just my 2 cents of course but life boils down to: 1.) how hard you wanna work 2.) who you know 3.) a bit of luck


education is a huge f*ucking scam...unless, like i stated before, you wanna be a doctor or lawyer

This is simply not true. Look at the demographics of higher income people and their backgrounds.

I think to a certain degree this is true, however the people with higher educations simply have a higher bottom end.

If you are arguing that someone with no experience and a college degree >>>> no experience and no college degree, then I definitely agree.

However, I think with a couple good internships leveraged into full time jobs can be a far better use of time in the majority of fields. You have a lot more time to gain relevant experience, network, and get farther in your career. Most classes which are largely useless and put you into debt. Relevant experience seems like it would be way more important than whatever GPA you could achieve.

Darius

You forget though, people have skills that may be needed for the NEXT role. Someone may come in as some sort of entry-level position but companies promote capable people within when possible.

I was an analyst. I had a pretty decent skillset (or I'd like to think), that helped me with my next role. These skills will become relevant in my NEXT role, and management KNOWS that. It's what makes me a top candidate for my next role - skillset, experience, knowledge of the company and no need to break me in. I'm already aware of what's expected of me in my next job.

Lets face it, interns usually get very easy work or work no one else wants to do. No one in their right mind lets an intern work on anything that's going to a client directly.

unless the guy without a college degree interned for someone I know - I'll still take a college degree and no internships over internship experience and no college degree any day. It's highly unlikely that the intern learned any skillsets I value. The college degree candidate may not have eithier, but at least that person is more likely to be capable of learning the skills I need.

An intern is like when your buddies come over on the weekend to 'help' you build a deck or playhouse for the kids. You can't fire someone, or sue them for damages, if you never paid for their time. Some internships may appear to be more hands-on, but reality dictates no real responsibility or obligation exists.

imo, a degree is yardstick tool, it documents the applicant did complete a structured program within the accepted standards. Real world skills are acquired on the job.

I see your point but college education provides much more then just education itself. This is hard to quantify. The likes of logical thinking, social interaction, networking, time to think about your future and so on. It's a great place to meet like minded people. It also provides to an employer an attitude that you have enough work ethic to stick at something for a number of years to achieve a set goal, which at least means something. I understand your sentiments but I think basing judgement solely on income isn't the whole picture, there's many more benefits from college then education.

this guy!

You have to realize that 6 month of full time school is 3 hr of class per week. So, ~6*4*3 hours of 'learning.' 3 months of internship could be 50*4*3 hours of experience.

And, that is not even accounting for the fact that many college level internships will assume you know some basic principals that you have already learned in school.

Who is to say you can't go to school for terms a,b,&c, then intern for term d, then go back to school, etc...

Minimum wage or as I said before go to a commercial bank like chase

No, it was not 3 hours of class per week (it was closer to 20). You also aren't accounting for all the work spent outside of class (I always spent much less than most people, but still 15-20 is reasonable).

When I got to my first college internship, the "principals" they asked me about if I knew, I said "nope." for every one. Then they asked what did I know? In 2 weeks, I figured it out with help and was producing fine. They don't teach that kind of stuff in school.

Perhaps 3-4 weeks of 3-4 classes were useful (and I had a technical major). There were some classes I took above and beyond that really got me thinking well, but most people don't take those.

3 Hours per week per class = 20 hours of instruction if you are taking seven classes (unlikely -- however it is possible -- I did it once).

Sure, there are some filler/BS classes in college (to fill out the requirements / well-roundedness, etc); but if you challenge yourself enough --- You can learn a ton in 4 years (provided your school provides that opportunity with available high-level challenging courses)

I learned an absolute ton in college. And, for all the guys that say it isn't worth it .... I'd beg to differ.

What "principals" did you miss in college that they asked you about on your job?

The pay in your first job is irrelevant. With a 3.0 you should take what you can get. It's much more important to get in a group where you can learn as much as possible and have advancement opportunities. The pay will come in time.

FWIW when I was in a position to hire entry level Financial Analysts at our bank I did not hire new grads who wouldn't provide their GPA/transcript.

It was a technical job, so there was no exposure to relevant technologies. We learned about made up computer languages that did not exist in the real world. We learned nothing about proper style, reuse, error handling, etc...

It was all about toy problems with toy languages with some very simple concepts mixed in that could have been taught in 2 hours. Total waste of time. I did a training class at work that I spent 2 hour a week in (and some outside work) for a few weeks that I learned more than 4 years of school. Hands-on work with a knowledgeable expert in the field rather than some researcher so removed from reality that spouts on about things that are only useful in academia.

Trust me, I challenged myself plenty. I took a series of advanced math classes that 2/3 of the people (who were already super smart) failed out of. I ended up with enough credits in math that I could have gotten a double major if I would have met the non-major classes (I needed bio and foreign languages credits only), so I got a minor. Got another minor in an unrelated field as well. When given the option, I took the more advanced version of classes.

It was almost all useless. Came into my first internship, didn't know any of the languages or technologies used. Had to learn for myself on my own (most concepts in college were 20 years too slow), and did fine. Got my first real job, had to learn all over again, plenty of new stuff that of course was far ahead of the technology of college classes. Perhaps my school just sucked, but I feel it was more of 4 years of jumping through hoops rather than learning.

If you went to Ohio State and majored in a technical field, that isn't true at all.

It was true for me. Our main series of technical classes were from researchers who had developed their own programming language that is completely useless IRL. It's useful for adding cool stuff to your CV. But there is a reason why my company stopped hiring people from my major at Ohio State, because people came out of school knowing a bunch of abstract concepts and had absolutely no clue how to actually do anything.

I meant that it is totally unfair to judge what faculty can and can't do from how they teach undergrad classes. They teach theory because it is easier for them (theory doesn't change year to year), the students often know very little about the subject coming in so they really do need to learn theory first and they (apparently mistakingly) think the students can figure out applications on their own if they have a strong background in the theory.

OSU is a research university, so even if you take every single relevant class you are only using ~10% of the available resources. It's the same everywhere pretty much. Last time I TAed, it was a graduate course which I pretty much had to teach 1/2 the time since the prof was always out of town. There were a few undergrads in the class and I told them unless they were active in a research group and their advisor told them to take this class their time could be better spent on other things.

I am not going to accept a job after graduation next year that pays less then $50,000.

smh cheap companies trying to go for cheap labor. pay us for what we are worth and so we can pay our bills...

What's your major and work experience?

Where are you graduating from? Major/GPA? And, what are you trying to do?

I am an Economics-Finance and Ethics and Social Responsibility Major with a 3.5 GPA out of Bentley University in Waltham, MA.

I only have 23 credits left to graduate and am doing a blended semester of grad classes so will be half way to my Masters in Finance.

Have two internships this summer and am pursuing another for the fall term.

What are you trying to do within econ/finance? What have you done in your internships?

Thinking about Wealth Management to start then venture into Trading/VC

It would be like teaching an intro physics class, but instead of using the actual laws of physics, you make up some arbitrary rules and teach those as "theory", and solve problems in those for a year. It's pure intellectual masturbation that has zero application and would have been just as useful to study the real thing.

My main point is it does a piss-poor job of preparing students for a job. And of course laziness is a huge part of it (things don't change in theory!). You don't have to keep up with anything, you don't need to worry if it's actually useful, etc...

Only taking 50K+ might make sense for you, but obv would be silly for some. I thought you were saying it as a general rule of thumb for everybody with a college degree, which is no practical.