
College Degree Required by Increasing Number of Companies - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/college-degree-required-by-increasing-number-of-companies.html?hp
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jtreminio
Being a web developer often times feels like I live in backwards land.

I went to UTD for 1.5 semesters. I ended up with $2,000 in student loans (paid
off!). I make a stupid amount of money, work from home in my pajamas, and have
great benefits. I also do contract work on the side that pushes my income even
higher. To top it all off, I love what I do and can't imagine myself doing
anything else.

Compare that with friends from high school that went to state college for 4
years, have $50,000 in student loan debt and ended up getting a job that pays
less than $50k, with long hours and uncertain stability.

Thankfully not having a college degree has not affected me in a negative way.

~~~
niggler
The degrees are important when it's difficult to demonstrate skill. When you
can't put together a portfolio of work, you need external signals, and
pedigree is a commonly accepted signal (to a great extent, due to the fact
that those with a strong pedigree are usually the ones hiring and they
promulgate that type of thinking)

Web development is one area where its possible to construct a portfolio and
have others evaluate your work, which makes the degree a less relevant part of
the evaluation process.

~~~
fractalsea
With sites like github this is true for any tech job. Think how much code you
could write and put on github if you didn't go to college and worked solely on
you own projects for three years.

This is true for any field where you are required to create things (art,
design, etc.).

It's harder for subjects like history, but if you put your mind to it you
could do a lot of your own research in a particular area over three years and
write your own book, for example.

~~~
bunderbunder
> With sites like github this is true for any tech job.

Not any tech job. In some specialties there's still a lot to be said for
formal education, and I wouldn't anticipate it being easy to land a job doing
something like NLP without at least a Bachelor's degree any time soon.

For stuff like Web development where it's mostly about knowing your tools
rather than understanding theory, though, yes definitely. Even if we're going
to assume some formal training will be expected, I still think most folks in
the tech space are poorly served by the prejudice for 4-year degrees. An
associate's degree or certificate would be far less expensive and onerous. I
suspect it would also be able to do a better job of preparing folks for their
careers, by virtue of being freer to focus on practical skills without also
having to serve the educational needs of students who are bound for
postgraduate programs.

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SlipperySlope
Did this catch the attention of anyone else?

“I am over $100,000 in student loan debt right now,” said Megan Parker, who
earns $37,000 as the firm’s receptionist. She graduated from the Art Institute
of Atlanta in 2011 with a degree in fashion and retail management, and spent
months waiting on “bridezillas” at a couture boutique, among other stores,
while churning out office-job applications.

\-----

Something is very, very wrong with the student loan program in the USA.

~~~
montecarl
Something is wrong with people that that they choose to go to schools that
cost $100,000 to get degrees in fashion and/or retail management.

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arjunnarayan
Something is really wrong with a regime that _lends_ an 18 year old $100,000
for an art degree. This is only possible because the lender is guaranteed
paybacks no matter what (because the borrower cannot default).

If we let borrowers default on loans under certain criteria (say, their annual
income was below a certain threshold), then lenders would have to actually vet
the students degrees --- and then we might have a sane system where you're
denied a student loan if you're going to major in underwater basket weaving,
but approved if you major in engineering.

~~~
nestlequ1k
But can you imagine this world? Where you are sending your transcripts to the
bank, proving to them that not only will you finish college, but be able to
get a job afterwards.

And every month in college having to send your grades to them so they can be
sure you're still a good investment.

It makes sense to me but... can you imagine the feelings that would be hurt by
this?

~~~
numo16
Maybe feelings need to be hurt...A lot of people expect things to just be
handed to them these days, especially with the "everybody is a winner" culture
that is pushed in the elementary schools currently.

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niggler
The article misses a very important point: in the economy of 2013 in the US
(outside of silicon valley), labor supply far outstrips demand. The employers
can afford to be picky, and there's some truth to the idea that the college
student will work harder at the lower level jobs because they are saddled with
debt (and are less likely to have flexibility).

Ironically, there is a similar practice in finance where bosses and companies
help their top employees live beyond their means so that they will be "forced"
to continue working.

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someonenotyou
Some of the best engineers I've ever worked with had no college degree. Give
me someone passionate, dedicated, honest working, smart and fun to be around,
degree or no degree, that person is going to be an assest to any company.

~~~
larrywright
I agree with the sentiment, but I think we're unique. If you're a skilled
developer, or a web designer, you can prove it with a body of work (open
source or personal projects). Not all jobs have that.

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dmm
Requiring a degree is a way to filter resumes.

If you get 200 applications to a position and requiring a degree allows you to
narrow that down to 30, why not?

~~~
bobwaycott
I believe we are soon moving to where this excuse for carefully considering
candidates will no longer hold. More people with college degrees will make
that significantly higher.

Also, 15%? Is that accurate, or are you just throwing numbers out there cos
you think 85% of job applicants really do not have college degrees?

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rayiner
What makes you think that, as college degrees become more common, employers
will "carefully consider" candidates instead? They are just as likely to look
for other cheap, easy filters: like college ranking, graduate degrees, etc.
You already see this in some fields. E.g. it's almost impossible to get a
decent-paying job with just a BS in Chem/Bio these days.

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bobwaycott
Article opens with the very thought I left college 10 years ago thinking--this
degree is just my new high school diploma. Maybe in another generation or two,
we'll see graduate degrees becoming the new BA/BS. Maybe then people will
begin to realize this is all a farce.

~~~
haubey
I'm not sure it's a farce, or at least that's not the word I would use. I
haven't graduated high school yet (3 months to go) but I think it's probably
better for people to have more knowledge on a subject. So if we're raising the
bar, I don't see how that's a bad thing. Eventually the system will catch up
and student loands will get remade into a better system, but until that time
you can definitely avoid accumulating $100,000 in debt; state schools are much
cheaper, and there are plenty of scholarships and grants available if you look
in the right places.

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daGrevis
This is like going backwards.

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Jenk
UK person here. We've had this problem for a decade or so.

It started in the 90s with companies wanting graduates for roles that really
doesn't require a higher education and if you didn't have a degree, your
CV/Resume was promptly filed in the bin. So the government made higher
education a lot more accessible and pimped it out a lot, much to the expense
of both the students and the nation. More Universities, bigger classes, wider
spectrum of courses, etc.

Lots of people now have degrees. I mean _lots_. When students are planning
their education, there really isn't a "not go to University" option that
doesn't carry the sweeping the streets or factory line worker stigma with it.
It's also really quite rare to meet anyone younger than ~35 that hasn't been
to university.

We don't quite have the Pedigree problem that, as a foreigner, it appears the
US does - i.e. we don't really have a "X University is better than Y" type
classification going on (e.g. in TV programme 'Suits', Pearson Hardman will
_only_ recruit Harvard educated lawyers. No other College graduates need
apply. No idea how 'real' this problem is in the States.) There is some social
perception of certain universities, but I'm yet to encounter any restriction
being imposed based on which University someone has been to. However, we are
seeing the "Must have a 1st Degree with Masters" line appearing on job adverts
more and more which is simply just pushing the bar higher, as I imagine is
what employers in the US asking for "College X" educated applicants are doing.

All the while we have an education system that is drilling into our young
people's heads (and their parents) that University is a must. There's a lot of
pressure for young people to get into University.

Degrees are not worth anything like they were before because _everyone_ has
one. Nobody "stands out" any more, is all I mean. Everyone has one because of
the demand, and the government gave everyone a big boost into Uni. Recently
the government had to cut back on the pseudo-subsidy they were giving to the
student body, so now we also have a lot of young people who think University
is make-or-break, but will also have a large amount of debt (£60,000+) before
they've even started working.

Despite all this there seems to be - at least in my experience as one of the
few people to have not attended university - a growing number of employers who
are starting to ignore the necessity for a degree. Degrees are still regarded
as a demonstration of one's character and ability to learn, but it's becoming
less and less of a requirement. Perhaps it is just my experience but
recruiters, employers, and certainly myself as someone who has recruited many
times, are seeing past the qualifications and doing their own assessment (for
lack of a better phrase) of prospective employees. I don't mean we're sitting
our own exams, I mean we are doing meaningful interviews. We're inviting
candidates to work with us for a few hours, and so on. Employers are realising
they want to hire intelligent people, and that not everyone has access to a
University education, and also that the current education system just doesn't
work for everyone. This is what I hope will become of the education and
employment system of the future - that a degree an option for students to
pursue, but not the only option.

That should be enough rambling.

TL;DR: We've gone full circle in the UK, from requiring that
candidates/applicants have degrees, back to assessing candidates for
ourselves, and I expect we will again and again in the coming generations.

~~~
chii
> Degrees are not worth anything like they were before because everyone has
> one.

the degree isn't worth anything to differentiate people, but saying that
getting a college degree isn't worthwhile is not true - at least, if your
personal goal isn't to _just get a job_, but to learn how to learn, to make
friends and form a network of peers. But i agree that the amount of debt you
have to carry to get all of that is quite a problem.

~~~
Jenk
Poor wording on my part, but that's definitely not what I was shooting for at
all. Degrees are still degrees - I'm not trying to take away from that at all,
but as the successive sentence to the one you have quoted says - all I mean is
nobody stands out because they've got a degree anymore, because it is the new
norm to have one. Same for any kind of merit; if everyone has the same merit,
then nobody stands out.

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Evbn
Enterprise rental car company made a fortune hiring underpaid non-college-
degree-holders for its counter staff.

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helloamar
Start your own company then

~~~
jonathanjaeger
"Starting your own company" is certainly not for everyone. And even for those
who will eventually have the knowledge and domain expertise to start something
profitable (i.e. pays at least your own salary), it often takes time. You
don't suddenly pop out of high school and have a profitable company on your
hands.

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helloamar
Everyone can't start one, to start one we should have focus, commitment, idea,
most important part is to do the ground work.

~~~
chii
> Everyone can't start one

i'd like to challenge this idea that not everyone can start a company. May be
not in the current form that a company takes - i.e., having a lot of "admin"
stuff to take care off (such as taxes, registration, various laws etc).

I think specialization is the key here - may be there is room for a
specialized company whose sole job is to take the "business admin" part out,
and all the founder has to do is actually do the work. All of the other parts
that a ancillary is done by this specialized company. What this could mean is
that instead of working for someone, everyone works for themselves, and all
the organizing happens via some automated fashion (akin to how the stock
market operates).

Also what this means is that if the efficiency of the system is can be made
high, then mediocrity will quickly die out (due to natural selection).

