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Is a college degree really worth the money?

ldog

ldog

Pain is Pleasure
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Good am.

I think the days are over when a person must get a degree to make a decent salary. There are so many opportunities to earn a good living without a piece of paper. Various trade schools(shortage of workers) and many other jobs can allow you to make a good salary. Yes, I understand the need for additional schooling for medical and or legal jobs.

Am I on point or way off base?

What’s your experience?
L
 
You can take anecdotal evidence or specific slices, but on average over a large sample you can earn more with a college degree. Work also tends to be much "easier" than trades
 
My opinion is not much anywhere is really worth the money anymore.that being said i have a kid starting school this year in medical field. Scholarship helps only so much..was moving to another city but decided to stay close to home for now.
Many i know have debt because of college,i think its worth it if they follow through and start career while still in school .many bounce around or take time off or dont finish at all and now have 40k + in debt..
 
I will add this experience always trumps some asshole with a degree in real world,not every field but most i have been in this is true..That being said the guy with a degree and no experience will get the job 15k yr more than they would offer me.the pathetic part about it is they would have some1 like me train him.
 
Unless a high paying specialized STEM field, F no especially with AI coming. It is so easy to start a business or get into a trade such as electrical, plumbing, etc. This is coming from a moron who went for a Doctorate and never used it. lol

The worst thing a kid can do is go to college without the exact job in mind that ultimately requires one which are few and far between, is their passion and dream.
 
I think like a lot of things it depends. For something like engineering, you do need it. I have a degree from a very prestigious university in communications. Complete bullshit liberal arts degree. Working in the medical device sales field for 20 years showed me that the degree means nothing, it’s more about building relationships and being an expert on your product. Neither of which my college degree provided any value in. But the large multinational corporation that I was working for required a degree for the sales position.

On the flipside, I have a number of buddies without degrees who have done careers in the military, and in the trades and are much more successful than I am.


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unseen423 said:
On the flipside, I have a number of buddies without degrees who have done careers in the military, and in the trades and are much more successful than I am.
Click to expand...
In NY State the avg age of a plumber/electrician is in the 50's. A kid out of high school or home schooled can apprentice and be making 100K in a few years.
 
Meetketchup said:
In NY State the avg age of a plumber/electrician is in the 50's. A kid out of high school or home schooled can apprentice and be making 100K in a few years.
Click to expand...

That’s amazing! if you’re making that kind of money at a young age and soak up all the information you can, and have a slight bit of business sense to start out on your own after a while, that’s where these guys are absolutely crushing it.

Another point regarding college, which I don’t think is brought up a lot is maturity level. At 18 I was a complete degenerate very immature and basically partied and wasted a lot of time and money in college. Yes I got the degree but how much did I really learn?

Taking off a couple years after high school and figuring out who I was and what I was really interested in, probably would’ve done me a world of good.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option as my parents are very old-school and their thoughts were go to high school, go to college, and get a job.


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Depends on u & what u study.
Also getting taught by some in say economics that has a phd but has never run a successful business or a engineering professor that has never been a successful engineer in the field is comical but that's college.
Education=indoctrination is alot of cases. taught what to think, not how to think.
 
Only certain degrees and certain schools.

I have gotten jobs solely on the cache of my schools name or alumni network. If you arent going to a school that offers that, it may not be worth it.
 
These are all valid points. A case can be made either way after hearing your feedback.
 
chadmack said:
While getting paid to learn instead of accumulating 150k in debt
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Between the lost 3 years of earnings and the added debt it took my forever to catch up with my friends that just didnt got to grad school and became accountants.

You can also be a cop around here, retire after 20 years on 80% pay and then get another job.
 
I have some schooling maybe around 3 months worth and 7 years doing what I do, my base pay is around 150k year. Kids with one year experience can make 100k in a year easy, you just have to be gone from home. You don’t need two years in college to make 6 figures
 
when I finished up grad school I had no idea what I wanted to do. But, because I had an advanced degree more doors were opened for me than if I didn’t. The field I’m in now has nothing to do with my degree, but I couldn’t have gotten here without it.

I agree the trades are a great option to make great money, but there’s plenty of perks to the white collar lifestyle as well. The absolute hardest and most physical part of my day is my early morning workouts. Everything else is gravy.
 
Definitely not to make a good living.

But to be rich? With a few self made exceptions, higher ed is now part of the way the already rich “pull up the ladders” once they get there. To get the jobs that make assloads of money (again, as a rule, so there will be exceptions) the signaling of a degree - and a degree only from particular types of schools - is almost required.

There are now two tiers of college degrees (always were but you used to be able to move between them to an extent). One is the Ivy/little Ivy/stanford tier (more schools than that but those types) and the other is all the other schools.

The first generally pays back in spades. The second? It’s a real question if it’s worth the dough from a strictly financial standpoint (some people just want the experience and such which is cool, but talking dollars narrows the “worth it” calculation). Generally, still yes. But it’s gets narrower each year

And MK is right that ai will likely change that bottom tier calc, especially (on a different axis) as trades make more and people also retire out of them. But I’m gonna guess that going to MIT or Berkeley or such is almost always gonna pay cuz the elites set it up to

But who knows lol


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It depends on the goal.

If you just want to make money and you aren't afraid of working? Absolutely not, lots of skilled trades can make you a very good living with no degree.

Specialized STEM fields, law, medical, those need degrees.

I spent years in my industry with no degree and when I actually needed one to get promoted my company paid for it too so that's another consideration.
 
LegionF said:
It depends on the goal.

If you just want to make money and you aren't afraid of working? Absolutely not, lots of skilled trades can make you a very good living with no degree.

Specialized STEM fields, law, medical, those need degrees.

I spent years in my industry with no degree and when I actually needed one to get promoted my company paid for it too so that's another consideration.
Click to expand...
Same my company will completely pay for school,as long as it benefits their company ofcourse.
 
Screw college. With tech moving the way it is, the next batch of millionaires will be trade workers.
 

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