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I have a degree and think it was pointless. Did/does nothing for me. Right after school I went into IT. Certs and experience gets you far in IT. I wished I started that right out of high school. High schools today , at least in my area, have trade schools that are part of them. The local HS near me has a big separate campus for Nursing, Fireman, HVAC, Electrician, IT and I think Police.
I don't have a degree. My wife has a Master's degree, and both of our kids have 4 year degrees.
With the ongoing Student Loan Debt Crisis, I realize that college is a scam. College is not essential for most people. If college was essential then graduates would not be asking taxpayers to bail them out of their loans. My kids pay a lousy $336 and $280 per month, respectively on their Stafford loans (the older one double-majored and went for 5 years). If you can't get a job that allows you to pay that for 10 years then college was not essential for you. You could have pumped gas and bagged groceries, and not had to bother with studying.
Maybe people will say I'm conflating college with college loans. I don't think I am.
If my memory serves me as correct, some of these mandatory requirements to have a degree in order to be considered for hiring goes back to the days of passing equal opportunity laws. In the 1970s and early 1980s it was intended to exclude minorities from being hired. If they hired a White guy like me (without a degree) then employers would be discriminating if they did not hire a Black who also was without a degree. As a White guy without a degree this limited my advancement up the career ladder as an Army civilian employee, but I made it anyway based on performance and being known to the hiring officials. I used to say that I could paper my walls with all the rejection letters I received. But I still contend that racism once played a role in demanding a degree as a condition of employment, and may still be used to exclude some people.
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What about people who go to College to get a degree to be a teacher, Nurse or Accountant? It seems people are mainly focused on the really high paid professions that few ever get. The reason why I say this is because do your trades people in the US get paid pretty poorly? I assume they do if you feel College is essential? Here in Australia for example trades people are on the same income as Nurses and even Software Engineers and generally higher than teachers for example. In the resources sector you can work your way up to earning get a job with an annual salary of $200,000 AUD per year.
It seems this reality is Alien to alot of Americans and therefore the reason many push College as essential? For us University is something you do to chase a certain career, it doesn't necessarily relate to a higher income than non University workers as In many cases you could actually make less
One of the reasons for the obsession with college is due to status. Manual labor is viewed as a lower standard (mediocre at best) by many in this country. College degrees are associated with intelligence, the upper classes, and generally being a refined individual. This is changing; however, for the time being even if the non-college educated individual is successful and makes a lot of money, they will never be held in the same regard as their degree holding counterparts by the masses in society. Considering this young men will choose the college option since that will afford them greater dating success.
53% of Americans have college degrees so clearly not everyone attends or finds attending necessary. It likely breaks down to family expectations, academic ability and to a lesser degree finances. We expected our daughters to get degrees. They did. Both went on to get Master’s degrees as well. They had zero student debt because we made saving for their educations a priority and we’re lucky enough to be able to make that happen.
IMO, US schools need to have 2 tracks: College or Trade School/Apprenticeship. Not all kids are suited for college nor are all suited to learn a trade. Both groups should be equally supported by the schools.
Reading your comment made me recall that my father (born in 1917) went to collage & trained in wood working / carpentry -&- I guess working on a newspaper press, because he first worked as (?) for one newspaper, but then took a job as foreman at another newspaper & decades later retired from that same business. . . . He was the type who could read something just once & ace a test on it later without rereading or studying the material.
It depends to a considerable extent on your family background and expectations.
If your parents are college graduates, then more than likely you will be going to college too. You will face a lot of pressure to do so.
Also, there are quite a few immigrants who came to the United States for the sole purpose of pursuing a higher education and a high-paid career. There are whole families of doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, etc.
It is pretty much impossible to get into these professions without at least an undergraduate degree and usually they require a higher level of education than that.
To piggyback on the bolded, this is especially true for low income minorities. We grow with the understanding that higher education is the most realistic method for achieving upwardly mobility. For many it is breaking the cycle of low achievement, while for others, we recognize that as hard as our parents worked, lack of education and opportunities is what kept them poor.
In many ways the US is a land of opportunity, but again, I reiterate - the strongest determinate of one's social and economic status will be your parents.
Rich parents send their kids to college. Poor parents don't..
There is a difference of opinion about this among social scientists.
Some of them argue that your parent’s socioeconomic status is the main determinant of your socioeconomic status. Others argue that your own talents, IQ and work ethic are the main determinants of your socioeconomic status.
How does a person who starts with nothing make a lot of money in the first place?
I believe the truth lies somewhere in between both of these positions.
If my memory serves me as correct, some of these mandatory requirements to have a degree in order to be considered for hiring goes back to the days of passing equal opportunity laws. In the 1970s and early 1980s it was intended to exclude minorities from being hired. If they hired a White guy like me (without a degree) then employers would be discriminating if they did not hire a Black who also was without a degree. As a White guy without a degree this limited my advancement up the career ladder as an Army civilian employee, but I made it anyway based on performance and being known to the hiring officials. I used to say that I could paper my walls with all the rejection letters I received. But I still contend that racism once played a role in demanding a degree as a condition of employment, and may still be used to exclude some people.
I'm another working class white guy without a degree. I went to night school to learn computer programming. There were lots of working class whites and blacks in the class, many of whom you could tell were never gonna write code for a living. Some were re-taking the class for free after failing on their first try. But they had federally guaranteed loans, and that's all the school cared about.
I faced discrimination in hiring because I did not have a degree. I finally landed a job at $6.50 an hour (1983) but once I got a foot in the door in the industry, I was set for life. Nobody would care if I studied English 101 or Sociology in 1978 as long as I had experience writing code.
I don't think we have the cartoonish racial discrimination today that some practiced in the 1950's, although there may be some isolated cases. And are people like that really hiring college graduates? At most large corporations there is so-called reverse discrimination (now called DEI or ESG) in hiring and promotion, if anything.
Personally, I'd consider Trade School/Apprenticeship as 'college'..
How about we split the difference and call it "Advanced Education"? Whether it's 2 year, 4 year, graduate degree or even a certificate like HVAC often does and can be obtained in less than a year. All are fine. Having them will generally get your looked at while NOT having anything like that will get you bypassed pretty quickly.. At least in 'normal' times.
30 years ago, if you didn't graduate high school.. You could still make a good living and raise a family off the money you make, reasonably comfortably. Those days are gone.. When you could get hired without a high school diploma and spend a career at GM or Ford.. If you were in the south.. You probably went to work at a textile mill. In the Northeast, maybe a steel mill.. those jobs, while not gone, at least, other than the textile ones, are few and far between.
Now.. If you don't finish high school.. Good luck. Many employers won't touch you. At least, not if you haven't obtained a GED.
Do you HAVE to go to "College" or have some form of advanced education? No. Will it make things easier? Quite often. I'm in the IT field, so.. Perhaps a tough biased. In this field, no college is.. A tough road. You have to be exceptional to get your foot in the door without a college degree.
100% agree. For my kids, undergrad plus masters degrees paved the way to great careers. But I also get that they were lucky in that their parents paid for their undergrad degrees and they both worked full time, went to school full time at night to pay for their Masters degrees. Not easy to do, but those degrees have paid off quite nicely.
As you pointed out, now a days there are lots of jobs/careers where a degree is what gets you in the door. It’s not 1970 anymore when factory jobs were plentiful and open to any (male) regardless of education level. And those jobs provided a decent living. Those who used to rely on those jobs need to either learn a trade or get a college degree to compete in the current workforce. Both are more costly and time consuming than just applying for a job at the local factory. Schools need to partner more with community colleges to provide training for those who want to go into a trade.
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