Experience vs. college degree

I'm not "truly talented" on my best day; I just decided long ago I wasn't gonna let the lack of a college degree keep me from succeeding, to whatever extent I could. I'm probably too dumb to realize I'm not supposed to be in the position I'm in.

 

I bailed on college when I realized I was doing the same job as those with college degrees. I bailed on the job when I realized I didn't want to do the same job the rest of my life and I got the degree. I firmly believe a college degree is proof to corporations that you will put up with bullshit if you think "something" will pay off in the end. I don't regret it at all and seeing my grandma's face (I know, awwww) when I got my diploma is one of the greatest days of my life.

 

Wow, this thread just kind of blew up in the past week.

And, DanOregon, I hear you, buddy. I hear ya.

 

Let's not get carried away here. A person with a degree tends to know more than a person without a degree. They're generally more educated, though that isn't always the case.

This thread started by questioning whether it is necessary to have a degree to do well in a particular career field. We've solved that one. But some people seem to be trashing education altogether.

Also, the importance of a college degree is affected largely by how well someone does in high school. I learned a lot of stuff in high school that other students didn't learn until college. Hell, I took my first SAT test in the seventh grade because our teacher wanted to see whether she had any child prodigies in her honors class. I also wrote my first term paper in the seventh grade.

 

"Know more" what? Know more of everything? I'm trying to understand your line of thinking. If you are going to make a broad assumption like that, would it not also be fair to assume that a person with a degree from an Ivy League university would "know more" than someone who attended a generic state college? There are lots of people who believe that; however, native intelligence does not equal knowledge and the Ivys do not get every bright student (nor does every bright student graduate). If you were to match any veteran copy editor against any 2007 Yale grad in a game of Jeopardy, my money would be on the veteran copy editor (degree or not) because they are repositories of seldom-useful trivia and stray factoids. So the person with the 4.0 from MIT might be brighter than the copy editor, but would he "know more" in that context or would he know more only about his major (but far less than someone who has worked in that field awhile)?

My first college was a prestigious private one, the kind where you could walk into the library at 11 p.m. Saturday and find it far more packed than the campus pub. And in my mid- to late-20s I took some classes non-credit at one of the most selective state universities in the country (mostly to meet women) -- I went to class, I did (some of) the reading, but I took no tests and wrote no papers and received no grades. And I remember as much from those classes as I do from the school where I spent most of my waking life studying. There are many ways to acquire knowledge -- would a college grad who gets his news from TV "know more" than a college dropout who reads a daily newspaper?

And in our work, what is the value of "knowing more" anyway? I used to supervise someone with a couple advanced degrees and he kept telling me about how much he "knew" and I kept telling him that in the business of editing people's copy I am less interested in what a copy editor "knows" and far more interested in how much he's willing to look up. If we rely on what we know, then our standard of accuracy is haphazard because we encounter something new every day. So "knowing more" is something we pick up over time, but the humility to not trust our memory is far more useful on a newspaper. "Knowing more" only goes so far in our line of work -- skepticism, curiousity, common sense and the ability to see something from someone else's perspective are far more important, and we cannot see whether a person has that from looking at credentials.

 

a fine scotch i tell ya, a fine scotch.

 

College graduates tend to read the paper more than other folks. That's partly because college builds a well-rounded person by stressing diversity of thought and requiring a broad range of knowledge. College graduates also tend to read at a higher level than non-graduates.

I think you've proven my point.

Thanks.

 

Allow me (another college dropout, yes) to dispute that point, too. "Know more" is a pretty broad statement. Know more about what? I "know more" than a lot of people, including most college graduates, but a lot of that knowledge isn't particularly useful.

What I got from my time in college was this: It taught me how to learn. The rest, I did on my own and for free.

I would never, never, never discourage anybody from going to college, but I also would never try to describe it as an automatic punched ticket to greater things.

If my sink is leaking, I don't give a shit whether my plumber has a broad liberal-arts education. I want him to fix my sink, and I want him to do it well, and I want him to care about his work. The overemphasis on liberal-arts education has really taken away from quality focus on technical and industrial arts, which bodes poorly for the future of our society.

If you read a lot, that doesn't automatically make you smarter than me. It just means you read more. (And there aren't a lot of people out there who read more than this college dropout.)

 

I don't have a degree, and there are certainly times where I regret it. I've been fortunate to get some decent chances in this business, and have a job that I truly enjoy, but I think the route there would have been a bit easier with that piece of paper.

I've seen a lot of people say that a degree is most important for getting a first job, but I'm not sure I completely agree. There will always be small, middle-of-nowhere papers willing to take a flyer on someone young and with a bit of talent, who will come cheap (oftentimes, the papers that run "Get paid to watch games!" job ads). It's getting out of that first job that can be a little tricky. Once a larger paper shows that you're worth hiring away from someplace else, that's when the experience will likely start to outweigh the degree.

Like I said, I'm one of the fortunate ones who was able to get out of that first job. There are plenty of other lucky/good ones out there without a degree who have had long, illustrious careers. But there are also plenty of people who get stuck in Podunk-ville. It may be because of no degree, it may be because of a lack of talent, it may be because of poor work ethic, or it may be some combination of those three.

As it's been said on this thread before: Having a degree, although not always necessary, will never hurt. Not having one will never help, and could certainly be a deal-breaker in some cases.

 

For example, that columnist job in Eugene. Don't bother applying without a degree. I'm told it is an absolute, ironclad requirement.

 

Yeah. Sure. If Jim Murray walked in, they would tell him to get lost.
Absolutes suck. So do the people who make them.