I’m from east Asia so these matter a lot. They’re practically necessary for getting hired and to have a decent social standing.
I heard America is one of the few places that don’t require a degree to get hired or be successful. How true is that
I’m from east Asia so these matter a lot. They’re practically necessary for getting hired and to have a decent social standing.
I heard America is one of the few places that don’t require a degree to get hired or be successful. How true is that
Comments
Many jobs need a degree. Few employers care what school you got it from, unless it’s something really prestigious (e.g. Harvard’s law school).
Do you need a degree to be successful? No. But statistics don’t lie- college graduates make far more money (on average) over the course of their careers than people who only have a high school diploma. Even a two-year degree is absolutely worth getting.
A lot of jobs do require at least a bachelor’s degree. How important the specific school is depends on what you’re going to school for.
A degree is necessary for almost all salaried jobs. But once a worker is hired, success isn’t dependent on your education. I’ve worked with a lot people who went to impressive universities but were subpar workers and the opposite- very talented people who went to a meh university.
Social standing means almost nothing in America. There are plenty of decent jobs out there that require little or no education.
As a millennial, it was kind of hammered into my head from a young age that I needed to go to college to get a job, and I needed to go to a good school to get a good job. I know a lot of my peers felt the same. We were all applying to “reach” schools – basically really good universities that we hoped to get into. And then we had fall-back options, which were less prestigious or maybe local schools which were back up options in case you didn’t get into the school of your dreams.
Edit: of course we all ended up with expensive degrees that got us no further ahead than our coworkers at our retail jobs. There’s the common trope of a barista at a cafe with a useless degree in history or psychology.
In America you can earn a good amount of money doing work like plumbing, elevator repair, and being an electrical lineworker which do not require degrees. It’s physically intensive but you can definitely become successful doing those jobs
Most white-collar jobs now require a bachelor’s degree at the bare minimum. But how important your university is still depends on your specific career.
For example, in medicine and engineering your school prestige does not matter very much, just as long as you complete your required curriculum and get the accreditation.
If you want to go into something like finance then a prestigious university is more important because it’s a field with limited jobs
Many employers now require a degree for a lot of jobs. Whether the jobs actually need someone with a college degree is debatable. A lot of service industry and blue collar/manual labor jobs don’t require one. Most don’t care about what college you went to unless it’s some really prestigious job. Like only .21% of the US population holds a degree from a place like Harvard or Princeton.
Quality of the school matters a lot.
Reputation of the school barely matters.
Depends on the field. There are some businesses (like management and IT consulting) where the company banks on the prestige of their employees to market services. Investment banking is similarly hung up on where you went to school. Beyond that it gets far less important particularly as you gain employment experience. Every single person I work with has a college degree though, many have PhDs, but I’m also a scientist at a chemical company. I’d be scared if people just rolled in with a high school Chemistry class.
Speaking from a normal persons perspective, a good school helps you land a good job/higher salary but after your first job it doesn’t matter where you went, they’ll just care about your professional experience.
Now if you want to be among the elite power brokers of the US you’re going to need to go to the elite universities, no one from UNLV law is going to be getting nominated for the Supreme Court anytime soon
I’m an automation engineer in the US. I have zero formal education. I’m one of those triple digit blue collar workers you are probably referencing. I have about 3 decades of experience in my field. I’ve taught classes on what I do. I’ve run entire departments.
My wife is Malaysian. For fun I looked into finding a job in her county incase we decided to move there. Every job (every job) was only considered about my education. Three decades (decades) of experience ment nothing to them, only my education.
The highest salary I was offered was 20k USD.
It depends on the job you’re looking for. On average people with a degree make a good bit more than people without a degree. But it varies a lot. Someone with a degree in something not very marketable is not likely to be making as much as someone without a degree but who is a tradesperson. So you can definitely be successful without a degree, but you need some kind of plan on how you’re doing that and most people without a degree aren’t getting themselves towards one of those options as often.
Getting the degree from a good university / college vs a degree from anywhere tends to matter very little. Which should probably be talked about more. The benefits of getting a bachelors degree vs not having any degree is going to make a difference of something like 10-15k on average per year. The benefits of getting a bachelors degree from a private school vs from a public state school on average might be a few hundred dollars a year and it disappears once you’ve been working for a few years since after that people care more about your last job than where you went to school. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at the numbers but those are the general numbers. So where you went to school might matter somewhat but generally very little. Especially if it’s outside of a school like Harvard or Yale, in those cases that I think helps more but outside the Ivy League schools the impact is minimal.
It really doesn’t matter much beyond your first job, because after that you’re on the job experience and conduct is what they’re looking at.
Degrees are very necessary in the US unless you want to pursue a line of work where they are not expected. Most white-collar jobs are going to require at least a bachelor’s degree. Millennials and Gen Z Americans have been told since childhood that going to college is a necessity, and we now have far too many people with college degrees and far too little jobs to employ them all.
More prestigious lines of work (like high-paying jobs in law and finance) also highly value prestigious universities and it is difficult to get those jobs if you did not go to a school like that. If you want a normal middle-class life, a prestigious university is not necessary.
> How much does a good university/ college matter?
>
I’m taking “good” to mean “elite” here. Because I’d consider Western Michigan University or Wayne State Universities “good schools”, but they probably don’t have any status to the people you’re talking about, who are talking about Princeton and Harvard.
We get a lot of questions about “the Ivies” or ELITE colleges in this sub because people have heard of them…because they’re elite.
In reality, those 8 Ivy League universities have about 63,000 undergraduate students…which is about the same as Arizona State University or Ohio State University. Most Americans go to state run schools like those.
Clemson University has great engineering programs, Michigan State is well known for agriculture, U of Missouri for journalism, Central Michigan for education, etc.
We have millions of college students in this country who end up being employed for decades, very few of them go to “elite” schools.
The only places that “require” degrees from elite universities are like, the top firms on Wall Street or international finance companies.
I know lots of engineers that went to state schools like Ferris State, North Carolina State, etc.
Elite means elite, most people don’t go to those schools….yet most people still have fine careers.
> I heard America is one of the few places that don’t require a degree to get hired or be successful. How true is that
>
Depends entirely on the career. You can’t just “get hired” to be an engineer or architect, you need a degree in those fields. You can just “get hired” at a plumbing company and learn your trade and end up being company VP 20 years later.
Unless you go to an Ivy League and wish to be a top researcher in your field or work for the top law firms or investment bank, it doesn’t matter hardly at all, especially after you have your first job.
they don’t matter. I work for a guy worth over $200 million who didn’t get past the sixth grade and built his empire himself.
https://youtu.be/zs6nQpVI164?si=EM5IskKs8M8gugrd
Going to a good school will really help get your first and maybe 2nd job if you job hop quickly. After that it’s substantially less important.
There’s several companies that hire from “target schools” so going to one of those will help get your foot in the door at a lot of places.
It’s not true. People without a college degree earn 30-40% LESS than people with a college degree in the US.
> to have a decent social standing.
No idea what this even means. The college you went to has no bearing on your social standing. I don’t know what any of my neighbors do for a living, let alone what college they went to.
Hard work is more important than social standing here.
There’s a lot of successful people that started their own companies with nothing more than a high school diploma.
It doesn’t matter much and your social standing is going to be much more determined by your friends above a reasonable income level
This depends on your definition of “good” and “matter.”
My cousin has degrees from excludes schools (ungrad, 3 masters, and a doctorate). Her degrees do not matter so much as the people she knows. I suspect should could call the White House regardless of which party is in charge.
My nieces went to the most expensive school in there state and is does not matter at all. Neither do what they went to school for. One niece learned business and that helped her move ahead in her company (creative) as she understood the business side earlier than others, but a community college associates would have done the same.
My wife is a teacher and went to a school that was known for training the best teachers. She is a better teacher than most. Best part was that her school was not expensive.
I am in business and started in a highly respected school but transferred (got married) to my wife’s school which had a standard program. I found her schools business program to be easy (and had less offers when I graduated due to the school).
Long story short, it depends on many many things.
Not really once you land your first job and perform well in it. Your university can give you the extra pop in certain industries, but nothing beats an involved, well-performing student with multiple internships at big name companies. If I am considering a candidate that graduated from MIT but they have basically nothing but average grades and no extras vs. someone from Chico State with a 3.8 GPA, President of their fraternity, head of their ASME chapter, and an internship with PG&E, I am going with the Chico State person.
>I heard America is one of the few places that don’t require a degree to get hired or be successful. How true is that
It really depends on the type of job. No one is hiring a doctor or lawyer without a degree. A lot of people like to talk about how some tech CEO’s have dropped out of college, but gloss over the fact that guys like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were smart enough to get into Harvard, rich enough to attend it, and then dropped out because they founded successful businesses.
Personally, I had been at my job for two years before my boss asked if I even went to college, let alone where. It never really came up in my interview other than a single line on my resume.
Bottom line: Having a degree isn’t a golden ticket, but not having one isn’t a death sentence.
Depends on the job you are trying to get.
I work in an industry that cares about where the degree is from. It’s always noted in resumes when they come in and there’s definitely a hierarchy of institutions from which the degrees come. It’s less now than when I got my first job 25+ years ago, but I am involved in hiring so I know it’s still around. Some of it is genuine snobbery, but it’s also because of networking.
In my field you need a degree, and there’s a strong preference for advanced degree even though they’re not really relevant on a daily basis.
It depends on the field and the company.
For the legal profession, if you don’t go to a top law school you’re unlikely to get a job at a major, prestigious law firm and unlikely to ever become a federal judge.
My general experience is employers don’t really care where you went to school unless it’s an Ivy League grade school or they’re known for specializing in your field.
The networks that come from going to an elite university are the main draw. You can see how the tech billionaires all seem to know each other, and this goes back to their university experience. Peter Thiel has a network in the Ivy League that accessing can put you one heart attack away from being the president.
It used to be very true, both of my parents were just high school graduates and they were able to work themselves into great careers, but that’s basically impossible for younger generations.
The jobs you’d have to work are very demanding as well. For instance, someone in construction could make great money, but they’re probably working 80 hours a week.
I’ve been in 6 figures white collar professional since my 20s, with no formal education. It can be done
The job market is about connections and that’s where going to a good school helps. By age 30 though it doesn’t matter as much.
I’m in engineering and have hired engineers for many years.
Degree is required. A quality school is helpful, but in engineering that’s often a large state university. In fact I’d probably favor many of the Big Ten schools over most of the Ivy League for engineering. (I’m not even sure if all 8 have engineering.)
Obviously a white shoe law firm is going to be different. There are still parts of society where family legacy and old wealth is required, but in tech/engineering it’s not really the case.
Typically, the University/institution only really matters for the first job. After that, work experience takes priority.
It matters for things like alumni networks so you can get your foot in the door professionally. After you get experience and start to develop a professional network of your own just having a degree is really the important thing.
Many professional jobs do require a bachelor’s degree, or even a graduate degree.
Going to a prestigious college can give you an advantage and help you get a job at a prestigious company.
But for most people, working average jobs at average companies, it doesn’t matter what college you went to. You just need the degree. And sometimes, relevant job experience can make up for lack of a certain degree – for example, a job listing might say “MBA, or a bachelor’s degree and 5 years of experience”.
In my industry, once you have your first job and have a track record, no one cares what school you went to.
If you are just graduating, the advantage will be what alumni will be at the company(s) you will be interviewing with. That makes a difference.
Agree with most posters here. I’ve lived in both America and East Asia, and I’m familiar with the concept of a good university basically determining the trajectory of your life.
However, that’s not the case in America. Most people don’t care where you went to college. When getting hired for a job, generally speaking practical experience matters more than what school you went to.
I’ve had multiple friends from China and Japan, and whenever they talk about how much school matters over there and the social expectations around it, it’s always kind of depressing tbh. I remember once I told one of my friends I would be taking a break from school and just doing what I want for a bit and she just replied, “That’s every east Asian’s dream” and “That’s not a reality for me”.
Over here, there’s pressure to go to school, but it’s not nearly as much. There are plenty of jobs and ways to make a decent living without a degree. Degrees are also extremely expensive, and many people feel they could better spend that money elsewhere. There’s also been push back around the idea you “have” to go to college because many people *did* go to college and still found themselves struggling to get a decent job.
It’s the not the same over here
Having a degree is important – entry level jobs won’t even look at your resume without it in A LOT of different fields
Going to an extremely prestigious university only matters in a few select fields, in my opinion. No one really cares where you went to college in most industries. Especially after you’ve been working for a few years they’ll care way more about what you learned working than where you went to school
Depends on the field. And honestly, if you go to one of the really elite schools, the advantage you make is connection to connected people, not the education.
MIT, Cal-Tech? Those make a difference because they do say something about your abilities in order to get in. Harvard? Well… if you make connections there, great, but one of my friends made the mistake of focusing on her studies instead of networking, graduated magna cum laude, and is a medical receptionist. A perfectly respectable and useful career, but not what one associates with “magna cum laude, Harvard-Radcliffe class of 1996.”
Many places want a degree because so many people have them now coming out of the degree factory much of higher education has become. So why not require someone have a degree. It shows that at least yet might be a bit higher educated.
Students coming here from East Asian countries care too much about that from what I’ve seen. It can matter if you’re trying to be the best in your field. The top universities in your field may not be the most prestigious overall. If you plan to finish with a bachelor’s degree and just get a decent job then going to a good school vs going to a great school isn’t a big difference. There’s good schools with better internships than great ones anyway. If you wanna be a doctor or be in one of those top companies then going to a top school in that area can actually matter a lot. Just remember that online university rankings don’t accurately reflect how the school is seen in a specific discipline. It’s not like a country like China where the top schools are near the top in every aspect
College level education helps get a foot in the door to a lot of jobs, and statistically college graduates will earn more than those who did not, but it’s not the only avenue. There are plenty of trade jobs that, while requiring technical training, do not require a college degree and still have the opportunity for high earning.
The institution one graduates from largely doesn’t matter unless one is trying to get into a very specific firm, group, or organization that traditionally recruits or favors certain universities (mainly law firms and Ivy League schools).
It depends what you are doing. If you are a scientist you need at least a bachelors degree and if you are a doctor you need a Medical Degree. But many jobs, including well paying ones, don’t require a degree or college. Some people go to a trade school or community College for things like Welding, Plumbing, Nursing, X Ray, and Carpentry, which all pay well. There is a strong social stigma against not going but it’s getting weaker as an oversupply of graduates relative to jobs means there are a lot of college grads working menial jobs
In general, a college degree mostly proves to an employer that a new hire can show up every day, be on time, and follow directions reasonably well.
For young workers entering an industry, it can be a big advantage – especially since many colleges offer internship placement and networking opportunities.
There’s some social capital tied to diplomas. Someone with a PhD is generally going to be respected more than someone who didn’t finish high school, especially if that degree comes from a prestigious school like MIT or Harvard. But none of that matters if both people are reasonably successful in their careers and industry. Americans value outcomes.
In my experience, the best education is on-the-job training. As a hiring manager, I care a lot more about relevant experience than where someone went to school.
It’s also worth noting that one reason college grads tend to earn more is just selection bias. On a micro level, that stat doesn’t reflect a person’s skillset or earnings potential.
Having a degree is still kind of a baseline requirement. I had a coworker with a history degree that was a project manager.
Only a few companies exclusively hire from very prestigious universities. A friend of mine did this. Got a high paying consulting job then burned out.
There are some successful non degree holders but they usually work really hard and long hours starting a business or doing trades. Some just get lucky. The class clown from my high school started some kind of fantasy football thing that really took off. There are a few realtors that really hustle and build a business.
A degree in a hard major with good grades from a top university certainly matters. Cs in Women’s Studies at Harvard isn’t going to open any doors. That will get you into top graduate and professional programs. The top employers pay big money for people who have demonstrated the capacity for critical thinking and work ethic necessary to get a degree like that. It’s the simple way of screening new hires.
It doesn’t mean you can’t be successful with a degree from a middle of the pack university with Bs instead of As but it will be harder to land in a fast track career job and doors may be closed to many professional and graduate programs.
The Korean SKY schools thing is ridiculous to us.
Depends on the field, depends on what you’re trying to move on to, depends on your location, depends on the school, depends on how long it’s been since you were in school.
You don’t HAVE to go to a “good school” to get hired, but a good school can still go a long way in helping you during the hiring process.
I think there’s research saying that just the reputation of the school alone, ignoring everything else, really only makes a difference if you’re looking at the top 20 or so schools, or something in that ballpark. So think Harvard, Chicago, CalTech. For some colleges, their reputation is stronger regionally than it is nationally (arguably Rice, but something like Villanova is probably a better example). And, arguably, there are schools that have a strong enough reputations for being “good” that people don’t actually look into it care that the academics there aren’t as strong as at other less prestigious schools.
Unless your school was SUPER prestigious, nobody really cares once you’ve been out of school for a while. When it might make a difference is when you’re still in school or just graduated, and have a short resume with no relevant work experience. BUT, there are weird exceptions where it’s less about the quality of the school and more about the school having a strong and proud alumni record. Here in Texas, Texas A&M is somewhat notorious for some alums going out of their way to hire other alums.
And, of course, the reputation of your specific program in addition to your school’s overall reputation will matter a lot more for stuff like engineering or architecture, or of you’re applying for grad school.
So it’s not that a good school doesn’t matter, or never matters, but it isn’t the only thing that matters. As a final note, especially if you applying for prestigious and competitive jobs, there are biases against community colleges and certain lower ranked schools, and I think that bias against those schools sometimes makes more of a difference than the advanced of what are perceived as “good” schools.
It really depends on you and your motivation. If you are going to work hard and graduate top of your class, it doesn’t matter. If you are just going to put in average effort you will probably get more out of a high status school with smaller classes and more networking. If you are not going to try at all then it really doesn’t matter, but getting a bigger brand name on your resume might help.
>How much does a good university/ college matter?
It depends. If you got an engineering degree from MIT or a law degree from Harvard, that may take you far, as those are prestigious degrees. Or if you went to a school that offers a specialized degrees, that could come in handy by differentiating you from your peers. For example, my wife double majored in molecular and cellular biology, which is more specialized than a regular biology degree.
I went to a state school and majored in engineering. For what I do, nobody really cares which school you went to, but a degree is required.
>I heard America is one of the few places that don’t require a degree to get hired or be successful. How true is that
You can be successful without a college degree, however, it will be more difficult. You don’t really need a degree to do my job, however, you can’t be a licensed engineer without that degree so you are limited in just how successful you can be. For example, you are probably not going to become a principal in an engineering company without a degree.
Success can be subjective so YMMV.
It’s not nothing between the real value of the education you got plus the prestige the school and the contacts you may have gained by going to an elite university. But for most people it’s most important for their first job breaking into their chosen field. After that employers will care a lot more about your actual work experience and a lot less about how prestigious a school you went to. People without a diploma at all can become successful outside of academia though it IS harder. It’s hard to land your first job in a given field without having the education because entry level positions are looking at that education as their their main hiring criteria since most candidates don’t have work experience… BUT if you do manage to land a job in a given field without ever having gone to college very few people will hold that against you outside of academia or highly technical fields and positions that really do require the knowledge gained in the course of earning an advanced degree.
I’m still waiting for an employer to ask for my transcripts from my college.
I graduated in 1983.
Prestige matters to a few professions like medicine and law, but any university that’s accredited is a “good” university.
It is not a golden ticket to automatic success, but it helps to have attended a top university. It is a door-opener. I will use myself as an example. I went to a “sub-ivy” university (the tier below Ivy League ). The executive director (3rd level manager) of my first job was an alumni of my university, and conducted on-campus interviews. This was my foot in the door. But I also got several job offers from other companies that were not associated with my university.
Likewise going to a lower tier university does not consign you to a lower tier career, but you won’t have as much of a head start.
No one has cared about where I got my degree from since my first adult job. It’s possible that some institutions would be red flags, but most employers aren’t carefully watching college rankings to figure out how to judge potential employees.
In the US the degree is very helpful, but there are only a few industries where the pedigree of your degree come into play.
I’d say you have to get training of some sort but not necessarily a four year college. I’d start with what you are interested in doing and see what it takes to do that.
Some professional will pay for your training. Our local hospital will pay for you to become a nurses aide and after you have been there awhile will pay all the way up to your RN degree.
Definitely don’t need one to be successful here or get hired a lot of places, the degree matters more than where it’s from when it is required for a position
There are many jobs in America that don’t require a degree that are considered good jobs. There are also many of jobs that do require a degree. It really depends on what you are trying to do and where you live in America.
If you’re asking about the quality of the college/university, I would say it matters, but the degree subject and level matter more, usually.
Depends on what you’re doing.
My fiancée has a masters from an online school and she makes 6 figures.
The way I see it is the only reason to go to an Ivy League schools is for the opportunity they create outside of a degree.
It just doesn’t matter pretty much—go to any heavily subsidized public university, get a degree, get in the job market and move up from there.
College is important for learning skills to get a good first job. Getting a degree also demonstrates to the employer that you’re capable of carrying out a long term plan.
But beyond that – say two or more years after you start in a field – your resume of actual workplace accomplishments is far more important than which college you went to, or even having a degree.
I have a degree in Biochemistry, from a non-US university. But I had a 35 year career in cybersecurity, starting as an entry level programmer.
The only people who were really interested in my degree were in HR departments, due to the difficulty they had in confirming that I’d graduated.
The degree gets you in the door. Where it might matter is if the degree is from a school the hiring manager isn’t familiar with, that might cause some hesitation. Advice that I was given as teenager that rings true to me is: “Go to a “Name” University (either Ivy League or Flagship University of a State) and people will know that school anywhere or go to college within 100 miles of where you want to live.” Basically, you can go to a small school but don’t go looking for jobs 2000 miles away where there are no alumni or locals that know of the school.
Most of this is moot with 5+ years of professional experience though. The actual school you went to only really matters when its the only thing on your resume.
Like not at all unless you’re trying to get a career in the most prestigious law/engineering/medical firms
There are many careers where having a degree is necessary, but it is possible to have a good job without a college degree. Though on average, people with college degrees earn more money throughout their lifetime than people without college degrees.
There are very good paying jobs and careers that don’t require a degree. Culturally, many people find it a lot more “respectable” to have a college degree, but it’s not necessary for a good job. Going to a “good” university doesn’t matter that much unless you’re going into a few specific highly competitive fields.
So long as it’s an accredited school, no one cares. If you find an employer that does care, you probably don’t want to work there anyways.
After your first job (or two) employers care less and less about your degree. Experience becomes more important.
Depends on the field, law and medicine care and some specific STEM fields care, the rest just want it to be a college that doesn’t have a specifically bad reputation.
It definitely depends. As a whole the US cares less about degrees than Asia and Europe. That said, in practice it does matter for certain fields. In my industry, finance, employers recruit for the most desirable roles at elite schools. Going to one of the Ivys or similarly prestigious schools makes it much more likely to get on a high potential career path. I used to work for one of the big name hedge funds, I was the only state school kid on my floor.
Same largely applies to law, medicine, academia etc. There are plenty of jobs where having a degree is a yes/no question and the specifics don’t matter.
It matters somewhat in a few few professions – law, medicine, and to a lesser degree in something like engineering.
The biggest factor is just having a college degree. I work in IT and we’ve hired people with philosophy degrees. It just really means you’ve (hopefully) learned how to learn and have a broader knowledge base. Universities/colleges in US require core classes for all degrees, so English, history, math, science, and usually some classes in humanities like art, music, psychology. You’ll have a mix of these and core classes for your major. When you get to your junior year (again generally) you’re taking pretty much all classes for your major but there are options there as well. Depends on your major. Say you’re in a science-based track. You might have to take either biology, physics, or chemistry and if you’re smart, you’d choose that enhances your major. Take enough of these type classes and you can get a minor degree as well. Something like computer science with a minor in math.
A really famous or well regarded College can be an advantage when trying to get hired, but this is not guaranteed.
Most Colleges have good enough reputations that employers will consider them about equal.
So majority of the time if you went to a decent school you will have the same chances as most anyone else to get a job.
After your 1st job it doesn’t. It somewhat matters if you want to go to grad school. It only matters if you plan on getting a job making dumb amount of money straight after graduating
I need a better education for a career in film.
A lot of jobs in the US required degrees, but these days most major companies will take relevant experience in lieu of a degree.
Also, the school that you go doesn’t matter at all, except for maybe some companies if you want to work directly for them out of college, and even then you might able to still get there after getting some experience. For reference, I have a degree from a now defunct for-profit school, in a field unrelated to what I do, and I work in fortune 100/500 companies.
For example, Ivy leagues recruit heavily into finance, so as a 21yo with no experience and a Harvard degree it might be easier to get into a company like Goldman Sachs, but you can still make it to GS couple of years down the line with some experience and a no-name university degree.
I suppose there is always a chance to you run into a hiring manager or recruiter that shares Alma-mater thus creating some kind of personal connection, but that’s just a stroke of luck.
From a social standpoint, the average person does not care where someone went to school to, and I even ran into people who went to Ivy League and keep that shit to themselves.
Around 70% of jobs in my state need a degree, a good college is important in my opinion.
to be blunt it really comes down to a ‘who you know’ thing. I did not finish college, I got a 2 year degree but never completed my Bachelors, profesionally speaking I struggled early on but eventually if you play your cards right and you have experience you can get jobs that require a degree. The main advantage college educations get you in the US is alumni associations, clubs, organizations that just being associated with opens doors for you. That said I got my 2 year degree in liberal arts and I was intending to get my BA in library science or some humanities discipline and yet I work in insurance so even if I did graduate my degree wouldn’t have been related to my job
Depends.
A good school gives you a good network. That’s what you’re paying for.
At the vast majority of accredited schools, the education quality will be similar.
It matters more that you have a degree than where you go it from for the most part. There are some colleges that stand out more than others, like Yale, Harvard or UPenn but you aren’t doomed to failure if you don’t go to those schools.
You know what you call a doctor who graduated from Harvard med and a doctor who graduated from a state medical school?
a doctor
With that being said. Whatever you’re depending on doing determines if you need a degree. I’m a reading specialist, I needed a teaching degree and then a masters degree as a reading specialist to do this. If you want to do a trade. You can go to trade school and still be very successful. It truly just depends on what career / job you want to. I will say that not one employer has seemed to care about where I got my degree from
College degree matters. A good one not so much. You certainly get access to networking at a great college that is not available in a random state school. That being said I went to a state school instead of a great school because it was free vs very expensive and I’m still very happily sitting in the top 5% or earners.
I have never once been asked my gpa and since my first job I’ve never been asked what college I went to. Being able to show tangible professional success trumps education all day long.
The degree opens doors that wouldn’t be open. It creates a floor.
Way too many people think whatever they decide as a career as a teenager is what they will do forever. The actual major doesn’t always matter.
It’s not like in East Asia where it is ultra competitive and you have to go to the very best schools, even though some Asian immigrant parents think that’s the case here. Really you just need any school but a good one will help a but
Going to a good school will give you an advantage in the US, but probably not to the same degree as in Asia. The real advantages are the connections you make at an elite school, and the opportunities that you get from attending, rather than the prestige of the name itself. You can definitely be very successful without going to an elite school (e.g. Joe Biden didn’t attend any elite institutions), but in general, going to an elite school will make it more likely you will go further in your career (just look at how many Ivy alum are represented at the highest levels of government for instance). The flip side is also true though: going to an elite school is no guarantee of success. People aren’t going to give you a cushy job just because you went to Harvard, for instance.
If you’re just trying to get a basic white collar job, doesn’t matter at all.
If you’re trying to get a higher end social networking C-Suite job, it’s everything
I make more money with my H.S. diploma than most of the college grads at my workplace. But I am in a fairly specialized trade that is short on trained people.
It depends…things that require an advanced degree like law or medicine or veterinary medicine, etc it can be important but also dependent on where you’re trying to work afterwards. Like nobody at my office is going to care much where the staff attorney got her law degree…but a big defense attorney firm will.
Most professional jobs in the US require a degree these days, even lower level positions that didn’t once upon a time…often it’s not a matter of requirement for the position, but when most of the other applicants for the position have one, more likely than not the person with some kind of degree is going to get the job.
Statistically, you’re much more likely to earn higher wages and advance your career with a degree, though there are obviously people who don’t have a degree and do very well for themselves.
I believe that there are essentially 3 tiers of universities in the US. You have the elite schools whose graduates land the most prestigious jobs. They are different depending upon the field. MIT and Harvard are both elite universities, but not in the same subjects. Graduating from one of these schools opens some doors, but closes others. Some employers will pass on a candidate from an elite school if they feel that their opening is too “ordinary” to keep them interested.
In the middle you have a large number of schools that have good reputations but would not be considered to be top of the line. Anyone with a degree from one of these schools has a wide range of choices for future employment – probably more than the elite school grads (although the elite grads will probably have no problems finding work). This group is dominated by state colleges like Ohio State and the bigger private schools like Notre Dame.
The 3rd group consists of mostly smaller schools that typically don’t have much name recognition nationwide. These are often viewed as academically inferior to the other 2 groups. They also often cater to specific groups or professions. These degrees are still valuable, you just have to work harder.
However, your college really only matters when you start working. After your initial job no one really cares where you went to school.
It depends on the field. There are some career paths where a degree is mandatory, and where getting from a prestigious university can give a significant advantage.
However, it’s not assumed that someone will be a failure if they don’t to go the best school. There’s a greater entrepreneurial spirit, and you don’t need a degree to start your own business.
Not as much as youd think unless its an ivy league school, the degree is what matters
I work as a software engineer. You absolutely can get into the industry without a degree, and it was extremely common during the pandemic when tech companies were trying to scale up quickly. But then they scaled back down and now the competition is more fierce. It’s still possible, but having a degree is a pretty strong advantage, and it’s been difficult even for people with degrees to get work lately.
Americans value degrees but not as much as many other countries do, and your degree (or lack thereof) gets less and less relevant as your years of experience increases.
At the elite levels of society it matters. For everyone else just the degree matters. Plenty of ways to make money.
In terms of education I’m not sure it makes a huge difference, the more prestigious colleges serve as a great networking opportunity mostly for privileged students to attend school with a similar cohort.
In other words you can become as qualified going to a state school, but you won’t make the same connections you would going to Harvard or Yale or Stanford.
Quite a bit. You need to graduate from a good school with a good GPA (3.5 or better), have previous industry experience from internships, know people at the company, AND make a good first impression to even be considered. The real kicker is that many of the jobs you’re applying to don’t even exist.
Outside of the Ivy League, your college doesn’t matter. That you went to an accredited school. Got a degree. That matters most. Ivies are only good for some monied nepo babies to make up for in “good connections” what they lack in talent. They don’t have better, secret knowledge at Ivies that the rest don’t.
GPA only matters if you want a career that needs grad school.
On average, people with a college degree are much better off financially over their lifetime, even considering student loans
It doesn’t matter nearly as much as in East Asia but the admissions process is also nowhere near as logical and meritocratic as in those countries (or the rest of the world for that matter).
Many employers won’t even look at a resume that isn’t from a certain “tier” school. It depends a great deal on the industry
I’m surprised by the amount of people saying social standing isn’t a thing, but I do think it’s only a thing for a small percentage of the population. There are circles where where you went to school will absolutely matter, and where the connections you made at that school will likely be crucial to your career, but we’re talking about 2-3% of the population. For the vast majority, it will only matter in certain careers or for that first job.
There are some large or prestigous companies that might look for a specific school like Harvard or another ivy league school.
Otherwise 99% of jobs that require a degree don’t really care. As long as it is an accredited school in the USA you are probably good. Colleges and Universities tend to rank pretty high world wide anyways, so even a random university in nebraska is going to be good for most things.
Very little for most people