I had a prof once who said high school graduates could get jobs waiting tables at Chilis and TGI Fridays. With a fine arts degree, you could wait tables at a much more upscale restaurant.
I should know. I don't have a degree, and I have had an easy time of getting leadership positions in fortune 100 companies. If you have a degree--ANY degree--that's a plus. Even a crappy English or Psych degree is a nice resume padder. But that's all college is worth outside of the rigorous sciences. It's just 4 years of BS (har har) and a sheepskin at the end of it.
A college degree helps you get past the bubble headed HR generalist who is the first screener of job applicants. Once you get in the door, the degree is pretty useless. An uneducated wise guy like me can come in and steal the job from you, because guy's like me know how to huck and chuck to survive, while fools who spend their lives in school do not.
My niece is a classy student who also waits tables at an expensive restaurant and makes more money than I do. She pays her way full time and is a beauty too.
There is nothing wrong with a job like that. I was the best Chili Maker at Wendy's.
Of course I got higher paying jobs as time went on but there was nothing shameful in that one.
It is sad that Ken is too blind to see that.
A hundred years ago, the typical purpose of a college degree in the liberal arts was to prepare the children of the wealthy to be able to socialize and have intelligent conversation.
People who actually needed to work for a living went into the business world, worked, and studied at night school or correspondence schools. There mostly was no silliness with degrees in the business world -- you either knew things or you didn't.
The requirement to have a degree in order to get your resume read came from the EEOC's quotas, and businesses need to ensure that the applicant pool had people who could actually read and write