College degrees demonstrate you can complete a long-term project with disparate, often competing priorities handed down from separate departments while meeting deadlines and milestones.
10 years ago I had a senior director at a large fortune 50 corporation tell me that because of the dire state of US education, the only way to ensure a candidate could read, write, and do basic math was if they went to college. As someone who now does lots of corporate hiring, it’s only gotten worse. It’s especially bad in technical fields where about half the CS grads I interview can’t even answer basic questions like “What’s an IDE?”
I quit college to start my own successful outsourced IT business but HR doesn’t give a shit.
Controversial opinion: The point of college is NOT to prepare students to be “work ready” if that makes sense. The point of college is to give you the critical thinking skills necessary to be able to learn, grow, and make decisions on your own as an adult professional. Whatever technical knowledge carries over to your job is just a bonus.
Gradeschool is supposed to do that. That’s 12-14 years of a person’s life. If you’re not ready to be an adult by highschool graduation, then the system failed you.
(oh look at the system failing over and over and over again)
Laudable goal, but whatever they’re doing isn’t working based on some of the graduates I’ve known.
They don’t seem to teach much critical thinking these days beyond a few elite institutions. The focus at the state schools I went to was churning out as many engineering grads as efficiently as possible.
The “Qualification” is to be shackled to college debt so that you’re a more compliant worker, unwilling to risk your income by asserting your rights and seeking a livable wage.
If you’re debt free, you’re liable to grovel a whole lot less just for the honour of being able to work there and might instead just quit.
You need the basic technical knowledge, but most of it won’t apply in the working world. People cut corners just enough that they won’t get into trouble. Although, depending where you are, open and flagrant corruption is normal.
