In a dramatic shift, Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost
6mon 21d ago by lemmy.world/u/MicroWave in news from www.nbcnews.com
The latest NBC News poll shows two-thirds of registered voters down on the value proposition of a degree. A majority said degrees were worth the cost a dozen years ago.
Americans have grown sour on one of the longtime key ingredients of the American dream.
Almost two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn’t worth the cost, according to a new NBC News poll, a dramatic decline over the last decade.
Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is “worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime,” while 63% agree more with the concept that it’s “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”
Well they made college and grad school cost upwards of 200k+ so no shit
My friends and I talked way back in school about how further engineering education was negatively correlated (not exactly: see comment) with pay after a bachelors and was statistically a terrible deal.
EDIT: That's not to say it's worthless! But it ain't worth what they're charging. There isn't actually a negative correlation in the strict sense but rather there isn't clearly a premium for the degree in all markets. You can be taking a straight up financial loss. The original statement was inaccurate, but that's historically what we told each other.
It kind of depends on what you want to do. I worked almost 10 years at a consulting firm that specialized in failure analysis and they loved hiring PhD metalutgists and Masters grads in specific engineering disciplines.
This was partially because that specialization helps in niche cases and partially because it helps market smaller companies as competent if you can say "I have 4 phds on staff for X, Y, and Z, one is a professor at (technical university name here)"
The team leads or project leads were always older engineers who only had their bachelor's degrees (and experience) but would shit talk professors and advanced degrees when the "academics" weren't around though. It was a REALLY toxic situation and ultimately led to me leaving. (I'm a BS Mech btw)
Your a bullshit mechanic? Damn that's a useful skill in this day and age.
Lot of low effort bullshit going on. We could use something right and proper
Professionals have standards. I'm not sure there is an ISO standard for BS but N.I.S.T was probably working on one before the current administration gutted the funding for being woke.
I didn't check to see if there's an XKCD for this, but: This should cover the ISO BS
I’m sure it depends on where you go, but going to MIT or Stanford is likely too expensive to justify, even if you are good enough to get and graduate.
You only go there if your parents are rich or you get scholarships
I’ve known a few MIT guys, they definitely have money.
they are also likely to be more well-off academically too, meaning they have the goods for a grad degree and suceed in it, because they all thse private tutoring sessions plus any nepo connections for better resources like internships, lab experience not to mention nepo-connections to employers. in our HS we only had 1 very gifted student who is more than likely to suceed in his field more than the rest of the 99% of our hs class, and then we have top performers,not gifted but 4.0 upon hs graduation. everyone else, they are on thier own.
remember when they paid for everyones MD school one time at columbia? the school selectively chose certain groups over others, they chose the more well off students over the disadvantaged students(socioeconomic)
These high status schools provide lifetime connections and in-groups that are irreplaceable and not found elsewhere.
You are essentially guaranteed to be connected to people in power and wealth by going to these schools.
Sure not everyone is able to capitalize on that but being a Harvard alumus is a legitimate and recognized status among ivy grads and especially among other Harvard alumni. Im sure MIT and Stanford are comparable but this is the real reason people want to go these schools.
I’m sure there are a few at MIT and other prestigious engineering schools that go there for connections, but engineers are typically nerds and want to go somewhere to learn. Unless that’s changed since I was in school 15 years ago.
yea, the nepo-connections from these school. just having it on your resume without those connections wont do you any good.
Yeah I went to a cheap state school for an engineering degree. Sure I still haven't paid it off yet, but it was definitely financially worth it. Even more worth it if you consider how much I don't want to do uneducated labor for a living.
Uneducated labor isn't only manual labor. Lot of uneducated folks have mad skills. We're just not curing cancer or inventing new batteries or planning trips to Mars.
I'm a technical lead for a software company (that's not a non-degreed position generally but 30 years of experience can take you far in any field), my wife is a customer service manager / trainer who has presented to a nationwide audience, my oldest daughter is a bank manager.
My son broke the mold and got a nursing degree and currently makes less working harder than any of us. That said, it was 100% the right choice for him. He has a passion for patient care and I'm sure he'll go far.
That's fair. I'm in manufacturing so I associate it with physically difficult trade labor, low paid administrative labor, and low paid repetitive and boring labor. Some uneducated people develop plenty of skills, that said, my degree was a shortcut to skills and a direct path to a good career. The deal has gotten worse over the past few decades, but we still need people who have traditional educated knowledge. And I fear that we may face serious problems if education rates plummet.
The general education also had a drastic positive impact on my personal development as well, but I'm not rich enough to pay tens of thousands for that.
Completely agree.
feel like he could make more in nursing, has he looked into traveling nursing? i know they make bank off of it, depending on where you are. nursing is one of those degrees, if your stuck in a hospital you are more stressed and likely to have less pay, compared to movign around to different facilities.
I appreciate the suggestions. He is aware of traveling nursing. I think he has some specific goals, although obviously those can change over time. The biggest thing he has to deal with is his medications require him to work consistent shifts. He can't go back and forth between days and nights, and a lot of positions require more flexibility.
He's not doing terribly — he just bought his own house, which is more than a lot of guys under thirty can say. But he hasn't yet caught up with the rest of us pay-wise.
It’s exactly backwards. The more prestigious the school, the more money it has to subsidize its students. Advertised price tags only apply to the wealthy.
An engineering Masters is worth more than zero, but probably not worth the tuition to go to Grad School in the first place. IMHO, nobody should go into debt for any grad school unless they are becoming a medical doctor or lawyer (and even then it's not a slam dunk.)
If a grad school gives you an assistantship so you can go there for little to no money out of pocket, that's fine. If you work for a company willing to pay for your grad degree, that's fine too (although it will take a lot longer than working full time). But it's a bad idea to pay your own way.
This is the way to do it. If you're paying for your whole PhD, you're doing it wrong.
besides the research side, which engineering are likely to have jobs
"They" are the ones who want less education. Uneducated people are more easily controlled.
Someone tried telling me that "they" in parenthesis is antisemitic. Who invented this? I don't know. Probably "them" to get people to dismiss the discussion.
That's (((they))) or """they""" generally, as a not so subtle dogwhistle.
Just 'they' usually means, you know, like, uhh, The Man. TPTB. The Swamp, oligarchs, and sometimes for the Q klan, the globalists, which then bleeds over into anti-jewish rhetoric.
And a bunch of us were still paying off loans when when raising the current high school kids.
even the lower-tier school with cheaper cost isnt worth it, you will end up the same place as the 200k+ tuition, waste the same amount of time, getting the same degree.
I recall a podcast I listened to years ago talking about some schools trying out a new model that worked something like...
Instead of taking out a loan, you just enter into a contract with the school that x% of your paycheck for the first z years after graduation go to the school. Kinda like child support.
Get an unemployable degree and now your making burgers for minimum wage? Then you don't owe anything.
Get an amazing job that pays a ton? That degree is going to cost you.
Now it's in the school's best interest to A) offer degrees that are actually worth something instead of misleading students down a dead end path, and B) help students find and keep good positions after graduation.
It sounded awesome. But what I found infuriating were the people they interviewed that benefitted from the program, now had fantastic high salary jobs, and were whining about how much they were having to pay for the education and program that got them into that high paying job in the first place.
I proposed this to a boomer 15 years ago and man was he so angry at the thought of wages being garnished to pay loans for 10 years.
Like how does that change the situation if I have to pay regardless? If anything it might be great for me to reduce my taxable income.
The issue with this is that knowledge should be it's own reward. Where I live college costs a pittance. If you want to study fine art, that course should be available and is.
What you're suggesting sounds great in a very practical respect but would only further benefit capitalism at the cost of wider knowledge. Many of the things that are worth learning in life to so many would immediately disappear from college curriculums.
The goal should be to make third level education cheap enough that anyone can do it without crippling themselves financially.
Could easily be hybrid... You pay some up front, they get some on the back end. This and other subsidies might be able to save the arts.
this is kinda the way australia works for citizens: the government sets the cost of courses (usually about $10000-$20000AUD per semester) and then pays for them entirely, and you get a HELP debt with the government which is kinda like an interest free (though indexed so it doesn’t get cheaper with time) loan which is automatically taken out of your paycheque pre-tax and only after you start earning a certain amount… if you never earn that bottom limit, the debt disappears if you die
This just sounds like IBR with extra fewer steps.
To be clear, this is an issue with the cost, not with the degrees
The cost is so high because companies require degrees for jobs that don’t need them.
how else am i going to get that perfectly seared and crusted smash burger without 4 years of university experience?
Art majors need jobs too.
Because companies want employees that are in deep debt and are less likely to get uppity. By the time you pay off your student load, you're suppose to have a mortgage. This is by design.
It's an issue with cost, but that also extends to the perception of the degree itself. Even a few decades ago I always found American culture to be generally more disdainful towards degrees and degree holders than most of Europe or Asia.
One of the worst things you can be in America is "elitist"; it's a loaded word that describes a fundamentally Un-American attitude. And you can see why - there's plenty of idiots with rich parents and a degree, and a lot of intelligent people with poor parents and no degree. So elitism and intellectual snobbery also imply classism and racism.
In countries with free/cheap tertiary education, it's less controversial to say that people who are qualified to do a thing are likely to be better at that thing, and that getting qualifications is inherently a good thing.
the known colleges that produce elitists, tend to be the ivy league ones. and i heard employers will often reject these candidates based on thier attitudes
The value of ivy league is networking with other shitheels and get jobs as a c-suit or politician. They don't actually learn any skills and their token poor person they admit is no better off for being there compared to a regular 4-year.
Ah, murika: where its bad to be elitist, but being a racist is just fine
depends on what kind of racist. We're racist about our racism.
The degrees are also bad, they are often filler material now.
It's an NBC news poll so I'm not sure it's easy to find much more info on the poll or its history.
Here's a chart showing previous responses:
Duh, civilized countries make education free because it;s a net win for the country. If your politics makes that a bad, dunno, sorry for your loss...
I was going to make a similar point. More people with college degrees is a big win for any society. And lots of degree programs are incredibly valuable even if they aren’t training for a specific job. The problem is we’ve set it up as a direct profit choice for the individual.
Spot on! Not only for academics, but most 1st World countries have superb apprenticeship programs for the trades.
Maybe a net win, but if the alternative is that elites do, say, 1% better, while everyone else does 5% worse, guess what the elites are going to pick?
25% of unemployed Americans have a 4 year degree
It would be more interesting to see the comparison between unemployment rates among 4-year-degree-holders and unemployment rates among non-4-year-degree holders
2.5% for 4 year degree holders
4.2% for those with only a high school diploma and 6.2% for those without a high school diploma
Thanks!
Here is the time series so you can see the stats for any given month for as long as they've been tracking it:
So 75% don’t?
No, they all have Masters degrees in Anthropology.
That's incorrect. Man-man, who has 7.19% of all anthropology degrees, is a statistical outlier and should not have been included.
The majority are art majors, obviously.
Is that all? It must be higher
My job has me on college campuses several times a month, and I often speak individually with over a thousand college students a month.
There is real fear among these students. Many have done everything right, planned a career, took the classes in order since middle school to get there, took out thousands in student loans, all knowing that it will be worth it to get a good job that will pay well for an entire career...
Only to find out halfway through college that corporations are replacing all their software developers with AI, and the career path they've been following since they were a kid, no longer exists.
But they still owe their student loans, even if their Plan B career, which they hadn't considered until they couldn't find a post-graduation job in their field, pays barely more than minimum wage.
Many north american GenXers had the same feelings in our 20's, even though it was a better situation then. Being in the voracious demographic wake of the boomers made scrambling up a tippy ladder seem pointless.
And Millennials faced the same thing when graduating college right into the wake of the 2008 crash. Thousands of dollars in debt where paying the minimum could leave you owing more than you started, and into a job market flooded with not just recent graduates but many veteran workers who had lost their jobs. Baristas with Ivy League degrees and no social safety nets.
Told their entire lives that good grades and a college degree were the path to happiness and a job better than flipping burgers at a McDonalds, only to graduate and be called entitled for not wanting to flip burgers with your masters degree.
Much to the joy of GOP politicians everywhere.
The role models are all dumb corrupt sacks of shit that are on the long road of decline until sometime find out again that meritocracy is better at providing quality.
Shame those lessons need learning time and again.
At 18, I went to community college. During my 2 years there, I absolutely fucked my credit by getting credit cards and not paying it back.
So thinking my credit was bad, I decided I couldn't afford University. So I just decided to lie that I had a degree and just kept doing interviews and when it came down to the background checks, I didn't lie.
About 20% of the companies I got an offer for talked to the hiring manager who cared about my fake degree. The rest just turned a blind eye or didn't care.
At 46, I don't lie anymore. After 20 years in the industry, They just care about places I worked and responsibilities I had.
Most people in my level of industry have masters or PhDs but I only have a bachelor's. We all get paid the same, my 10 years in industry are worth more than my degree.
I hired a gal who had a PhD in statistics and analytics. After hiring her, she told me that nobody would hire her because of her degree.
She told me she would get more people contacting her if she didn't put down she had a PhD.
employers are probably looking for PHD and masters in the listing, but they are only willing to pay "BS" level wages, or somewhat higher. i think thats why alot of BS majors cant get hired.
Experience matters more than a degree, but good fuckin luck getting a foot in the door without either.
Lie on both. The worst thing that can happen to you is you not getting the job. If you get the job you have at least three months to learn the job quickly. Usually after the second month, they will start noticing that you're incompetent.
I sometimes wished I just lied about having experience.
You know. I also lied about my experiences. But I took a crash course on the software or the job I had to do. For about 5 years, 90% of the time, I get fired for being incompetent. After bouncing around with my lies, I sorta getting good at my job until I end up quitting after learned everything.
Just lie. The worst thing they can do is fire you. Who cares. You're still alive and can just keep applying until some other company hires you.
Degrees and grades only matter for younger and less experienced folks.
Yup, so just lie about everything. But do your homework and learn about the job you're doing.
I've been telling people this for years: Post-secondary educational institutions are no longer about education; they're a business. They do everything they can to maximize profits, and don't really care about the quality of education.
I realized that back in high school, which is why I never went to college. I kept telling people I didn't want to go into debt when I didn't even really know what I wanted to do with my life.
This is the real crime here that the government turns a blind eye to. How are these institutions allowed to function as nonprofits?
Exactly, see what things like rpkGroup (a particularly heinous example) are doing to colleges to get them running like for-profit businesses. “Restructuring” aka gutting the school and the purpose of a university, which is to give a rounded education.
Very noticeable here in the US how much college has become unaffordable and out of reach
Shows in everyday life here from the conversations to just any day to day interaction
In the media all comes out like it is made for young school kids with the words getting smaller and simpler with less sentence structures
Even if voting was not rigged here can tell with way people see our elected officials as football team members to rally behind
Higher education becoming unattainable will lead a country to poorer health, more underpaid factory workers, less quality of life for everyone, less progress, more repeated failures from history, etcetera
Conservatives: Then get a high demand and high paying job!
the field becomes too competitive and saturated and couldn't find jobs
Also conservatives: Then work in a factory!
factory jobs gets taken over by AI
Conservatives for the final and umpteenth time: Fuck you!
Student debt has been increasing faster than ceo pay. Its not a sustainable system but it also will lead to more companies importing workers with hb1 visas, which is probably honestly the corporate plan.
Why pay for workers with rights to go to school when you can just import people who already have a degree you didnt pay for and who you can treat like shit?
The problem is the cost of college is opaque. They show an upfront cost, but something like 2/3rds of students don’t actually pay that price. Schools have learned they can get more out of people by setting a high price and then giving “aid” discounts than charging a flat price that is affordable to everyone. Also, schools measure themselves by “prestige” and that is determined by admission rate. Schools are luxury brands and they do what luxury brands do… manufacture scarcity. The result is they’re looting the livelihoods of young adults by putting them into indentured servitude. Higher education needs to be reformed. It isn’t the fault of professors. It’s the administrators.
Schools haven't "learned" this behavior, they've been incentivized for it. All you'd have to do is make public funding contingent on a flat baseline cost - everybody pays the same minimal amount for tuition and books.
thier target audience is mostly freshman who are likely to pay full tutioons, so almost anyone junior or higher or neglected in terms resources dedicated to help them in career development(intership, volunteer work)
Well, the price of a four year degree skyrocketed, while the financial return for most degrees is essentially zero. Not that there isn't value beyond monetary compensation to be had in getting alot of degrees but they now come packaged with a lifetime of student loan debt if you're not wealthy or lucky enough to get scholarship money.
Dramatic? It was practically manufactured.
I never did but I’m now middle aged and stuck in my career without one. I’m right now planning on finding a competency based program to try to speedrun, so I can stop working on implementing others peoples broken garbage.
I have bad news for you. You can get a PhD and you'll still be implementing other people's broken garbage.
I’m aware, but I’m stuck where I am and can’t climb any further. So, either stop trying or try something else.
Implementing other people’s broken garbage. As I feel I do that every day, what is it that you do for a living? Ha ha. Also, do you have any ideas for the future?
I do, I have a career goal I have been marching towards for some time but the momentum I had has stopped.
I joined the IT workforce during my generals at college, before the .com crash in the 90’s. I dropped out and have been working my way up ever since. I’ve led teams, I’ve been an architect, I’ve been a senior engineer, but I have always been after a director level role. No matter the experience though so far, the door is closed unless I have the degree.
So, I’m thinking about WGU, for an IT Management degree (maybe eventually a masters). It’s what I do every day, so I hope I can test out of a fair bit and the rest I should probably brush up on anyway.
I’m not after Fortune 500, I’ll go be a director for a balloon manufacturer or something, just a role where I can have a little of my own agency.
I joined the IT workforce during my generals at college, before the .com crash in the 90’s. I dropped out and have been working my way up ever since. I’ve led teams, I’ve been an architect, I’ve been a senior engineer,
You and I were on much the same path at about the same time.
the door is closed unless I have the degree.
I saw this same thing as I was advancing. I made the hard (at the time) choice to keep my full time IT role and go back to school part time at the same time. I did part time three years Community College getting an Associates Degree. While not the director level, it did get me a better, higher paying, job. My new boss actually called out that degree as working in my favor to get the position. That company had tuition reimbursement, so while working that full time IT role, I took advantage of that to attend a university part time, and after another 3 years got my Bachelors. My Bachelors degree got me a more advanced role yet at a new org. That lead to far more advancement.
Here's the good news. University work will be easy for you! You've grown into an adult with organizational skills, an awareness of your responsibilities, and time management skills. It will be significantly easier for you now, as an adult, than an 18 year old that doesn't understand life yet. So I encourage you to do it! Figure out your degree program you want, and get a Plan of Study from a school. Enroll in a single course and see how you do. I think you'll be surprised how manageable it is. Its time consuming, yes, but you'll find the time. I kept to taking only 2 classes at a time, only term did I do 3 and it almost wrecked me while still doing my full time IT job.
I’m not after Fortune 500, I’ll go be a director for a balloon manufacturer or something, just a role where I can have a little of my own agency.
I,m not sure this place you're imagining exists the way you're describing. Each level up just trades for a different yoke to bear. At the director level you could be given unrealistic KPIs to meet, or a slim budget to do so. You might find you can't achieve what you want because you can't get or keep competent staff. Even if you do everything right, market forces or regulatory change can nullify all your plans which are then made meaningless or ineffective.
As you get higher into management, firing people absolutely sucks. Keeping on dead weight/underperformers/overstaff instead of firing them means you are robbing your ability to give raises or advancement to the other workers you have that are really performing well. So you fire them, but it still sucks.
I don't say any of this to discourage you. This has just been my experience. Perhaps you'll navigate the river differently and find what you're looking for when you advance. But seriously, you can totally get a Bachelors degree, and you don't even need to quit your current job.
First of all, I can’t thank you enough for the thoughtful reply. Your experience in the first half of your reply is very valuable, and what I am hoping for in my journey.
I’m not sure this place you’re imagining exists the way you’re describing.…
I agree, it might not, but in my career, as I’ve advanced higher, I have found a new landscape to explore each time. I didn’t even get in to managing a team on purpose, I was the lead engineer on my team and my boss quit. I had no eye on the position, until the rest of my team got behind me and told both me and the company that they wanted me as their leader. It was then that I took stock of where I was going in my career and after doing that for a little while, I knew the direction I wanted to go. Despite my role turning from the day to day technical, to a more long term thinking type role, I found I enjoyed it greatly. I was able to re-shape the team to be more effective, and I made some tremendous improvements in our tech stack. Most of it didn’t come from me, it was things my team brought to me, and we worked to turn into proposals, with financial metrics and so forth. This was also where I got my first taste of Architecture, being put on the CAB, in charge of evaluating all the infrastructure requests and designs.
At the time I was sure it was the architecture and planning I enjoyed, so I accepted a position as an Architect with another company. In the end though, I realized that it wasn’t the technical work I enjoyed, it was mentoring and building a team. It felt great to be the guy who could help take the ideas that the team had, and build them into a workable business solution. I even enjoyed bringing my engineers back down to ground level; sometimes a really good idea, just isn’t workable in the current landscape. I wound up walking away from that job amicably to deal with some family health issues and now I’m stuck back in a Senior Engineer role, slowly dying of boredom.
As you get higher into management, firing people absolutely sucks. Keeping on dead weight/underperformers/overstaff instead of firing them means you are robbing your ability to give raises or advancement to the other workers you have that are really performing well. So you fire them, but it still sucks.
Wholeheartedly agree, but I’ve also done this long enough, and seen enough of the type who need to go, that I am willing to act. I have not directly fired anyone, but I have been on the hiring, managing and I have had to develop performance review practices for the engineer that I wanted to fire, but did not have the authority to do so (was a good lesson, he eventually turned around, just after far more strikes than most places would tolerate).
I don’t say any of this to discourage you. This has just been my experience. Perhaps you’ll navigate the river differently and find what you’re looking for when you advance. But seriously, you can totally get a Bachelors degree, and you don’t even need to quit your current job.
Again, thank you so much for your input. I know a degree won’t fix every problem, but at this point, working on new ones is what I’m after. I’d change careers entirely but I don’t think I have the time, so instead I want to advance and see where it takes me.
I’m in the evaluation stage, trying to make sure I can stick to it if I embark on this journey. Discussions like this help a great deal.
At the time I was sure it was the architecture and planning I enjoyed, so I accepted a position as an Architect with another company. In the end though, I realized that it wasn’t the technical work I enjoyed, it was mentoring and building a team. It felt great to be the guy who could help take the ideas that the team had, and build them into a workable business solution. I even enjoyed bringing my engineers back down to ground level; sometimes a really good idea, just isn’t workable in the current landscape.
You are ready and qualified for a management position right now. This is most of what I would want to hear if I was interviewing you for a leadership role.
I know a degree won’t fix every problem, but at this point, working on new ones is what I’m after.
A degree fixes one single problem that I couldn't overcome any other way: meeting the requirement of having a bachelors degree which employers require. It will do the same for you.
I’m in the evaluation stage, trying to make sure I can stick to it if I embark on this journey. Discussions like this help a great deal.
I stayed in the evaluation stage for far too long. There are steps a few into the process which require actual commitment. The first few steps don't. Do those first few starting next week. What I found was that I was missing critical information for my evaluation I couldn't get any other way beside action.
If you're interested I'm happy to share more tactical knowledge and experience about what to do next as a mature working IT professional wanting a degree. Let me know if you're interested in that.
Once again, thank you so much. It means a lot coming from someone in the industry, who’s walked a similar path.
I have been making some moves. I am evaluating, but I don’t want to get stuck in analysis paralysis. I’m in the “what happens if my situation changes” stage, and right now, I still think having a degree will be a benefit.
Warning incoming wall of text!!!!
There are two things I'd recommend you give some consideration to altering from what you described as your current path so far:
#1 Don't go for an IT degree
You have decades of experience in IT. You are going to learn very little from trying to get a degree for an area of expertise you already know. Yes, you'd be able to test out of a bunch of stuff, but in the end you're still going to have to take lots of classes that will be boring for you or worse, you'll have to "learn it wrong" because of the gap between academic answers and what we both know from experience is how it works in the real working world. From my previously aborted attempt at college after high school I knew "getting bored with classwork" was one of my weaknesses. Pushing myself to do work I knew was useless or wrong is a large part of why I think I failed to complete the first time. You may or may not have the same issue as I did. At best, if you are successful getting an IT degree, you'll likely have learned little to nothing more than you know now.
Consider instead getting a degree in an area you don't know backwards and forwards already. I chose the business/marketing path. There are a number of reasons I liked this path:
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The coursework is not generally difficult compared to technical IT material you and I have to consume on a regular basis for work. As I was doing full time IT at the same time, it was a really nice change of topic to be able to do coursework without getting more IT to deal with. It made it something to look forward to instead of dreading.
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Having the business education gave me fantastic view of what the organizations I was working for were trying to achieve with IT, where the challenges existed we have almost no visibility to in IT, and the ability to speak the language of business to C suite executives while fully retaining all of my IT knowledge I already knew. This business communication ability alone I can point to for several specific instances where I was later successful in an IT objective because I was speaking their language.
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As for the worry about having a degree not in IT, nobody cares what you get your Bachelors degree in. Employers always assume you did it after high school anyway, instead of as a mature adult. They just want the "degree" box checked for the hiring requirement. If you truly want a degree in the field you work in, do that as a graduate degree. There, it matters.
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Its cheaper to get the degree! Business and marketing classes are available from far more schools on far more frequent schedules. This means you can shop on price for your school with far more schools to choose from and things like lab fees and textbooks were generally cheaper too.
#2 Don't go to WGU as your school of choice
WGUs business model, as I'm sure you're aware, is different than most schools. Instead of a "per credit hour" fee, you pay a flat fee "per term" that allows you to take all the classes you can handle. However, that flat fee requires nearly a full-time student course load to break even compared to other "per credit hour" schools. One the surface its a good deal. If you were quitting your full time job, I might recommend it. Instead, if you're keeping your full time job that means you're going to be paying FULL PRICE per term, but only able to take advantage of a small fraction of that high cost.
#3 Costs (bonus unsolicited advice!)
Avoid taking on debt for school! I'm hopeful that your employer has some sort of tuition reimbursement. Many do! Check into that and find out what the terms and conditions are. Though many have a golden handcuff clawback provision, they are usually limited to 1 year. So if your degree takes you 3 or 4 years to complete part-time, you quit your job immediately upon graduation, at worst you only pay back 1 year's costs. Further, if you're laid off you don't even have to pay back that 1 year! For whatever isn't covered, pay out of pocket if you can. This is also why choosing a cheaper school is important. You're at an age you should be contributing heavier to retirement, not taking on student loan debt (again if you have the luxury to avoid it).
I'm not sure if you have done much if any college before, but if you have, its entirely possible that any courses you passed can still be applied to your new degree attempt. I had credits that were over 17 years old (English, History, Math) that fully applied to my new degree saving me time, money and effort. You'll find out all of this when you pick a school and have your first talk with your assigned advisor.
As for picking a school, this part of the advice may be out-of-date so take it with a grain of salt. Avoid "online only" schools. These target people just like you that are working adults, but they charge a high premium because they know you have money. There is also a bit of a stigma with employers for some of these schools. Most state support schools which are bricks and mortar offer many online-only degrees. This means you can get a mostly or entirely online degree, from an actual accredited (seek regional accreditation only! "national" accreditation is a scam!), while getting low cost schooling from a school that is established and recognizable to employers as legitimate.
Select your 4 year school, and see which Community College credits they accept. Community college be the least expensive courses you can find, and have your advisor at the 4 year school confirm these CC classes transfer 100% into the 4 year school. Your Bachelors degree will say the 4 year school name. Nobody asks or cares where you completed your pre-req courses. Don't pay high 4 year school prices when you can pay cheap 2 year school class prices! Also, frequently there is an Associates degree with 100% overlap with your Bachelors school. This means you can achieve a 2 year degree without having to spend all the time for bachelors before you have something to show for your work. I got a 20% pay raise with a better job just from my prior IT experience and my new Associates degree in business/marketing.
If I may be so bold, here's your homework for next week:
- Find out what tuition reimbursement options your employer has. Its also possible they have preferred rates for specific schools so you need to find this out first.
- Select your degree.
- Select your 4 years school, and search their website for what 2 year/community college they partner with for full credit transfer.
- Contact your school of choice through their admissions process, and get assigned an advisor (all this is free). They will be able to set up a meeting with you and walk you through the next steps after you communicate your goals with the school. You will come out of that meeting with a Plan of Study which is a document that tells you what classes you'll need to take, the info required to calculate the approximate total cost of your degree, and give you a good idea of the time to complete it.
100% of the above homework steps have ZERO COST and ZERO COMMITMENT! There is no reason for you to NOT do these things as these are the critical answers of evaluation info I was missing when I was taking too long to get going. The very first time you have cost or commitment is when you enroll in your first class. Start with just one. Use that to get in the grove with what school will demand of you. After than you can ramp up the number of courses at once. Again, I did a regular load of 2 courses at once as I found 3 to be too many.
I hope this is helpful info. If this was too much info, my apologies. If you have other questions, feel free to ask. I want you to be successful in this!
Once again, thank you, and apologies for the delay in my response. I was traveling this weekend and didn’t have time to really absorb your post until now.
IT degree – The degree I’m looking at is a business degree focused on IT Management. I chose this because it’s business-oriented, lets me leverage some of the experience I already have, and includes content outside my current wheelhouse that’s directly applicable to the roles I’m targeting. It also leaves a future path open if I decide to continue. My intention is to complete the IT Management degree and then evaluate whether I want to go on to an MBA or pursue more education in a different direction. The idea is to achieve something relatively quickly and stack wins so I feel like I’m making real progress. My biggest worry with jumping into something entirely new is burnout.
WGU - This is the first program I’ve really dug into, and it seems like a good fit for what I’m looking for. I understand their model, and my hope is that I can move through it fairly quickly. I’m not trying to “speedrun” it, but I do want to use my existing experience to accelerate where it makes sense. Based on my research, it still checks the most boxes. I have a full-time job, I have kids, I’m an assistant scoutmaster for my kid’s troop and so I need something that lets me learn at my own pace, in fits and bursts as I can clear time. I’ve run some financial numbers, and if I can stick to a plan, I think WGU (or a similar online, competency-based program) is still my best bet. Plus, I kind of like the idea of trying school in a different way than the traditional model, since I never had much love for traditional classroom environments.
Costs – As I said, I’ve run some numbers. I could do some prerequisites through something like Study.com, but the cost savings versus the added complexity just isn’t worth it to me. I’d rather commit to a complete program and march through it; I know myself well enough to know I need to feel like I’m “on the path.” I do have some tuition reimbursement and have reached out to HR for details, but even without that, WGU is affordable. My planning assumes a two-year target for the degree, but I’m fine if it ends up taking three.
I’m working on finding any transferable credits I might have and trying to track down my ACT scores (do 30-year-old test results even still exist?). I’m also talking with some trusted colleagues and friends who’ve been down a similar path for advice. I also personally know a career coach who is absolutely fantastic, and we’re meeting next week.
So, a plan is coming together. Thanks again for all your advice, this is good stuff and will absolutely help me on my path.
My intention is to complete the IT Management degree and then evaluate whether I want to go on to an MBA or pursue more education in a different direction.
I thought about a graduate degree too, however my career really took off (partially because of jobs I was able to get that had a Bachelors requirement). A graduate degree at this point in my life would not advance my career further and actually probably reduce my success because of the time commitment and what it would mean I couldn't do with that same time and energy. Maybe I'll chase one after I retire just for fun!
My biggest worry with jumping into something entirely new is burnout.
I had this same worry for myself, and it is certainly a balancing act. Too much course load, and you won't succeed on learning/passing then get burned out even if you do. Too little, and you might get "comfortable" again getting your time and schedule back to what you had before you started.
For me I found success by starting with one course per term for the first term, then two courses per term for two more terms, then three per term (finding out that was too much), then dropping back down to two per term. Additionally, I never took a term off. I was worried I wouldn't go back, so I did the low-and-slow path or the entirety of my Associates degree to completion. Then when I got the new job (with tuition reimbursement), I did the same, low-and-slow until completing the Bachelors degree.
So, a plan is coming together. Thanks again for all your advice, this is good stuff and will absolutely help me on my path.
Right now you might be thinking "how am I going to find the time to do this along with everything else?!" After the 2nd week of this new responsibility you will have it worked into your schedule. You will then ask yourself "What was I doing before with all this time I found for school commitments?!", and finally after you graduate a month or two later you'll loop back and say "Where the heck did I find all that time for the school commitments!?"
You've got this! The hardest part is just starting. You are so close. Just. Start.
Not that I am suggesting that you do this, but no one checks degrees… especially if they were a while back. Double especially if it’s from an educational institution than has since shut down.
If this is your only setback and you already have the skills needed… 😇
I’m aware, but I am not built for that. Plus, I’m so established as someone without one in the industry that such deception would be instantly discovered.
I never got one either and just lied having a degree. Some companies cared. Most don't. Lie during the interview, but once you accept the offer, don't lie on the background check.
You also need to stay curious about the field you're in. Constantly watching youtube and understanding the industry you're in.So once you're in the interview, you don't sound like a noob.
As someone absolutely killing themself to barely tread water with a fairly well paying job after getting a graduate degree, the kids are unfortunately correct.
How does that delta compare to people who didn't go to college?
Most college graduates seem not to fully appreciate just how shitty things have gotten for the non-grads in the past 30 years.
Well, most of the people I grew up with are in the trades or just didn't go to college and they're not thriving, but they're doing fine. They can mostly afford houses (in large part because of the low cost of living in their areas) and to have some modest savings, which is more than I can say being tied to high cost of living areas where I can use my degree and being completely unable to save anything thanks to Daddy Student Loan Servicer. I get what you're saying, but I'm very aware of how those without degrees are doing since those are the people I grew up with and still maintain friendships with.
Are you under 30? The blue collar trades income trajectory is pretty flat over time, so it's the 30's where college educated careers tend to come out on top, and the 40's and 50's where college grads really start running away with a huge gap.
Plus in any trades job into the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, and you'll generally see lower median wages (and much lower 25th percentile wages) than pretty much any white collar college educated career.
And living through a few business cycles also shows that non-college jobs, including the trades, are just less stable (and tend to force earlier exits to retirement or disability).
Keep your head up. High pay in HCOL areas tends to pay off over time, because not all costs scale the same, and being able to pay down debt or save a higher number of absolute dollars is better for your long term financial health.
Ah that could be part of it. I'm in my 30s but in a career with a notoriously long ramp up.
The trades seem to be doing just fine from what I can see
That's just a small subset of non college grads. If you're going to compare people who are aiming for a specific profession in a specific industry, you should look at the career outcomes of the college path, too, with specific majors that are feeders into specific careers.
Maybe you can argue that plumbers are doing "just fine" with the median wage at around $60k per year (across the entire career trajectory from the age of 20 to 60), or that welders make a median $50k, but those numbers don't come anywhere close to accountants ($81k), financial specialists ($82k), financial analysts ($102k), electrical engineers ($112k).
And you could argue that I'm cherry picking professions, and I am, but simply by saying "trades" is also cherry picking a profession.
Community college admissions continue to rise because of this. Even students with excellent grades in high school bypass the 4-year institutions as long as possible. It's the same classes either way. Why pay 10 times more?
Good maybe we will finally have some market correction and colleges realize they are not a staple for the American dream anymore.
We need to stop saying "American Dream." It's really beating a dead horse at this point. It feels like such a fictional concept to me.
it is. total propaganda for the masses.
Of course it's being seen that way.
If I were to go to my university this year, doing the same course I'd have:
£9250 x 4 = £37000 for the 4 year course
£9504 x 4 = £38016 for rental accommodation including bills (I picked a rental property that included bills for ease of calculation)
£5000 x 4 = £20000 for food (based on £100/week)
That's £95016
And how much of my degree do I use day to day? Jack shit. Anyone starting my job technically does not need a degree. I work with a niche piece of software that is well known in it's field but outside of that is not. No degree would ever cover this
You could not have done that math without a degree.
IMO, being educated should be at least a minimum wage job, paid by the government. This would allow students to focus on learning their crafts, instead of being distracted by part-time jobs.
This only works if minimum wage is enough to guarantee housing, food, healthcare, transportation, internet access, a small degree of entertainment, etc. you know, basic standards of living and not just modern slavery
There are still plenty of jobs that are gated by a college credential. Tech was the biggest way aorund skipping it, and tech is imploding.
I don't doubt what you say is true, but could you list some examples of jobs that are gated by a college credential?
Anything in healthcare, which are the last college degree jobs that consistently pay over average.
I approve of our healthcare providers having college educations & being paid well :-)
I would hope so?
Why are you asking?
When you come out of school carrying six figures of debt into an economy where you will never afford a house and won’t pay off the debt until you are 50. An entry level job that requires 5 years experience and pays 35000 a year. Yeah. That checks out.
I've felt like this for over a decade. I don't even want to know what cost is now.
Because it should be more affordable
Damn that sucks. Here I am sitting at Uni only paying for the public transport ticket basically.
I feel so free to be able to do this.
Yup, and educated citizens make better citizens. Your country cares about having a civilized, egalitarian society.
The U.S. just wants obedient workers the bourgeoise can control.
Employers no longer universally take a college degree as a way to skip ahead in the line of employment. A college degree should basically be a ticket to any job within that degree field. In practice, that’s incredibly unlikely. I started at minimum wage with my first job out of college lmao. My second job netted me like 50¢ more.
Many college degrees (looking at you, biological sciences) don’t even have jobs available for fresh grads. When I graduated I was competing with thousands of others for like 5 jobs in the country. After my internship ran out I was never able to work in the field again.
Schools keep pushing those degrees though because it gives their professors a constant supply of free labor (interning in a lab is usually required to graduate).
same situation, but minus the interships. biotech, research almost next to no jobs in the field unless you have significant undergrad experience, and getting lab experience while undergrad seems very limited. and when i look at the people employed or in the labs, its almost dominated 1 demographic, which apparently has been given a leg up for years, hence why dominate the biology field(mostly around health).
its meant to be gatekeep for phd,and lesser extent masters
I taught onco research for 6 years (not as a professor, but as a research consultant)… there were professors that would seemingly purposefully give huge and long projects to grad students a few years in and then they ended up not graduating until year 5 or 6.
But you do need one in retail to move from line worker to management in most companies
originally they use softwares to screen out applicants based on nebelous requirements, like keywords. now its done by AI screening which made it worst.
Why work hard and study to die poor? Work lazy and die happy
This can't be that shocking to the news media and "analysts". Kids have been practically railroaded into getting at least a BS for decades, a lot of the time to the tune of 10s of thousands of dollars in debt if not more. Now that nearly everyone entering the work place has one it is not the selling point to employers that it was once. Supply and demand and all that.
And that's before you even get into the usefulness of so much of the coursework in a lot of these degree programs. I only have an associates degree and probably half of the program was unrelated to the stated purpose of the degree. I can't imagine how much junk is required for a 4 year or more in the name of being a well rounded person.
Maybe, just maybe, everyone is starting to wake up to just how self serving the college industry has become.
No longer? I didn't see them as worth the cost fifteen years ago. That's why I emigrated back to my home country so I could study virtually for free.
Well, that was you.
'Twas I!
Your specific situation doesn't apply to everybody.
The only important part was the first. I kept thinking, how in the world is it acceptable to charge that much for a degree and endebt students for the majority of their lives? What if you fail to find a high-paying job to pay it back? People would simply shrug it off as if it were normal and shared "tips" like paying the minimum of $50 forever without caring that they'd end up paying twice as much as they borrowed.
And because of that, our high school admins made sure to show us that trade jobs and community college were viable alternatives. I took the third option because of the family circumstances at the time.
They didn't say it did
They expressed incredulous disbelief in why people don't agree with them.
They had an option others don't.
Right on target! Keeping the masses uneducated is one of the main goals.
Speak for yourself
I think it depends pretty dramatically where you go. It might not be worth it if you go to a school that costs 40k a year. But college in general opens doors to a lot of positions.
Not to say college is the only viable option.
I ended up with the opportunity to get a MS CS for $20k debt and even that doesn't seem worth it at this point (the university does not have assistantships for MS students)
its been known for a long time(like 10years) that cs has a very low job prospects, alongside bio at the time, seems it has gotten worst. i knew someone just before the pandemic he wanted to get into burgeoning AI research, i suggested he just work in tech instead, dont waste his time, since i had a cousin with cs and never found a job in the west coast. he was trying to get another bachelors and then ms IN DATA/ai research. but schools will not allow you to get a 2nd bachelors(if you already have one)(its hey call it academic incest)
Shit, I figured this out 20 years ago. Where has everyone else been?
In college.
I should have been an escalator repairman. Those guys look like they have job security.
Escalators don't break, they turn into stairs.
Edit: This comment has been up 2 days and no one get the Mitch Hedberg reference. Fo same, Lemmy.
Escalators break, they just remain useful while broken. However, everyone would still rather they get back to how they were before (moving).
I notice they always have their shoelaces tied, too.
It very much depends on the degree.
Its 2025 are we seriously still taking "polls" as fact?
Polls have been pretty accurate. Some of the polls involving elections Trump specifically runs in have been less accurate, but even the polling of his race in 2024 was pretty accurate.
I just did a poll and the results suggest polls are actually inaccurate.
So dramatic. Drahma queens.
Drahma and Greg was a fun show
It’s going to be a fun world without arts and philosophy…
And bravo to 18yo kids that have all that planned. Not sur life is set on rails and all for most of us. Sure didn’t feel that way for me. Or about everyone around me.
Comparing a rigorous Philosophy degree to an internet argument is something said only by the uneducated.
Philosophy is the spearhead of science, most scientific breakthroughs begin first with philosophy.
The sad thing is that college is and has been viewed for at least my entire life as just a more elaborate version of a vo-tech school.
Which I kind of understand - I didn't want to come out of uni with no path forward either, so I went for CS. Believe me, I understand the game.
However - it's a real shame that we don't treat K-12 or university as something to really broaden the mind, but only as a way to sort the population into various ways to earn money. Essentially ONLY used as a job training program.
Instead of treating education as something that should be about getting a liberal education in every sense of that word with the aim of making as many people as possible autodidacts so they could not only think for themselves, but they could teach themselves nearly anything they care to learn, K-12 + higher education is expected to be about prep for a job. This kind of education essentially makes "do your own research" little more than a punchline aimed at morons who are doing no such thing.