Posted on 03/04/2026 8:40:04 AM PST by eyeamok
to add more frustration to Gen Z’s plate, there’s the growing realization that for most jobs, a college degree isn’t even useful. They spend thousands of dollars, time, and resources at a university only to enter the workforce completely unprepared. Or the tasks are so mundane that basically any high school grad off the street could handle them with zero problem.
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Most degrees can still get you a barista job at Starbucks.
I’ve been saying this for years. For the overwhelming number of jobs out there, a college degree won’t do anything to help you. You can only learn on the job, like everyone else.
Find someone already in a career you're interested in and ask what it's like. Ask about pay. Ask about what training is actually useful. If it's college/grad school, ask what specialties and what schools are good. Same for hands on trades, which trade schools are good.
That's what I did to be a programmer. Before I finished 11th grade I had talked to programmers, including two in hiring authority, and asked them what training is good (BS in computer science) and where to get it so that people in their position would want to one day hire me.
Simple, really. If you ignore Big Academia's constant brainwashing that they hold all the cards and know everything for your future.
I have counseled a number of potential freshmen to NOT enroll in an expensive school.
First, freshman are culled anyway, and those who take on debt are not "forgiven" for their "poor investment on credit."
Second, a transfer from a two-to-four year institution is far less expensive, and the sheep's skin is the same.
Lastly, with the exception of STEM, most degrees today are not investments, but rather costs to follow graduate debtors through their next years and decades.
It was noticed that having a college degree correlated with having a good paying job. So why not college for EVERYBODY?!
Tasks on an entry level job are boring? Who knew?
Here is a clue: They were boring in 1982 as well.
But now universities are charging 'rich people only' fees and the GIs are no longer flooding in to learn engineering or architecture. Instead non-rich people are borrowing up to their eyeballs to get liberal arts degrees but a vastly dumbed down version compared to those 1930s students. Gender studies, social justice, etc. And hence, they are unemployable but carrying immense debt. Stupid, unnecessary choices wrecking their lives.
Slow learners.
Let me help, if your degree has the word studies anywhere in it you would have been better off going to a trade school.
I recommend you save a little money by using it as toilet paper before you buy your next roll.
Over the past 50 years many states converted their vocational schools, with the mission of providing college grads skills in the trades, into two year community colleges designed to provide local commuting students a two year associate degree before moving on to complete their liberal arts bachelor’s degree at a state university.
If state legislators had any vision they would today be redirecting education funding at community colleges and state universities to vocational education. Ten years from now the skilled electrician, plumber, HVAC technician, mechanic, welder, and computer repair technician will still be in high demand while the holder of a 2 year associates degree, or 4 year bachelor’s degree, in almost any liberal arts field will be loaded with debt and an unemployed ward of the state.
AI will be doing the administrative and “managerial” jobs most liberal arts grads fill today. However, the AI data centers will require skilled tradespeople to stay in operation. Automated vehicles will also require skilled human mechanics to stay on the road.
That is so right on target.
Every time I got a promotion, I would look around the room and figure out which job was next. Then tailor my efforts to make that happen. Sometimes that included things like figuring out how to dress the right way; learning to use the tools they used; watching to see what they were NOT good at—and learning that skill.
I used to tell my kids that MOST of my success was based on being the guy who actually read the manuals of the software that we used. I was able to pick out little things that were not being used that would streamline work and make reports more timely and accurate.
I don’t know where I learned any of that, other than my Dad always yelling at me to “pay attention to what is going on around you.”
It depends on the degree. Anything with “studies” in the title is worthless. STEM degrees are still in demand, but AI will be increasingly used to take the place of some. People who build and repair will always be in demand.
The goal of education is to train you how to think.
But these days it’s more about telling you what to think.
I guess degrees in Transgender Cambodian Poetry aren’t worth what they used to be
I told my kids (and their friends and young people in church) to career plan. Then career plan. Then career plan some more.
And Network! Network! Network!
Was doing an audit at a landfill (yes my life is odd). The boss was trying to fill a job and the HR person was trying to get her to put a college degree requirement on it. The job was as follows: truck loaded with trash drives onto scale, truck drives to dumping location and trash is dumped, truck drives onto outgoing scale, weight difference is calculated, company is sent a bill.
It is a job any sixth grader could handle. But because you had to punch buttons on a computer and do very minor math it required a college degree.
Your first job is to learn what your boss does and to gain the skills to get his job.
The slowly-dawning reality is that for a long time, college degrees have served more as a ticket-punch prerequisite for certain jobs than they marked actually useful learning. As college standards dropped, that reality has gotten even worse.
Or a degree in Afro Pygmy Studies.
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