The 4 Year College Degree: Unaffordable And Still Required?

There is more than one way to achieve the education required for many “professional” jobs. What do we tell the impoverished child of deadbeat parents who must begin working immediately at adulthood? Not every child will be lucky enough to receive a full scholarship or grant and still be able to provide for themselves unless they also work full time. Many of these young people are in survival mode. Are we to tell them that a trade school or community college education along with years of paying their dues with progressing on-the-job experience is not enough to succeed?

Couldn’t a young person find an entry level path into a career and gain the real life, practical skills and experience necessary to head into management? What about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Richard Branson who had none or just some college education? Would a hiring manager turn them away?

I agree with Manager — the path to all professions doesn’t have to be a four-year degree right after high school then a job. IMO there’s a lot to be said about getting a lesser degree, gaining some experience, and then going back for more education. These folks bring a different perspective to their education and have the advantage of being able to directly apply what they learn as they are learning it vs having to wait until they have an internship or job to use it.

Case in point is someone I know who started out his career in fabrication. Over time, he grew dissatisfied with that role and knew that he wanted to achieve more. One of the benefits of his employer was tuition reimbursement. He was approved, and started an associate’s program in Supervisory Management. Partway through the program, he was promoted to a Production Supervisor role. He completed his degree, and a few years later, went back for his BS in Management. Because of the agreement between the technical schools and the state university system, roughly half of his program was considered completed due to previous education and experience. What was left to complete was paid for by his employer.

When comparing two job seekers, who do you think will look more impressive — the one who is fresh out of college with a couple internships under his belt, or someone who has years of hands-on experience coupled with a degree?

Tim, I remember the first time I was myself a hiring manager. Two colleagues and I were hiring for entry-level staff & had several positions to fill. Our manager advised us to hire not just someone who could do the job but would also be promote-able.

It was never stated that such a candidate had to have a 4 year undergrad degree. I assumed it, as did my colleagues. But the truth is that none of the duties required a college diploma. We adopted that criteria silently and without discussion, as a means of weeding out candidates and getting a manageable number, but it was a false criteria that had no bearing whatsoever on ability to contribute or indeed, promote-ability.

That perception was wrong then, and is increasingly so now, because it’s becoming more clear that we’re moving towards plutocracy as a candidate evaluation process.

My belief is we’ll see associates degrees with employer-aided bachelor’s degrees in holders of entry-level positions as the norm.

I look at this in two phases: Right now and Later.

Right now a 4-year degree, or lack of one, is being used as a limiting factor for filling an open position. I was there, unemployed, without a degree trying to get doors to open. Needless to say, quite often they remained tightly closed. Once I got a job I made a commitment to myself to complete my degree (I already had 2+ years of college right out of high school, but that was 20 years ago) so that this would not happen to me again. For today’s workplace the 4-year degree is pretty much a requirement, at least until the economy improves.

Later (sometime in the future), I think things will change. I’ve read that people will end up being more like consultants to a company rather than employees, with “jobs” lasting 12 to 18 months on average; this will be the new normal for the business world. I’ve also heard that there will be a giant labor shortage as Baby Boomers retire because there are fewer Gen-X and Millenials to backfill those positions. If these predictions come true then a 4-year degree becomes a non-issue; companies will be looking for someone to fill a role for a short while with no lasting commitment to the employee. Why would a company invest in an employee’s education if they will be gone in less than a year?

When I began my career in IT in 1989 a college degree was optional; even IT management often didn’t have degrees because they worked their way up the ranks. But how can you adequately plan for a 45 or 50 year career? Look at how much the economy has swung in the last 20 years, and if historical economic cycles are any indication it will continue to swing back and forth for the next 25 years of my career. I worry for kids graduating high school because the next few years will be so rocky, but before long the argument will swing the opposite way dissuading kids from going to college.

My opinion is that a 4-year degree is never a bad thing. Yes, it’s expensive, but there are ways to mitigate that expense. As some have stated, doing it over time is one way. Another way might be attending a less-prestigious, and less expensive, school. Unless you want to work in top management for a Fortune 100 company, a Cal State degree will get you just as far as a USC degree at a much lower cost. I believe education is a place that we need to be more pragmatic to prevent our own (or our children’s) bankruptcies.

The irony is that many employers just breeze over the degree (as in: “did you graduate, yes or no?”) then continue plowing through the candidate’s experience with a fine-toothed comb. The fact that the person spent so much time trying to achieve a high GPA and earn academic honors doesn’t even register, and in fact, is seen as more of a passing fancy versus a statement of serious achievement.

The real issue, though, is that we need to reshape the national dialogue about what constitutes job readiness. Ask many employers, and they say a degree is great and can make a difference, but they really want to know what the candidate can DO.

As a former state school to career director, I have seen first-hand the advantages and successes of industry-generated curriculum implemented in high schools that have provided new workers with both hard and soft skills… I don’t think every student is cut out for post-secondary school, so it is going to require a meeting of the minds to connect education directly to human resource managers to define the valuable skill sets – we still need to give students the building blocks to encourage critical thinking, but once a career path is defined, we need to give the students all the tools available that are going to be relevant to employers so it becomes a win-win situation, instead of the sad state of affairs that it is today.