Is a college degree REALLY necessary?

Great Debates
1

I did not finish my college career…er…or should I say: I DID finish my college career, but did not receive my degree. :wink:

Anyhoo, do you think that getting a college degree is truely necessary for the average person to have a successful career or is the whole collegiate system just bullshit? I mean, really, although many companies/positions require a degree, you additionally have to posess a certain level of experience. Why can’t the level of experience be the end all/be all?

Is the whole collegiate system just a BUSINESS designed to be a money maker as opposed to really educating?

So many people come out of college BURIED IN DEBT…the whole thing really irks me.

2

I can’t generalize. Gates and Dell didn’t finish college, and they have both achieved some modest success. Other people do need it and use it successfully.

Besides, colleges have the best parties!! Don’t forget about that aspect.

3

I believe if you are a Bill Gates then you don’t need it if you are an average Joe than you need it.
Don’t seem fair but…:frowning:

4

Because you can’t get the experience without the job, which you can’t get without the degree. It’s not true that you need experience–the company I work for regularly hires freshly minted college graduates. And we require degrees.

There are people who, through luck, native skill and talent, opportunities, or sheer genius, make it without the degree. But generally, anyone with a modestly open mind and a willingness to learn is better off having been to college. And you don’t have to come out buried in debt–I know lots of people who’ve gotten entry level jobs without degrees and pursued the degree in the evening. And once they got it, they got a promotion or a better job.

5

You do need experience, but you can’t get started with a job without having background knowledge. If you never went to college and wanted to be an accountant, who would want you? You don’t know anything about accounting. It isn’t like being a waitress, where the manager can give you a rundown of what to do and you do it. Most careers are very detailed and require a good understanding of the subject.

Programming is a bad example. Gates already knew a lot about computer programming, and a degree is probably less important in that one category, because you can teach yourself quite a bit from reading books and testing stuff on your own computer. I know people who design web pages and can make programs in high school. Gates was just very talented in his field. He also made his own company so he was a boss to himself. He didn’t need a resume.

6

The question is incomplete. Necessary for what? Necessary in order to be a physician? Absolutely. Necessary in order to be a productive member of society? Of course not. It depends what your goals are.

7

Splanky , let’s say a high school student got a job working part-time with a CPA’s office or a bank and was able to exhibit an interest in making accounting (a blanket term here) a long-term career AND exhibited the aptitude but had zero desire and/or resource to attend college. Lots of employers are willing to assist motivated employees in obtaining necessary specialized training. I’m not trying to be an asshole…I DO understand the point you made. At the very LEAST, I believe that the student in my example is going to receive an education that would easily rival a college student during their last two years of college. Why can’t we just nix the first two bullshit years of college where we basically RE-learn English, math and science and fast forward to classes that focus on our MAJOR?
MLS , the question IS complete. To simplify, let’s assume we are referring to careers that do not require a master’s or above (doctors, lawyers, SDMB mod)… :cool:

8

Accounting is a poor example, since the specialized training for an accountant is a college degree in it.

If what you’re questioning is the value of the diversity requirements in an arts degree, well, that’s a very different question. There are a lot of benefits, both personal and society-wide, to having liberal arts programs for degrees, rather than narrow professional training, but honestly, they’re the kind of benefits that, if you don’t see the point, you won’t get the benefit, even if you meet the requirements in the course of a degree.

If you want more practical benefits, I can only hope that you end up in management somewhere, sometime, wondering why your employees are incapable of seeing past the end of their spreadsheets and understanding the larger picture. I see it everyday: we fight a constant battle to get our employees to think beyond the next task on their list, to see more than the smallest possible interpretation of their job description. Almost without exception, it’s the people with university degrees who are able to do that, while the clerks and the kids out of high school can’t.

9

A degree is proof that you’re willing to put up with a lot of pointless bullshit to be able to impress other people. Some people consider that a good quality.

10

Well you could always go the alternate route like I did, the military. They will give you training and tons of practical experience. I now make pretty good money in telecommunications all due to my military experience.

11

It’s possible to rise to the top without a college degree. My step-mother dropped out of college to raise a family, and now holds a top position in Sacramento County that pays $5,000-$15,000 more than my father’s (who graduated from Dartmouth with honors, and holds a master’s from Arizona State).

In general, however, it’s not easy to succeed without a degree.

12

Because the vast majority of larger institutions and businesses have a multi-tiered hiring system. At the first tier, you have people who have no experience nor real knowledge of the jobs in question. All they have to go on are “credentials”.

In one job search, I was told a couple of times that it was unfortunate that I had a Bachelor of Arts in general biology. A decade of hardcore molecular biology experience wasn’t good enough to get past that first tier.

I only got to interviews in institutions that only required “A bachelor’s degree”.

That being said, there are jobs that have “X degree or equivalent experience” in their description.

13

*Originally posted by DEVA *

Here’s something to think about - you have two people who want to work at a bank as a CPA. Person A fulfills your requirements above (high school grad, has an interest/aptitude in becoming a CPA). Person B has a 4 year college degree with training as a CPA.

If you hire Person A, you’ll be footing the bill to train the person (with no guarantee that the person you train will spend their entire career at your bank). If you hire Person B, your training costs will be minimal as they were born largely by the individual himself. If Person B eventually leaves, then you hire another individual who has born the bulk of the cost of training.

If a concern is to minimize costs so as to maximize profits (a goal for many companies) you’re more likely to hire Person B.

14

I agree with others here, it’s just easier to get ahead with a degree. So having one is usually better than not having one. As a general rule.

However, there is a myth amongst some people (often among insecure degree holders) that a degree is “proof” that the person is automatically really, really good at the subject in which they got the degree. This is not true. They may be really good, they may be average, they may suck. It all depends.

For instance, I have what I consider to be a pretty good art education. But I didn’t get a degree (too poor). I see, over and over and over again, talentless, uninspired, lazy, hackneyed artists who have a degree. And a few of them will cite their degree, as if that is automatic proof that they’re a good artist. But it doesn’t work that way. Their art stinks. No matter how many degrees they have, they’ll still stink as an artist.

A former co-worker used to make a point of mentioning her degree in Fine Arts. More than a few times. (I had mentioned my interest in art.) But who was the one who was selling their art, getting into art galleries and shops? It wasn’t her, it was me. The one without the degree.

15

Mr. 2001:

“A degree is proof that you’re willing to put up with a lot of pointless bullshit to be able to impress other people.”

True, indeed. The sad part is that in may cases it’s not even so that the person can impress other people.

I enjoyed college. Whether I could’ve had as much fun and learned as much by skipping that process, I don’t know. I will say, though, that I got a science degree and work in a technical field and can’t say that I use even 2% of what I learned in college. I sometimes laugh when I think of how much math I stdudied (multi-variable calculus, etc) and I’d say that the most complex math I ever used at work was taking an average. I guess I might have used some statistics, but that’s about it. It’s also true that when you have a good knoweldge of a particular subject, maybe you can’t appreciate what it would be like to do your jobe WITHOUT that knowledge, but the education was a lot of overkill from a strictly utilitarian point of view. I still had a good time, though, and wouldn’t have done it differently.

16

A recent thread on the subject: Why should I go to college?

17

I do not have a degree and I consider myself quite successful. I have climbed through the ranks and now find myself a Supervisor of a large Data Center. I make great money, enjoy my job, and have everything that I could want. So do you need a degree? No.

Now let me give you the down side.  I think I put in just as much work to get to where I am as I would have had I gone after a degree.  I dont think I saved any time by not getting it.  You need to work hard and start at the bottom.  If you are an average worker don’t expect to go anywhere.  You are going to be advancing on your skill and work alone.  Also if you decide to switch employers after climbing the ladder don’t expect to start where you left off.  Expect to have to climb a couple rungs again.   The one thing I miss out on is a sense of security.  If I get laid off or fired and have to hit the streets competing with those with degrees I will not be coming from as strong a position as I would like.  Experience is golden in my field so there is a little comfort there.  I do however think I would have a very hard time making what I am now if I had to find another job and possibly even have a hard time finding one which I could maintain my current lifestyle.  All in all If you have drive and ambition you can do without the degree.  My biggest issue is worry / anxiety about what would happen if I were to have to start over.

Weeril

18

There are a great many factors involved.

One is the particular field. To use the accounting example, now there is a field that is more or less mature. The skills wanted in an accounting position have been laid out, and innovations are not as frequent as they are in some other fields. The training to properly develop those skills has been integrated over many years into a more or less standard college curriculum. If accounting is what you were going for, why not get the degree? In general, for some fields, a school is the only practical palce to get hands on experience.

In the case of Bill Gates et. al., you have to remember that he got his start at a time when computers were only about 25 years old, and computer programming several years younger than that. There were precious few courses of study in the field in the mid-seventies, and many of them still regarded the entire field of Computer Science as simply an interesting elective subset of the study of Mathematics. So a degree wasn’t really necessary for him to do what he was doing.

That said, you may STILL want to go to a college if you are in a cutting-edge field, because that’s where all the new research is being done. It just may be harder to get in to a cutting-edge school.

It also depends on the job market. Back to accounting: You can swear on a stack of bibles that you have spent hours at the library learning everything there is to know about accounting, but if the hiring manager has 20 other applicants, all with degrees from nationally accredited institutions which have good reputations for producing quality workers, why should they look at you? But if your the only one in East Podunk who even knows what a spreadsheet looks like, you have an advantage without the degree.

There are also factors outside of the specific knowledge you gain. People who have spent four years away from their parents interacting socially and academically with their peers tend to have a very different way of dealing with the world than those who did not.
In some careers, you benefit more from having the degree, some benefit more from not being “overqualified”. A plumber with a degree in fluid mechanics does not have an advantage over one who does not, and both will probably make more than several other fields that require college education.

But enough theory. Fifteen years ago, I ended up in a situation where I could not finish my own degree, and found that the fields of interest to me generally required them. I have listened during that time to people my fields of interest who had degrees, started their careers when fewer companies required BAs of entry level workers, or otherwise never had to start at the bottom of today’s job world without the benefit of one claim that a degree was a totally unnecessary expense of time and money. My experience has shown me that they have no idea what they are talking about, and I am very grateful that I will be completeing my Bachelor’s in May.

19

One can have a successful career in many fields without a college degree. Those fields are also for the most part open to people WITH college degrees. Certain fields are mostly closed to people without college degrees. (Large entities such as major corporations, state and federal government agencies often use a 4-year degree in anything as the primary entrace criterion.) The degree also demonstrates that you were able to persevere at something for 4 or more years. (Not implying that those without degrees can’t, it’s just that the piece of paper shows it.)

One of the best programmers/systems analysts that I know has no degree. I know completely incompetent people with advanced degrees. There are very hard-working self-educated people who have succeeded financially and created a good life for themselves. College can be a good place for a young person to learn about himself, the world that is larger than the town he grew up in, and to develop independence while he matures intellectually. It can also be a good place to get vocational training. There are lots of other places to get vocational training, too.

The engineer asks, “How does it work?” The physiscist asks, “Why does it work?” The liberal arts major asks, “Would you like fries with that?”

20

I have mixed feelings on College/University. On one hand it at least allows you to know that someone has at least a certain level of IQ (I can’t see a truly stupid person getting through college/university).

On the other hand lots of good jobs don’t need a degree.

I didn’t complete my college having left for the job market early. My other friends all finished college and got their certificates. I make more than all of them mostly because I’ve gotten 4 raises and work in a non-computer-related industry that they got into (I’m a computer geek, but my inter-personal skills allows me to do my job more than knowing how to support an OS).

In the long run I might be in trouble if I change careers but in the mean time I’ll stay where I am and enjoy the benefits of working for a large company in the service sector.

Also, all the job listings here (at work) state experience is better than a degree (for supervisor positions and stuff like that). It doesn’t hurt of course but I can become a supervisor after 5 years. I can’t see many people getting a degree then working in Customer Service (the “pit”) just to get a chance at becoming a supervisor.