Really? That surprises me. It’s theoretically possible to get credentialed in the United States without having a degree, just by passing exams, but no one ever does it because no one would hire you. Are there actually credentialed actuaries in Australia without degrees? Is it common?
I have a degree, and a degree was required to get the job I had when I started with my current company. But I am not in a field related to the subject I intended to study on entering college (journalism) nor the field I got my degree in (psychology). Despite this, I am glad I have my degree and I’m glad I went to school.
The major benefits for me were:
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In college, I learned to enjoy learning, as I got to avoid subjects I didn’t like (math) and study things that sounded interesting to me (psychology, linguistics, botany). As a result…
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…the world opened up a bit more, and I met interesting people and had experiences I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I also acquired some research, leadership, and teaching experience, which benefited me both personally and professionally.
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I gained options. I didn’t know what I wanted to do after I got my degree. I didn’t want to do more school, at least not immediately. So I sort of just fell into the first job that sounded good. The job required a degree, and fortunately, I had one. I really have no clue what I’d be doing if I hadn’t had one.
Most of these benefits I realized in hindsight. At the time, school felt like nothing but work and stress.
I don’t believe having a degree guarantees I’ll live happily ever after, but it does contribute to making my life as enjoyable as it is today. Right now I have a decent job, a decent savings, and some portable job skills. The money I earned made it possible for me to afford little luxuries, such as a high-speed internet connection, which led me to both the joys of lolcats and the SDMB as well as my SO, whom I had no chance of meeting IRL as we lived 2400 miles apart. I’d have far less in my life if I didn’t have the income I do, and I wouldn’t have the income I do if I didn’t have my degree.
I know people who don’t have degrees but have done well for themselves-- my parents are a great example of this. However, despite their success, they both always expressed the regret they didn’t have their degrees. (Both started school but never finished.) My mom in particular used to wonder how much farther she could have gotten and if she wouldn’t have had to work as hard or take as much shit as she did if she had her degree. From them I learned that just because you can do well without a degree doesn’t mean not having one won’t negatively affect you somehow, whether in a tangible way or just psychologically.
That’s just something people uneducated people say. 
Going to college and business school has opened many doors for me that otherwise would not have been opened. What would have been the alternative? Find some light industrial job near my parents suburban home and hang around the local bars drinking beers with guys I went to high school with? My dad runs into guys I went to high school with all the time - driving the UPS truck, waiting in local restuarants, or cleaning the septic tanks. Now there’s nothing wrong with these jobs or having strong ties to the community you grew up with. But I wanted to be able to experience more. I don’t think I would have had the opportunities to make the friends I have or live where I live or go places I’ve been without an education.
Yes, I have a 4-year college degree (bachelor’s of arts in political science). There’s no way I would have the job I have now without it. The vast majority of professional jobs (read: decent-paying) out there require a college degree. I have no idea what type of job I would have now without it, but I am sure it would pay less and be something of the “blue collar” variety… which may be fine for some, but not me.
Three degrees from three universities for me, and I enjoyed nearly every minute of it. I’d be terribly frustrated without a PhD, since it gave me a ticket to do the kind of stuff I love to do. I’ve also been damn happy for about 25 of my 27 years of working. I mature slowly (am not quite mature yet at 56) and the world was probably better off with me safely in college for most of my '20s.
My father doesn’t have a college degree, because his family was too poor, even given that college was free in NY. He did fine for himself, but he had to work extra hard to get promotions he probably could have gotten easier if he had a degree.
My question for the OP is what did you expect from college, and what do you think you could do in the current climate without a degree?
Many older actuaries don’t have degrees because at the time they were studying the only way to qualify was via correspondence with the UK Institute. The Australian Institute did not start running its own exams until the 1980s.
In theory it’s possible even now to qualify under the current Australian system without getting a degree, though it’s not common. And even then you’d still have to do some of your study at a university as a non-degree student. There are five parts to the current Australian qualification process:
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Part I: these subjects are not examined by the Australian Institute. Most students cover this material while getting a degree at uni. But you could do them entirely via correspondence with the Institute of Actuaries in the UK if you wanted to. One of my colleagues, who studied pure maths at uni, did this.
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Part II (Control Cycle): only available from one of the accredited unis in Australia (of which there are five). Most students incorporate this course into the degree that they are already doing for the Part I exams. But you could take this course as a non-award student.
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Part III: specialist subjects examined only by the Australian Institute.
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Commerical Actuarial Practice: a commercially-based subject examined only by the Australian Institute. The running/teaching of this course is actually currently outsourced to one of the accredited universities, but it’s “badged” as an Institute course and students enrol in it via the Institute, not the university.
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Professionalism course: available only through the Australian Institute, or a comparable overseas professional actuarial body.
The people I’ve known who make good livings without college are usually one of the following:
1- ex-military who apply their military training (ordnance, computers, whatever) into a civilian job
2- mechanically/technologically oriented (whether cars, AC repair or computers)
3- natural born sales people (cars and machinery for men/hotels and catering for women, furniture and real estate for both)
4- people who started at a company in an entry level position and gradually rose through the ranks to a managerial position
5- civil service employees (Federal or state or city) with umpteen years of experience
I’ve known a lot more people without college degrees who spend their lives just getting by. I recently saw an ad for a Saturn salesman at a local dealership that said “college degree preferred”, which is a bit scary: college degrees (especially undergraduate) are already inflated, and soon even more people will have to pursue them which of course makes the inflation go even higher. It’s totally true that a graduate degree is today what a bachelor’s degree was in 1980.
Getting a degree will expand your options in the job market and in life.
Once qualified you dont HAVE to follow a career in the discipline that you studied.
While at college there is a very good chance that you will meet up with people who may be more interesting then those you might normally meet and who will most certainly be a cut above the norm.
Yes there are people who live very unexciting lives and who are perfectly happy.
You might well be one of them but you must ask yourself “Am I going to be happy working in a factory,or waiting tables or selling shoes for the rest of my life?”
If the answer is yes then dont bother with higher education.
Many people get the jitters before going to Uni. are they good enough etc.?
And then of course theres all the other stresses involved so people try to rationalise to themselves that they can be just as happy with mundanity as they can be with high flying.
But its years later when the option is no longer there that the regrets set in.
My two pennorth is if you have the opportunity then grab it with both hands.
I didn’t get my degree until I was 30 and now work in a field I truly enjoy (nursing).
In retrospect, I wish I had gotten my degree sooner because I would not have wasted so much time in boring and low paying jobs.
On the other hand, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I was younger, so I guess it all evens out in some cosmic way.
To emphasize a good point someone else has made, one of the greatest benefits college conferred upon me was that it really opened my mind. Before college, frankly, I was a bit of an irreflective nitwit; and being constantly challenged and studying a broad range of views on political and moral issues made me a lot more reflective and a lot more humble about my own point of view.
I started off in art school, decided I wanted something with a more academic bent. I moved on to a four-year school and graduated with BAs in art history and anthropology (supplemented with non-major, required classes from a community college). Just recently I finished a program at what would best be described as a vocational school–learning how to be an advertising creative.
I didn’t enjoy any one of them more than the other (I liked things about all of them), or even find one more useful than the other. I found the education enormously useful, though. It has helped open career doors for me and, perhaps most importantly, taught me how to think about things differently.
Yes, it’s important, but I don’t believe that you must have a degree to do well in life.
I have a BA in Anthropology. I am not an anthropologist, I am a secretary who writes fiction on the side.
I do not regret going to university; I loved learning, school, and it was one of the most important periods of my life. If we won the lottery and I didn’t have work for a living, I would write, travel, and go back to university and take classes just for the joy of it.
However, if I had children who were not sure that university was for them, I would encourage them to get a good trade. There’s nothing wrong with being a plumber, a mechanic, or welder, any good, skilled trade.
(The plumber who does a lot of work for our property management firm makes very good money. Mind you, it’s hard work, and he’s called upon on weekends and evenings, but the world needs plumbers. Not so much, chicks with BAs in anthropology.)
I know many people that delayed college after high-school and with careers and families, they’re having a hell of a time to get back.
I went to college right out of HS so no big deal, but after starting a family and career, it took a major life catastrophe to go back to get my master’s degrees (long story but basically I was spending life staring at a wall and going to work). I then went to get my doctorate and with doing that, working on my national boards, and a second credential I decided to take a year off after completing my course work before typing up my dissertation (the research is already done). That was three years ago and I keep telling myself to get back to it and finish already.
In short, going back to school sounds easy in practice, but it is really hard.
I have a BA in Soviet and East European Studies. I currently work in telecommunications. Did my degree help me? Not directly I think.
I think the degree helped me generally learn how to learn. I don’t use my degree at all, but the habits and strategies of how to learn new material are valuable to me. I feel that I’m well rounded enough that I can learn almost anything. I had enough hard science in addition to other courses that I have no shame in a BA.
My military commission taught me more nuts and bolts things; how to deal with people and how to execute a plan. A pretty good amount of construction practices and their management. I use this a lot more than my degree on a day to day basis.
I think a college degree complements whatever it is you end up doing. And it can never be taken away from you. Maybe it’s just punching a ticket, but I think it still has value.
Official poster: “I were a high school drop out.”
Added with a felt tip: “Now I are a millionaire.”
Me? Coupla years of community college. Is an AA real?
Peace,
mangeorge
Mine turned out very poorly the first time around, better the second.
You do NOT need a college degree to have a successful and fulfilling life. But you DO need some kind of marketable skill. You don’t need a degree to be a welder, and good welders are in extremely high demand and make good bucks - but you have to learn to be a welder, and it’s not something you just pick up in an afternoon if you’re going to be any good at it. You can make very good money as a truck driver, which doesn’t require a degree.
What you DO need to do is keep learning and develop career skills. Education is one way to do that, but there are others.
However, other have made a point worth repeating; it’s much easier to go to college right away than wait until you’re older. The older you get, the more established your life and obligations are, and the tougher it’ll be to find the time and money to go to college.
I have a highly specialized degree in a narrow field in which I no longer have any interest in working, so I have a lot of student loan debt and limited marketable job skills.
The job I have now is one that requires a degree, though it’s not in my field. As such, I make quite a bit more money, and have better hours and working conditions, than the non-professional staff where I work, so to that end I’m better off for having a degree.
But then again, I could make considerably more money as a welder or trucker.
Nevertheless, I’m glad I went. If I had to do it all over again, I’d major in something else, but I’d still go.
Yeah, I tried it. My early college career (age 18-20, roughly) was a disaster, and I was asked to leave. I got a case of the fuckits and never looked back… at least, not for a while.
When I tried to go back, it was hard. I took a class or two each semester, but then I got pregnant with my first child, and I haven’t taken a class since (kids are 5.5 & 8).
So I am college-educated but I do not have a degree. Because I work for family, I am fabulously overpaid for my education and position. If I had to get a real job, I’d be a bit fucked (although my work experience is the bomb, if the RFP says “degree required” then it’s a degree that’s required…).
Mu husband has a BA and a JD- if the need arose, he could go out and get a high-paying slog job at any moment. It’s a nice parachute to have.
This is a point of some interest to me. I have, for different reasons over the years, made more money that a lot of degreed employees. For some, not all by any means, this is a real problem. Not that they earn less, but specifically that I earn more but do not have a (real) degree. Simply put, they feel that I should earn less. 
You appear to be in the majority who really doesn’t care.
OK, first to answer you question, then to impart the fatherly advice you seem to need.
Yes, I’m college educated. I have a BA in journalism, with was pretty much worthless unless I wanted to be a newspaper editor/reporter, which I thought I wanted to be, until I’d been one for over 20 years, then discovered it wasn’t waht I wanted at all. Now I’m getting my master’s degree in English so I can teach, which is what I wanted to do all along and should have done 25 years ago.
Now, here’s the advice, just as I got it from my father: You can build a good life for yourself and your family without a college education, but you will have to work very hard at a job that has absolutely no reward except the living it provides. There aren’t very many union jobs available, and that’s what you’re talking about. A thankless apprenticeship, long hours of hard work and the probability that it will break down either your body or your mind before you retire, allowing you a scant five to ten years of retirement before you die of the injuries and illnesses you’ve contracted on the job.
Or, you can go to college and get a degree that will allow you to use your mind and challenge your creativity. You will earn up to 200% more than those who work for you and you will enjoy a longer life and better health than your employees.
Heres how my dad phrased it: “Who would you rather be, Lyle Alzado or Pat Bowlen?” I’d like to point out that Bowlen is still alive, and much wealthier than Lyle Alzado and John Elway put together.