It's true for most buisiness administration/IT/corporate office-type jobs. Just about everything relevant is learned on the job. A college degree is four years spent to keep HR departments from throwing your resume in the trash unread. ;)
You can say that again.
I've had some college classes, but no degree. Every job I've applied for since I returned from Vietnam in '67 has required a degree. Yet I'm able to bypass the HR idiots and get interviews with the hiring manager quite easily. The same with my daughters.
Since I've always been a consultant I've had hundreds of interviews. The degree thing never comes up with me, nor my daughters. The hiring manager wants to know if you can do the job, and if you will "fit in" to his team.
The sole purpose of requirements for a job, mortgage, club membership, including political clubs is to give the decision maker a face-saving way to reject the applicant that doesn't sound petty or discriminatory.
Affirmative Action comes in many forms. Some graduates think they deserve a job or mortgage or membership or whatever because of what they are, rather than what they can do.
But education can prepare people for the real world. In IT, the need is for people who can remember a complex set of combinations of criteria ... in other words, to think. Some teachers do teach a person how to think. When I switched careers to IT in the 80s I purposely attended Harper Community College because it had one of the top 10 IT faculties, not in the opinion of academics who would never give that to a 2 year college. But that was the opinion of employers, especially in the MidWest. I could go on an interview and say "I had Singleman, I had Longhurst, I had Mellenthin, etc. and was immediately hired. Singleman allegedly taught Assembler. But what he really taught was "how to think".
That group of good faculty retired and was replaced by people with much higher academic degrees and prestige. But all they can teach is "how to click a mouse".
A good K-12 can also teach how to think. But most of those schools are too busy teaching how to feel and what to feel and can't handle the thinking skills.
Just about everything relevant is learned on the job. A college degree is four years spent to keep HR departments from throwing your resume in the trash unread. ;)>>>>>>>>>
And the situation only grows worse. I have a high school diploma and a diploma from a Navy electronics school but am considered unqualified now for the same type of job I had back in the sixties even though computer technology would make the same type work easier to do now. I see people with four year degrees now doing jobs that would have been sonsidered beneath the dignity of a self-respecting high school graduate in the sixties.