spurgeonryan said:
How do you think I have so many posts? I sat and did resumes daily for years after coming to Illinois. Went to interviews, etc. At that time it was all about experience. I had none. Degrees did not seem to matter a few years ago. Now people are desperate for workers, but I do not think I want to leave Walmart now. I am in upper management , only took a few years to do, so who knows what else is in store here.
I personally did not need a degree to get 60 thousand plus a year now. Not great, but better than what I made in the military. |
Well, the market shifts over time. Usually it cycles. You'll have a period where degrees are very desirable and the "old men" are being denied. Then you will have a period where degrees are meaningful. This actually ties into a lot of cycles that businesses go through with restructuring plus economic trends. For example, when companies get bloated, they eventually are compelled to get lean. And that usually means middle management is going to lose their jobs as they seek to "empower their employees." When an industry has this happen, they don't want to hire people with middle management type creds cause, they don't want 1) to pay them middle manager money and 2) they are currently reducing, not growing, middle management. In such a climate, they will indeed want people with degrees, cause they want their general employees to be more capable rather than just mindless drones. But then eventually, a company may grow and expand and outgrow their stripped down middle management structure and once again need people with a lot of experience.
And then also playing into this is the fact that whenever degrees become desirable, people rush out to get business degrees in droves, often with no regard whatsoever for whether they got a good business degree from a respected university or colege and without actually putting in the effort to get the best out of their education. It's the learning that is always valuable, not the piece of paper you get on the stage. As a result, having a degree becomes less impactful and they become more picky about where you got the degree and want you to prove to them in interviews that you actually did some learning and can show them how your education - not the piece of paper you got on stage - will work for them.
Basically, these things change often. The learning is where the timeless value is, not the degree itself. Unless you are going into law, medical, financial, and certain technology fields, where they are required.
