<p>Yea, many of the jobs at our state departments require at least a master’s degree, even though the work can be done (and is in the case of folks grandfathered) with “just a BA”. </p>
<p>There will be sales jobs where some folks can earn wages that may be ok or better without a post HS degree or cert, but those are definitely disappearing in our state. Two of my former mechanics had MBAs and one had an engineering degree. </p>
<p>Where I’m working now, you really need a Master’s degree to get to the management level. They pay for it, but you have to get it. </p>
<p>Ooh management, what fun.
;)</p>
<p>DH and I both got master’s degrees in engineering in 1986 (high GPAs) and had a heck of a time finding jobs. We ended up moving from Texas to Maine in order to find work. I remember my father-in-law saying, “I really worry about kids your age - it’s much tougher for you to make it now.”</p>
<p>“Millenials growing up in a culture of poverty and ignorance with no family aspirations to increase their knowledge and skills are assured to live in poverty.”</p>
<p>Heck, even those who grew up in more privileged backgrounds will have a tough time unless they optimize their skill set and are open to the available opportunities. Poverty is the default. It takes a LOT of effort to have a comfortable lifestyle these days. </p>
<p>Think Baby Boomers. Our parents’ generation had tons of kids, even if those kids only have two kids there are many more young (and old boomers) workforce adults than in previous generations. Even with the percentages of abilities (IQs) remaining the same there will be many more with the ability to successfully complete college degrees. They can take jobs that don’t require a degree.</p>
<p>We have also increased the technology of our society- using those advances has spread to workplaces that used to require more brawn than brains. Fewer workers and they need to manage the computer instead of doing things manually like their fathers. Kids in a blue collar paper mill town used to follow fathers and uncles straight from HS (the women typically didn’t have that option and weren’t holding the jobs) into good paying union jobs. Or get a lucrative summer job while in college pushing a broom. Now so much automation has forced workers to keep up with technology.</p>
<p>The competition for colleges has increased as well (this is CC) with the population bulge. Think of how many of us couldn’t get into our college today. Another factor- women are now allowed to take spots only men traditionally took. Joe Smith with his HS diploma has to compete with Jane Doe and her college skills unlike his father.</p>
<p>btw- how many actually “chose” not to attend college? Is it a choice when your record- grades and test scores- isn’t competitive even if you want to go to college? Is it a choice when finances dictate you spend any funds on food instead of school? They need to differentiate those who have the desire but not the means from those who could but don’t. Also- some less than college degree trade skills are in demand and lucrative for those who can learn them, put in the work and like them well enough to do them. </p>
<p>Baby boomers’ parents often belonged to unions or union-protected jobs. There was such thing as paid overtime. The benefits included pensions. Middle-class standard of living could be achieved on one income. Their non-college-bound children could train in a specific trade in high school. The state U was within the means of a middle class income & part-time job held by the child. Times have changed. And not for the better. </p>
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<p>Years of underfunding have caused some defined benefit pensions to fail, and employers to think that defined benefit pensions are too much of a risk to bear, so it is no surprise that they are less commonly offered today.</p>
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<p>Back then, even a student with no parental support and parents wealthy enough to prevent financial aid could likely find a high school graduate job that s/he could support himself/herself with, plus pay the trivial tuition at the nearby state university to study for a bachelor’s degree. This is much less of a possibility today – the current parents who did that themselves are unpleasantly surprised that their kids cannot realistically do the same.</p>
<p>The difference with people like Zuckerburg and Gates is that they went to college but the pace or the stuff taught was not enough for them. They probably felt that they could excel even more on their own and that they did. But it is not as if they simply decided to quit and become a millionaire. It is not as if they stopped learning and educating themselves after college. Even without college, those that succeed and excel are those who continue to make serious efforts to learn and excel. Not everyone is able to excel and get to those levels without college: It takes certain personalities and intelligence to do so.</p>
<p>Studies like that don’t account for differences in work ethic and ability between those who “choose” to go to college and those who “choose” not to. How many of the kids who “choose” not to were lucky to get out of high school with a diploma or GED? Why would we expect them to be as financially successful as the kids who were more able and/or harder-working? </p>
<p>I read an article the other day that quoted someone who stated it best: “The only thing more expensive than going to college is not going to college.” The difference in yearly wages between one with a college education and one who does not have one is much greater than it has ever been. Go to college.</p>
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<p>Also, most colleges allow students to return after taking a leave of absence. There are probably plenty of people like them who left college to try something entrepreneurial, but returned to college after such ventures failed.</p>
<p>there are still opportunities out there for people without degrees. i’m currently in school and got an entry level sales position with a large cruise line. if school doesn’t work out i could work my way up there</p>
<p>@mathyone</p>
<p>I was reading through this thread waiting to get to the end to post my two cents only to find my thoughts already posted by you. You have hit the nail on the head. </p>
<p>Does this study control for the possibility that high school students with the tools to be successful in college are much more likely to actually go to college today than in the past due to our culture of ‘you must go to college’, thus leaving the population of non-college attendees looking much different today?</p>
<p>The question isn’t, are non-college kids less successful today than in the past? The question is, will a given student, who otherwise would have been successful in college, be worse off today than in the past should he/she choose not to go to college?</p>
<p>The study doesn’t seem to ask or answer that question. With all the debt and dead end jobs these kids are finding after graduation, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that results are much better for the average ‘qualified but chooses not to go to college’ kid today.</p>
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<p>@YZamyatin: You nailed it. These studies tend not to do apples-to-apples comparisons. The results say as much about who selects into college as they do about the value added of college. </p>
<p>My fiance was most likely better off not going to college, and I may have been, as well. I don’t think the “you must go to college” mindset does good things for average middle class students who won’t get aid but may not be able to afford to go. My fiance could not have gone without big debt, and of four children the eldest in that family is the only one to go-- and she went on to get advanced degrees. These are not first gen kids, either, their father has advanced degrees. My fiance got a job right out of high school that he still has 10 years later, he gets great benefits and flexibility, the sky is the limit with this company, he’s had better offers from other companies, and he makes double what I make and I have a degree-- and he makes more than I will ever make in my line of work no matter how much experience I get. He works a second job these days more for fun than anything else, a project he is doing with my dad, and makes as much in 20 hours a week as I make in 60 hours. A big part of this was luck, but I think he would have been okay no matter what. He’ll never be rich, but he can live a comfortable middle class lifestyle and that’s more than enough for us. He has a younger brother who works in the same field who is also doing very well for himself, just bought a beautiful family home for him and his fiancee last summer, and his other brother does fine, too. They’re smart and they manage. They would have been idiots to leave the opportunities they had to borrow 30-50k+ to go to college on loans like I did. It’s not just Bill Gates types who make it without a degree.</p>
<p>Of course, statistically, most people who are capable should go and will need to go to have the kinds of lifestyles they imagine having. But I don’t think that everybody should go, or that everybody needs to go. I don’t think every 18 year old should be beaten upside the head with this statistic. I was told by my HS at 17 that I would never be able to support myself if I didn’t go to college no matter what my parents said about what they could afford, and that if I wanted any chance of having a job someday I needed to go to college. Well, apparently almost all of my HS friends missed that memo because they didn’t go and are now more financially independent and secure than I am-- they make less money but without debt they can afford to. College, at the cost it came at, was not necessary for my goals in life. It was nice to have, but I had no business going AT LEAST until I was 24 and could possibly get aid. I think if I’d waited to 24 I might not have ever gone, but that was when I needed to make that decision, not at 17.</p>
<p>Emaheevul, just curious what field your fiancé and his brothers and your HS friends are in that they are doing so well financially without a college degree. It’s good to know these fields, as college is truly not for everyone, but there are many with and without college degrees struggling in today’s economy. </p>
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<p>Could be any of the following:</p>
<p>Skilled trades.
Sales.
Self-employment.
Some fields, like computer software, which accept self-educated people without formal credentials more easily than others.
Types of work that are unpleasant or dangerous, so that they have to pay well to attract people to work in them.</p>
<p>Of course, most or all of the above require some education (or self-education). While such education need not be what one usually thinks of college attendance leading to a bachelor’s degree, it is not the same as not having any post-secondary education.</p>
<p>I know a young man who made his first million dollars before he was 22. He’s a realtor, without a college degree, although with a license (for which you have to have solid analytical/math skills) and some further training. My plumber didn’t go to college but lives in a house with 7 bathrooms - a house my PhD husband and I couldn’t afford.
Yes, there are plenty jobs where training and experience - but not necessarily a college education - can provide a solid, if not outstanding, income. </p>