Degree or not degree...that is the question.

Yes, horrible joke. But seriously?

Come on people, stop fucking derailing the other thread. Argue here. A special little corner for the argument that won't stop to continue.

 

I love the title you used!

 

I'm not going to say anymore on the topic. I wanted to better understand the thought process, and now I do. I don't agree with it, but that's my right not to agree with it. Different strokes for different folks, as they say.

We all have the right to our own opinions. I think there are alot of opinions flying around on this board about a variety of topics. I love it. I love the exchanges. I love how people challenge each other on here. That's why I'll probably not ever leave this site. LOL.

Btw, great title! :lol:

 

Based on experience, you can talk about being smart and not needing a degree with ENTRY level position jobs. But if you want to further your career, you will need that degree and then some.

I started out as a computer programmer. I was in the engineering field so the programs I was working on were very math oriented. If you DIDN'T have the foundation in math to begin with, you could forget it. Yeah, you can teach yourself programming on your PC but if you needed to work on main frames, business computers that has a lot of users and information, you had BETTER have that foundation.

As technology advanced, the company I was working for advanced with it. They offered their own classes to keep you up to date. Of course, you didn't have to take them, you weren't forced to but you started noticing your career advancement becoming stagnant. At a certain point, they even had an arrangement made with the local colleges where you could get a degree in engineering and work at the same time.

The same arrangement was made for someone who wanted to go the management route, they could work on the weekends to get their MBA ( Masters in Business Administration ) while still working full time. As stated earlier, you weren't FORCED to do it but you would notice your career advancement suffer. Also, if you were fired or let go, other companies would hire you a lot quicker if you had the experience AND the education to back it up.

Too many times I've seen situations where a candidate was "smart" but they didn't have the educational foundation to go with it. That led to some very nasty confrontations when situations "hit the FAN". FOR EXAMPLE: This one guy had a degree in MUSIC. He wanted to be the SUPERVISOR of the Information Technology department. The manager said he was smart and a quick learner so he hired him. There was a situation where a big client for the company needed a job done right away. The supervisor couldn't give the job to one of us because we were working on other projects that needed to be done so he HAD to do it himself.

Basically, without getting too technical, he tried to fit a square peg into a round hole. When you want the area of a SQUARE, you use different equations than you'd use if you want the area of a CIRCLE. Thats like trying to use the same description for an orange as you would an apple.....NO. He spent all night trying to get it done but couldn't. Next day, the manager started yelling at him because it wasn't done. Of course the supervisor started yelling back saying it couldn't be done. The manager picked one of us to do it and it was done in an hour. The supervisor had spent all night using a SQUARE equation to solve for a CIRCLE, OF COURSE if wouldn't work. Needless to say, he was fired that day.

Its situations like that, where you have to be on the same PAGE or same LEVEL as the people you are working with where a structured education does help. I only used programming as an example because that is what I'm familiar with. Of course the same can be applied to law, medicine, accounting, etc.

 

haha, I can't believe you guys liked the title. It's such a bad joke! Thanks though! Nice to see I still got it. :smt031