It’s curious to me that in threads like this, we rarely ever hear from the underemployed alum of a “good” school or the graduate of No-Name University who is doing quite well for him/herself. Neither do we frequently hear from the underemployed graduate of No-Name University who feels that they’ve been disadvantaged by their mediocre education.
There are a few conclusions we might draw from this observation (assuming it’s true):
The underemployed don’t like posting to this kind of thread.
Underemployed people who graduated from good schools are a rarity.
Successful graduates of no-name universities don’t like posting to this kind of thread.
Successful graduates of no-name universities are a rarity.
My guess is that there’s much subjectivity involved with how we rate our life outcomes. I consider myself successful because I’m doing better than my parents did, I’ve got all the trappings of middle-classdom, and my job has some prestige associated with (I’m not pushing a broom or wearing a hairnet. And I have an office with a door). Because my definition of “success” is pretty modest, I’m guessing that no matter what institution I had I graduated from, I’d be doing pretty well. But maybe if I was shooting for a higher bar (six figure salary), I’d be regretting my decision not to attend Cornell (or majoring in science rather than engineering).
So I guess if I were advising someone on how much importance to place on name-brand and prestige, I’d ask them what they want out of life. Do they just want to be comfortable in life? Or do they want to be at the top of the pack?
Well, if she “can’t get in there, she can go to Eau Claire.”
Started at Marquette University myself, ended up with a BS in English from the University of Wisconsin. I work with a ton of UW grads, along with some Michigan Tech grads and grads from the U (that’s the University of Minnesota up here) as well as some grads from the smaller area universities. Don’t know if it’s really made much of a difference. However, it also must be said that both the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota are well-regarded institutions even with their “state school” status. Especially in engineering, which is generally my field of work (although I’m not an engineer myself).
I started at the University of Minnesota, but didn’t write my terminal paper for an Art History/Film Studies degree. However, over a number of years I managed to get myself a tidy six figure a year salary as a project manager, systems analyst or business analyst (depending on the moment). I finished a degree (restarting an Accounting major) at the aforementioned Metropolitan State - mostly to be able to check off the B.S. checkbox. (Bachelor’s not Bullshit - although either fits). At one time I had a seven person international staff - and probably could have done much better had I not mommy tracked. But we decided to let my husband have the career while I got the dentist appointments and vomit duty - despite my rather pedestrian education (as was said, the UofM - Twin Cities and the University of Wisconsin - Madison are well respected state schools regionally, but Metro State is…well, I checked off the checkbox).
But I agree…my sister graduated in Nursing from Winona State. For nursing, it really doesn’t make a darn bit of difference where you graduate from if you want to be a nurse.
It depends. For my undergraduate, I went to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). It mattered only in that I was in biology at the time, and the better local businesses seemed to recruit there preferentially for the sciences and engineering over San Diego State University (SDSU) or the University of San Diego (USD). That said, I changed companies several times over the course of my career, and certainly worked at one large employer where the HR staff went to SDSU themselves, so they preferentially recruited from there.
I got an MBA at the University of Texas at Austin and that made a huge difference because the quality of companies that came to the business schools was largely based on their ranking, or at least that was the case in the late 1990s when I graduated.
One you have an established career and your first job out of either college or graduate school, I don’t think anyone cares if you went to Harvard or a reject party school. Indeed, many of the engineers I work with today were former military and went to either University of Phoenix or National University just to check the box for having a bachelor’s degree.
Now it almost seems like the shoe is on the other foot. I am now in a position where a hire people for defense jobs, and I sometimes shy away from people who went to prestigious universities, because they tend to want and expect more in salary and are usually on the higher end of the pay scale I can pay while not offering significantly better skills.
I went to a generic urban state U for BS and MS. Back when tuition was $120 a quarter.
The education part was standard. Good enough. Nothing fancy for the most part.
But … I was able to individually interact with faculty very early on and that helped immensely. I got to go “behind the scenes” as it were. I was able to do more interesting and advanced things than the usual just-clocking-in student.
Good grief, I was on a first name basis with the graduate dean who didn’t even bother reading the form I brought him to sign since he knew me and that it was going to be fine.
All of which was just perfect for propelling me onto my career.
OTOH, I’m not sure how much of this is possible now with all the adjunct part-timers being hired. They probably only show up for the lecture and maybe an office hour or two. Forget real student interaction.
