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College Degree Required by Increasing Number of Companies
- helloamar 14y agoStart your own company then
- jonathanjaeger 14y ago"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.
- helloamar 14y agoEveryone can't start one, to start one we should have focus, commitment, idea, most important part is to do the ground work.
- chii 14y ago> 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).
- ebiester 14y agoHow do you start a company without money? It's hard to start any business without a minimum of cash flow. I know my parents couldn't have fronted me the money...
- camus 14y agoyou dont get a lot of cashflow if you begin your professional life with a 100.000$ debt.
- ebiester 14y agoSo, an eighteen year old without that debt is going to have a better shot? Let's not talk about the case where the child has a trust fund, or wealthy parents, or is incredible at a skill. Let's talk about the average 18 year old. Considering that nobody in their right mind would give that 18 year old a business loan, where are they getting this capital to start a business? (Remember, due to the recession, the traditional entry level job is taken by people with significantly more experience, making the skill and income acquisition portion of the program harder.) When I hear this advice, I usually hear it from people born on second base and think they hit a double.
- chii 14y ago> nobody in their right mind would give that 18 year old a business loan that's only if the giver of the funds is an irrational actor. if the business proposition has meat, they ought to be able to get funds. The next gen of fund raising would very much be like kickstarter (except this time, you actually get equity, not just a preordering system). I suspect you could even keep the identity/private information of the founder a secret, and make the proposal and get judged by that alone.
- someonenotyou 14y agoSome 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 14y agoI 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.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- aaron695 14y agoThis is so disingenuous and plain misleading and I see it around a bit. Most of them, if not all went to Uni. They then made great contacts and could pull out because they became successful early. Without Uni, they possibly would all be nobodies.
- rtpg 14y agoThis. Meeting people is the most important part of uni by far. Loads of people will otherwise not meet other motivated people to take on big things.
- dmm 14y agoRequiring 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?
- Evbn 14y agoBecause the job might not benefit from an overqualified degree holder.
- bobwaycott 14y agoI 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?
- rayiner 14y agoWhat 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.
- ktsmith 14y agoHiring degree holders for things like receptionist and file clerk only works if the job market is bad and you don't care about churn.
- Futurebot 14y agoExactly right. We had a previous discussion of this topic which is worth reading as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3998813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3998813 Right now, it's a Bachelor's. In 10 years, perhaps less, it'll be a Masters. This has nothing to do with required skills or knowledge, and everything to do with the fact that we simply require fewer and fewer people to actually do work, and have got to get through that ever-growing pile of resumes somehow.
- jtreminio 14y agoBeing 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 14y agoThe 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 14y agoWith 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.
- ebiester 14y agoYou have to hit the lottery with parents who will go along with this program. :) My parents would have looked at me like I sprouted another arm. Like they did when I was about to drop out of school and start at the community college in the mid-90s so that I could get an IT degree and move to silicon valley. In retrospect, it wouldn't have been a bad idea -- they were teaching COBOL and Fortran after all. :)
- Evbn 14y agoEnterprise rental car company made a fortune hiring underpaid non-college-degree-holders for its counter staff.
- SlipperySlope 14y agoDid 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.
- Evbn 14y agoIsn't that the cliché of stories like this?
- montecarl 14y agoSomething 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.
- suresk 14y agoMaybe. But I think the school system (K-12 and higher education) are somewhat culpable here. Starting fairly early, we teach students that there are a bunch of hoops they need to jump through in order to get a good job later in life. For an 18 year old, it is easy to see college as just another (and hopefully last) hoop to jump through. Colleges (and the for-profit schools are exceptionally bad here) show them a rosy outlook for whatever major they are interested in - I guarantee you every person who is up to their eyeballs in debt got shown something saying "x% of graduates from the <insert not very marketable degree> program were employed 6 months after graduation with average salary of $y" based on questionable information, did the math, and thought it was a reasonable choice. I don't think high school students are given enough information and enough reality to fully understand the ramifications of their college choices. I absolutely made some bad choices when picking my major in college, but it took me quite a while to really figure that out - thankfully, I at least didn't get a bunch of debt to go along with it.
- rayiner 14y ago
- bobwaycott 14y agoArticle 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 14y agoI'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.
- niggler 14y agoThe 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.
- daGrevis 14y agoThis is like going backwards.
- Jenk 14y agoUK 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.