From this article:
“My dream is that someday employers will say, “Let’s hire anybody but a college graduate. We’ll teach him what he needs to know for our work. Check out the homeschoolers—they are a really sociable lot.” Imagine getting a fresh and intelligent young worker at age 18, rather than a stultified parrot at age 22.”
I personally know of three companies who already practice this. All are startup technology businesses, all are incredibly successful, and not one has an HR department. And one of the three has no female employees. None.
It is all relative to the position. I hire engineers for new product development, and no I will not even interview someone who does not have the right degree (or at least an adjacent one).
Are there some engineers in the world without degrees, sure. I have worked with some and even had a couple work for me; the problem is they are all one trick ponies who know what they have worked on (experience) and little else. If they get into a situation where they have get back to fundamentals (statics, dynamics, thermodynamics, circuit analysis, etc.) they don’t know it and likely don’t have the math background to learn it were I inclined to teach it to them (not that I have the time).
Even with a degreed engineer who knows the fundamentals, it takes a couple years of training and mentoring before they can do projects somewhat independently. I don’t want to think how long it would take with a HS kid.
Here is the kicker, even among degreed engineers, at best 25% have the chops to do the work, and that is generous. When I interview I ask a lot of basic problem solving questions based around the applicants’ degree, you would be shocked how little most of them know (or can articulate.) The thing is, for a lot of jobs, even those with the job title of engineer, don’t do much real engineering so they can get away with it.
Some degrees are worthwhile. Science, technology, engineering, math based majors are worthwhile in college. Medicine, nursing, healthcare, are all worthwhile investments into ones career earning potential.
On the other hand, anything with the word “Studies” in the title should have those majors eliminated. Typically people concentrated on an area of a subject in graduate school. The base degree would be in English Literature for example and the graduate would then focus on specific areas of Literature.
Too many kids don’t know what they want to do and go off to a four year party then get stuck with a six digit cover charge then wonder why they’re slinging coffee at Starsucks.
JQ
College degrees aren’t what they used to be.
This is because they ended employment testing. Being in telecom in the past I can site it as a prime example. Back in the day, you’d apply to Ma Bell, and all else looking OK, you’d take a test.
This gave them an indication of your potential. If hired, they would send you to schools.
Can’t do that now because the indigenous population would mostly fail. So now they use ‘education’ as a bar.
But in Tech, Vonz-90 up above is correct. My son was freaking out, thinking he was over his head when he go this first software engineering job. I told him they hired him for potential, and they know it’ll take 6 months or so to fit in. Few years later, he’s one of their top dudes.
So get this..He was hired by a Toyota. Part of the interview was a session where he had to build a cloud environment – live- and explain what he was doing.
I owned a restaurant business for ten years.
Impressive resumes crossed my desk hourly.
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During interviews with Food Service degree grads, they realized they were taught very little about attracting and keeping customers.
Interactions of fats with salts, the chemical basics of proteins during different temperature ranges,.. why does lime juice curdle dairy different from vinegars or lemon, chilled eggs versus room-temp in corn-bread.
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I had far greater success bringing fifteen-year old pearl-divers up into prep part-time.
A recent grad in checkered trousers and a starched chef smock… not so much.
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I needed an interest in drudgery, doing risotto the same way every service, the same portion each plate.
You want to impress me?
Show me your knives.
If you go antsy if I get too close to touching them, we might have common ground.
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And that degree from a prestigious alma… use it to test a blade.
If you know it ain’t squat, I might give you a run.
Just keep my front-room staff happy.
Any tips you get, share them with the people furnishing the clean pots and pans.
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I think 99.99% of degrees are for players, immature babies extending their kindergarten ‘me! me!’ years.
Internships are for the hard-core… and those on the fringe of lunacy.
[ suddenly remembers to breathe ]