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Straight-A dropout
Photo by Flickr user Herkie, Creative Commons.
How I realized university wasn’t my be-all and end-all
I should have seen the warning signs.
Take one snow-stormy night in mid-December, back in my first semester of university. It was nearing midnight, and despite a looming first-year politics exam mere hours away, I left my notes and textbooks and sped to Parliament Hill, where I donned my polyester page uniform and (voluntarily) worked a thrilling, late-night emergency debate.
I rationalized my decision easily. Why worry about a political science exam when I could take a front-row seat to watch our elected representatives engage in high-stakes debate?
In the years following, I quickly became the reigning Queen of Justification. I justified every skipped class and dropped course that speckled my short-lived university career. Why study CRTC regulations in a communications class when I can learn about the importance of airing Canadian content on my own campus radio show? Why fret over an English grammar exam when I can spend (triple) that time copy editing articles for publication?
When I realized I was learning more on the job — on any of my jobs— and was essentially getting paid to discover career prospects and to develop crucial workplace skills, I decided it was time to put the brakes on my expensive academic career. I’ve since replaced selecting courses with selecting what to include on my resume. I haven’t looked back.
But though I know the value of my choices, there remains a stigma against me and my kind — those who choose not to go to university outright or who decided to leave and never return. We’re told we’re unemployable. We’re told we haven’t worked hard enough. We’re told we can’t be taken seriously.
How many 18- or 19-year-old students take their post-secondary studies seriously? My introductory philosophy class was populated by half-awake students slouched behind their laptop screens. No more than eight of us — of nearly 100 — had completed the required readings for each class. Eyes glazed over. People snuck into class late and out early. It may have been a first-year thing or a mandatory-arts-course-thing, but many, clearly, wanted to be elsewhere.
So why, then, are those of us who have the courage to seek knowledge and growth elsewhere so frequently cast aside? I’ve been told by people from various fields of work that if they had two qualified candidates apply for a job, and only one of them had a degree — a degree in anything — they would hire the applicant with the piece of paper. And I’ve heard two justifications for this: the degree demonstrates a strong sense of commitment, or it acts as a de-facto insurance policy.
I don’t believe a degree properly fulfills either of these requirements.
Consider the commitment argument first. There’s a rather simple connection to be made between sticking around an institution for four years and sticking around a workplace for the same amount of time or longer — but that’s as far as that argument goes. Undergraduate schooling does not revolve around a nine-to-five schedule. It does not require that you dress professionally, or even that you complete the same tasks every day. University structure doesn’t even ask that you stick with the same topic of study, if the amount of students who change majors partway through is any indication. If you’re looking for someone who will be committed to your workplace, look for someone who has proven their commitment to another job previously.
The second reason, the purported “insurance” that a degree holder provides, is the pro-university argument I’ve heard most often from school-supporting employers. Apparently, if I was an employer and hired a non-graduate for a job, and he or she screwed up royally, my butt would be on the line – more so than if I had hired a graduate to do the job. How does an extra credential become an excuse? If you mess up, you mess up; and while it’s up to your superiors to figure out how to proceed, you’re likely to get some sort of slap on the wrist. Consequences shouldn’t vary between the schooled and the school-less. Apart from medicine, engineering, and other schooling-is-always-mandatory-because-people’s-lives-are-at-stake fields, I can’t name other jobs for which university training provides the one-and-only kind of preparation or insurance against failure.
I’m starting to think I wouldn’t work for an employer who simply scans my resume to look for a degree. I’d rather someone give me a job because they believe my combined experiences – inside and outside of the workplace – make me a good fit. And while I respect my peers who have found personal value in pursuing higher education, I’m still waiting for our society to grant equal value to education that is sought elsewhere, outside of the four walls of a lecture hall.
Will that ever happen? Will more employers find the time to look beyond the fact that we, the degree-less, have been replacing 20 hours of class a week with 40 hours of work for the last several years of our lives? It can be terrifying to be on this side of the fence when jobs are scarce, competition nears bloodthirsty, and more and more young people are waiting out the recession by completing post-grad programs. But just like the swing of a supply and demand economy, perhaps work experience will increase in value once we realize just how common a BA, and even a master’s, is becoming.
Consider this: decades ago, higher education was largely inaccessible and unnecessary for most. Workers of all collar colours climbed their respective ladders as they dedicated years of service to their trades, and they gained necessary skills as they took on new responsibilities. When did we lose this value we once so emphatically placed on hard work?
I no longer believe a degree is synonymous with education — at least when it comes to job-preparedness. For the working degree-less, those who are looking to pay the bills and find fulfillment beyond a campus: it’s time for employers to realize we have something more to offer than a $30,000 piece of paper. We have tangible experience — an invaluable asset in this post-recession working world.
As my mother once told me: ” never let school get in the way of your education”
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Well said.
How do you write so well for someone without an English Degree?!?
And I have found that many of the jobs that are strictly looking for that flat piece of paper are often flat pieces of jobs.
As someone who is about to graduate from a four-year program with nothing more than an expensive piece of paper and a firmly entrenched ideology that I somehow “deserve” a well-paying job simply by virtue of four years of not working very hard, I can certainly see now that it has been a waste of my time. I now am essentially obligated to pursue further education in some form in order to improve my prospects for getting a worthwhile (aka well-paying) career. Perhaps I should have cast fear aside and tried to crack into a full-time job when I finished high school, instead of simply killing time relying so heavily on the safety net provided by a university degree. Four years in a full-time job could have provided me with some sort of upward mobility, and certainly more financial stability than I have now. The illusion of secondary education is fading rapidly, and the proportion of “educated”, unemployed, indebted 20-somethings is surely to rise just as rapidly in response.
I am a post-secondary school drop out. Today, I am a successful Regional Manager, with an extensive résumé, who gets job offers without even looking for them, all at the age of 27. I received a résumé today for a guy that had 2 Masters, lots of traveling experience and lots of good skills, but he can’t find a job. I support your article, success doesn’t depend on an expensive piece of paper. I do however believe an education and a degree will definitely open some doors and support success, but it doesn’t make it. Determination, good judgement, integrity and hard work will get you there – and a little luck.
Great article Emma!
The way you describe school doesn’t sound anything like my daily experience. I was in Sciences before and switched into Engineering and every week I spend more than 40 hours a week doing assignments, labs and projects. I worked an Engineering job this summer and found that was probably even slightly easier than school.
However, your comment on the value of life experience is right-on-the-dot. I’d think that when employers chose to hire someone less ideal for a position based on a degree vs a non-degree applicant, they are simply re-enacting and recapitulating their own experiences with job hunting.
Someone, somewhere in their lifetime told them that they needed a degree and they are just carrying on this process.
However I do know of a few friends who have earned the job through shear “employability,” who are sans degree but have shown more intuition and elbow grease than any other available candidate. These people vindicate the struggle against degree-based discrimination you speak of, and show that it’s not impossible to usurp this imbalance.
I agree that a university degree (at least in certain particular areas of study) is overvalued, by both employers and high school graduates. I often say that I learned more outside of the classroom than I did inside it during university.
In my opinion, with employers, the problem is that there’s a laziness involved in the hiring process. If they’re giving ten resumes, and five have no post-secondary education, it’s easier simply to dismiss those five and narrow the pool. But, as your case indicates, they do so at their own peril.
I have a university degree. The job I currently work in required me to have a degree to apply but I don’t think in practice anyone actually put much value on it during the hiring process.
I will say however, as someone now in their 30s having been in the workforce for 10+ years, I am very happy I have a degree. If you can afford to get a degree without going into a terrible amount of debt, you should do it. A university degree is an education. It is not a guarantee of a job. You will look back on this period of your life as the opportunity you had to read, think, debate, and feed your intellectual life. This is sad to say but is the one and only chance most people will have in their lives to do this, until maybe retirement.
It’s expensive. Lots of people can’t afford it. If you’re lucky and can make it happen, do it. You have the rest of your life to work.