Tertiary Education: Relevant or Redundant!

[Lyrebird]

Is tertiary education really useful? Gone are the days where we could have a degree and land a job in our desire field. So is it really that useful or is there really no point to it and just a waste of money?

Remember to respect everyone's opinions and avoid insulting anyone. Think if you would say it out loud to someone face to face if before posting.

 

[Lysson]

It is only useful if it is needed. A doctor, vet, architect and so on would need a degree because they would have to be a professional or there could be a danger to life.

Otherwise experience and personal skills are what needed to land that dream job.

 

[Osprey]

What Lysson said. Jobs in fields like medicine should require a ton of study and dedication, since the jobs themselves demand an extensive amount of skill and knowledge in order to be successful (and to not end up killing people). Some jobs really do require the best of the very best. This shouldn't apply to every career in existence, of course.

 

[Hector]

I'm kind of in the middle on this. As above posters have said, there's jobs that definitely do (and should) require intensive schooling. Doctors and lawyers being the two that come to mind right away. Doctors due to the whole 'lets not kill our patients' thing and lawyers because of how complex legal doctrine is (I was on a pre-law track in college so I know the basics and well, law is absurdly complicated) and just how much study is required to know the law (and by know the law I mean know the one or two specialties most lawyers end up choosing).

On the other hand, I don't really think that degrees do as much now as they are advertised to do. I currently work in the financial sector (specifically database development and data analysis for a large financial consulting firm). This is a job that requires a large amount of technical knowledge, a solid grounding in financial knowledge and on paper it seems to use the skills I studied in school (economics and computer science at a top 25 university)... and yet, a lot of the time it feels like the degree wasn't worth it.

Almost a quarter of a million dollars for a piece of paper. But I learned 90% of what I needed to do my job at the job. But the piece of paper said I had the skills to learn that 90%. It's a rather annoying catch-22. They want to hire people with experience. You get experience by working. The degree says little but you need it anyways.

So really I don't know if its worth it. I think it's only definitely 100% worth it if you know exactly what you're doing with that degree (degree X leads to med school which leads to being a doctor) for example.