University Degrees: Pros and Cons

If it sounds too good to be true, it generally is. Isn't this what we've heard before? With this constant push on university degrees, I'm often reminded of the people, including several family members and friends, that I've talked with over the years, who had degrees but they didn't have jobs in their field of education. It became a useless piece of costly paper that didn't help them due to job availability being scarce in their field (among other things). I've seen or heard of it far too often to wonder about the logic behind promoting a higher education when the jobs won't be available for them, leaving them with large tuition bills and possibly lower paying jobs. It's insane.

Why push at someone to get a degree if the jobs aren't there? Why also stigmatize someone for not having a degree? Who's really gaining from all this? In fact, has it ever crossed anyone's mind in who's behind promoting that the government should have free university education? Will it escalate to the point that we will need a degree to be a restaurant server? Seriously! Besides, we all know that nothing's ever free. Someone will always pay. That means, if not in tuition, it will be in higher taxes.

I've thought about this for many, many years. It seems so illogical for someone to have any degree, for instance, and be flipping burgers, instead of having the job they went to school for and still have to pay back a student loan. Not that flipping burgers is bad, I've done it and it's a necessary job in which I'm thankful there are those that do this. Any "service" industry is very vital to our country. They should be appreciated for their contribution and never demeaned because of it.

This morning, I began to think about this again when a friend posted a quote from Albert Einstein: “I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.” After posting the quote, her friend commented that we couldn't live without our sanitation department and how extremely important their jobs were to everyone. I agreed with him, we would be in serious trouble without them. My husband retired from Storm Water Operations in Tampa. He was a street sweeper that kept our city gutters clean and sewer drains unclogged against street flooding, especially during our rainy season. A very important function to keep a city functioning.

Anyway, to continue about degrees and my observations, I also discovered that there are "degreed" people who were being paid less in their field of education due to a flood of these people in the job market. I discovered that, first hand, back in the late eighties when I lost my accounting job due to a recession. As I was looking for a job, I was told that there were university CPA graduates being paid less than what I had been paid at my last job. At the same time, I was noting how others, with degrees, weren't using them because they got better pay in another field, sometimes service related fields. I don't mean just restaurant employees or street sweepers. There are also jobs that are taught through technical schools as well, or on the job training; many things that wouldn't require a four year university degree.

In fact, I worked as a bookkeeper (with only a high school education and on the job training), back in the mid-seventies, at one such technical school that taught computer repair. People can also learn to be an electrician, construction worker, an appliance repairer, medical transcriptionist, paralegal assistant, among many other jobs that can be taught through technical or trade schools, but check the job market first before deciding any career. 

Also, there are people I know that are self-taught web designers and multi-media artist. They're good at what they do, but should they be stigmatized because of not having a degree? Should they be made to feel discriminated against or snobbishly looked down on? No!

Yet, isn't that what some do in order to promote universities and their high tuitions? Making people feel one is more important than another due to a particular education or degree? You're a sanitation worker and I'm a doctor. Right! Yet, without that sanitation department, doctors would be up to their necks in more germs than they would ever want. I can go on with more analogies, but I only hope people understand that there are pros and cons when it comes to degrees. No one should be stigmatized, because we all have jobs to do, we're all educated in those jobs (however that occurred). Also, no one should feel that another is always better off either.

Unless, of course, one might surmise that a person who has a nice paying and less worrisome sanitation job, without a degree and school loans to pay back, might feel they are better off than a doctor with all their responsibilities and enormous tuition loans to repay.

Something to ponder.