Why? That makes no sense. It’s more of an accomplishment obviously, but having a degree at all still means you’ve accomplished more than 60% of the country, even if you don’t know anyone in that 60%.
Reread the post.
One person’s success does not “put down” everyone else.
Look, it’s perfectly fine to feel proud about completing your degree. Particularly if it was a challenging or difficult program. But it’s not like it makes you King of the Earth. And it’s really more about what you do with the degree that defines success.
I think that’s a pretty weird conversation to have.
I just picked up my Associates Degree a few days ago, and I am 29. I am moving on to get a Bachelor’s degree from NEIU. Majority of my credits will transfer and I can afford it, I may turn out to be 33-34 before I get it, but I’ll have one past age 22. I get by now, I’ll always find a way to, regardless of job ‘markets’. A degree only increases the odds of getting a job, lets you try different fields. The real reason I have one and my pursuit for the other is because I want it. I’m not going to treat it as some damned license to work. IMHO that is not what getting a degree is for, it is for enriching your mind and soul with knowledge and knowing you did something good for yourself, making you a better person.
I view it as this;
1.)I go through compulsory school; primary and secondary. I work or work and go to school, I save and get my degree on my own time as a way to further enrich my mind and myself. If it helps with a job, cool, if not… oh well.
NOT
2.)Go to primary and secondary school, work for pennies while living with parents and go to college, be forced out of school with a degree in something I wasn’t interested in just because it had a potential to get me a job, to pay off the debt for the degree before I can start saving.
One of these things makes sense to me. #1
I suppose age is a factor. 50 years ago a degree was not so low-hanging a fruit.
An interesting difference between the US and western Europe here. A large part of western Europe had conscription until relatively recently. I’ve always had the impression that military service and degrees are inverted in terms of respect between the US and western Europe.
When your country has conscription, military service is nothing special. In the US it tends to be more respected. In Europe, Universities have to meet national standards though, so a degree has a certain minimum standard and gets more respect.
Of course, all degrees are not the same. Photography, dance and media studies are degrees. As are maths, physics, engineering, law, medicine and nursing.
You’re both “sort of” right. I can only speak for my own experience, which was in the 1970s, but it made a difference if you were recommended by (i.e., had a reference from) a graduate of an Ivy League school when you applied. In fact, the local alumni club would do application interviews and they had a great deal of influence on the admission process.
When I was accepted by an Ivy League school, the comments I got from my fellow high school seniors were about how my family must be rich or very successful. Nothing could have been further from the truth. They were not lower-class, but they didn’t own a business or anything. They both had to work to support the family. I earned the grades in HS, did the extracurricular activities, played varsity sports, and generally did what I had to to earn admission.
While I was in college, I worked 25 to 40 hours a week, year-round, to pay the bills and get through. My parents contributed $1000 a year for four years, and I was very grateful for it.
So, yeah. I’m proud of my degree…even though I never earned a dollar in my field of study.
It’s not just about whether or not the admissions people care who your parents are, it’s the fact that kids with parents who have been to somewhere like Yale are much better prepared to guide their kids through it than parents who don’t really know or care about the education system.
Let’s take two kids:
Kid 1, who had parents who moved to the area with the best high school, and pushed for their kid to get on the advanced courses, signed them up for extracurriculars that would look good on an application, who had a private tutor hired for them when their grades started dropping.
Kid 2, who went to the ‘failing’ local high school, who had parents who didn’t give a crap what grades they bought home so long as they stayed out of prison, who didn’t have time to do homework, forget extra classes, because they were working full time as soon as they could get away with it, because they needed to help pay the bills.
Which one of those is more likely to go to Yale?
Which one would you be more impressed by, if they did?
I’d not be “impressed” by someone who finished their degree in 4 years, and I’d not be “unimpressed” by someone who took longer. Back in the late 70’s, when I was looking, even at good engineering schools about 50% of the engineering graduates graduated in minimum time: it wasn’t an exclusive group on either side.
To the contrary, I read a year or so ago an article about the so-called hi-tech shortage that said that large employers were using automated software that checked applications and was rejecting without any human intervention perfectly qualified people whose resumes didn’t happen to fit the exact requirements.
You will not find me on Linkedin and neither of parents had any college at all. In fact, my mother was a HS drop-out. Still I managed to get a bachelor’s degree and a PhD.
I don’t know about Yale, per se, but Harvard, for example, is explicit in stating that children of alumni are given extra consideration.
From their website :
The application process is the same for all candidates. Among a group of similarly distinguished applicants, the daughters and sons of Harvard College alumni/ae may receive an additional look.
So I think it might be more accurate to say they give smell to medium sized fucks.
While most physical therapists have only a community college associate degree, mine explained why here Bachelors was important to her. It made her an educated, rather than just a trained, person. Besides learning her profession, she also had to study and pass unrelated college level courses in the arts and sciences and humanities.