I just tore up my degrees

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I've tried getting entry-level jobs...can't even get that. Honestly, I don't see many entry-level jobs advertised....except in sales.

Its the same everywhere. It's not what you have or know.. it's who you know and how you socially interact (interviews etc). It's extremely hard to get a foot in the door without sheer dumb luck, even for NTs but worse for us.

My advice to any young people. Do a qualification where you train in something or do work experience or get an intern ship.

We have the same problem in Ireland, there are people with Masters degrees who spend thousands on education and they are left unemployed. Employers are always crying out for experience but nobody is willing to give them that experience. It's a real pain when you're trying to get a job to pay for college or just to support yourself financially.

Makes me wonder if I really will need a college degree for vet school in a few years. Maybe someone will wake up one day and realise how many BS courses you have to take to be a vet like literature and phycology. They say math is a requirment but I notice no one really seems to teach how to actualy apply it.

Okay, but many people from Europe that I speak to (both on-line and in real life) tell me that with my education, I'd have a good-paying job in no time over there (I mean Europe generally...not Ireland specifically). I really think there's a cultural difference....this country puts such a high premium on hands-on experience over "fancy book learnin'." The college dropout with a couple years experience has the advantage over the Phd. with no experience.

Objectively, I don't know which way is right, but I do know the American way hurts me.

It might seem cruel for me to say but if I wanted to truly know something, I would look it up in a book. I would not hire someone to tell me. Learning something and memorizing it means nothing in the real world. Knowledge is only useful when you can apply it or expand it. Simply knowing is not enough to be useful.

People who just feel like they can regurgitate knowledge and get ahead in life are sadly mistaken. Many colleges are resorting to these same multiple choice and standardized testing utilized in high schools. They resort to making the material easy enough so most can "pass". It is one of the reasons a degree is not worth a lot these days.

I wish I did that so bad, my heart sinks when I even read it.

Wise words from technoteen.

My advice for anybody wondering what degree would actually be worth the time and money is to look in the want ads. Whatever degree or certification is asked for in the jobs you would be willing to do, that's the one to get. Things can change in 4 years but at least it points you in the right direction.

Luckily the degree still exists whether that piece of paper has been torn up or not. Employers contact the university to verify that the potential employee has the degree they say they have. The paper version of the degree could be forged so employers need to hear it from the source.

Sometimes the thing to do in tough economic times is to augment the degree with a certification in something that is hiring right now. Certifications generally take only a year or two- or less, sometimes.

Sometimes I feel like a degree is worthless and only want to hire highschool drops outs is because some people don't want someone smarter to come in there and notice everything that is going on.

This. I think we're becoming more and more like the Mike Judge film Idiocracy, where book learning and studying is ridiculed.

Unfortunately, most degrees are worthless. My ex has BS in engineering. He's been out of work for serveral years now. Engineering jobs have dried up. I would say that if you want to get an education, get it in healthcare, general business classes, or technology.

I don't have a degree...never had the opportunity to complete my education. Most of the classes I took are now worthless.

Except that they aren't ridiculed. LostUndergrad is wrong and technoteen is right. Employers don't want to spend money on somebody who repeats back what is found in a book. Employers want somebody who can do a specific job. A degree might be a proxy for an ability to do that job but not necessarily.

Your best bet right now is to get a quick certification in something that is currently hiring. Certifications take a fraction of the time as degrees and cost a fraction of the money to get. Lots of unemployed college graduates get certifications on top of their degrees just to start working. The degree can then enable them to go farther within the company, once hired, than somebody with a certification but no degree.

yeah technoteen is right but at the same time we need those kind of people. if we dont who the hell is going to keep this country running. if we fill the world with 8 week certified people we have no industry at all. we need innovative people to create and continue building things. yeah you could get a certified guy to create something but he isn't going to know as much as a person with a 4 year degree. and doctors wtf? how our country is set up now seems fine. we have people who can maintain their own at the top and maintain their own at the bottom, which is exactly what we need. if we leave a classless society it doesn't make sense, everybody head is going to go so big they won't want to do the blue collar work. and plus who created education, it probably wasn't a person that will only take a 8 week certification course. it took people who put in the night and day work to get us where we are at. we need big headed hard working people.

yes college have those scan tron sheet but there are some people out there who aren't willing to even go that far in life. college is no picnic even doing those kind of test. and at least those people are exposed to the material and if something was thrown at them at dealt with that material they would at least know where to start.

That is kinda going back to what he was saying but idk i'm no where smart enough to wrap my head around this kind of stuff and have any type of intelligent debate. this could probably go deeper and deeper but i dont have the mental stamina for it at all.

I feel this wen't away from the point but whatever. I do see your point on not needing a person to regurgitate that can be found in a book, but someone who has studied it could have more experience and insight in it then say someone who has just started reading it. you can't figure out things over night on a subject. it takes time. which might bring a better result then say john who just started reading the material a couple of nights ago.

The world is becoming more and more harder to understand the more i learn about it.

@Lost Undergrad: We have found a point of agreement. I agree that quickie certifications give you far less breadth or depth than a full university degree and our economy would be in deep trouble if there was a sudden reversal and certificate holders outnumbered degree holders. We need people who have been immersed in a subject in-depth.

My advice was for the very short term. The OP needs a job. A certificate is a fast route to a job and has more certainty than a degree. If he gets a certificate in something, the odds of him getting a job go way up. Once in, the degree(s) will be helpful in promotions. Or maybe he won't want to be promoted in that field because it isn't a long term interest. But he'll at least be employed- and in something that looks reasonable on a resume-and when the economy picks up he'll be in a better position to get a job relevent to his degree(s) than if he were unemployed all that time.

There is a reason I am so gung-ho on this degree+certificate path. The economy took a dip at the end of the 80's (though not as bad as now) and I found myself in a position similar to today's graduates. I had a degree but couldn't even get a job as a sales clerk (a job that is dependent on people buying lots of stuff). So I registered for a certification program (exact nature witheld for privacy reasons). Most of the people in my program were highschool rather than college graduates, although some were degree holders doing the exact same thing as me. Once certified, I got a job quickly and the fact I already had a degree helped me gain promotions.

It may seem odd that a certificate can make one more employable than some degrees. And this only holds for degrees not currently in demand. But the one thing that certificate programs have going for them is that they are very job-training oriented rather than education oriented and many will have internships to get you experience that employers demand.

I'm not arguing that degrees are useless and certificates are all anyone needs. But desparate times call for desperate measures. Employers right now are the ones holding all the cards since applicants outnumber jobs. They want somebody who can start with as little on-the-job training as possible (which costs them money and there is no guarentee of return on investment). The global reasoning skills and general knowledge gained while getting a degree are great but rather vague. The employer wonders, "how does his ability to write a term paper help me right now?". The beauty of the degree+certificate path that I followed during the previous downturn is that the certificate gets you in the door because it is so job-specific and the degree helps you rise in the ranks where global reasoning skills and general knowledge are needed to get past entry level.

yeah i completely get what your saying.

if you have a masters in poli science... have you looked into gov. agencies like peace corps, diplomatic services, civil service, FBI... ?