• University degrees ‘irrelevant’ to big employers
    107 replies, posted
[QUOTE=DaMastez;49595662]This is the problem with higher education in my (limited) experience; people can not have a clue and yet somehow not be kicked out of the program or forced to retake the class until they get it (or give up). It devalues degrees in general because it means a degree isn't a statement of "this person has a fundamental understanding of concepts and real world applications in X", rather "this person paid us some money, sat through some classes, and we gave them a piece of paper because they tried".[/QUOTE] Universities will kick out people who consistently fail courses, after first sitting down with the student and trying to work shit out. It's one of the conditions of study at my university, would be the same for many other places. Someone who has been awarded with an undergrad degree will know broadly more in the area of study than the average person. It's not on its own merit a qualification which says 'this person knows all of their shit'. That kind of stuff is left for postgrad degrees.
This is why I picked a more specialised course over something general like computer science. Graduates of my course are usually picked up fairly quickly by tech companies, though obviously like any course those with more experience are preferred.
My degree put me slightly ahead of other applicants for my IT job, but I believe it's not always the degree in itself that is considered to be the qualifying point. Few recruiters know what each degree entails, so generally they'd be interested in what you actually learned (I.E what knowledge the courses left you with) and how you performed the work (were you typically a group leader, a coding whiz, a designer?). Another important thing to consider is that getting a job nowadays is harder regardless of your background, so naturally this will impact the value of a degree. Also, experience still always trumps education, so with fewer positions available it's obvious that these would primarily go to those with experience.
I've been working full time along with studying a degree as a huge amount of professional jobs say a degree is mandatory even if completed unrelated to the job role. Maybe its different in the US but here in the UK it seems they are still relevant.
[QUOTE=Scot;49596018]This is why I picked a more specialised course over something general like computer science. Graduates of my course are usually picked up fairly quickly by tech companies, though obviously like any course those with more experience are preferred.[/QUOTE] That's why i did a year in industry and worked over a couple of summers. Every job i've looked at needs a CS degree.
This isn't quite true if you're going into the Hard Sciences (Pure Physics, Chemistry, Biology) etc. I'm an Ecologist and whilst my volunteering in my last couple of years of Undergrad and my MSc helped, my degree and experience from it (My theses especially) were really important in getting the jobs I've had, too. That and networking, it does help to get to know some of your professors etc, because they often have something that you can work on with them after graduating.
I spent 6 months looking for a job after ending my studies and the ONLY reason I got one was because I had done some finals in a work-school environment that involved taking apart a screen and finding out what was wrong with it. NOBODY cared about my studies, that piece of paper or the amount of theory I knew. It was finding a broken inverter and a crack in a glass back plate that was interesting enough to hire me, as I found out afterwards. It's fucking insane how the world works when it comes to high-end studies.
Studying a BA in History and struggling to get an internship under my belt because I'm not qualified enough for unpaid work experience apparently. :v: I feel as though I'm pretty fucked for the future. I study at a top-class institution but if the fact that people don't even want me for work experience is anything to go by, I may as well get myself down to the job centre or hand out CVs at Mcdonald's as soon as I graduate.
Going to some program in Mississippi for my next shore command. Currently doing some online studies for a misc associates while trying to figure out what I want to study. But I am really hoping I can get some connections on shore duty.
Here's my thing - a lot of people can get all up in arms about college being a waste of time, but if you don't care about your career enough to figure out what you really need in order to get there, perhaps college isn't the problem. Taking college isn't necessarily detrimental unless you think college is the end all be all, and not taking college isn't necessarily detrimental if you do your research and figure out what you need to do anyway. The reason why I say this is because a lot of people have taken the issue of the social pressures to take college as a blank check to straight up complain about their college experience and go even as far as to say "college is useless". It's a means to blame everyone but themselves. I'm not suggesting that anyone in this thread is doing this, but I have seen this complaint on Facepunch before, and I've heard it before in real life.
I have a friend who wants to go into medicine, but she's stuck doing biomedicine because she got rejected by the universities. The problem here is that she has so much experience with medicine; she's done a lot of medicine internships over the breaks for about 3 years but that's still not enough experience according to them, and the only people who really get into medicine are the children of people who do medicine.
Well yeah, this makes sense Who would you rather employ: Intelligent 24 year old who has a list of degrees, with no experience. Intelligent 24 year old who has a list of experience with thousands of hours of work.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;49593715]It's always amused me when college students don't do any studying on their own downtime for their field or degree. I've met dozens of history students that never read a single history book outside a class requirement. How the fuck do they think they'll get ahead in the world is beyond me.[/QUOTE] How is this even possible? They should have to read something outside of course materials at the very least to do their papers. If their professors aren't making them do that they're bad professors IMO. Any history professor I've had would literally rip my head off if I tried to write a paper using class materials, except the one I have this semester who assigned a paper topic and expects you only to use course materials for it, but she's American and all my other history professors are Canadian so maybe they do things differently down there. [editline]24th January 2016[/editline] Also as a history major I'm fully aware my degree won't get me a job. I'm probably going to get certified to teach English as a foreign language and then go do that in some foreign country for a few years, then come back to Canada and go back to university for a master's degree at the very least.
[QUOTE=Antdawg;49595848]Someone who has been awarded with an undergrad degree will know broadly more in the area of study than the average person. It's not on its own merit a qualification which says 'this person knows all of their shit'. That kind of stuff is left for postgrad degrees.[/QUOTE] This is mostly why I went on to do an MComp after starting my BSc Software Engineering (at my uni this is just the comp sci degree with one or two mandatory project management modules, I followed the module plan despite not having to after changing course). The requirements for the MComp meant I had to keep a good grade through the BSc, and the pass boundary for the MComp modules and projects was set much higher. I [I]had[/I] to know my shit to a decent extent to pass that. Having that one extra year of study seems to have given me much more flexibility in what jobs are offered to me (mostly through agencies, eughh). And it gave me time to do a internship with help from the uni itself. Having a degree a bit more impressive than a simple BSc/Ba/etc. can help quite a bit. It proves your competence and fair bit more than a Bachelors that you can basically sleep through. [editline]24th January 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Ishwoo;49596290]I've been working full time along with studying a degree as a huge amount of professional jobs say a degree is mandatory even if completed unrelated to the job role. Maybe its different in the US but here in the UK it seems they are still relevant.[/QUOTE] Having some sort of degree can work as evidence you aren't a total fuckup. You managed to hand shit in on time and do well enough to get a degree. A lot of the required degrees are also II-2 or higher, so you can't just coast along on the easiest marks possible.
College is a scam. They sell you on the idea that college is 24/7 parties throwing Frisbee on the quad, crushing pussy, and all that jazz. Turns out its not, because the "college experience" was something they made up to try to get everybody to go to college. Then, because you spent none of your time thinking for yourself in highschool, you have no idea what you wanna study, so you decide to choose a generic option like business or paychology. Then you graduate with a 50k degree which nobody wants because as it turns out, employers won't just hire you because you have a degree like all the baby boomers told you would happen.
I don't blame them to be honest. I often wonder how the hell many of the guys at my uni are going to survive afterwards - regardless of their grades. They really do shock me with the lack of knowledge they seem to have about the world, and their lack of skills. The best way to look at a degree is something that can support you, but does not make you. A lot of people see a degree as their identity, their sole reason for being able to get this job or that, but it's not in many cases. Employers are better off testing people with personality/pyschological tests, skills tests and so on.
I decided to go to Uni for the experience and not the certificate at the end. Nearly all jobs here require "At least 1 years experience in X" and Uni is a way into a work for a year if it is part of your course. But it's also fantastic for building contacts and friends in the same field which is also very crucial for loads of industries. The degree might not help, but that doesn't mean to say University doesn't.
I hope my internship during Cegep and University helps a lot then.
The only thing really that is worth doing university/college for is if you need a degree for a specific job. Of course first you have to figure out what that is.
[QUOTE=wauterboi;49596803]Here's my thing - a lot of people can get all up in arms about college being a waste of time, but if you don't care about your career enough to figure out what you really need in order to get there, perhaps college isn't the problem. Taking college isn't necessarily detrimental unless you think college is the end all be all, and not taking college isn't necessarily detrimental if you do your research and figure out what you need to do anyway. The reason why I say this is because a lot of people have taken the issue of the social pressures to take college as a blank check to straight up complain about their college experience and go even as far as to say "college is useless". It's a means to blame everyone but themselves. I'm not suggesting that anyone in this thread is doing this, but I have seen this complaint on Facepunch before, and I've heard it before in real life.[/QUOTE] Yeah, this is something I find so annoying about some students. People that go to university just to avoid living in the real world for another 4 years who act like they're burdened by the universal injustice against them that is college. It's like, if you really don't like college, don't go? Save your (parents) money, and save me the effort of carrying you through a group project.
[QUOTE=PieClock;49598219]I decided to go to Uni for the experience and not the certificate at the end. Nearly all jobs here require "At least 1 years experience in X" and Uni is a way into a work for a year if it is part of your course. But it's also fantastic for building contacts and friends in the same field which is also very crucial for loads of industries. The degree might not help, but that doesn't mean to say University doesn't.[/QUOTE] I always tell people that they should only go to college if they know what they want to study and what they want to be when they graduate. I tell them not to go for the experience at all. If college weren't several tens of thousands of dollars, then it'd be fine to go for the experience, but when you're spending a shitload of money on something, you should get some return for the investment. In the US, college has become 100% about getting a job, so you shouldn't have any illusions otherwise.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49593918]yeah but engineering isn't the whole world there's tons of other job fields saying work ethic and what not can only be learned through school is blatantly false. I didn't need that to learn how to learn, how to "not crack" under pressure. That's from life actually.[/QUOTE] he never said any of those things so this post is worthless. [editline]24th January 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Swilly;49595379]Meanwhile we need people like butchers and plumbers in the US.[/QUOTE] This is exactly why I'm probably going to wind up ditching my associate's degree and go into trade school.
Go to a school with co-op. A lot of companies love students from my school for that.
[QUOTE=Amiga OS;49593599]I landed my first job because I had been programming as a hobby for 4 years beforehand, I was able to waltz through their take-home assignment and show past work. I don't know if its just comp-sci students, but they tend to scrape and drift through their course, we have taken on students during their gap year, and they really do have a surprising lack of basic knowledge and practically no hands on experience.[/QUOTE] That's because a computer science degree doesn't teach how to program. It gives a nice foundation to learn programming. Programming is essentially applied CS theory.
There are certain jobs you can't do without a degree, and even then, people with a degree flat out get paid more on average, so it may be irrelevant for employers, but not for employees
[QUOTE=nerdster409;49593636][B]Fuck[/B] So how am I supposed to get a job after four years of college if college is the only experience I've ever had with what I'm studying?[/QUOTE] Go get an internship. Or two. Or more. That's how I got a job. Good advice for literally anyone in college. Internships give some experience in the real world and typically work as college credit.
Started uni (informatics, free - thanks new laws) in September, finished one semester, took part in a few programming competitions. Now considering quitting since even though the non academic part of the uni experience has been amazing, the course content is absolutely boring. I've already got 3 job offers, a few industry contacts and some new friends. Accepting the best of the job offers now, interview this upcoming week. Their CEO told me face to face that they don't really care about degrees. They know exactly how useless some of the grads can be.
I'd love to do something in comp sci but I've never been someone to sit in one spot in a classroom and networking is beyond my grasp since I'm not a people person. Skilled labor will most likely be my future, I hope. The internet and how it connects all of us with our computers has fascinated me since I was a child but of course as we get older we have to get realistic about our places in life. That and I wouldn't know where to start learning on my own. Plumbing is easy; shit flows down hill. In Comp Sci I feel like I have to go back to the very start of it's history and understand the very being of computers to learn how to program or understand how servers work.
College dropout here, I was originally majoring in anthropology, then switched to comp sci because it "made more money." I dropped out not long after because I was unhappy and was going through some mental and physical health issues. People are telling me to go back to school and figure out what to do with my life, I dunno what it is I wanna do yet. I sure as shit don't wanna end up in loads of debt. What are my options?
You gotta have some kind of direction IMO. Only you know what you want to do with your life. I dont think just simply going to school and hoping everything will fall into place is necessarily a good idea.
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