Are college/bachelor's degrees nowadays a compulsory?

When I got my Bachelor's degree in 1987, I was already thinking similarly - that a BA does what a HS diploma used to do. No matter what one's major was, any BA would open a door. Of course, in those days, Harvard University (as an example) was only $10,000 a year for the academic portion. My private liberal arts college was about $6000/yr. Annual incomes were lower, too, so all that seemed expensive at the time. Ha!

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Trade school is a far better deal. Two years, hardly any debt and huge job demand. If I could do it again, I would do trade school.

 

I did both, got two degrees and done undergrad, plus learned two different trades while going to college. Started my own business when I couldn’t get a job after graduating! Lol. Made really good money grooming and training dogs, until I finally got hired in my field of education. Always good to have a fall back plan.

 

People need to choose fields in college that have good job prospects. If not, they should consider trades. I graduated at the start of Great Recession and work in a field close to my bachelors. That is rare.

 

Can we just go back to bartering?

 

To be fair College degrees are outdated, they used to make sense for past generations, but as a Gen Z, I can tell you, having a degree by itself is no longer good enough to compete, and on top of that the years you lose on getting a degree cant possibly compare to the advantage of using said years to gain experience in job market and add that to your curriculum.

The biggest thing you need nowadays is "adaptability" and few colleges give you the options.

 

Prospects dont matter (one of my friends took electrical engineering and wanted to take doctorate to earn even more, he quickly changed the pace, when he realized his class taking masters was all heading in to take the best available jobs at the country and his FOMO made him get a job as well), if you are going to compete with your whole class for the job, what you need is increased quantity of available jobs, or branching out, if you can branch out and keep adding things to your skills you can turn most useless degrees into oportunities, but you have to go the extra mile, you have to have more, in order to succeed.

 

Of course, I didn't mean that a degree would get one into any door; many jobs are degree specific. However, there are jobs open to any college degree as a prerequisite, and not just a HS diploma, as was more useful in ages gone by. Also, many times the task is to get one's foot into any door, even at a lowly, ground-level position. Then, one is able to be promoted up internally more easily with just having a college degree, especially into a supervisory position. A lot of places entail work so specialized that even a specific degree doesn't help a lot - one still has to be trained anyway by the company, which with a degree goes a long way for future promotion. I am looking at this as one who has had many jobs/careers and have advanced and have overseen others in advancing in their own careers.

 

Thats what I found rich about the whole college scam, they tell you the more higher tier of degree you have the better career options you´ll have in salary but it´s all a lie, you are often going to be told to work from the ground up like anyone else, regardless of degree tier.

 

I understand, and I'm not saying one is going to get their dream job at first, and also no guarantee for anytime. But more doors or more promotions are possible with a college degree when compared with just a HS diploma. Imagine how hard HS graduates have it - unlike decades ago. But, whether a BA or HS, the ones who get off their ass probably will have better chances, too. It's not going to be handed out to those who have the best gaming skills and excel at PMO in their basement, right?

 

Yeah but my point, is that College scams you when it sells you the idea of degree tiers, not that College Bachelors by themselves are a scam, they sell you by FOMO that 1st tier degrees (Doctorates) are more valuable than the rest, but forget to tell you that when your masters pals dont go into doctorate and go job hunting, they are more likely to end up getting good jobs you could´ve gotten and afterwards will hold more experience over you when you finish your doctorate and want to go job hunting, it´s a unfair system, Job experience > Higher degree tiers, everyone should know and preach this, but the MSM brainwashed most of our parents into thinking otherwise. Doctorates right now are a money trap I´d stay 10 feet away from them, just sayin.

When my Masters is done, I´m going to polish my coding skills and go job hunting I´m not losing more years on college, tried internships before and I couldnt even got those case I had 20 other guys competing for the spot.

With a Bachelor´s degree you can start at ground level in some job areas but you can easily go up if you keep aditional skills in check and are hunting good jobs, then you work your way up, you arent even required to get Masters and Doctorate.

And the expenses of student loans to get some of this masters and Doctorates are a Negative sum game at best, in some cases I´d even argue your points and say that post Highschool work is a better alternative, than the student loan debt.

 

Yes, I'm sure there are some disillusions with higher degrees, especially when not in marketable areas. And, exorbitant prices nowadays are something to be weighed on a cost and practical benefit.

 

Another problem is that a lot of this higher degrees dont prepare you for Negotiating a good salary once you get out of College, it´s a big problem, nowadays you are expected to know how to job hunt, know some coding and know how to negotiate, just as a entry point and I´ve been losing a lot of faith in Linked In case a ton of fake CEOs and gurus are overflowing the market there, so now I seek alternatives.

Nobody at college prepared me for this, I had to proactively search, thats what I disliked the most about it, some people are often prepared by some teachers for this, but others are just left behind.

 

It sounds like you have a lot of resentments to the college system.

In lots of areas, people go into phds because they love and want to keep studying, don’t want to enter job market yet, or want to teach rather than practice in the field. Masters can be a shortcut in many fields to higher level positions, particularly early in career.

 

Yeah, most who fail to get internships probably share the resentment and I worked hard trying to get them.

I wouldnt mind doing that if I was on my 60s, with a investment portfolio already setup and a job, not in a environment like today, at the peak of my 20s.

The problem is like in my friend´s case, the longer you take to join the job market the worse you´ll have it later, in his case if he hadnt went to do a internship in Ireland before Covid hit, he would´ve had more competition in getting a job in the country, when he came back.

College is bad case it sets you up to compete with your peers for everything, so long as the job demand is superior to the offer, you´ll likely lose the game and I dont wanna play losing games, If I´m paying for College getting internships shouldnt be difficult, but the bar is being increased due to the increases in population, and I know I´ll lose job opportunities if I´m put against someone´s resume with a internship.

Plus I want to be a Nomad Capitalist now, when my parents told me what I wanted to do in college I wasnt ready for long term, now I´m and I´ll have to branch out, case just having a job is no longer good enough, for low middle class people like myself, I have to invest my money or inflation will fuck up the value of my money (another thing Colleges dont help you with), whats fair about that? Modern Society has been beating up the middle class for so long, that now I want to invest, done being a sheep, there´s nothing wrong with what I have to say, College is becoming more and more of a privilege and a money trap and I´ll say it, if you dont have money for college and your parents tell you to take a student loan, tell them to take a hike and pay it for you, or you´ll be bailing.

There are Dave Ramsay horror stories on Student loans, you should see them.

 

6 figure jobs are a trap if you are a investor you wont even want 6 figure jobs that arent way past 150k (case 6 figure income leads to 6 figure tax).

In a few decades You´ll want to be a coder, good code will replace a lot of law and medical jobs with time.