There are a lot of what they used to call, “back-office” jobs that don’t involve decision-making or creating content that are conflated with “working on Wall Street”, depending on your cohort group. A lot of them are tech/info systems jobs. I’d be the first to admit that many of them don’t require college diplomas. OTOH, many of them may not exist by the end of the decade.
3 Likes
Looking back, there is absolutely no way my college experience could have lived up to my high school expectations. I have a bunch of regrets.
I tried my best to steer my kids towards college paths that would result in fewer regrets for them … but they don’t always appreciate my wisdom.
I’m kind of doubting that most high school kids who come across this article are going to think anything besides “that won’t happen to me”.
1 Like
I’m in the Investment Research team at a large asset manager.
I understand more from CFA content than I did from my 4 years of economics.
It used to even be common in the 1970s and 80s for people in Investment teams not to have degrees.
I’m based in London at the moment and there are a handful of people on my floor who entered without a degree (very rare but they worked their way up from).
Our back office support staff are located outside of London.
The cost never bothered me. My parents are fairly upper-middle-class: the rental yield from the properties we own more than covered any costs of education I incurred.
That makes sense, but one needs an undergrad degree to sit for the CFA exam (with very few exceptions).
3 Likes
LOL. Any Ivy League law school grad will identify with that. Just substitute “bar review content” for “CFA content”.
1 Like
100% but then again my parents didn’t become wise until I became a parent 
understatement for sure
1 Like
Not necessarily true.
I know a few who took it without a degree.
You just need 4 years of work experience.
A guy on my floor left school at 18, worked in the back office for a few years until 25 and worked his way onto the investment floor after he took Level 1 2 years ago
But it supports my point. You shouldn’t need a degree to take the CFA and you don’t need one.
Society and the system makes people do degrees. My parents went to university but I know so many old people who never did - it wasn’t needed 50 years ago.
Cost didn’t bother me either and I paid my own way through college (along with some debt). Best investment I ever made!
Of course it was completely different back in the day. I thought college was expensive then but pails in comparison to now. Don’t think kids could pay their own way without incurring large debt with todays COA.
2 Likes
I think there are two separate arguments.
In our society, yes, it was a great investment for me to get my degree as a sign of credibility.
But I’m saying, it shouldn’t. People in their 60s,70s and 80s didn’t need to go to university in most Western countries.
University education used to only be for elites while the rest of us left school and did work.
Yep but kids want to be elites and go to elite institutions
Back in the day, “on the job training” was the norm. It’s hard to blame universities for chasing demand for niche degrees when so much of the drive is coming from corporations themselves.
1 Like
There are 4 million people in America in each grade.
Around 60,000 apply to Harvard/top schools. Maybe make that 100,000 for people who apply to only one or two schools.
That’s around 100,000 kids in the entire country applying to top schools. The vast, vast majority of kids are perfectly happy not being elites - 3.9 million Americans in each grade will never apply to an Ivy League school for undergrad.
The only reason degree uptake has become so high is because you can’t really do anything but trades and retail without a degree. So what do kids who don’t want to be elites but want office jobs do?
They go to college and get a degree they didn’t need 50 years ago to get that office job.
Wasn’t necessarily disagreeing, just a good opportunity for a pun 
What office jobs?
Any job that doesn’t require manual labor, pays above the median wage and you get to work at a desk inside.
What jobs do you think they were doing? I’ve been mulling my (and H’s) family since reading your post.
94 year old FIL - college degree. Worked as a foreman at his company for decades. Said he got the job because of his degree - never worked his way up. Retired back in the '80s.
Several of H’s uncles/cousins - no degrees - worked in car repair or construction.
My grandparents - no degrees - farmers and factory workers, as were their siblings.
My parents - degrees - teachers.
An uncle - degree - IBM engineer, then college prof.
Aunts with degrees - teachers.
Aunts without degrees - secretary and retail.
Uncles without degrees - farmers and military followed by construction.
Is my family an anomaly? Because otherwise there’s not much of a difference in those I know who are aged from 60 - 94.
2 Likes
That would be my family as well. People with college degrees were happy as heck to go into public school teaching. Sadly, it’s the Masters of the Universe who look down upon those professions now.
1 Like
I’m trying to think of those mythical office jobs too. In my experience, the folks who got office jobs without a degree (secretaries, receptionists, personal assistants) were mostly women and the jobs were administrative/support positions. Yes, you could work on the floor of Wall Street as a trader and at some brokerage houses (as a stock broker) without a degree, but I don’t think investment firms were employing a lot of people (mostly men) without degrees, even 50 years ago.
3 Likes
All four of my grandparents did everything they could to see to it that their kids could go to college in order to have a better life.
On my dad’s side there were just two siblings and both went to state schools.
On my mom’s side there were six siblings. The oldest two got to go to state schools, the military drafted the next one, farming was the love of the next, then money had run out so the last two were the secretary and retail worker. My mom and her sister supported three of the last four because they know the financial aspect wasn’t the same and they won out. (Only the secretary didn’t need support, and that was because she was married to someone who brought in more money, plus had no kids.)
I’m in London at the moment.
Financial services here had a huge contingent of non-college-educated workers in the 1960s and 70s.
You could become a broker or work on the trade floor without a degree. There are some staff in their early 60s who don’t have a degree (this is a very large asset management firm - it’s a household name).
I interviewed with the CIO of another large asset management firm yesterday (early 60s) and he never went to university. He was saying how it’s very rare for someone not to have gone to university today.
Back then, banks used to offer apprenticeship schemes where you could leave school at 18 and join a revenue-generating function.