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@partial_accumen@lemmy.world

2026-04-23 04:40 UTC

> Most of the university education is also worthless on job market. 90% of knowledge you will be using in a company will be company-specific (processes, rules, tools, people) and thus not possible to gain at the university. This was my mindset when I dropped out of college after a year. I then entered the working professional world and did that for 10 years. Then, while still working full time professionally, I went back and completed my degree. What I found was that I had been missing a lot that college filled in those gaps. I was much more successful after getting my degree. > Employers require university degree as a proof that you are able to come to the same boring, tedious place and waste your time for eight hours a day, five days a week each week. That's *part* of it, but its more that you have a basic education with the fundamentals of your field. More importantly, college teaches you *how to learn*. A Bachelors degree will make you no expert. However the effort you undergo to *get* the degree exposes you to the various resources and bodies of information that exist. It sets up opportunities for critical thinking usually with pretty vast resources at your disposal to research, answer questions, and build something on your own from start to finish. A degree usually also means you have a passable command of your native language and can put together a report or presentation that is on-topic and not embarrass yourself or your superiors when your work comes under scrutiny from others. I sometimes remember a couple of my myopic proposals I made before my degree and didn't understand why they were shot down. Today I completely understand. I was out of my depth before, yet I didn't have the self-awareness to even know that. For those 10 years prior to my degree, I didn't understand why the company made decisions that it made. It made, to my eye, wrong/inefficient decisions. What I was missing was understanding of the organization, finances, law, markets, geopolitical impacts, risk management/mitigation, and sometimes even the ethics. None of this that if you go to college you'll come away with all of this. If you skate through doing the absolute minimum you might pass with your degree (and debt!) but you'll have wasted an immense opportunity to learn and better yourself. > Online courses would be better off tied to specific companies rather than to degrees. While I completely agree that a corporate culture is good to learn to be successful in operating in it, I have doubts a designed curriculum would accurately capture the various "good old boys" or crony decision making processes or those that embrace rules not to end in a good result but just to slow you down from affecting change. Nor would that course explain the simmering resentment of below-average of middle managers that have been passed over again and again as they see their better or more agile peers continue to surpass them and how that can negatively affect your personal productivity or chances of advancement.

Replies (1)

  • @HrabiaVulpes@lemmy.world 2026-04-23 12:23

    >This was my mindset when I dropped out of college after a year. I then entered the working professional world and did that for 10 years. Then, while still working full time professionally, I went back and completed my degree. What I found was that I had been missing a lot that college filled in those gaps. I was much more successful after getting my degree. Different experience then. After finishing university I had to learn a lot in my first job in the exact field university was for. > More importantly, college teaches you how to learn. Strongly disagree, but perhaps your college had special training on this. Mine just gave me material and told me to learn. There was nearly no difference in grades between people who worked on their education daily/weekly and those who just marathoned through this on last week before exams. The biggest "effort" in some cases was either getting over 50% attendance or buying book authored by professor. Luckily it was mostly for some niche subjects. > What I was missing was understanding of the organization, finances, law, markets, geopolitical impacts, risk management/mitigation, and sometimes even the ethics. If those were part of a single college course, it must have lasted for a decade to cover all of that. At which point job market will prefer person with 10 years of experience instead. I don't think I can fully understand your position. I neither been a college dropout, neither have I ever wanted to know why company I work for makes specific decisions. I don't even have ambition and pride necessary to switch from position of expert to position of manager. From the very beginning of my university years my goal was to become a specialist and never ever agree to any position that would require skills that I neither posses nor are passionate about. At which I largely succeeded. My chances of advancement are zero by choice and I hope I will manage to keep them this way. What I was aiming at is that university often misses tools, frameworks and knowledge that is more up to date with needs of current job market, instead opting to "give a good base" that is also half a decade outdated in most optimistic case. I guess my take does not match goal "let's advance as high as we can in company". Thank you for your story though - it was an interesting food for thought.

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