Do you feel that college is necessary to have an successful career?
#career #careers #career-choice
34 answers
Kim’s Answer
Hi Destney
Ken has given you some excellent advice and guidance. One additional thought to consider is to augment your understanding of your personality traits with some insight into your true strengths. My favorite assessment is StrengthsFinder. The resulting report will provide insights into your true strengths and how they are aligned to educational and career options. This information along with the information on your personality traits will provide a well-rounded guide to your decision-making process. Your educational and career path tends to be fluid so keep your mind open to opportunities that you may not have originally considered along the way. Best of luck.
Kim recommends the following next steps:
Ken’s Answer
No. The important thing for you to do is to get to know yourself and how your personality traits relate to various career areas - many of which do not require college and provide for a very good lifestyle. Here are some good sites to visit followed by some tips from my many years in Human Relations.
Should You Go To College
https://medium.com/the-mission/high-school-is-over-should-you-go-to-college-b5b6db6f6712
My Biggest Regret: Going to College
https://medium.com/the-mission/my-biggest-regret-in-life-going-to-college-ef2068f179cf
Ken recommends the following next steps:
Djaja’s Answer
Yes for me.
My college degree help me landed my first job at a bigger company (Sprint PCS). One that job, I was competing with other candidates that also had a college degree. I do not think they will offer me a job if I did not have a college degree.
After my bachelor degree, I did my Master degree without experiencing a working life first.
My advice is not to do your Master degree immediately. After you finish your Bachelor degree, go to work first. See if you like the field you study. You can always go back to school later if needed.
Rama’s Answer
John’s Answer
BETTER LIFE SKILLS
During your classes, you'll often develop the reasoning skills needed to make life decisions, ranging from buying a home to helping their children choose their own college. In fact, college graduates are more likely to have children who also complete a college education. Other advantages of educational degrees may include better study habits and so-called 'soft skills' which spells out into communication and collaborative and cooperative behaviors that enables humans to not only de-escalate dangerous and potential fatal situations, but also negotiate for advantageous placement of self and those close to oneself even in the face of overwhelming obstacles or unfair disadvantage. When others react with anger or despair, those who have a broad palate of interpersonal skills and coping mechanisms, will be successful by persevering, analyzing and assessing the status quo and strategizing towards a new outcome. These are all skills taught in college in various courses such as Algebra, History, Sociology and Philosophy for instance, also known as General Education, or the Humanities.
HIGHER SALARIES
A college education may be one of the best investments of time and money for a person's career. A 2018 report produced by the American Community Survey that was released by the U.S. Census Bureau stated that those who held a bachelor's degree were expected to earn a 40-year lifetime salary of about $3 million dollars on average, while high school graduates only took a lifetime salary of about $1.5 million dollars (www.census.gov). On average, those who held master's degrees earned $3.8 million dollars. Holders of professional degrees could expect lifetime earnings in excess of $5 million dollars.
Good Luck Destney
Katie’s Answer
College is necessary for certain careers--engineer, lawyer, doctor, teacher, etc. College is NOT necessary for all careers.
There are many career fields that require certification that can be gotten through other types of education. If you don't think college is for you, I suggest checking out the programs at your local technical school to see what best fits with your interests.
College doesn't always have to be the next step after high school. My parents both went back to school while I was growing up. There are lots of non-traditional options for college including night classes and online programs.
Katie recommends the following next steps:
Deena’s Answer
Deena recommends the following next steps:
GABRIELA’s Answer
Arjun’s Answer
College is important but not necessary.
Kimberly’s Answer
Simeon’s Answer
Boopathy’s Answer
Tina L’s Answer
Whatever you decide, remember completing a college degree takes discipline and dedication and those are life skills that you can use once you graduate and start a career. So....it's leverage and can't hurt, although it can be financially taxing.
Weigh your options..pray about..and follow your heart..
Best wishes
Louise’s Answer
A college degree is a great asset. While we've heard of people succeeding without a college degree, it is not necessarily true for everyone. Many of those who have succeeded professionally without a college education ended up enrolling in college later on. They realized that their success did not guarantee certain knowledge (i.e. business management or law) that could be beneficial to their line of work.
Most importantly, knowledge is power. Material possessions can be taken away due to mismanagement or what have you. However, nobody can take away the knowledge and skills one acquired through a college education.
Finally, success is not only measured by accumulated possessions or accolades. A person is equally successful when they follow through on what they are passionate about, thus fulfilling their goals in life.
Best wishes to you!
Louise recommends the following next steps:
Anny’s Answer
When I started college, I had ambitions to work in banking. However, mid-way through my undergraduate, I figured out that I did not want a career in Economics. However, I took enough courses in other fields to identify that Marketing was my true passion - college helped with that.
Note that if your desired field of work does require a degree, your investment in your college studies will likely pay off as college grads (on average) earn more over their lifetime vs. non-college grads.
Michael Ivelin’s Answer
The first step that you need to draw down some ideas of what you like to do and see what jobs correspond with that. Then do some research and determine what the requirements for those jobs are and what kind of money are earned for them. A lot of times you might want to do something, but when you realize that you will be making close to minimal wage doing it, you reconsider your options. For example, my friend wanted to be a firefighter because his father was. He did the one-year training and when he finally became one he realized that he was making only about $1,800 a month which was not enough for him to pay his bills. Therefore, he started a second full time job as an ambulance driver. However, even with that job he still could barely make $3,000 from both jobs a month and he did not had any free time as he was working over 80 hours a week. Now he is a truck driver and he makes over $4,000 a month working 5 days a week as a local truck driver. He is home every night and has all of the necessary benefits.