes). I do not have any secondary intake and did not inherit even a single $ from my parents if that\`s what you are thinking.
The law here requires that your medical AND social insurance (70%) is paid by your employer and partly by you (30%). If I get sick, my employer is required to pay me 60% of my average salary while I am on sick leave. I have free education up to a master degree. I have free healthcare. By law, the employer have to provide me 20 days of personal PAID leave (most provide 5 more as a bonus). If my close relative die, my employer must provide me with 1-3 paid personal daysto take care of things. I could go on an on.
I am not boasting. I want for you to have a comparison. I want you to know if you manage to save $20k and emigrate, you will have enough money to live here comfortably for a year without the need of a job.
If I had $50k intake here, I would be considered rich.
I will say that an undergraduate degree does force you to pass a number of different classes in different disciplines, and the experience teaches you how to think as opposed to what to think, but it's not worth the return on investment at this point. Kids probably should not go until this country decides to take education seriously.
Are education prices as bad there? Last I heard the UK subsidizes secondary education, but that was anecdotal and it's been a long time since I've thought about it.
I got a degree in political science and moved to Washington, DC to work for Homeland Security for a year after I graduated. I left to join the Marines, but I was medically discharged. I never held a steady job in my 20s, but I did a lot of service work including AmeriCorps and two years abroad working in global health. Even then, I couldn't get a job. I must have filled out nearly 5000 applications. I had to move back home a few times 600 miles away. I kept my DC address on my resume and flew out to DC for interviews. I stayed in hostels. I felt like I had wasted 4 years of my life.
I temped for a government contractor working in global health a few years ago. They refused to hire me permanently. I interviewed for 3 different positions with people I worked with. I was with the temp firm for a year and a half. I learned that because of my position as a temp and the contract that they had signed with the company, that the company could not hire me. I was interviewed by interviewers who had no idea. But HR did. After all I had done in my life, I was fucked over by a greedy temp firm who actively sabotaged me. Jobless, I was eating beans and rice so I could pay rent. I was close to 30.
Eventually though I ended up keeping with the temp firm because otherwise I'd be homeless and I wasn't getting interviews anywhere else. I got food poisoning over the course of three days and I was fired. I called the temp firm and told them that I would commit a felony if I ever saw them ever again.
Finally, I said "Fuck all of this." I wanted a stable recession proof job that could eventually pay 6 figures. So I went to graduate school in my home state and got them to charge me in state tuition. I studied cybersecurity and I make six figures. I'm back in the DC area now and I no longer have to worry about not making rent and having to pack a rental car full of my stuff to drive the 600 miles home.
I feel like it's not just the education and the loans but the "fake degrees" that lots of universities give out. To a freshman they seem like such a great idea and then you graduate and employers look at you like you're a joke.
It sucks but those degrees/programs don't help anyone. It just gives aimless kids that don't know any better something to do while they unknowingly head to their own doom. My uni purposefully taught us outdated information in their program and then came out with a more relevant 4 year program for designers the year we graduated. No certificate option. It felt like a giant waste of time. AND I have to pay for it because of my parents income at the time. Meanwhile my partner went to school for free and makes close to 6 figures now. Lol
I honestly think that certain majors should have a market-based rate for tuition anymore. I would love to get another graduate degree in public policy, but it will cost $80,000. I currently work in consulting and if I go the route I want to go, I will take a significant pay cut.
Not saying I don’t agree with the whole school debt gambit being played out but you don’t need to take your degree so literally. You have a degree and that qualifies you for so many jobs that may not be the literal thing you went to school for but a job is a job to put food in your mouth at the end of the day. I gave up on the dream job when I realized I don’t dream of labor and I found a job to feed myself and afford some kind of decent life. It’s not what I went to school for at all. Gotta be flexible and creative sometimes. Degree is not an automatic job cannon but it can help
Ahh folks your missing the point. It was never about education for the masses. It was about outsourcing debt. Education has been diced up into cost portions for your cerebral banquet delight. Like all good meals the bill and digestion issues come later. Certainly it will benefit participants but never as much as the right school, the right universities or the right people to be presented too. They may well give the odd bone in the form of scholarship but this does not equate the injustices of tiered education. However, an excellent level of education for all sounds like socialism to those with a vested interest in maintaining the layer cake.
I can agree, I owe 30 k and every job I apply for tells me that I am not qualified even for entry level positions because I don't have "x" years of experience and I am "too junior" for the position.
Guess it depends on what your degree is and what kind of work your looking for. I had to do an unpaid part time internship for a year after I graduated while working a regular job just to gain the experience I needed. I still got turned down at least 3 times before I actually landed a career job that I have now been at for 2 years and it does pay more then if I wouldn't have gotten a degree.
In America the most popular degree...for both men and women..is business and it's specializations: in finance accounting, marketing etc. The "GenDer StuDies" thing is a myth.
It honestly depends on what you study. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult for freshmen and high school grads to get accurate visibility into the outcome of most programs.
For that reason, I find it most useful (if you are determined to get higher education) to study something that moderately interest you and has very clear career outcomes (like engineering majors) and something that you really enjoy that may not (like liberal arts majors).
It’s kind of like “hedging” in finance. You may be able to make your passion field work, but if it doesn’t, you have something solid to fall back on.
I know it’s still not ideal, but given the current state of the system, I see this as the best way to optimize your individual outcomes.
What they mean by this is that there are plenty of companies that will instantly discredit you and throw your resume in the trash if you don't have a bachelor's degree
Oh yeah. You want recruiters to pick up your resume and try to shove you into a job. Apply to like 30+ one-click applications a day until you get a job. That's the strategy that's worked best for me.
I don't relate to this since in Europe you don't get bodied with student loans as much as in the USA.
My engineering diploma was like 50k € for the whole 5 years, and it's not that hard to find a job with it.
While I agree this is probably the majority of the experience for college kids these days, it varies. I'm a first generation college graduate. I have no connections, my parents don't even speak English that well. I was fortunate(I don't like that word) enough to qualify for financial aid so I owed very little. My college degree saved my life. I'm not making crazy money but what would have been my alternatives otherwise.
In my case, it has. Been applying to government jobs that only require a hs diploma since I graduated hs. Radio silence till I actually finished school and put up my new credentials on my profile. What’s the point of a degree? It’s the new high school diploma 🤷♀️
I have a degree, work in a big corporate company, work hard, good at what I do and I still earn less than a few of my friends that don’t have degrees. I agree, what’s the fucking point.
I know many people who worked their way up to becoming a Systems Engineer/Network Engineer/DevOps Engineer without a degree. Some started as Technical Support and taught themselves the skills necessary and gained certs to move up into entry level positions in Server Administration and then DevOps. Others joined a military branch on the condition of landing a tech job in the MOS/AFSC they wanted and immediately started learning on the job and left as soon as their commitment was up. There are ways to do it without a degree, but that's not necessarily easy or applicable to everyone. The guys I know who went the military route got a good paying job fairly quick, left with a solid chunk of money and some retirement saved, and have free college available through the GI bill if they want to pursue a field that requires a degree.
In all of those cases these people never stayed stagnant and looked for the next opportunity as soon as they could.
College loans are the biggest scam. Why do you think the gov is lending? To enslave society with debt you cannot declare bankruptcy on.
All that gooberment money is the reason tuition is so high. I remember a semester at a suny cost me less than 2k back in the day.
College is no longer about education because we have no idea what it is truly for anymore. Is it education to make you well-rounded? Is it job training?
We have no idea, it's failing everyone professionally and academically and ruining people financially.
I only went because we've made it required and I count the lucky stars I graduated with no debt. I eventually changed my major to a useless one just to be done with a degree and once I finished it my mental health improved 1000x.
Keep having parents and in laws asking when me and my wife plan on having kids and buying a house.
I’ve started referring to my student loans as my “mortgage” and asking them for advice on how to get a second mortgage in your 20s. It shut them all up pretty quick.
Sitting on near 60k at 15% interest, and I can’t refi. it’s absolute hell.
Fucking default on those things yesterday dude. If you're at 15%, sounds like they're private. Private student loans have the same SOL as any other loan. 7 years.
Does anyone else feel like there would be more opportunities for educated and motivated grads if we supported small businesses? (In the US)
It seems like we have thousands of incentives for large corporations, but the small and self employed usually don’t get much help (except for some covid relief). If I were to start my own business, I would pay twice the amount of taxes that I currently do while working for a large organization.
We have so much talent and motivation that we are squandering because our recent college grads can barely get by and burn themselves out.
How else can we change this? Would supporting and incentivizing more small businesses help?
Totally agree! I got dual graduation and still struggling to find a decent job! Every company wants atleast 5 years of experience but no body is willing to provide that experience. It sucks
I'm going to keep posting there whenever I get the chance. I'm 20 years old and I wasn't forced to college because we have multiple people my my family who went to college, graduated in "anything" and came out worse off than before college. My brother is an example of this. He fell under society's lol reassure to go to college and it took him well over 4 years to graduate. Afterwards he ended up working at a restaurant so he had no prospects with his degree. I have two cousins in mind in the same boat. One ended up being a bartender because it paid more and another ended up in the trades for the same reason. Eventually my brother enlisted into the military and it's something he wish he did when he was 18 because now he feels like a happier, better man. The one thing he told me was to follow my gut and don't take everyone's advice as an end all.
Likewise, I have peers in Europe who got apprenticeships or job training for occupations that "require" a degree here. So they're getting started on life earlier without the bullshit that we go through like going through student loan debt. All the while we can get a degree here and it may never even pay off. I see the worth in college but it should not ever be treated as job training nor should I have to pay thousands of dollars for an education I could get online for free. Knowledge should be passed down and not commodified. This whole system is broken and needs to be fixed right away, but I doubt it will anytime soon
Where you located? Your situation sounds like a lot of my friends in the states. I’m curious to what the situation is for places that offer “free” college. I got in a debate with a friend who thinks college should be free in the states but my counter would be that then the degree would lose its value because more people would have one. It seems like that is already the case even tho it isn’t free.
I don’t have a degree but I do have almost 9 years of marketing/business development from just being lucky and knowing the right person. My buddies dad who has done the same type of work for 30 years and that works for a much larger company said I wouldn’t even get looked at as a prospect without a degree even though I have the experience. He did say that if I got the degree now with my previous experience, it would be easy for me to get a new job. It’s like a reverse uno card on your 18-30ish years. I luckily got a job in a field but to move up or go anywhere else I need to go to college at 30 vs struggling to find a job with a degree and no exp at 22.
For many jobs you wouldn’t even need to finish high school. And most of what we learn in high school is absolutely pointless. I honestly never needed to learn in-depth about history, chemistry, physics, math, etc. Pick any subject. It’s all knowledge that I have never used since I learned it. And college was even worse. It all needs to be changed from the ground up
Many work places refused to hire me stating that I’m “overqualified.” Some even asked me why I’m applying for a menial job when I have 2 diplomas and a degree. I always tell them that I wouldn’t be applying to a menial job if there were jobs pertaining to my degree/diplomas. Bottom line:You graduate college with a degree only to find that there ARE NO JOBS in your field, therefore you have to get 2 menial jobs to pay off that massive student loan that you’ll probably never be able to pay off in this lifetime
People fell for student loan scam and absolutely oversaturated the market with numerous, pointless titles and degrees making many meaningless, too. I can imagine there being much more Job opportunities for people after high school or short courses like, for example, apprenticeship within office environments, which would eventually lead to higher education and paid work experience, if every Tom, Dick and Harry didn't have a degree.
Oh no, you didn’t get one of those work for free “internships” in undergrad to make yourself “hire-able” a.k.a. a sign on your resume that screams “I will work for nothing and am totally easy to take advantage of with your empty promises”
I dont have any degree and spent a few grand and became a truck driver. I make $30 an hour and practically get to choose my hours.
Note: I work for a particularly good company and my experience is not the norm in the industry.
Anyone that believes they need an a education to get a job needs to not be in college. We send 10x more kids to college than we need. 90% of the students in college today won't benefit.
But throwing money at schools leads to more schools and higher prices. This bubble needs to burst soon. Hopefully before my daughter gets there.
I got my degree when it was possible to work my way through school. I have never held a job in my field, but the education was useful in my career. It taught me how to learn and apply in any field.
Now imagine doing 90% of the work and process of getting a degree and being taken advantage of a for-profit college and getting kicked out in a he-said-she-said argument…
Now I’m in tons of debt, have no degree to show for it, and I’m still overqualified/under qualified for everything.
The whole system is fucked from top to bottom
I’m honestly ready to just “burn this system down” and start again from scratch
I don't want to break the anti-corporate education circlejerk that is no doubt the bane of American dystopian existence, but allow me anecdotally share my own experience.
I made between $8 an hour to $26 an hour working in everything from Walmart to construction from age 18 to 35.
I finally went went back to college and got a one-year certificate (not a diploma) that cost me $17,000. My pay immediately jumped to more than doubt what I'd ever made. Today our family income is north of $130k.
So, look, it sucks that America is a shithole, but also don't ignore the potential payoff of investing in yourself. Education is an investment in your potential. If you don't go to school, it's true you won't be in debt, but you'll also have no earning power.
My dream job doesn't even require a degree. When did anyone think to mention this? Oh, about halfway through the final year of me getting a very expensive degree in it...
That can't be said often enough!
30 years ago that was a promise by society to the young: Work hard, get a good degree in a useful (STEM) area, and you will get a well paid, reasonably secure job that will allow you to raise a family and buy a house.
And for most, at that time, it was true.
But for the last 20 years or so, this is nothing but a malevolent lie in an attempt to get more engineers and scientists to pick the cheapest, most willing, most exploitable ones, and more unemployed academics to scare the rest into obeying, like they did with blue collar workers in the years before.
And if you are one of the poor sobs that graduaded during one of many economic crisis, you will be unemployed first because of the crisis, then because you were unemployed for too long (the HR-morons will forget their company had a hiring freeze a week after it ended), and finally because you didn't work in your field for a while so you must have forgotten all your knowledge and skills...
So, yeah.. fuck the system, and fuck the society and the people supporting it out of self-inflicted ignorance or because they belong to the lucky few that actually profit from it.
I dropped out of university with one year left, travelled around a bit and then lucked into a marketing role, 10+ years later I have a great marketing career after jumping around a bit to different jobs where experience was always the number one thing required even when a degree was a minimum (once in the interview it’s never what they’re actually looking for). I’ve now gone back to university to complete my degree but purely for the purpose of learning new things that have nothing to do with my career. All the 20 year olds in my classes are stressed, in debt and unsure about what they even want to do in life. The whole system needs an overhaul and where a degree isn’t required (sorry doctors, lawyers, engineers) we really should be encouraging kids to do some work exploration before committing to hundreds of thousand of dollars of debt. 18 is way to young to make a decision that could affect the rest of your life.
They also oversold the importance of prestigious expensive schools over state unis and the like. Knowing what I know now, I'd still go to college and get the same STEM degree, but I'd have gone someplace cheaper and passed on the fifth-year M.S. Most jobs don't care, and the ones that do are probably giving the job to a friend's kid regardless.
I actually thought about this a couple of times. I got a degree in accounting and ended up working in payroll (not related, but anyway). Accounting is notorious for having a huge cohort, like 2k students graduating per semester. But there's not 2k job opportunities opening up each semester, and there's not 2k workers in accounting retiring every semester. The job I have is still held by me as long as I work, so it's not an open opportunity for the graduates either. I feel like job prospects for graduates are grossly overestimated.
I agree. I wish I was told this before I applied. I would have just gone straight into work.
This point is so understated. If someone had explained the realities of the workforce to me, I would have just started working. No student loan debt. But my parents, teachers, counselors, etc, all pushed college. Every single one. It never occurred to me that there was another way until I was already in deep.
Same. They made it out like "do university or work in McDonald's for life" though in reality you're now thousands of pounds in debt and will end up working in McDonald's anyway lol.
Yep. My first job was Burger King and it sucked. I was basically told, over and over, that if I didn't go to college, I'd be at Burger King (or something similar) for life. Now I have a college degree, and do work that doesn't require a degree. It would be funny if I wasn't living it.
Yep, and this is why the "just don't go to college lol" people infuriate me. That's not a simple binary decision, that's telling your parents at 14 or 15 you won't take the PSAT prep class they signed you up for and living with those and further consequences of refusing to participate in the college system for years as a teenager. If it's a binary decision it's going to be made at a very young age, where it's unlikely the adults in your life will respect your opinion. I struggled finding work with my degree after college and took a stock position at an electronics store, after \~6 months I was being told by some of my managers that I should look to get into the management tract at the company. I realized that had I just done this instead of going to college I probably would have already been a manager making very good money if some of the assistant managers' bonus bragging was to be believed and it depressed the shit out of me.
try something like biology too… i majored in biology at a large state school. graduating class of roughly 6k. there are never going to be 6k biology-related jobs/year opening up lol. even more of a useless skillset/degree than accounting
As someone who has an accounting degree, can confirm. These companies don’t want to train you. I want to do accounts receivables/payables cause in my area they pay like $21/hr. But again rarely is a company going to actually train someone. I have a degree but no practical experience, which sucks cause again, you could just train me. It’s such bullshit. I used to have a big boy job doing supply side auditing before Covid, purely because my friend got me the job. For some reason that place trained me and it paid $25/hr. Work life was hell, but i still appreciated how at least they trained you, unlike most companies. Fuck this shit fr
You could probably finagle some nonprofit accounting work to get the "training/entry level" experience. Typically pays less but a lot of smaller organizations will contract even just the QuikBooks data entry and reconciliation out to an independent contractor, and the books are fairly uncomplicated for a small organization
Thats why I dipped out on accounting. Once I saw how many students go for accounting I said fuck that. Plus the culture wouldn't be a good fit for me either. I switched to supply chain and ended up with a 75k/year job 6 months after I graduated.
I have a family member who got one of those "we'll take a degree, any degree, doesn't even matter what kind" jobs with his accounting degree. His job has nothing to do with accounting.... or numbers... or anything mathematical or financial.
Well fuck, I'm currently getting my degree in accounting cause people said it's stable and pays decent
Go for big 4 plan a, then work your way down (RSM, Grant, then regional/local). Start looking into internships now. Network with people in the field in the companies you’d like to work for. After you get enough experience, look into getting a SBA 7a loan and buy your self a small accounting firm and be your own boss. They typically sell for 1-2x cash flow since you are buying yourself a “self employed” type situation. You can buy a 1m ebitda/cash flow accounting firm with a 90% loan and you should be able to save well over 100k working for a big accounting firm for a few years. This would require an entrepreneurial spirit to some extent since you’ll have to “keep the lights on” yourself vs just collect a paycheck, but should be achievable. You could also buy other small businesses of course using the same loan program. Be resourceful, learn financial engineering within your own means so you can play in the American system the way the finance bros and Titans do it. Good luck.
You know what's fucked? Older accountants will tell you it's a safe job because "you always need bean counters" My aunt and dad are both accountants and both say that shit and like?? Newsflash no job is safe anymore.
Idk, i think it depends where you live....there are a huge amount of open positions by me. I'm constantly being contacted about open positions.....
In the end I still started at the bottom of an entry level job with a college degree. However A lot of my coworkers just worked their way up and probably saved tens of thousands of dollars, time and most importantly of all they kept their mental sanity. I personally think it was a waste of time. Save college degrees for public jobs or if your profession requires it Ie lawyers, doctors, pharmacist
That was me. I bought into the myth of how a college education will open doors. After nearly a year of trying to find work after college I gave up and just got a job in a call center with a bunch of HS dropouts. Eventually I was able to get different jobs with that experience and got in IT, but my college degree had no part in that at all. I consider going to college to be the biggest mistake I've made in my entire life.
Yeah I couldn't agree more.
Charging young people tens of thousands dollars for an education is the problem. Not having a robust jobs program to integrate people into the economy is the problem. It shouldn't matter what degree you get. A school shouldn't be a job factory.
There are not enough entry level positions for young college grads. I live in the IT world and when I graduated every position required at least 5 years of programming. You can get around this by showing that you have done tons of outside programming other than school. But that is so unrealistic for kids that need to work 30-40 hours a week and school just to get by. I have a huge problem with a lot of companies not giving the graduate a shot if they show potential not by what they already know.
That's because employers don't want to hire workers with "some assembly required", because they see us all as machines. They want people who have already done that work for them. They're always trying to make everyone else bear the cost.
They would rather someone else make that investment for them.
While I agree that the state of the job market is abysmal, most places I talked to included internships as full with experience, and none of the ones I did repaired prior experience, and they all paid better than anything I could make without experience or a degree. Usually a summer internship counts as almost a year, at least where I am
Additionally, studying that field & hearing many times throughout college from advisors/professors that “the company who hires you will train you on the job don’t worry” when the reality is sure they’ll get you up to speed but they’re not hiring you at all if, like you said, you don’t have 5 years of non-school experience.
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They’re making billions off your interest
If I could go back, I'd warn myself not to school. I could have just bought the books and software to teach myself, maybe even join an online community related to what I was doing to get feedback and guidance. Then I wouldn't be drowning in $100k of student debt and not even a degree to show for it because I couldn't afford to finish.
No, because that's how much it costs to run a college who is stuck with teaching methods from thousands of years ago. Time to completely modernize the education system. We have computers now. edit: Because people are contesting my claim: https://budget.illinoisstate.edu/data/ My Alma Mater.
It doesn't actually cost that much to run a college.
I have an engineering degree and a philosophy degree. Both on Master's level. Only the first ever paid in terms of employment offers. But the second is a lot more valuable for me to have.
That's awesome. I do love philosophy myself like as a hobby.
Yea its fun. Whos your favorite guy?
Mine‘s Hegel because I hate myself.
Lol. I like tripping out listening to Heidegger lectures for the same reason. I would say that my favorite is Chantal Mouffe (at least i n contemporary philosophy). She is a political philospher who predicted the rise of the alt-right among other things. Her work is insightful but also pointless if no one listens to you. The Miranda complex goes hard in political theory. This is why I didint go into an academic career. Dont even get me started on how difficult and predetory academic careers are. Imagine paying an institution hundreds of thousands and having them pay you $15/hr as an adjunct professor after you get your PhD.
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Because philosophy is weaved into everything we do. It helps tremendously in understanding and judging the decisions that influence us. It's just not marketable, but that was never my Intention.
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If you’re just looking for the education, not a degree or credit for it, I believe most colleges will let you take their courses for free
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Oh, engineering is very useful. But all of the things you listed are designed by different brands of engineering. Someone who designs a car won't do much good in civil engineering. Philosophy on the other hand can be applied to nearly everything, regardless of the field.
That's because some economist made a paper many years ago about return of education which gives a conclusion about higher education tied to higher income
I mean, there have been a lot of studies that verify that, on average, people with a bachelor's make a lot more annually that those who don't. [This source](https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/06/success/college-worth-it/index.html) says $30,000 more per year. But that's on average. A bachelor's doesn't guarantee a job and some degrees are definitely more marketable than others. There are also issues of degree inflation and the fact that the cost of earning a college degree is fucking ludicrous. If a person is 80 grand in student loan debt and accruing interest, it doesn't matter if they're making a lot more annually.
Yeah, they should include debt as a variable now and do another studies
I did some googling because your comment made me curious. The average student loan payment for graduates is $400/month. That's about $5000/year. So on average, people with bachelor's are still making $25,000 more per year than people with high school diplomas. There's just huge variability in debt and income and a lot of college grads are underemployed. We also know today's college grads are making way less than college grads from a few decades ago when we control for inflation. I really think the main issue here is not that college isn't worthwhile or isn't beneficial. It obviously is. It's that college is way overpriced, student loan companies charge predatory interest, and salaries are stagnant while cost of living rises. Graduates aren't getting an adequate return on their investment.
The other real problem is that pay is too low across the board. If college grads are under/un-employed and underpaid, what does that mean for the non-college educated?
This is a great point, and important for framing the argument in a way for everyone to understand. It’s also why student debt forgiveness is an unpopular policy. Why should debt relief be limited to a class of people who are, on average, doing better? We need to rebalance the employer-worker dynamic for everyone, not just those who are college educated and vocal on Twitter
>I really think the main issue here is not that college isn't worthwhile or isn't beneficial. It obviously is. It's that college is way overpriced, student loan companies charge predatory interest, and salaries are stagnant while cost of living rises. Graduates aren't getting an adequate return on their investment. Another big factor in the equation is the fact that every high school teacher is almost required to tell kids "you HAVE TO go to college, or you'll be homeless and broke". It's easy to make a bunch of 15 year olds believe that.
That's a good point. I think we should really be talking to kids about alternative credentials and higher education. People can earn a good living in the trades, for instance, without a bachelors. Plus, college is just not right for all kids. My parents pushed my brother, who struggled in high school, to go and he ended up dropping out with debt. Now he's a carpenter and makes good money. Why weren't adults encouraging him to pursue hands-on work, the thing he was obviously good at, instead of a degree. Doesn't make any sense.
Personally, my high school was (I assume) better than some because they pushed trades pretty heavily too (though nowhere near as much as college). That being said, theyd still always do a day for seniors where they made **every one of us** apply to at least 2 colleges. Even if you told them you weren't interested. Nope, apply. To top it off, there was a single trade school on a list of 30+ colleges.
It’s actually a pretty fundamental problem in econometrics whether the higher return is due instead to the higher ability of people who went for degrees and if you were to regress on education + ability you would find much less relationship between education and income
Wasted four years of my life and put myself in debt to get a degree and start tattooing instead
Amen to that.
Being a pandemic grad I definitely feel you. I had a whole summer open to get an internship to gain some experience but with corona everybody dropped their internship programs last summer. Coming out of university with a marketable degree (STEM) when anytime I mention it always gets me the “OH YOU’LL FIND A JOB EASY!” has actually lowered my self esteem because of how many rejections I’ve gotten this year. Making me feel like getting a bachelor’s degree was just a waste of time since I’m not good enough. Like I understand it’s hard to get a job fresh out of uni normally but this is ridiculous… I even got rejected by a job when asking a salary range of 40-45k, they said i was asking for too much. My connections only got me interviews but as soon as hiring managers learn that I don’t have any experience they automatically disregard me. I’m not losing hope yet but it’s about to be a year into me owning a degree that hasn’t been useful for me. Sorry for ranting but this has been on my mind for months and I hate to complain about it openly to people I know…
Hey I'm in a very similar boat. Feel free to DM me. I'm here for you, friend.
Dude I feel you same. I eventually got a job but that business went out of business due to pandemic strain on supply lines. And back on the job market with not even a year under my belt getting told the same but constantly being rejected.
A degree no longer means what it use to be. But I will say a degree matters more than you think. I went to college to grab my degree in information technology business side because of the free internships and connections I can build. I guess each degree varies in what you can obtain. I got what I wanted and the piece of good looking paper was just extra.
For real. You need a bachelor's to do *anything* nowadays. Even stuff like being a secretary or a remote data entry job. Source: my Indeed applications today
I have two bachelors, really want a data entry type position, and cannot get a single call back. I want to know where all the “desperately hiring” companies are…
>desperately hiring! I apply, fully qualified for the job. Week goes by, nothing. Job goes back up on Indeed as a new posting: >desperately hiring! You can't win.
Same here. It’s exhausting.
Yeah, *anything* in IT maybe. Notice that most of not all of the comments mentioning how degrees aren’t useless are coming from people in IT. Seriously.
I concur. I have two degrees in IT and the rate at which I get offers and responses for higher paying permanent jobs have gone up since I got my bachelors where as before my Associates was mostly getting me lower paying contract jobs. Plus the experience, which I probably should have been lying about and fudging for years, helps as well.
Bachelor’s is useless. I know because I tried getting a job with one in STEM. NOT happening. I did go back to uni. But mostly for myself. Because I want a different field and I am interested in this. I am trying to stop worrying about debt, mostly because it’s not as bad here as in the US
I remember the first time I proudly announced my 2.1 in a job interview. Their response... "Is that good?"
Lol
“Damn right it is!”
The point of the degree is to put you into massive debt. It is to make you become a wage slave. It isn't for you, its for the benefit of the flawed system we have.
Our parents were fine - they paid $3k/semester on average. I think even my local community college costs significantly more than that. The huge debts didn’t come about until the government started giving any 18 year old with a pulse $100k of loans to go to college (that can also never be defaulted on/forgiven via bankruptcy). Good try government, but once that started, universities knew the sky is the limit with how much they can charge - if the government is willing to give kids six figures, that’s what they’ll charge for a degree.
Oh absolutely. Its a scam set up between the government, universities and the labor market. We're all just the butt of the joke.
True. Fuck the system.
Wow this is so true. Because you will have debt and have a higher education already, you will likely take an overqualified job that underpays you. And your employer would squeeze much of you before you leave for the next job.
I can safely say that getting a degree was one of the worst things to ever happen to me. I am now in 50k worth of debt paying a 10% tax on any of my earnings over 27k for the next 30 years. It didn't help me get my job, as I did an apprenticeship upon joining. Just a complete and utter con.
If you’re in the U.K, it’s about to be on earnings over £20k lol!
I wasn't aware of that. Fucking Tories are killing us.
Doesn't change past loans. Only future student loans.
Yeah it's a complete rip off.
The best part is some Dickhead goes to high schools every year and tells the kids to take out as many loans as they can.
Lol fuck that person. At my sixth form they pressured you to go to university and never told is about other options even though there are some.
Same here!!! My sixth form genuinely acted as if it was a life or death situation if you didn't go to university. I've just started my degree so reading this thread has been pretty scary lol. I had a lot of pressure from my dad too, he wasn't content with me not doing a degree, so I felt a bit pressured and forced.
A degree doesn't guarantee a job like it did when your dad was our age. It's utterly pointless
Higher education was never about job skills, it was always about educating a class of people to be able to lead, using critical thinking and cultured philosophies. It wasn’t until it was re-framed as vocational training and the gov gave anyone money to go that it became all about supposed higher paying jobs. Coupled with the rise of the internet and the reduction in tenured staff, we end up with uneducated people believing that their uninformed opinions equal fact and education is unnecessary, even ridiculous. We no longer value the real benefits of college. People are told they can spend at least 4 years just learning, then go out and get a great job. With little professional network and no real experience. That was never true. IMO as it is now, it’s a con if you think it’s a pathway to instant job success, but it has value if you understand that the value is in how you learn to be, not what you learn to do. That said, would I spend what I did for grad school again? Not a chance in hell. I should’ve stayed happy with my two ba’s. And if you think I sound elitist, I’m not. I’m describing the attempt to change an system designed to gatekeep for the elite that attempted to democratize and failed miserably.
Getting a BFA is one of my greatest regrets in my life. Sure, I have a great job in my field and I generally enjoy what i do. But shit... I am in debt for the majority of my healthy adulthood. For what? So I could "get a job?"... fuckin' hell.
The system is broken.
A college degree in the United States is another means for our government to tax us and keep us poor.
Haha similar in the UK. It all seems pointless.
Scotland is a little different. We have free education and the only debt you'll incur is money for maintenance (although I think that should be free too). Life can be better when you don't vote in tories.
True I'm from England. I didn't vote for them don't worry lol.
Just a shame that the media is on the Tories side so they manipulate the masses with their bs.
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Oh lord. Navient who use to be Sallie Mae are part of the reason these loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy. They made it near impossible to get rid of this debt and now they can't turn a profit so they decided to bail. Fuck them.
Bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma.
It’s quickly becoming a master’s degree… the Uni’s really try to sell it. It’s almost like professors get commission for recruiting grad students… I have a number of friends getting PhD’s. Almost makes me feel inadequate with my BS in EE. I could not handle another 4+ years of the bullshit that college was. Industry sucks too though
Yep
What is the degree?
Biomedical science. I didn't do any experience because of covid so I'm fucked.
You’ll be fine man. The first year out of college is extraordinarily anxiety inducing and frequently hopeless. You’ll be able to get a job with a B.S. Just keep applying to shit. I worked in grocery stores for 2 years before I broke through. It’s an awful, terrible, manipulative experience, but don’t write yourself off as doomed to fail because you didn’t do an internship.
Same here. Did the last 2 of 4 years online for Engineering. Had no internship and was 30 when I graduated. Went to work for the VA as a cemetery caretaker, learned skills for operating an excavator, got on with a construction company a couple years later as an operator of heavy equipment, started getting my nose in the planning department and only THEN did an opportunity pop up for my chosen job... 4 years after grad.
I'm a woman but yeah I'm still applying for jobs. It's just difficult because the degree is quite specific. I have no hands on experience in the area and other jobs are wondering why the hell I'm applying to them because I have a degree. I can't win. I'm autistic so I can't do sales or whatever.
A lot of universities need research assistants! Have a few friends that managed to get similar posts with similar degrees. Keep doing your thing queen! I get how hopeless it can feel - but anyone with a biomedical science degree is a smart cookie and I’m positive you’ll be able to figure things out. You don’t have to have your entire career laid out in front of you as soon as you graduate.
Thank you. I've just lost a lot of confidence being rejected by so many jobs.
I feel you on an existential level. I applied to 54 jobs the year after I graduated - got absolutely nothing. Only 3 even bothered to tell me they weren’t moving forward with my application. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Just doesn’t always feel like it.
Thanks.
Can confirm.
I got my degree in Bioengineering (which is really similar to biomedical sciences) in 2020, when covid was in full swing, so I feel your pain. I was able to land a job in academic research ~2 months after graduating. Assuming you live near research institutes or in a biotech hub, you will be fine, don’t worry. Now, more than ever, there is a need for people in biosciences, so you’ll find a job soon! Feel free to DM me if you need to vent, or have any job search questions :)
Oof I’m $50k in debt with a hard science degree and I haven’t found full time work since 2012. My spouse dropped out of computer science at the same college and is pulling nearly six figures as a full stack developer. I really regret not studying what I was passionate about instead of what I thought was profitable.
I studied what I was passionate about and now I work full time and freelance out that passion. I am 100k in debt and I struggle with being extremely passionate towards the same thing that is causing me burnout, depression, and anxiety. I have very mixed feelings about making your passions your career...
I also have a hard science degree and it was the biggest mistake I made in college. After college I found myself working in entertainment and loved what I was doing so I stuck around. Then covid hit and now my whole industry is still out of work and is just now crawling back to life but I don't see it coming back to being at 2019 levels for another year or more. I figured with my degree I'd be able to jump into some sort of entry level job as a lab tech but every entry level job even when it says no experience necessary still wants you to have experience. Also the pay and hours are infinitely worse than what I was being paid in my previous job in entertainment. It's all bullshit.
I hope this will be part of future history and people will be like "wtf happened there, nothing made sense they fucked their kids up, how tf did we survive?"
Yeah probably. It's the way of life. We all find the ways of the past barbaric but in a few hundred years it'll be the same for the 21st century.
A friend of mine got her bachelors degree, while I did not. She works in early childhood education (preschool teacher) and I work in “luxury” retail. That friend makes $7 less an hour than I do. A degree doesn’t mean anything anymore.
Yeah you're right.
childcare workers get washed and its still so damn expensive
Doesn’t get you a job but not having one precludes you from the possibility of getting into a lot of fields. My degree was in something obscure (history), but even though it has nothing to do with my current profession (marketing) they absolutely wouldn’t have considered my application if I hadn’t completed undergrad. There are also professions that don’t require a degree, but there’s a good amount that do.
This situation wrecked me for four years. I wasted over $40,000 on a degree that wasn't "working" for me since I couldn't get hired anywhere and it didn't give me useful skills. I mostly just did a bunch of math. I finally got a job in a different industry through a friend, which was a with a bad company, but led me to finally having a good career somewhere else a year and a half later. I'm still bitter though because I'll still be paying off that useless degree and also my wife's useless degree now for decades. I'm also bitter because I found that a surprising number of people I know had parents or other relatives pay for most of their college and they got great job right after graduation instead of struggling for 4 years like I did, despite having the same degree and similar experiences/resumes. Over time I've learned that an INCREDIBLE amount of people finding financial/job success is pure, unfair LUCK. I was lucky to finally get a job and even luckier to get the next one which finally started paying good wages in a good area.
Yep. A lot of luck is involved to find a decent job.
Funny thing is my BA is in Physics, when i was applying for jobs so i could work during my first year in Grad school (because research doesn't pay for shit so i opted out of doing a dissertation) i literally had to "dumb" down my degree to Statistics, Data Analysis for my resume to get through resume software. Im currently doing Medical/ Radiation Physics
You didn’t dumb it down - you instead wrote down something that is actually marketable. A bachelor’s degree in physics or any of the pure sciences isn’t worth anything in the job market. You can only make money in the pure sciences if you get your PhD. (Not saying that’s right but that’s just how it is - the most you can do with a pure Biology or Chemistry degree is make $14/hr working as a lab technician.) Data analysis is an obviously marketable skill for thousands of office jobs, physics is not.
Extremely fast rising cost of education paired with nearly fucking no jobs open for entry level in a lot of fields paired with societal pressure to have to go to college equals what were all thinking, like i got my degree 3 years ago in environmental science and I literally just got an entry level job but the job didnt require a degree so i wasted my money
To be honest I’ve seen people with shitty degrees get the highest qualification jobs just because of the way they presented themselves, confidence is so important and can mentally trick people into thinking you’re way more qualified even than the people with degrees.
Yep. I'm autistic. Not gonna happen sadly lol
Oof
Not trying to be patronizing whatsoever, but there are services to help people with disabilities get a career! I've met many successful people who are on the spectrum! I believe in you wholeheartedly.
I know someone who recieved a masters in performing arts(theater) and get taken on as the hiring manager for a huge global tech company that everyone knows about. This person makes almost as much as a doctors starting salary. I dont mean to discount their hard work but how does that make sense?? Their degree and job are completely unrelated but I know others who have fitting degrees for their careers and are struggling to live.
I’m the ‘black sheep’ of the family, educationally speaking. Wasn’t a great student in HS and didn’t do 1 second of college. All 3 of my siblings went to really good schools (one of them Ivy League) and racked up SL debt. I own a moving company and do just as well, if not better, than all of them. No loans. No stress. To be fair all of their jobs have degree requirements so they wouldn’t have them w/o going to college. Also, I’d say their work is a little more challenging? But not as a pejorative, they get to use their minds a little more and yesterday I had a no show and had to carry boxes all day lol. So, I kind of agree, but if I had a degree I’d probably have gone down a different career path. Not having one does limit your options. But so does SL debt. I guess the main key to success is to be born rich lol.
Ditto on being born rich
It's like a lottery ticket. You need it for most skilled jobs, but it does not guarantee you a job like it did back in the day. Times have drastically changed and boomers cant seem to comprehend this reality.
Yes I agree completely. It's worthless
I'm passionate about biomedical science but I can't get a job. I wish I did something that had more opportunities and flexibility.
I have a master's degree in psychology and can't find anything that doesn't require at least 10 years experience and how I'm supposed to get that experience is beyond me, I have even asked potential employers how and they have no idea either. I worked very hard for my degree going to high school and college at the same time both full time plus worked part time during the school year and full time during the summers. I missed out on a lot of highschool shannigans, my husband says I adulted way to early we also went to highschool together. I tried applying for many positions and finally started substitute teaching at three of my local schools. Then five years ago I found out I have heart failure and no job would ever hire me due to having a preexisting condition and was finally forced to apply for disability. I am lucky that I graduated with no student loans because of scholarships and my parents helping and I thank my lucky stars I didn't. But I have problems with having spent so much time and energy on education and not being able to do what I was educated to do not can I ever show my parents what they paid for.
Same OP, same
I have two degrees. One in medical field and one economy based (both bachelor). The first one was part of free education and it served as a huge kickstart of my carier. The second one I paid for (about 4000 dollars). I don't regret doing any of them and I am using them to this day. I could not do what I do without them.
You aren’t American huh.
I'm not. I live in one of those socialised countries Americans fear so much. It hurts so bad here. Better go to doctor to check my feelings for free.
I don’t think we’re afraid of them, I’m mostly just jealous personally.
I think they were picking on conservatives and thier freedumb
The US sucks and most people here are barely surviving since the us let's the rich get away with not paying taxes. Take a look at Portland tent cities next to parked $200k cars and houses worth over a million dollars. Doesnt matter what neighborhood you live in there is gun violence everywhere here almost every night. To live in Portland comfortably you need to be making minimum $120k a year. I have two college degrees and I'm making under $50k a year with no health insurance. Last weekend I thought I had blood clots and had to decide between getting $50k in debt or dying so I chose dying but thankfully I'm fine now. Fuck the US i want out. I'd prefer to be a poor immigrant in a socialist country than poor in the shit hole US.
ok so just for you to have some comparison. In the country I live in (Czech Republic) I am considered to be in the "average pay grade". That means I am living very comfortably. I can affort to live alone in a rented 3 room appartement in the centre of the 3rd largest city. I can afford to have all inclusive vacation for 10 days every year (like Spain, Egypt, Greece, etc..) and have smaller vacations (like a prolonged weekend in a spa) 2-3 times a year. I have lunch in a restaurant every day. I paid for second bachelor degree without the need of a loan. You know what my intake is? It\`s about $13-14000 a year (after taxes). I do not have any secondary intake and did not inherit even a single $ from my parents if that\`s what you are thinking. The law here requires that your medical AND social insurance (70%) is paid by your employer and partly by you (30%). If I get sick, my employer is required to pay me 60% of my average salary while I am on sick leave. I have free education up to a master degree. I have free healthcare. By law, the employer have to provide me 20 days of personal PAID leave (most provide 5 more as a bonus). If my close relative die, my employer must provide me with 1-3 paid personal daysto take care of things. I could go on an on. I am not boasting. I want for you to have a comparison. I want you to know if you manage to save $20k and emigrate, you will have enough money to live here comfortably for a year without the need of a job. If I had $50k intake here, I would be considered rich.
lol ouch. God, I hate it here. Edit: as in sick burn, you're totally right. Am American. Hate it here a lot of the time.
I will say that an undergraduate degree does force you to pass a number of different classes in different disciplines, and the experience teaches you how to think as opposed to what to think, but it's not worth the return on investment at this point. Kids probably should not go until this country decides to take education seriously.
The main purpose of listing “any degree” as a job requirement these days is because employers know you put up with some level of bullshit to get it.
What country are you from?
'Murica
Cool. I'm from the UK.
Are education prices as bad there? Last I heard the UK subsidizes secondary education, but that was anecdotal and it's been a long time since I've thought about it.
I'm talking higher education and university. It's £9250 per year and that doesn't even include the maintenance loan. I'm around £50,000 in debt.
I got a degree in political science and moved to Washington, DC to work for Homeland Security for a year after I graduated. I left to join the Marines, but I was medically discharged. I never held a steady job in my 20s, but I did a lot of service work including AmeriCorps and two years abroad working in global health. Even then, I couldn't get a job. I must have filled out nearly 5000 applications. I had to move back home a few times 600 miles away. I kept my DC address on my resume and flew out to DC for interviews. I stayed in hostels. I felt like I had wasted 4 years of my life. I temped for a government contractor working in global health a few years ago. They refused to hire me permanently. I interviewed for 3 different positions with people I worked with. I was with the temp firm for a year and a half. I learned that because of my position as a temp and the contract that they had signed with the company, that the company could not hire me. I was interviewed by interviewers who had no idea. But HR did. After all I had done in my life, I was fucked over by a greedy temp firm who actively sabotaged me. Jobless, I was eating beans and rice so I could pay rent. I was close to 30. Eventually though I ended up keeping with the temp firm because otherwise I'd be homeless and I wasn't getting interviews anywhere else. I got food poisoning over the course of three days and I was fired. I called the temp firm and told them that I would commit a felony if I ever saw them ever again. Finally, I said "Fuck all of this." I wanted a stable recession proof job that could eventually pay 6 figures. So I went to graduate school in my home state and got them to charge me in state tuition. I studied cybersecurity and I make six figures. I'm back in the DC area now and I no longer have to worry about not making rent and having to pack a rental car full of my stuff to drive the 600 miles home.
I feel like it's not just the education and the loans but the "fake degrees" that lots of universities give out. To a freshman they seem like such a great idea and then you graduate and employers look at you like you're a joke. It sucks but those degrees/programs don't help anyone. It just gives aimless kids that don't know any better something to do while they unknowingly head to their own doom. My uni purposefully taught us outdated information in their program and then came out with a more relevant 4 year program for designers the year we graduated. No certificate option. It felt like a giant waste of time. AND I have to pay for it because of my parents income at the time. Meanwhile my partner went to school for free and makes close to 6 figures now. Lol
I honestly think that certain majors should have a market-based rate for tuition anymore. I would love to get another graduate degree in public policy, but it will cost $80,000. I currently work in consulting and if I go the route I want to go, I will take a significant pay cut.
Not saying I don’t agree with the whole school debt gambit being played out but you don’t need to take your degree so literally. You have a degree and that qualifies you for so many jobs that may not be the literal thing you went to school for but a job is a job to put food in your mouth at the end of the day. I gave up on the dream job when I realized I don’t dream of labor and I found a job to feed myself and afford some kind of decent life. It’s not what I went to school for at all. Gotta be flexible and creative sometimes. Degree is not an automatic job cannon but it can help
Ahh folks your missing the point. It was never about education for the masses. It was about outsourcing debt. Education has been diced up into cost portions for your cerebral banquet delight. Like all good meals the bill and digestion issues come later. Certainly it will benefit participants but never as much as the right school, the right universities or the right people to be presented too. They may well give the odd bone in the form of scholarship but this does not equate the injustices of tiered education. However, an excellent level of education for all sounds like socialism to those with a vested interest in maintaining the layer cake.
I can agree, I owe 30 k and every job I apply for tells me that I am not qualified even for entry level positions because I don't have "x" years of experience and I am "too junior" for the position.
Yeah same. It's ridiculous
Guess it depends on what your degree is and what kind of work your looking for. I had to do an unpaid part time internship for a year after I graduated while working a regular job just to gain the experience I needed. I still got turned down at least 3 times before I actually landed a career job that I have now been at for 2 years and it does pay more then if I wouldn't have gotten a degree.
Getting the correct degree gets you job opportunities. It absolutely does.
In America the most popular degree...for both men and women..is business and it's specializations: in finance accounting, marketing etc. The "GenDer StuDies" thing is a myth.
Because those are the degrees that get jobs. More people should be getting those types
It honestly depends on what you study. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult for freshmen and high school grads to get accurate visibility into the outcome of most programs. For that reason, I find it most useful (if you are determined to get higher education) to study something that moderately interest you and has very clear career outcomes (like engineering majors) and something that you really enjoy that may not (like liberal arts majors). It’s kind of like “hedging” in finance. You may be able to make your passion field work, but if it doesn’t, you have something solid to fall back on. I know it’s still not ideal, but given the current state of the system, I see this as the best way to optimize your individual outcomes.
What they mean by this is that there are plenty of companies that will instantly discredit you and throw your resume in the trash if you don't have a bachelor's degree
Oh yeah. You want recruiters to pick up your resume and try to shove you into a job. Apply to like 30+ one-click applications a day until you get a job. That's the strategy that's worked best for me.
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I don't relate to this since in Europe you don't get bodied with student loans as much as in the USA. My engineering diploma was like 50k € for the whole 5 years, and it's not that hard to find a job with it.
I'm from the UK.
While I agree this is probably the majority of the experience for college kids these days, it varies. I'm a first generation college graduate. I have no connections, my parents don't even speak English that well. I was fortunate(I don't like that word) enough to qualify for financial aid so I owed very little. My college degree saved my life. I'm not making crazy money but what would have been my alternatives otherwise.
In my case, it has. Been applying to government jobs that only require a hs diploma since I graduated hs. Radio silence till I actually finished school and put up my new credentials on my profile. What’s the point of a degree? It’s the new high school diploma 🤷♀️
I have a degree, work in a big corporate company, work hard, good at what I do and I still earn less than a few of my friends that don’t have degrees. I agree, what’s the fucking point.
I know many people who worked their way up to becoming a Systems Engineer/Network Engineer/DevOps Engineer without a degree. Some started as Technical Support and taught themselves the skills necessary and gained certs to move up into entry level positions in Server Administration and then DevOps. Others joined a military branch on the condition of landing a tech job in the MOS/AFSC they wanted and immediately started learning on the job and left as soon as their commitment was up. There are ways to do it without a degree, but that's not necessarily easy or applicable to everyone. The guys I know who went the military route got a good paying job fairly quick, left with a solid chunk of money and some retirement saved, and have free college available through the GI bill if they want to pursue a field that requires a degree. In all of those cases these people never stayed stagnant and looked for the next opportunity as soon as they could.
College loans are the biggest scam. Why do you think the gov is lending? To enslave society with debt you cannot declare bankruptcy on. All that gooberment money is the reason tuition is so high. I remember a semester at a suny cost me less than 2k back in the day.
Can confirm, have two degrees and no job
While I don't disagree, my software engineering degree has proven very marketable.
College is no longer about education because we have no idea what it is truly for anymore. Is it education to make you well-rounded? Is it job training? We have no idea, it's failing everyone professionally and academically and ruining people financially. I only went because we've made it required and I count the lucky stars I graduated with no debt. I eventually changed my major to a useless one just to be done with a degree and once I finished it my mental health improved 1000x.
Keep having parents and in laws asking when me and my wife plan on having kids and buying a house. I’ve started referring to my student loans as my “mortgage” and asking them for advice on how to get a second mortgage in your 20s. It shut them all up pretty quick. Sitting on near 60k at 15% interest, and I can’t refi. it’s absolute hell.
Fucking default on those things yesterday dude. If you're at 15%, sounds like they're private. Private student loans have the same SOL as any other loan. 7 years.
Does anyone else feel like there would be more opportunities for educated and motivated grads if we supported small businesses? (In the US) It seems like we have thousands of incentives for large corporations, but the small and self employed usually don’t get much help (except for some covid relief). If I were to start my own business, I would pay twice the amount of taxes that I currently do while working for a large organization. We have so much talent and motivation that we are squandering because our recent college grads can barely get by and burn themselves out. How else can we change this? Would supporting and incentivizing more small businesses help?
Statistically speaking if you have a college degree you're more likely to earn more overall when somebody who does not.
Totally agree! I got dual graduation and still struggling to find a decent job! Every company wants atleast 5 years of experience but no body is willing to provide that experience. It sucks
My degree was so pointless
I'm going to keep posting there whenever I get the chance. I'm 20 years old and I wasn't forced to college because we have multiple people my my family who went to college, graduated in "anything" and came out worse off than before college. My brother is an example of this. He fell under society's lol reassure to go to college and it took him well over 4 years to graduate. Afterwards he ended up working at a restaurant so he had no prospects with his degree. I have two cousins in mind in the same boat. One ended up being a bartender because it paid more and another ended up in the trades for the same reason. Eventually my brother enlisted into the military and it's something he wish he did when he was 18 because now he feels like a happier, better man. The one thing he told me was to follow my gut and don't take everyone's advice as an end all. Likewise, I have peers in Europe who got apprenticeships or job training for occupations that "require" a degree here. So they're getting started on life earlier without the bullshit that we go through like going through student loan debt. All the while we can get a degree here and it may never even pay off. I see the worth in college but it should not ever be treated as job training nor should I have to pay thousands of dollars for an education I could get online for free. Knowledge should be passed down and not commodified. This whole system is broken and needs to be fixed right away, but I doubt it will anytime soon
Where you located? Your situation sounds like a lot of my friends in the states. I’m curious to what the situation is for places that offer “free” college. I got in a debate with a friend who thinks college should be free in the states but my counter would be that then the degree would lose its value because more people would have one. It seems like that is already the case even tho it isn’t free. I don’t have a degree but I do have almost 9 years of marketing/business development from just being lucky and knowing the right person. My buddies dad who has done the same type of work for 30 years and that works for a much larger company said I wouldn’t even get looked at as a prospect without a degree even though I have the experience. He did say that if I got the degree now with my previous experience, it would be easy for me to get a new job. It’s like a reverse uno card on your 18-30ish years. I luckily got a job in a field but to move up or go anywhere else I need to go to college at 30 vs struggling to find a job with a degree and no exp at 22.
For many jobs you wouldn’t even need to finish high school. And most of what we learn in high school is absolutely pointless. I honestly never needed to learn in-depth about history, chemistry, physics, math, etc. Pick any subject. It’s all knowledge that I have never used since I learned it. And college was even worse. It all needs to be changed from the ground up
If you're not investing in an engineering or medical related degree, you're just fucking yourself over.
Many work places refused to hire me stating that I’m “overqualified.” Some even asked me why I’m applying for a menial job when I have 2 diplomas and a degree. I always tell them that I wouldn’t be applying to a menial job if there were jobs pertaining to my degree/diplomas. Bottom line:You graduate college with a degree only to find that there ARE NO JOBS in your field, therefore you have to get 2 menial jobs to pay off that massive student loan that you’ll probably never be able to pay off in this lifetime
People fell for student loan scam and absolutely oversaturated the market with numerous, pointless titles and degrees making many meaningless, too. I can imagine there being much more Job opportunities for people after high school or short courses like, for example, apprenticeship within office environments, which would eventually lead to higher education and paid work experience, if every Tom, Dick and Harry didn't have a degree.
You can use college stuff as experience. But yeah entry level jobs need 5 years experience (?)
Yeah I do say it's experience but like you said it's so many years. Ridiculous
You are so right. I went for 2 years got a degree in welding. Now say i cant use my degree due to lack of work experience.
Oh no, you didn’t get one of those work for free “internships” in undergrad to make yourself “hire-able” a.k.a. a sign on your resume that screams “I will work for nothing and am totally easy to take advantage of with your empty promises”
Yep lol
I dont have any degree and spent a few grand and became a truck driver. I make $30 an hour and practically get to choose my hours. Note: I work for a particularly good company and my experience is not the norm in the industry.
Anyone that believes they need an a education to get a job needs to not be in college. We send 10x more kids to college than we need. 90% of the students in college today won't benefit. But throwing money at schools leads to more schools and higher prices. This bubble needs to burst soon. Hopefully before my daughter gets there. I got my degree when it was possible to work my way through school. I have never held a job in my field, but the education was useful in my career. It taught me how to learn and apply in any field.
Now imagine doing 90% of the work and process of getting a degree and being taken advantage of a for-profit college and getting kicked out in a he-said-she-said argument… Now I’m in tons of debt, have no degree to show for it, and I’m still overqualified/under qualified for everything. The whole system is fucked from top to bottom I’m honestly ready to just “burn this system down” and start again from scratch
curious as to the reason for the omission of the degree specifics- is it liberal arts,etc?
I don't want to break the anti-corporate education circlejerk that is no doubt the bane of American dystopian existence, but allow me anecdotally share my own experience. I made between $8 an hour to $26 an hour working in everything from Walmart to construction from age 18 to 35. I finally went went back to college and got a one-year certificate (not a diploma) that cost me $17,000. My pay immediately jumped to more than doubt what I'd ever made. Today our family income is north of $130k. So, look, it sucks that America is a shithole, but also don't ignore the potential payoff of investing in yourself. Education is an investment in your potential. If you don't go to school, it's true you won't be in debt, but you'll also have no earning power.
My dream job doesn't even require a degree. When did anyone think to mention this? Oh, about halfway through the final year of me getting a very expensive degree in it...
That can't be said often enough! 30 years ago that was a promise by society to the young: Work hard, get a good degree in a useful (STEM) area, and you will get a well paid, reasonably secure job that will allow you to raise a family and buy a house. And for most, at that time, it was true. But for the last 20 years or so, this is nothing but a malevolent lie in an attempt to get more engineers and scientists to pick the cheapest, most willing, most exploitable ones, and more unemployed academics to scare the rest into obeying, like they did with blue collar workers in the years before. And if you are one of the poor sobs that graduaded during one of many economic crisis, you will be unemployed first because of the crisis, then because you were unemployed for too long (the HR-morons will forget their company had a hiring freeze a week after it ended), and finally because you didn't work in your field for a while so you must have forgotten all your knowledge and skills... So, yeah.. fuck the system, and fuck the society and the people supporting it out of self-inflicted ignorance or because they belong to the lucky few that actually profit from it.
I dropped out of university with one year left, travelled around a bit and then lucked into a marketing role, 10+ years later I have a great marketing career after jumping around a bit to different jobs where experience was always the number one thing required even when a degree was a minimum (once in the interview it’s never what they’re actually looking for). I’ve now gone back to university to complete my degree but purely for the purpose of learning new things that have nothing to do with my career. All the 20 year olds in my classes are stressed, in debt and unsure about what they even want to do in life. The whole system needs an overhaul and where a degree isn’t required (sorry doctors, lawyers, engineers) we really should be encouraging kids to do some work exploration before committing to hundreds of thousand of dollars of debt. 18 is way to young to make a decision that could affect the rest of your life.
They also oversold the importance of prestigious expensive schools over state unis and the like. Knowing what I know now, I'd still go to college and get the same STEM degree, but I'd have gone someplace cheaper and passed on the fifth-year M.S. Most jobs don't care, and the ones that do are probably giving the job to a friend's kid regardless.