Degrees are practically worthless, until we adopt a different mindset.
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If you’re getting your degree, stop now.
Your degree is practically worthless. Many of us live in an economy that doesn’t care about your degree. Fewer and fewer of my friends are getting hired because of their college diploma, and there’s really no sign of that trend ending soon.
There are major exceptions, of course.
Personally, I’d prefer if my surgeon graduated from medical school. The same goes for my dentist, lawyer, and most other professionals I work with on a regular basis in my personal and business life.
My graduation day was beautiful.
The auditorium was packed with family and friends at my small liberal arts college in Illinois.
One of my closest friends was charged to give the commencement speech. Julie had worked on this speech for weeks, sacrificing the few remaining nights of her undergraduate career to craft the perfect message for her fellow classmates.
Commencement speeches don’t normally receive standing ovations, but hers did. She nailed it.
After thanking her audience and hugging those on stage, she trekked back to her seat amidst the applause. Eventually, the crowd settled. I turned around, smiled, and patted her on her knee.
“Wow,” she whispered to me. “They didn’t have my script at the podium. I guess I did ok though, right?”
Julie’s performance serves as lesson about education.
The point of a speech is not a script, the point of an education is not a diploma.
How entitled are we to think that anyone would hire us because of a piece of paper?
It doesn’t matter if that diploma reads Pre-Law or Marketing or Underwater Basketweaving, a diploma doesn’t give any of us a right to anything, especially a job.
How entitled are we to think that anyone would hire us because of a piece of paper?
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There has been great discussion recently about the value of going to college.
On one far end, they’ll tell you there’s not success without a degree. On the polar opposite end, they’ll tell you that college should be avoided at all costs. There are legitimate arguments on both ends and everything in between.
My opinion is just as valuable–or valueless–to you as any other on this issue. Instead, I’d like to offer a different way you can look at education.
Your degree is not a tool.
Imagine you’re a carpenter. So you go to a school for carpenters. Your advisor sits you down as a freshman and asks, “What tool do you want to build here at school?” You decide to dedicate four years and a bunch of money to building a screwdriver.
Yes, a screwdriver. Flat head or phillips, it’s your choice. Whichever you choose, you spend four years hand-crafting it. You read the textbooks, look at the slide presentations, and follow your professor’s instructions.
Day after day you work on your screwdriver.
Don’t be surprised if nobody hires your screwdriver.
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One day you look up from your screwdriver and realize that it’s graduation day. Your friends and family pack the auditorium at your small carpenter school to see you walk across the stage.
After a wait that seemed like an eternity, they call your name. Your family cheers, your friends whoop and holler, you shake the president’s hand, and they hand you a box. Inside that box is something you’ve dedicated four years and a bunch of money towards.
They present to you your screwdriver.
Don’t be surprised when nobody hires your screwdriver.
No matter how incredible your screwdriver might be, few people would hire yours.
But what would they hire? If you’re a stubborn entrepreneur (like me) who claims to be un-hirable, ask yourself a different question. Who would buy your screw driver?
Nobody. That’s who.
Degrees aren’t tools; they’re lenses.
Fret not, my friend! Those four years weren’t necessarily wasted. Your screwdriver isn’t useless, and you’re not worthless either.
While few would hire your screwdriver, more would hire the skills, perspective, and ingenuity it takes to make a screwdriver.
Here’s a real life example of what I mean.
I know a history major.
Actually, we all probably know a history major or two. Can’t think of any?
If you’re having trouble naming off your history major friends, then you’ve proven my point: many history majors aren’t working in history professions.
Ask a history major, and they’ll tell you that there aren’t any jobs for history majors. The history major I know told me that once, and it made me choke on my coffee.
“Of course nobody is hiring the history major,” I thought. “Not many companies need a history diploma on their payroll.”
After I wiped some coffee drops from my mouth, I asked her a question.
“What makes you a fantastic historian?”
She rattled the reasons off with ease: the fortitude to research, figuring out gaps in stories, solving old mysteries, identifying patterns in people, and communicating in a way that compels non-historians to intently listen.
The skills, perspective, and ingenuity it takes for her to be an incredible historian are many times more appealing than the degree itself.
If you’re working towards your degree, stop now.
Instead, direct your focus on the unique and attractive skills, perspective, and ingenuity it takes in order to be the best title on your degree that you can be.
The success lies within your skill set.
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Photo: Flickr/COD Newsroom
The way American companies are sending jobs overseas or importing foreign labor, you are not going to get a job whether you have a college or vocational degree. It is amazing how we tell kids to stay in school but we don’t want to hire them when they leave school. In the movie Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield told the kids to stay at home and let the parents deal with the world since they are the ones that made a mess of it.
If you don’t get a degree, there are plenty of companies that have antiquated HR policies that won’t allow them to hire you.
I know, I work for one. And there have been plenty of highly qualified people that we could never hire because they didn’t have a degree.
So, while a degree won’t guarantee you a job. A lack of a degree could guarantee that you don’t get a job from certain companies, regardless if you can do the job or not.