You don't HAVE to go to college to get a good job!

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>Hear me out on this one.................................</p>

<p>Alot of people have this mentality that they have to finish college or else they will end up doing nothing with their lives. This is not true and people have actually been brainwashed into thinking this is the only way to be successful.</p>

<p>We go to school and our last 3 semesters of college are actually classes that we want to learn while the other semesters we are taking classes that don't even matter. With all the technology in the world you can teach yourself about the major that you want to be. It will be more interesting and more hands on that you can ever think of.</p>

<p>You will learn more and be more comfortable because it is on your own time. I know plenty of people with Bachelor's and Master's Degree and are working at Best Buy and Walmart. </p>

<p>Why you may ask? They have not developed the interviewing and social skills to land the job and you learn that only physically which includes research and actually going to interviews and socializing.</p>

<p>To be completely honest no one wants to be working till the age of 65 until the social security check comes in. You want to earn enough money to retire early and the only way that works is by picking career that you would enjoy without getting paid. Forget what your parents pick for you. Do what you love that is the key.</p>

<p>If you like going to school then have at it, but remember that it is not the only way to be successful.</p>

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<p>You bring up several reasons here on why college doesn’t gurantee a job, but you don’t really talk about how getting a job (especially a solid, enjoyable, ‘able-to-retire-before-65’ kind of job you discuss in the 2nd-to-last paragraph) doesn’t require college (as your title states).</p>

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<p>I’m a college sophomore (Public Health/Pre-Med) and I completely disagree with you. Stay in college AND get work experience during the school year and summers and you should be fine. You’d be hard pressed to find a job that pays well that does not involve food, retail, or manual labor and I refuse to have a career in any of these, not that these jobs aren’t respected, but they’re just not for me. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not as intelligent or innovative as Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, so realistically, my chances of making good money and a comfortable life for myself increase by getting a college degree. Many have been able to make good money and have a comfortable life for themselves without a college degree, but a majority of those who have done well hold a degree that they utilized.</p>

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<p>@AmericanPatriot1 an enjoyable job as I described will be a job that you can enjoy without getting paid. Now the job getting solid will be the more time you put in it , the more money you will make and the better you will be. How do you get that job you may ask? Apply constantly and work on your interviewing/social skills. Once you master that you can get any job. Remember the interview is the 1st impression if you ace that you are golden.</p>

<p>@Nerdygirl1994 Like I said before I have nothing against people that like school but making it the only way to be successful is not good because if you fail at that then you’re done. It’s not true that if you don’t go to college that you will end up in a fast food restaurant. That is where people go because it is the easiest option and they don’t want to put in the effort to get better at interviewing/social skills.</p>

<p>I have a friend didn’t go to college, got a job at chase bank moved up to personal banker and has his own house, car and is living comfortably. College is not the only way to go but it is an option for people that don’t know what to do career-wise.</p>

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<p>The unemployment rate for graduates of four-year colleges between 25 and 34 was 3.9 percent in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For nongraduates in that age group, it was 9.8 percent.</p>

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False. This is an overgeneralization. Would you then say that prerequisites are unnecessary?</p>

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With vast resources comes the need for standards. This is why we need accredited programs and the like. Would you argue that these are unnecessary?</p>

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The only way to make tons of money is to work a job you would enjoy without getting paid by? This is not a coherent point. I would assume one way to retire early and makes tons of money would be to work in a lucrative fields. </p>

<p>All in all, you did not successfully argue your point.</p>

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<p>@elite2291 I never said that college was the ONLY way to be successful, but that your chances of success in terms of income and job satisfaction are alot higher if you have a college degree statistically speaking. I agree with you that not everyone who didn’t attend college works at a fast food chain, but I personally know some that are because without a degree, they have very few options left. You also said that people work in fast food because it is “the easiest option” and “they need to get better at their social/interviewing skills”. Not only did you just insult fast food workers and their intelligence, but you can improve your interviewing skills while being involved in your college activities. How do you recommend people go about polishing these interviewing skills?</p>

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<p>@niquii77 pre-requisites are there to make students stay longer in school, it is a business. Most students don’t question about pre-requisites but the truth is you can easily get an override and take the necessary courses to finish school faster.</p>

<p>Just like I said before the schools are there for business but there are plenty of tools in today’s society to make you learn just as good or even better than learning at school.</p>

<p>In your point you are talking about working in a lucrative field to retire early and in my point I am talking about working your way up to making big money. If you are going to work your way up of course it is going to be a field that you need to enjoy.</p>

<p>@Nerdygirl1994 It will increase your chances on paper but the real test is the interview. I have nothing against people that work at fast food restaurants. If they just started working or need a quick job to feed their family then that’s the best choice. Jobs like banks, cellphone companies, and security pay much higher though. If you want to get good at doing something you actually have to go do it. Research and do interviews that’s how you get good at it.</p>

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<p>The interviews don’t matter if you don’t have the qualifications to pass the HR department through your resume. The way college students get experience is through internships nowadays.</p>

<p>You’re not going to walk onto Wall Street and get an investment bank job without having pedigree. If you want a job at Goldman Sachs, you better be the best in undergrad.</p>

<p>You’re not going to become an engineer that works for NASA these days without a degree. </p>

<p>There are jobs that don’t require school that I’m sure make a lot of money, but I doubt they are jobs people want to do. </p>

<p>At my university at least we have a place where we can get interviewing clothes, do mock interviews, have someone look over our resume until it is perfect, have people help you hook you up with a job, etc. When bachelors degrees are becoming the norm, high school degrees aren’t worth anything much anymore. There aren’t many people that I knew that graduated high school and did well with only that type of education. The only high school graduates I know are mooching off their parents or working at Mcdonald’s (literally). </p>

<p>You don’t have to like school, you just have to like what you’ll be doing with what you learned once you get the job you want. I’m sure there are people with masters degrees working at Best Buy. I’m pretty sure they didn’t major in Computer Science, Math, Engineering, or something lucrative either. You have to understand that not everyone is going to be Mark Zuckerberg. For every successful person, I think hundreds of thousands fail when they try to make it on their own. </p>

<p>I don’t really understand the whole socializing aspect. Plenty of people socialize in college. Doing “what you love” is good and all. Not good for some people. Going to UCLA and getting a PhD in Physics, be on a never-ending post-doc, and then living out of your van is not what I’d call a great life doing physics in your spare time because you couldn’t find a job.</p>

<p>College is a business. I honestly don’t think I’m any more well-rounded by taking general education classes. They should get rid of those. You should acquire all your necessary math and english skills in high school. But prerequisites? Are you kidding me? Walk into a Partial Differential Equations class with your high school knowledge and tell me how you’d be able to handle it without experience in calculus and ordinary differential equations. They are necessary.</p>

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<p>Pre-reqs are really necessary… at my school they’re not even enforced, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you are going to fail. Why? Because they’re not obvious, and they’re listed as pre-reqs for a reason. Sure, standard calculus and physics are considered lower division courses, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy, nor does it mean you can just skip over them.</p>

<p>GE classes… yeah, those could go away. I do agree with having standard english classes, considering high school level english classes can be lacking. At my school, for engineering, there are only 6 required GE classes, and two of those are english… so that’s maybe a semester and a half of useless classes, which is nowhere near the 2 years you’re citing.</p>

<p>Also, online learning: It’s not the same. Don’t even try to pretend that it’s the same as going to school. If you wanted to learn programming, sure, you could go follow little tutorials on the internet. But is that going to be the same as getting a CS degree from a university? No, far from it. Learning alone, online just doesn’t reach the same level. Some topics simply never come up, or are easily glossed over, deemed unimportant, etc. For example, runtime. How fast is quicksort? Mergesort? Radix? How can we make this faster? How does this work? How does the computer store information, and how can we abuse that? It’s a different environment, and it forces you to really learn and think and understand. Online learning, in my experience, has never done that, not in the same way. Also, at least at my school classes are generally beyond what’s easily available on the internet… google no longer helps with homeworks, and the only relevant material is oftentimes webcasts of our own class’s lectures.</p>

<p>That might only apply to STEM majors, I won’t say anything on humanities since majors there tend to have less relevant coursework when it comes to the real world. Even then, any degree shows that you can really commit to something for four years, and really work hard and think critically, and for whatever goals you have (even in something like fast food or retail) those are good skills to have.</p>

<p>And to reiterate what others have said: Not having a degree closes doors. Sure, you can get a job without a degree, but can you get the one you want? Not necessarily, and chances are it’ll take a lot more effort. School teaches interview skills, networking, it has career fairs, resume help, etc. Sure, it’s possible to have those otherwise, but school just opens so many more doors. (And not going to school honestly doesn’t get any advantages, apart from the cost of tuition.)</p>

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<p>Exactly. Good luck making it to the interview if all you got are some ultra-supreme-charismatic interview skills. Even people with those skills - from a business standpoint, if it is a position where a person’s performance matters, and another person is deemed to likely be able to perform better (with the primary determinant of such being a result of qualifications), a rational hirer will not hire someone with amazing interview skills but poor qualifications over someone with medium interview skills but great qualifications. </p>

<p>Of course, ideally one is a great interviewer and has great qualifications.</p>

<p>And of course, when it’s a low-skill job where qualifications don’t really matter, then yes it all comes down to the interview (McDonalds Crew Member jobs).</p>

<p>And I bet this Chase banker that was mentioned either:</p>

<p>1) Got REALLY lucky. But does that mean just because one person won the lottery that everyone should think they will win it as well?
2) Pre-existing connections. of course when your uncle is the Managing Director, it helps.</p>

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<p>Many colleges are significantly about socialization. From what I’ve seen, the people who begin working (or most often: just looking for work but not finding any) are often not as articulate nor high in social skills as people who went to college. Spending several years among hundreds/thousands of people the same age, engaged in a large amount of recreational activities (clubs, sports, Greek life, etc) promotes socialization in ways that saying “Hello may I take your order” and “Hey Bob, order #5 still needs a hamburger” doesn’t.</p>

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<p>I agree that no matter how stellar your interview skills are, you have to make it past the HR department first. And HR departments are there to weed down the number of candidates. One easy way - if you don’t have a degree, you get tossed on the discard pile. In this economy hundreds of qualified people are applying for every job. Most have degrees. If you don’t, you stand out in a negative manner.</p>

<p>As for the successful banker - I also have a friend who didn’t finish college, worked at a number of different jobs over the years, and ended up at a bank, where she has risen to be branch manager and is doing well (car paid in full, house with equity, nice vacations). However, she CANNOT get promoted any higher than branch manager without a degree. So she has a decent job, but no potential for career growth.</p>

<p>College is not the be all and end all. It is not the only way to be successful in life. But depending on the direction you are heading, it can open many doors for you. For many careers it is essential - no matter how well you interview, you’re not going to get a job as a doctor, lawyer, or engineer without at least one college degree!</p>

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A few ways to get out of a prerequisites are to 1)Demonstrate knowledge through a standardized test or 2)Take a course whose syllabus is similar to that of the universities. </p>

<p>Are these the “easily override-able” options you speak of? </p>

<p>If prerequisites are all about “business”, why is it necessary to take (or have credit equivalent to) Physics I before Physics II? Why is Calculus I required before/during Physics I? It is necessary because the knowledge base must be present within the student in order to understand the material in that course. </p>

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You are? No where in your paragraph did I see that point. </p>

<p>Perhaps, I looked over it:

Could you point out the sentence in which you said, “The key is to work in a career in which you love that you can eventually work up to earning big money”?</p>

<p>My point still stands: You fail to 1)Say your point and 2)Prove your point.</p>

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<p>Sure, you can get into technology with self taught skills. Many of those are really bench workers- not what you’re envisioning loving to 65. More and broader skills are needed to fulfill your potential, to own the right to more. Unless, of course, all you want is the wage and duties they hand you.</p>

<p>The guys like Gates are unique. Take a look at the early connections he had. Most people need to go through the “ring of fire” many times to advance. College is no guarantee. But neither is thinking you can be a renegade because it sounds good or you know one or two who made it. </p>

<p>To make it big, you have to add value. It’s just not about what you want. And one assurance most employers need is that you are willing to take on what is necessary, play by their rules. One way you show that- for the vast majority- IS by playing by the rules at each stage, not always bucking the system or looking for shortcuts.</p>

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<p>You don’t point out any careers one could have without a college degree, which imo would be central to the argument you title the thread with.</p>

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<p>This varies a lot by school. I’m only starting my fourth quarter, and the past three quarters as well as this quarter I have taken/am taking only classes I have some interest in, which happens to include mostly major classes and/or subjects that are applicable outside the classroom (e.g. foreign language). The possible exception is calculus, but even then that’s more a case of not being as interested in it compared to my other classes, rather than a case of not being interested.</p>

<p>I do agree that general education requirements that require some specific class(es) to fulfill the requirement are unnecessary as a general rule. I understand that it’s good to be well-rounded, but students should at least have a variety of choices to fulfill those requirements (if they don’t already) so there’s a higher chance of the classes being ones they’re at least slightly interested in and/or can apply outside of that class.</p>

<p>To your point about self-teaching, I don’t know about other people but that’s what I do on subjects that I’m vaguely interested in but can’t take a class in for whatever reason. Classes are largely reserved for my major classes (as a double major) with a few interesting and unrelated classes to fulfill general education requirements.</p>

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<p>Which you do at college as well, if you take the initiative. My school has an internship and career center where you can go for mock interviews, for instance. They give you the mock interview and give you ways you can improve your interviewing skills. I and many of my peers take advantage of it, and it’s helped a lot.</p>

<p>For general hands-on experience, that’s what internships are for.</p>

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<p>As far as what my parents picked for me, I come from a family where only two people went to college and only one even used their degree at all (the other is a stay-at-home mom). The default on both sides of my family is to either go military or go straight to the workforce. Nobody on either side of my family pushed college on me; in fact, quite a few were discouraging me for doing something “useless and impractical”. The only ones actively encouraging me to pursue my goals were my parents and a couple other relatives that knew me really well. Nobody ever told me to go to college, though. I decided that on my own.</p>

<p>As far as picking a career I enjoy, I’m already majoring in areas that I’m passionate about. Yes, one of those areas happens to be computer science and yes that’s a lucrative field. However, the job prospects from majoring in CS are just icing on the cake for me; the real draw is that it’s something I love doing. I do agree that majoring in something just for the job prospects without having any interest in the field is a terrible idea.</p>

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<p>Fair enough, and I do agree with your overall point. Especially coming from a family where the vast majority didn’t even take classes at a community college, I’ve been around plenty of people who have been successful without any college.</p>

<p>As a couple other people have said though, you may want to back your main point with examples. What kinds of jobs can you get without a college degree? Using my own parents as examples (though they both took a few classes at a CC, rather than having no college): My dad is a sales representative, and my mom is a preschool teacher and used to be a daycare worker. Both are doing what they love without having completed a degree. You can’t do that in all fields, though, so what other examples do you have?</p>