How Often Is a Degree a Negative
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Often those promoting college degrees try to say that any degree is better than no degree. But many graduates are beginning to see this as not being true. As a hiring manager I know that I don't see degrees as positives in general and degrees from poor schools, like for-profit schools or schools without academic reputations (like schools whose only claim to fame is a sports program) actually appear as a black mark making it look like the student both didn't research colleges well and failed to get into cheaper, more competitive schools.
I just came upon this article on CNN talking about students that were saying how negative their degrees were - not just negative overall (after considering the wasted time and money) but actually negative on their own (so bad that they need to remove them from their resume.) The article was linked from another one talking about how the University of Phoenix has lost more than half of its enrollment rate since 2010.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/02/pf/college/for-profit-college-degree/?iid=EL
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@scottalanmiller but they wear such cool maroon socks. (but I don't have any sort of degree, I can't comment on the damage of degrees on resumes/careers).
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I for one wish I would have went to our better college in town then the one I went to. I went to a big high school and didn't want a big college. My degree isn't really doing anything for me, since I'm not even in that field. But that's about to change.....I've got some things in the works.
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Aside from the obvious in the article, it's easy: Whenever you get it from ITT Tech or DeVry, or something along those lines. Not only are they not taken seriously in many places, they also cost about 3x-4x as much as a regular degree from a state school.
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@tonyshowoff said:
Aside from the obvious in the article, it's easy: Whenever you get it from ITT Tech or DeVry, or something along those lines. Not only are they not taken seriously in many places, they also cost about 3x-4x as much as a regular degree from a state school.
ECPI could be added to that as well.
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@Hubtech said:
@scottalanmiller but they wear such cool maroon socks. (but I don't have any sort of degree, I can't comment on the damage of degrees on resumes/careers).
I have a few but never put them on my resume. I doubt that they would "hurt" my chances as they are good degrees from top state schools but I don't want any HR department that would have passed me only because of that to do so. So I leave them off as a "filter" of sorts. I'm not proud of them, they are a complete waste and were ridiculously easy - easier than high school. But they are useful as a hiring manager as I don't speculate about college, I actually went, and I know when someone brags about having a degree that their bar for success is so low that they are immediately disqualified.
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If I could do it all over again. I probably would have gone to a better school for my undergrad and not have started my graduate degree. From everyone I've talked to there is almost no ROI for an advanced degree. I would have invested the money from my graduate degree into certifications.
Not that I didn't get anything of value from either of my degrees. I mostly unofficially tutored for my professors (with or without their knowledge) during undergrad so that was fun. Grad school wasn't too difficult and it gave me some hands-on experience into some technologies I probably wouldn't have touched otherwise.
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@BMarie said:
I for one wish I would have went to our better college in town then the one I went to. I went to a big high school and didn't want a big college. My degree isn't really doing anything for me, since I'm not even in that field. But that's about to change.....I've got some things in the works.
My wife was the same way. She decided to go to a local Woman's only college, wound up in $30K+ of debt to become a teacher. She definitely regretted doing that after the fact. Her student loans weren't paid off until she was 34.
For her masters she went to the local university and luckily didn't have to carry any loans for that.
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I can't really complain. I went to the local state university. It wasn't great, it won't get me a job in Dallas or LA, but I'm ok with that. I graduated with less than $15k in debt, Got a decent job, and I am able to pay for a house, a car or two, and a family. I wouldn't have been able to get where I am with out it. I could have gone to a much better school, and moved around the country, but it just wasn't in the cards for me at the time. It may be in the future, but I will have enough built up experience by then so I'm not as worried about it.
My only regret was spending three semesters at the for profit DeVry. It was easily 60% of my education cost, and I didn't get my moneys worth at all.
For me, Small town, small school, big fish in a tiny pond is where I want to be for now. I can live vicariously through Scott Miller's travels.
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How Often Is a Degree a Negative? Never.
The real question is: "Is it a positive?"
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I was talking about this topic to a friend who's a manager of a dev team at West Corporation. HR won't allow him to hire anyone without a degree. While I do believe that his team itself is a good place to work, it's definitely sounding like the company as a whole isn't.
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@Aaron-Studer said:
How Often Is a Degree a Negative? Never.
The real question is: "Is it a positive?"
Why never? The article and a lot of our experiences are that it can quite often be a dramatic negative.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Aaron-Studer said:
How Often Is a Degree a Negative? Never.
The real question is: "Is it a positive?"
Why never? The article and a lot of our experiences are that it can quite often be a dramatic negative.
Well never because you can choose to leave it off your resume as you have.
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@Dashrender said:
Well never because you can choose to leave it off your resume as you have.
True. Then it just becomes "do we ignore the cost in time and money and ignore the resume gaps that it creates and other negatives of learning bad habits, etc."
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If we don't consider something that we leave off of a resume as a negative, does that they mean that nothing can be a negative since we can just never mention it?
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Why did you choose to get a degree?
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And so that when I explained why college was bad and not working that people wouldn't use the lame excuse that I couldn't know because I didn't attend. I know, as a hiring manager, that anyone who thinks college means they are smart are way, way below the minimum standard that I would want to hire. College itself was worthless, but knowing for certain that it is worthless is valuable.
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I don't have a degree, and it hasn't hindered my IT career at all. In fact, I believe I would be worse off if I did have a degree. However, that isn't true for everyone. The "colleges" mentioned in the article that was posted are a complete joke. The smallest about of research would show that. It's difficult to compare Everest College with a state college. Degrees from bigger state colleges are seen as valuable most of the time.
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Depends on the "bigger state college" and where you are. UT is a big deal in Texas but a joke everywhere else.
