And in my friends case, there were plenty of people less qualified.

If your friend is only making $9/hr then sorry to say, but he must suck at IT. Computer Engineer and IT are not in any way closely related. He might as well have a degree in Woman Studies.

Considering I'm a hiring manager, I don't personally care where and if you have a degree.

 

When I went to school, there were so FEW applicants, that you could get into all but the same top 5% of schools. I was accepted at all but 1 school (Oberlin) where I applied.

Similarly, when I got out of school, employers were hungry for people. Hungry for head count. You couldn't get good service anywhere, because anyone with more than 2 brain cells could get a desk job (of some stripe).

There again. . . 1975 was the lowest per capita birth rate in the history of the U.S.

. . . and now, between a globalized work force, and a glut of college-aged and post-colleged-aged 'Muricans running around, a shitty economy with little credit available for capital expeditures. . . it's an employers market.

Have we had this issue before? Yes. Has it been this deep? I'm guessing not since the recession of the '50's, if ever.

A college degree has become, as it has before, a primitive filter. When the labor market changes, so will the need/relevance of that filter.

 

[QUOTE=Voodoo_S2K,Jul 1 2010, 09:41 AM] And in my friends case, there were plenty of people less qualified.


If your friend is only making $9/hr then sorry to say, but he must suck at IT. Computer Engineer and IT are not in any way closely related. He might as well have a

 

there will always be exception to not having a required degree to succeed. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both dropped out of college. However, all things being equal, having an advanced degree and if one is from a good school along with high GPA will help more than if not.

 

There is book smart and than there is street smart. I'll take street smart anyday

This college degree crap is over rated and a crock of poop IMHO

Than again I'm so none of this crap applied when I went to school or got my first job. Upside is for what most pay for student loans I bought my first house and paid for it.

 

I have a B.S. in Finance, and this doesn't do crap for me. You need a graduate degree at the least in my field.

 

couple of my buddies who were finance majors ended up doing 401k administration. I guess it's pretty easy to get into at the entry level.

 

As it has been stated, it really depends on your career field.

I'm a mech engineer, you NEED a college degree to be in my career field and a min 3.0+ GPA to land any of the "good jobs"

As always, networking, interview skills, internships, etc all help when finding your first job straight out of school.



And IMO, "street smart" is just to make people who couldn't do well in school feel better

 

As in my over 30 years of working experience I have yet to find a book smart > street smart "experienced" employee. There is no substitute for experience period.

YMMV

 

I think you'd both be hard pressed to accurately paint with such a wide brush. I know book smart people that couldn't get out of a wet paper bag and I know street smart people that are beyond useless.

Depending on industry and job type, you'll find great and horrible people with either book or street smarts.

That said, my wife doesn't have a degree and it constantly rankled her that people with a degree got paid 30-50% more but did 50% less work (and it's the same work she was doing at the time). In many positions, hard work and experience are as good or better than a degree. In others, without a degree, you're just going to flounder around.