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Can be legit. I once got turned down for a job because i didn’t have an mcse despite having over 20 years experience administering windows server and AD (and i’m talking laaaaaarge scale…universities and citrix farms).
That’s what happens when the people doing the hiring don’t know anything about any of the skills required for the role
They always present them as mutually exclusive, instead of related or reinforcing.
Most jobs that require degrees rarely require skills/knowledge learned in college/uni aside from sci/tech/engineering because the benefit there is that colleges have millions of dollars of instruments/equipment to fuck around with …
What I see as the value of a degree is that it’s a piece of paper that says that youre likely able to learn and play whatever game a job entails, communicate formally and effectively, be self sufficient, understand/accomplish specified goals with deadlines, and work effectively in a team.
Can someone without a degree have those skills? Totally. Does someone with a degree have all those skills? Not specifically, but they’ve likely been through the ringer for ~4 years and seen a lot of shit they had to face on their own and be accountable for it.
Can someone cheat their way through and be useless, sure, but they frequently found out…or just become managers unfortunately.
Deleted my original reply because I was just splitting hairs. I mostly agree with you, I just don’t like the framing
It’s pretty funny reading the comments because honestly I would generally agree with the meme. But I’m coming at this from the perspective of a systems administrator and when it comes to dealing with networking and security most of the people I see coming out of college with degrees don’t know a goddamn thing. Their courses are like 10 years out of date and not even remotely relevant to the real world but because they spent so much money on getting it they are very inflexible about changing how they were taught.
Meanwhile when I find somebody out on the street who just has had a passion for computers since they were like five they tend to be extremely on top of current security and networking needs and more than willing to be flexible and change how things are done when the situation calls for it.
I kinda agree, but mostly because western universities are being run like businesses first and educational institutions a distant second or third, and this is the inevitable outcome. Idk if other cultures have the same problem with their universities.
It’s more lucrative to sell degrees as status symbols and career checkboxes, than to sell education. This changes both their target market demographics, and their funding priorities.
Reminds me of what the guys in construction driving around in lifted trucks with blue lives matter and we the people stickers who’s dads got them a six figure job right out of high school in a union that is run like a white supremisist gang would say
I have only recently became aware of how shitty a lot of construction /plumbing/ electric/ etc union members are as people.
As they all promoted a giant data center in my city that will pollute and harm everyone (even them).
But they think 5 years of work on it is worth selling out their entire community and future generations for.
They spoke at our town hall meeting.
“Me me me, I want I need I deserve”.
What a bunch of tools.
I told another friend of mine about the experience, he’s a mechanic and shares my general values but he deals with a lot of those types due to his occupation.
He said that’s how they all are. They’ve always been like that.
I was surprised because I thought union people understand why there are unions.
Surely they would be against “the man”.
But they are not. And seem incredibly gullible and selfish. If they turn a profit, fuck everyone else.
To the originator of that meme, not OP: tell me you’re a boomer, without telling me you’re a boomer.
No matter what the Wall St. Journal says, social science says level of education is still the second most important determinant of quality of life. First of course is the socioeconomic status of your parents. I, personally, wouldn’t trade my master’s degree for a plumbing certificate.
I on the other hand wouldn’t trade my 7 years of software development experience for a master’s degree in the same field. I’d be unemployable in the current market.
I don’t see the post as disagreeing with you.
The graphic alone is pointing out what you are saying. Skills alone doesn’t get noticed. So you need a degree to be seen, which gets you a job, which reduces stress, which makes you happy.
But it is sad that it is true. I favor getting a degree, not for the education, but for the 4 years of experience living on ones own and having to handle life that it gives most people. It is also often an important social education. But I don’t like the idea of excluding those who don’t have a degree just because they don’t.
Should have a third, normal looking carrot with “having skills and a degree.”
Not the point but I still work at an amazon warehouse while getting my degree and people assuming it’s just like highschool seem a bit privileged/naive to me.
As someone who spent the better part of a decade in recruitment. You honestly never know what you get. So you have to take into count as many factors as you can. Education is a commitment, it means you had to go to school, study and prove your knowledge to graduate. Experience is also great, as its more proven skill. Unfortunately both have pit falls in their own ways. The example that pops to mind is i hired two people;one with alot of experience and one with alot of education. The educated one lacked critical problem solving and when a curve ball hit or something that was outside of normalcy she stumbled. The experienced one, always knee what to do on a practical level but lacked detailed workmanship, as she had done jobs so similar for so long instead of following protocol or contacting her supervisor. She would do what she thought was right and stumbled. Experience and education compliment eachother and neither should be undervalued.
Havings skills and a degree are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In my experience the degree was the gateway to gaining skills, not the method of doing so.
Also, I’d push back against the subtext that work experience gives skills. Plenty of people work a job for 10 years without having the adjacent job skills to be able to progress in that career or jump to another.
Critical thinking skills are the most important thing, and it’s possible to get a 4-year degree without actually picking them up or strengthening your skill sets in that area. But it’s also possible to work for 5 years without developing critical thinking skills, either.
In the end, no matter what you do with your time, only a small percentage of your effort is going into improving yourself. The people at work are trying to get stuff done for their employer, and the people at school are trying to get through the curriculum. It’s possible to do the work while the employer/school or even yourself cheats you out of the real long term benefits of actually learning during that time frame.
I think the degree is really more like evidence that you can get things done on your own. Parental involvement in the day to day is near zero for most people getting a degree. They also learn valuable social skills. But a degree isn’t the only way to get that. So it shouldn’t be a requirement. Yet attempting to determine if someone without a degree has that is costly and time consuming. Companies just want to take the easy path.
My wife once tried to grow potatoes and got what felt like a mile of potato greens while the slips barely grew at all.
Then she went back to her job as a lawyer and made enough money to buy a truck full of potatoes
Why didn’t she just sue the potatoes?
Maybe she’s a hesi-tater
Better than a master-tater.
Skills = Makes a better soup
Degree = Makes more green
I’ve gutted out 3 careers in “skilled labor” (a term I find problematic), each time working from the bottom entry level guy, to the guy in charge. In all three I’ve worked side by side with people who actually got degrees in that field.
I have also regretted not getting a degree for my entire adult life.
My buddy is an accomplished self taught violin maker. He won an award and was talking to another renowned violin maker who asked him where he was taught. He was slightly embarrassed to say he was self taught but she was quite impressed and said “Ahh! The slow way!”
Holy shit, that’s probably the job I would expect for there to be the fewest self-taught people. It’s such an unbelievably precise job, your friend must be unbelievably skilled.
It’s never too late to get one. I had classes with a 90 year old woman who was getting hers.
My dad got an art degree by taking one course per semester for years. He loved it. Got his degree last year. Retires this year.
Did she have an extra $90k lying around, or are her children going to be paying off that debt?
That’s not how estates work.
Community college is insanely affordable where I live, like $600/semester for a full class load before financial aid. Lots of textbook free classes too that use open source books. And colleges have financial aid offices with people whose only job is to figure out what aid you qualify for.
There’s a lot of help to go back to college, you just need to ask for it.
Experience matters a lot in practice, but having a degree gives you opportunity to learn fundamentals and to have a broader knowledge base in general. Met a few people without formal education with insane knowledge and skills but absolutely helpless outside of their area of expertise.
would be nice if it worked like that.
On my team of sysadmins, the best ones never had any formal education haha.The guys that are wizard tier Unix admins only have high school
On the flip side, I’m a former sysadmin and I only stick around for 5 years because I had the educational credentials to move onto another field (and then another field). I’m glad I did the IT thing in my 20’s, and still like to tinker with homelab stuff 20 years later, but in the end it was a stepping stone towards something else (that does require formal schooling). The degree is a tool that can be used to control on a few more things in your life, in the hopes that you can go where you want to end up.
