If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?
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@Dashrender said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
Maybe what Scott's saying is that the degree doesn't matter because in reality there are no jobs to be had. So having a degree, not having a degree, really doesn't matter because there are no jobs.
THis is mostly true. Everyone on both sides of the fence complains that there are no jobs. It's just that the degreed people know that they have degrees and can't use lacking one as an excuse. So they tell us that there are "no jobs". The people without degrees get to use their lack of degrees as an excuse (and the companies often use this too) and so do so, even though they don't get turned down any more often than their degreed counterparts. It's a believable thing that we tell each other to make ourselves feel better about not getting hired.
Finding a job in IT is a major undertaking whether you are entry level with a degree, entry level without a degree, advanced with a degree or advanced without a degree. No matter what level or education you are at, finding your next IT job is normally a huge challenge that takes months and hundreds of applications, most being instantly turned down.
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@Son-of-Jor-El said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Dashrender said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
Maybe what Scott's saying is that the degree doesn't matter because in reality there are no jobs to be had. So having a degree, not having a degree, really doesn't matter because there are no jobs.
I would have to disagree with you on that. It depends on the area, obviously. Plenty in the Boston area. Hell, I've seen articles talking about a lack of candidates for IT jobs there.
They say that everywhere. But often it's huge layers of bad hiring practices and an unwillingness to pay necessary rates. Both sides have it true, companies often demand huge skill sets for low pay. But also while there are tons of IT folks out there, few have the in demand skill sets or are willing to change their skills sets to accommodate the market.
So often both are true, there are no jobs and yet there are no candidates. Because IT is a huge field and people don't hire "IT", they hire "SAP ONE Application developer with Python, five years of experience and eight years on Windows 2008."
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@FiyaFly said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Son-of-Jor-El said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Dashrender said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
Maybe what Scott's saying is that the degree doesn't matter because in reality there are no jobs to be had. So having a degree, not having a degree, really doesn't matter because there are no jobs.
I would have to disagree with you on that. It depends on the area, obviously. Plenty in the Boston area. Hell, I've seen articles talking about a lack of candidates for IT jobs there.
I actually usually see general articles conveying a lack of candidates in IT jobs overall.
Yeah, it's tough because everyone wants to act like IT is one big pool, which it is not in the least. Overall, there are way fewer IT Pros than needed, but those out there rarely have the needed skill sets.
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@FiyaFly said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@FiyaFly said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Dashrender said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
Maybe what Scott's saying is that the degree doesn't matter because in reality there are no jobs to be had. So having a degree, not having a degree, really doesn't matter because there are no jobs.
Now that I can understand, to an extent. Though, looking at Job Search sites there isn't much of a shortage...
Also, using this as a primary evidence. Go onto dice.com, indeed.com, monster.com, and search for IT jobs. Tell me how many come up as not needing a degree.
Again... useless. Everyone LISTS a degree. They list all kinds of crazy crap. Two big things that you are missing:
- 90% of the job listings on those sites aren't even for real jobs. They often have impossible requirements or senseless ones and respond to no one.
- 90% of jobs that list requiring a degree don't actually require one. That's standard boilerplate and everyone is supposed to know that they mean "or better". I know no one that lacks a degree that worries about those requirements, they "never" apply to people with the skills and experience.
These are talked about all the time. As a candidate any impression that you have of requiring a degree simply isn't true. I'm not saying that degrees are useless, I'm saying that "what you see" tells you nothing.
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@FiyaFly said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@FiyaFly said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@scottalanmiller said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
I had actually planned to have an article out about why everyone feels that lacking degrees are holding them back and why you can't determine that from that evidence. But then we had the funeral to get to. I'll have this out soon, though. It's really important to understand why lacking a degree will almost certainly make it feel that way when it is not true.
I agree it may always feel that way, regardless. However, it also seems to be true
This might be a good read on the topic- http://burning-glass.com/wp-content/uploads/Moving_the_Goalposts.pdf
In the key findings portion of that document:
In other occupations, such as entry level IT help desk
positions, the skill sets indicated in job
postings don’t include skills typically taught at the bachelor’s level, and there is little difference in skill
requirements for jobs requiring a college degree from those that do not. Yet the preference for a
bachelor’s degree has increased. This suggests that employers may be relying on a B.A. as a broad
recruitment filter that may or may not correspond to specific capabilities needed to do the job.Preference for degrees increases as out of work, low pay candidates with degrees flood the field. This happened to nursing too. Unless you are looking for entry level, zero experience jobs this doesn't apply to you. ANd again, this is ridiculously misleading. WHy....
Because even a strong preference for degreed candidates doesn't change the fact that the degreed candidates are four years, and heavy debt, behind their undegreed counterparts. Sure, someone with four years of college is favoured over someone right out of high school. But that's not the comparison. The comparison has to be against high school + four years of learning on your own and whatever experience you can gather during that time.
You are repeating horrific marketing material that should be instantly identifiable as not valid points. You are being played on emotionally,
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Instead of feeling like you are seeing lots of things pointing to the value of college, you should be thinking wow, in order to sell me college people are willing to post some ridiculous points thinking that I would not catch on. Most of those articles aren't reasonable and indicate a clear attempt to mislead or that the authors are truly clueless and that should scare you a lot about college grads that this is the best promotional stuff that they can come up with. It's overly transparent that they are willing to say anything hoping that you don't think critically about what they have said.
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@scottalanmiller said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Breffni-Potter said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
The need for a degree is due to the HR machine, would that HR machine look at the school in question and filter you out automatically?
This is something that people mention a lot and it definitely happens in the absolute lowest end jobs. But how often does it actually happen? I've never seen it in real life.
It happened to me at a widely known venue in central London. This was not a low end role, this was a technical position. CV and application was submitted into an online machine after researching it, did exactly what we dread, keyword scored it and I never heard back.
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@Breffni-Potter said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@scottalanmiller said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Breffni-Potter said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
The need for a degree is due to the HR machine, would that HR machine look at the school in question and filter you out automatically?
This is something that people mention a lot and it definitely happens in the absolute lowest end jobs. But how often does it actually happen? I've never seen it in real life.
It happened to me at a widely known venue in central London. This was not a low end role, this was a technical position. CV and application was submitted into an online machine after researching it, did exactly what we dread, keyword scored it and I never heard back.
Those things are so easy to bypass it's not even funny. That's all I'll say about it.
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@travisdh1 said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Breffni-Potter said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@scottalanmiller said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Breffni-Potter said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
The need for a degree is due to the HR machine, would that HR machine look at the school in question and filter you out automatically?
This is something that people mention a lot and it definitely happens in the absolute lowest end jobs. But how often does it actually happen? I've never seen it in real life.
It happened to me at a widely known venue in central London. This was not a low end role, this was a technical position. CV and application was submitted into an online machine after researching it, did exactly what we dread, keyword scored it and I never heard back.
Those things are so easy to bypass it's not even funny. That's all I'll say about it.
oh? do you know the magic keywords that bypass them? LOL
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@Dashrender said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@travisdh1 said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Breffni-Potter said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@scottalanmiller said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Breffni-Potter said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
The need for a degree is due to the HR machine, would that HR machine look at the school in question and filter you out automatically?
This is something that people mention a lot and it definitely happens in the absolute lowest end jobs. But how often does it actually happen? I've never seen it in real life.
It happened to me at a widely known venue in central London. This was not a low end role, this was a technical position. CV and application was submitted into an online machine after researching it, did exactly what we dread, keyword scored it and I never heard back.
Those things are so easy to bypass it's not even funny. That's all I'll say about it.
oh? do you know the magic keywords that bypass them? LOL
Just look at what they're asking for... if that doesn't get you past the front gate then they don't know wtf anyway.
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@scottalanmiller
Can you point me to some statistics on all of this? -
There aren't any - companies would have to report, and you'd have to trust that - why would they in either case?
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@Dashrender Well, here's my point. I can find studies, statistics, and reports all pointing toward a significantly high correlation in the requirement of a degree.
Unless the entire country is in on this attempt to con you into college, I have to assume at least someone would have taken time to show that this isn't the case.
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@FiyaFly said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Dashrender Well, here's my point. I can find studies, statistics, and reports all pointing toward a significantly high correlation in the requirement of a degree.
Unless the entire country is in on this attempt to con you into college, I have to assume at least someone would have taken time to show that this isn't the case.
Most people have invested crazy amounts of time and money to get that piece of paper. And let's be honest here, it really is only a piece of paper.
We've had at least one long conversation about this here already.
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@travisdh1 said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@FiyaFly said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@Dashrender Well, here's my point. I can find studies, statistics, and reports all pointing toward a significantly high correlation in the requirement of a degree.
Unless the entire country is in on this attempt to con you into college, I have to assume at least someone would have taken time to show that this isn't the case.
Most people have invested crazy amounts of time and money to get that piece of paper. And let's be honest here, it really is only a piece of paper.
We've had at least one long conversation about this here already.
Here's where it seems to get lost on what I'm saying- I absolutely agree with you. It's educational merit is, literally, nonexistent. You will not learn a single thing from college classes that you could not have learned in the real world a whole lot easier. It's ignorant and a significant ploy for money.
Problem is, we're the minority in that line of though enough to where a lot of jobs require it to be considered. We can argue 'They have no idea what they're talking about' and 'there's something seriously wrong with that company', but since this happens at a majority of companies, that makes us very, very limited in job choice. I'd love to be able to write off any company that does that. But, as I said, enough do to the point of finding it hard to be even considered by a job, let alone being able to choose which one out of a set you find most appealing.
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@FiyaFly Well, I'm going to be finding out for real here soon. I'll see how things go.
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@travisdh1 said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@FiyaFly Well, I'm going to be finding out for real here soon. I'll see how things go.
How so?
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@FiyaFly said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@travisdh1 said in If you could get a Bachelor's Degree for under $8,000 in less than a year... would you?:
@FiyaFly Well, I'm going to be finding out for real here soon. I'll see how things go.
How so?
It's been 9 years, and I know I could make significantly more money elsewhere, so job hunt time.
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TL;DR
I get the jist... . honestly you have to look first at are YOU a good student? From my personal experience I myself am not. I dislike a class room environment - drives me to utter and complete boredom faster then the Space Shuttle on Re-entry.... (burn)
There are things I want to learn, and areas I realized more then 3 decades ago that I had no interest in... Don't get me wrong, I love a good challenge,.. and look for them (I"m working on a 'borked' MS Surface right now). But I have my limits, I have what I am good at,.. sometimes even excel at. I am willing and can learn things,.. the day I stop learning is the day I am no longer part of this universe...
A University Education (paper) doesn't always get you more money,.. Being able to adapt, learn and move forward will more so than anything.
But I am also a quark... I learn differently, @scottalanmiller can show me some thing in Linux and it makes perfect sense to him and many many others,.. but I won't get it. Show me a different way and it may make perfect sense and I'll have it down.... I admire @scottalanmiller and all he knows,.. and I accept that I am not in the same league.....
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The HR blockade is not a myth. I did it myself once. I had a position open and I got a stack of resumes so thick I didn't have the time to go through them. I sent the pile back to HR and said, "Show me the ones with a 4 year degree." For a $14 /hr job it only cut the pile in half. It's sad on a bunch of levels.
With that said, there are lots of jobs out there where there is really only one person considered for the job, and it's because the employer has knowledge of the employee's skills, and the degree doesn't much matter.
If I was job hunting, I would go spear fishing in places where I wanted to work, not just applying to every add out there.
It's different if you're in your 20s. You may not have much to show a potential employer.
