I see so many people pursuing college degrees for things they are more than capable of learning without tens of thousands of dollars of debt so I pass the question onto you. Overall, is college worth it in 2020?
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Is Higher Education Worth It?
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A massive amount of millionaires, billionaires, successful people you name - have done it without finishing college. Would I recommend ATLEAST getting an associates? Yes, of course! That way you have some experience and can show that to an employer. You can substitute a 4 years bachelors with your skills.
I haven't received my bachelors, and I managed to bypass that for a Cyber Security Analyst position here where I live. It's about networking and putting in the work. If you can't do that, you're going to be in a sh*t hole for the rest of your life...
I feel that, I think that while it's not necessary, if you're not willing to put the work in to compensate then you're gonna be in a really rough situation
yeah, that tends to be what I'm seeing in a lot of fields. Although I guess I may not be factoring in the whole "college experience" though
While much of what higher education teaches you, you can learn on your own, you can't entirely replace it. For instance, you can't have a critical discussion with yourself, or a seminar with yourself, or be exposed to others' ideas and interpretations of a text, experiment, anything on your own. Higher education isn't just about information, in fact information is the least of it. Higher education is primarily about the process of learning to think critically, learning how to approach others' viewpoints and reconcile those with your own, and otherwise perform in a group environment. Most people, once they get to the real world, will need to work with others to a greater or lesser extent. In short, higher education is about learning how to learn.
There's also a great value placed by employers on higher education. Two candidates might be entirely equal, but an employer won't know that because a resume cannot capture everything there is to know someone, not even everything relevant for the job at hand. An interview also cannot do this, no matter how long. I have interviewed candidates for hours at a time, with repeated callbacks over the span of months, seeing them in all sorts of settings. You simply cannot see everything you need to. But if someone had a very high GPA from Harvard Law School, and someone else had a middling GPA from a law school you haven't heard of before, no matter how strong the second candidate is you probably won't even be making a comparison between the two even if your gut tells you they are in fact equal. Hundreds of years have told employers to pick the former candidate, and quite a bit of money is riding on that.
Now when you get about 15 years out, even 10, people look much less at where you went to school and much, much more at what you've done in the time since. But in the first instance, employers really only have schooling to base it on. Employers are not dumb and they know full well it is only a measuring stick, and that plenty of supremely gifted candidates fall through the cracks that way. Some of the most intelligent and capable people I have ever known did not graduate from college. But they have struggled a good bit more than they needed to in life, people that I have known, since I was a child, outclassed me in every way.
For many occupations, higher education is also necessary accreditation. You cannot be a doctor without going to medical school. You cannot be a lawyer without going to law school. You cannot be a dentist without going to pain infliction school. In most places you cannot be a teacher without a certain, variable degrees. This is partly to ensure a certain standard of care - because these are professions where if someone gets it wrong, the consequences are quite severe, quite irreversible, and stay with the injured person for the rest of their life - but also partly because there are certain resources available in a group education that simply are not available in an individual basis (for instance, someone studying to become a doctor, on their own, without the backing of a school, is unlikely to come into a sufficient and steady supply of fresh corpses ... one hopes).
I hear you. Some of the things I have learned that have most expanded my mind, academically, have been outside of school. And there are plenty of millionaires and a handful of billionaires who never went to school (I have known some). But I would keep in mind that these are either (1) the exception or (2) they inherited their money. Most of us will not be so lucky.
It is an investment, but I believe it is a worthwhile one for the great majority of people.
The biggest drawback of education in general but more importantly higher education is that it is 100% a scam, a money sucker that will waste your time for the simple reason of not offering you what's promised, or just categorizing you against the rest of the world without taking into account how unique you are, or how different you work than what's standard.
I would 100% agree with you if you were right, but you are not. Higher education isn't about any of these things, and to be honest, it shouldn't. By the time someone enrolls into a university or college they are at the very least already 18-19 years old. If you expect higher education to teach you how to learn at this age, you will be very disappointed. I would agree higher education should teach you how to co-operate but again, it doesn't do that. And it's also already too late to be taught how to “play nice with others” by that age. Higher education is strictly about information, specifically, information related to very few subjects all revolved around what you want to do, and sometimes a bit of a hands-on experience. I would argue the hands-on experience is about the only thing higher education does right.
As it currently stands, higher education has two purposes.
- Teach you everything it can related to what you want to do. (AKA show you as much information as possible)
- Give you a taste of what's like having a job related to what you want to do.
Higher education does nothing else since, you are expected to already know everything else from previous years.
Moreover the only thing you get after you are done with college/university, is a piece of paper that unfortunately still matters more than who you are or what you are capable of doing. With trying to generalize and standardize people, you forget that everyone is different. Don't get me wrong but a certificate, degree, GPA or whatever you want to call it, proves absolutely nothing, it certainly doesn't prove how smart or capable you are.
Why should it be used to prove who's the best candidate for a job?
Is it necessary to get a job? Unfortunately in a lot of jobs it still is.
Does that mean a lot more capable people that didn't have the option or just simply didn't want to waste money on higher education, get left out or even shamed upon? Yes.
Why should someone with the money and privilege go to a more renown university/college and steal a job position from someone else who's more capable but less fortunate than them?
Why should someone with any kind of disability, disorder or syndrome should be categorized alongside those with neither of them.
Why should I, with ADHD and depression that makes it really hard to focus at anything for long periods of time or worse, be forced to compete with someone who's totally healthy, only for me to end up in the gutter because some employer decided that the other guy with higher GPA, simply because he doesn't struggle with focusing on his studies or can even get a bit lucky and pay someone to help him (yes, that's a thing and the vast majority of students do it) is better in every way than me.
Why should the kid, who's family has virtually no income and can't get him to a university or college, be forced to never have a chance to do something more with his life and instead be stuck working an entry level job for spares?
And yes, some jobs require you to be explicitly taught etc. but I don't count those as part of the problem. The problem is what education is expected to do and what it actually does. I don't know about you or anyone else here but I simply can't understand how a paper or a number is supposed to tell me who's better.
To answer the original question, No higher education is not worth it, it will never be worth it unless the system decides to change itself.
Higher education is just another way to discriminate people.While you raise very good points -- I happen to disagree but they are good points nonetheless -- there is something I'd want to respond to.
You imply quite strongly that higher education is necessarily contingent on income and health, and so bars lower income and the disabled. Being disabled and having grown up poor enough to have been homeless for a time (only for 7 weeks but only person I know in my occupation who's had that experience), I was still able to get the education I wanted. It meant while I was getting it, I was in significantly more physical pain, I had to stay up much later and wake up much earlier because of my learning issues, and because of my financial circumstances, it meant that I left school with a mountain of debt (which largely dictated which jobs I could seek). But I knew all of that would be the case going in, and I'm quite happy I made the choices I did.
I certainly don't think everyone's experiences would be like mine, nor maybe even should be like mine. But I know mine helped me an extraordinary amount.
That's one of the two points, I tried to get across is, I realized, I didn't elaborate much on the other most likely because I wrote the post late at night. The other point I am trying to get across is the fact that higher education relies on a broken system, without making any efforts to at least alleviate that system's effect. Instead, it amplifies them. I'll go by example here, as I'm still in enrolled in a university. During my first year, we had a math class, which required, no demanded (I don't remember the bbcode for strike-through) knowledge that you should have been taught during the previous years. No biggie right? Tell that to half the class that was never taught that knowledge, simply because their teachers couldn't be arsed or didn't have the time to teach that to them. A lot of them either had to resolve to pay extra for classes in order to be taught that knowledge, so they can pass the class, or be damned to fail. Our Uni's teacher had literally no time to go over the amount of knowledge that half the class was missing and also work forward teaching them new things, it just wasn't feasible. As a result, if you lacked that knowledge, you either had to pay extra or pray you wouldn't fail, the majority failed and that affects them greatly.
As for my previous point, you may not agree to it, but it doesn't make it any less truthful. There are exceptions to everything, including my example above obviously, but it doesn't make it any less true. In the vast majority of "developed" countries (quotes there because we all know how a developed country's elections turned into a circus not so long ago... lol) you have to pay for higher education, and you have to pay even more to get into a "good" university/college. You are also forced to deal with going through at the pace someone else sets for you, pay extra to acquire knowledge because someone from the past didn't teach you, etc... Higher education is all about how much are you willing to spend to get a reputation, and after that you can basically fuck off. It's also true there are a lot of teachers out there who are trying to do more, help more and better the system, only to get sidelined or let off. The system is broken, it doesn't work and it's a scam. It doesn't take into account anything, it doesn't take into account how unique people are from each other, it doesn't take into account how different circumstances are. You fought through the system only to come out with a piece of paper dictating how "good" or "bad" you are and a huge amount of debt. If you think that's how things should be, you are wrong and possibly naive.
Finishing a university or a college is meant to be a fresh start into this world. We are subjected to a debt, most of the time we are incapable of paying off, literally as we are starting our lives. The end result is the same as with having higher education or not, the difference is that now out of nowhere you owe a huge amount of debt to a broken system.
And it's quite baffling to see people pursue higher education for the knowledge or just because a paper is supposed to make life easier, in an age where all knowledge is easily and readily available to you by the plenty. You just require critical thought to be able to find credible sources and filter out every piece of misinformation. And let's be honest, no school or university or college will teach you how to critically think, despite the fact that it's their primary purpose. You are not losing anything by skipping higher education.
Another point I can raise. A lot of people including my family and some of my friends say that having a degree or a number represent you, is the only way or rather the most important way to have access to more jobs opportunities, making it seem like it's the solution. It's part of the problem, not the solution. And I also say to you that whichever employer relies on a piece of paper or a number to show him how good of an employee someone is/can be, is stuck in an outdated era that is starting faze out for the better. In the recent years, there have been plenty of companies, organizations, businesses, etc. that have ditched that approach (relying on a degree, GPA, etc. to screen the candidates) either fully or to an extent, because they have realized its truly catastrophic nature, and how it fails to do what it's supposed to do. A lot more employers rely on methods specific to their company/ies that outmatch what a degree is supposed to do in every way. An employer that relies on outdated, outsourced and overall bad methods to evaluate his employees, means that they either don't give an absolute fuck about those they employ or at the very least are so indifferent to them that he doesn't care who he gets so long as they carry a reputation with them, and honestly, I wouldn't want to work for such an employer. However, an employer that actually tests me on my capabilities and on what the job and the employer himself asks of me in order to evaluate me, that's an employer who know what he wants.Last edited:I should apologize at the outset because while I said I disagreed, I didn't clarify to say precisely what I disagreed with, and while I said you raised good points, I didn't say in what ways I agreed with you. As anyone who knows me from NGU knows, I'm painfully long-winded, particularly when I am enjoying a discussion (which is most of the time), and I didn't want to derail the thread and thus stifle the chance for anyone else to contribute.
So let me say, hopefully a bit more clearly, exactly how I agree with you, and also state again why I think higher education is worth it, because I think we're closer to each other than you might think.
I absolutely agree with you that the system is broken. I absolutely agree with you that it has become rigged, either intentionally or because educational institutions have become engaged in a "race to the top" in which tuition must soar and the second someone raises their rates the rest much match or be deemed inferior, meanwhile actual services provided to students keep droppings particularly compared to what is charged. I absolutely agree with you that the net effect is to prove a societal block, keeping people in debt if they need to pay for it themselves, while those in the upper strata of society, rather than starting out their lives riddled with debt, can pursue not just any option that would be naturally open to them, but a much greater array of options because they also have all of the economic opportunities that have been effectively denied to their less privileges peers (here is what I mean: If me and an equally-qualified candidate were to seek the same clerkship with the same judge out of law school, but that other candidate was not riddled with debt, that other candidate would be twice as likely to get the clerkship, since I would in no way be able to even apply for a clerkship, since I would default on my loans on a clerk's salary, despite it being one of the most important things a first-year lawyer can do to build up their resume).
And no, I absolutely do not think the system should be that way. Not at all. This has been one of my biggest complaints since I entered "real life," and yet my current peers have absolutely no idea what I mean, because they come from an entirely different world. And to repeat a point I have attempted to make throughout my life, including earlier in this thread: Some of the most capable and intelligent people I have known, they have been entirely barred from opportunity because of the sorts of intangibles you raise, such as pieces of paper and numbers.
Plenty of your other points resonate with me to a greater or lesser extent because I really don't think we are that far off.
I think we have made the same realizations, but have just made different conclusions about what to do about it. The game is rigged. But the OP asks whether higher education is worth it, and my answer is yes. Despite every single problem we have named, I strongly believe it is the best, safest and most efficient path to success that we have in our society, unless one is very gifted in ways that obviate the need for higher education, such as an artist or athlete. Is it the only way? No. Do I think it's perfect? Absolutely not. Like you, it frustrates me endlessly. I have children, and as much as I wanted a good life for myself, that pales in comparison to my desire for them to be happy, so this is not a minor issue for me. They will be working harder than I did, for less than I did, to get the same piece of paper.
I do believe there are other benefits, strong benefits, that you gain from learning in a group environment, but I touched on them above and you disagreed with them above, which is of course fine. I'm only raising them again to point out that I'm not dropping them, only making clear that I am in no way saying our system is an ideal one.
For your points on employers starting to forego the needs for degrees, I can't comment for two reasons: (1) I haven't worked in almost a decade and I'm sure quite a bit has changed and (2) that would not and could not happen in my profession because it would be prohibited by law. So it's just something I would not know anything about.
EDIT: By the way, I am not at all trying to get you to agree with me. I'm only attempting to clarify my points above, or at least let you see where I am coming from.
Hey, I'm as stubborn as a mule lmao but ngl I've enjoyed our back and forth here, that's why we made this section
Hey, I'm as stubborn as a mule lmao but ngl I've enjoyed our back and forth here, that's why we made this section
I just wanted to share while I don't personally have much to add to either side I have really enjoyed the back and forth on here and it has definitely provided several valid points and perspectives
Depends on what you're going for I guess... The wife and I have no college degree yet make roughly $400,000+ a year and have no student debt hanging over my head... But you might go to college and then in one year make 3x the amount it cost to get your degree.
First of all college itself cost a lot of money, people from my country now can access this easily. The choice vary from private university to public university. After that the second thing comes into consideration that college open job opportunity or at least connection for some people like me. The last thing is if you come from third world country like me its better to do so, and questions later.RageSoul51
Skilled Gamer
In my country a year of college varies between $500-1800, so it's pretty cheap, depending on what area do you want to study. I am on my second college, the first one was my Law degree, that didn't help really much, because without a large sum of money, you can't get a job. Currently studying Horticulture, because it's my hobby, I like grafting new varieties of fruit trees, propagating trees, etc. It's certainly not a mainstream area/job, but if you are good at it, you can do a university, to help you learn new things and to have a degree in that field.
Don't go to a college/university only to have a diploma, it doesn't really help you get a job, certainly not in my country.I flip-flop a lot on how to answer that question. I enjoy the pursuit of knowledge. I had a good time at university. Made good friends. I would be a different person today had I not gone. It probably did change my life for the better.
However, I am working in a field with nothing to do with the subject I graduated in. I don't see myself making use of it anytime soon. I have a lot of student debt. The UK government has decided to increase the interest rate to something stupid like 7 or 12%. Furthermore, they've increased the duration of payments from 30 to 40 years. When I earn a certain amount I will be paying 9% of my income on student loans that I will never pay off.
I don't regret it, but I wouldn't hype up university to others nowadays.
blackmustang58
Skilled Gamer
That's depends and if your interested career position require college degree, so you can go to community college first and it is cheaper than state university, also you must have internship or find part time job to increase your work experience , otherwise most companies refuse to hire you or put on low end position, even with college degrees.
If you have generous scholarship to cover most or all of university, so you can go university to start a freshmen. Study hard and party less if you want to be successful.
Beware of student loans and they can put you at endless debt but in the US, fortunately, federal loans have income based repayment if you cannot pay huge payment and it will be discharged after 20 years as long as you pay on time. They have cap on loans and may not cover on expensive university.
Higher education is very huge decision that you have to make, so depends on your future goal. If you want to be IT specialist, consider to get certification if you have extensive experience with IT and some jobs can hire you without college education. There are programmers without went to college and you can learn on your own.
If you want to work for federal government - they require college degree for most positions, even if you have a lot of experience, so exception would be political appointees and they are at risk for dismissal when president admin changes, but it can be converted to full time civil job.
