A College Degree Is Now Required By Basically Everyone

Young_Chitlin
Young_Chitlin Members Posts: 23,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited February 2013 in Growing Pains
By: Katie J.M. Baker

The way we live now: it takes a B.A. to find a job as a file clerk, according to the New York Times, which declared today that the college degree is the new high school diploma.

Of course, most of us don't have to read the paper of record to know that because we're living it, either through firsthand experience or friends and family who've looked for a job in the past few years. But this piece has some poignant depressing quotes from employees at Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh, a 45-person Atlanta-based law firm where everyone — the receptionist, paralegals, administrative assistants, file clerks, and in-house courier who basically just runs around transporting documents — went to a four-year college.

"College graduates are just more career-oriented," said Adam Slipakoff, the firm's managing partner. "Going to college means they are making a real commitment to their futures. They're not just looking for a paycheck." (Um, those are directly conflicting statements, right?)

College grads are also just so much more fun (ostensibly when they're not ? about trivial matters like student debt):
Besides the promotional pipelines it creates, setting a floor of college attainment also creates more office camaraderie, said Mr. Slipakoff, who handles most of the firm's hiring and is especially partial to his fellow University of Florida graduates. There is a lot of trash-talking of each other's college football teams, for example. And this year the office's Christmas tree ornaments were a colorful menagerie of college mascots - Gators, Blue Devils, Yellow Jackets, Wolves, Eagles, Tigers, Panthers - in which just about every staffer's school was represented.

"You know, if we had someone here with just a G.E.D. or something, I can see how they might feel slighted by the social atmosphere here," he says. "There really is something sort of cohesive or binding about the fact that all of us went to college."

Ah, so that's why the unemployment rate for workers with no more than a high school diploma is more than twice that for workers with a bachelor's degree (8.1 percent versus 3.7 percent); not so much because more jobs these days require more advance skills, but because "those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less capable" and fall through the cracks. "When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out somehow," said one headhunter.

But hey, at least Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh promotes from within! But to what?
"I am over $100,000 in student loan debt right now," said Megan Parker, who earns $37,000 as the firm's receptionist. She graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 2011 with a degree in fashion and retail management, and spent months waiting on "bridezillas" at a couture boutique, among other stores, while churning out office-job applications.

"I will probably never see the end of that bill, but I'm not really thinking about it right now," she said. "You know, this is a really great place to work."

Go Gators!

Comments

  • Go figure
    Go figure Guests, Members, Confirm Email, Writer Posts: 4,662 ✭✭✭✭✭
    its the way the system works now doesnt mean u cant still find a decent job/career its who u know too. that can get u just about as far.
  • fuc_i_look_like
    fuc_i_look_like Members Posts: 9,190 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Lol @ college graduates are more fun. The ? ?
  • fuc_i_look_like
    fuc_i_look_like Members Posts: 9,190 ✭✭✭✭✭
    And lmao @ this ? getting moved to growing pains instantly.
  • Young_Chitlin
    Young_Chitlin Members Posts: 23,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
    And lmao @ this ? getting moved to growing pains instantly.

    I moved it myself
  • twatgetta
    twatgetta Members Posts: 6,705 ✭✭✭✭✭
    If a college degree is mandatory, what do we do with alarming number of all the slackers and dropouts in America??
  • KNiGHTS
    KNiGHTS Members Posts: 4,435 ✭✭✭✭✭
    My mom and grandma used to tell me this was coming all the time when I was a kid. Hell, the only reason I'm in college now is that I applied to work at a Burger King and they told me I needed a college degree and wouldn't accept an app without one. It was like that moment when you realize your parents aren't full of ? , and it scares the absolute ? out of you.

    May 8th, though, I'll have the new HS degree. Woohoo.
  • Melanin_Enriched
    Melanin_Enriched Members Posts: 22,868 ✭✭✭✭✭
    shaniqua lost.
  • NothingButTheTruth
    NothingButTheTruth Members Posts: 10,850 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Yeah we know, a college degree has ALWAYS been required for black people to get a decent job.

    Now as far as white males and "cute" white girls go, I disagree. Damn near every firm I've interned for was filled with old white guys "with experience" aka connects and ? air-headed white girls who the white guys thought was cute.

    ... This shouldn't be anything new. And for the college students in debt, that's 100% their fault. They need to learn how to manage their money better.
  • Wild Self
    Wild Self Members Posts: 4,226 ✭✭✭✭✭
    College is a scam. Hyper-inflating tuition to control people so that they can never live a financially free life. Scam ass bitchmade ass administrators.
  • Squidward Tentacles
    Squidward Tentacles Members Posts: 189 ✭✭✭
    edited February 2013
    knights wrote: »
    My mom and grandma used to tell me this was coming all the time when I was a kid. Hell, the only reason I'm in college now is that I applied to work at a Burger King and they told me I needed a college degree and wouldn't accept an app without one. It was like that moment when you realize your parents aren't full of ? , and it scares the absolute ? out of you.

    May 8th, though, I'll have the new HS degree. Woohoo.

    Unless you were applying for a management position I find it hard to believe that Burger King wouldn't accept your application because you didn't have a college degree. I work at a Mcdonalds, and I know people at BK and that's not a requirement at either restaraunt. It might be preffered in some cases but not required.
  • CitySojourner
    CitySojourner Members Posts: 689 ✭✭✭✭
    Wild Self wrote: »
    College is a scam. Hyper-inflating tuition to control people so that they can never live a financially free life. Scam ass bitchmade ass administrators.

    It's a form of modern day slavery.
  • CottonCitySlim
    CottonCitySlim Members Posts: 7,063 ✭✭✭✭✭
    this should say associate degree's.

    and Tuition rates will go back down since Obama started implementing laws to stop the colleges from continually raising rates to be non affordable.

    That and the fact people cannot afford it even with financial aid it hurting most colleges attendance rates. Its all about the dollar
  • twentyfivelighters
    twentyfivelighters Members Posts: 4,771 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Well, it's a good thing I'm going for my Ph.D. then. ? .
  • Copper
    Copper Members Posts: 49,532 ✭✭✭✭✭
    a receptionist who went to a four year college? that was a ? waste of four years
  • Melanin_Enriched
    Melanin_Enriched Members Posts: 22,868 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2013
    Wild Self wrote: »
    College is a scam. Hyper-inflating tuition to control people so that they can never live a financially free life. Scam ass bitchmade ass administrators.

    Huh?
  • major pain
    major pain Members Posts: 10,293 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Wild Self wrote: »
    College is a scam. Hyper-inflating tuition to control people so that they can never live a financially free life. Scam ass bitchmade ass administrators.

    Huh?

    dont e'en waste ya time bruh lol
  • twinzmom
    twinzmom Members Posts: 1,253 ✭✭✭✭✭
    CopperKing wrote: »
    a receptionist who went to a four year college? that was a ? waste of four years

    A professor at my school was crying about student loans and he got a PH D in Philosophy or religion something like that and he can't find a good paying job.

    Common sense would tell people to get a degree in a field with jobs.
  • willhustle
    willhustle Guests, Members, Writer, Content Producer Posts: 6,550 ✭✭✭✭✭
    twinzmom wrote: »
    CopperKing wrote: »
    a receptionist who went to a four year college? that was a ? waste of four years



    A professor at my school was crying about student loans and he got a PH D in Philosophy or religion something like that and he can't find a good paying job.

    Common sense would tell people to get a degree in a field with jobs.

    True but the ? is really a scam altogether though tutition is set at a skyrocket rate and then all of sudden you have to take out grants & loans (especially with a University) so by the time you graduate you're up to your neck in debt. I was lucky to get all grants b/c I refuse to take out any loans to continue college. It's all a hustle teachers just come there for a salary most don't teach like they are suppose to.
  • wittin
    wittin Members Posts: 17
    If you're committed and determined you can use your degree to recoup the initial investment, climbing the social ladder is not easy, its a competition, your acting like everyone who gets a degree is ? for life or something lol. The reality is too many people think getting a degree should equal some sort of tangible return immediately, and a lot of people shouldn't be studying for degrees as it just doesn't suite them but they just do it because they think that's what they are meant to do to be 'successful'. The degree is just the beginning, a foundation, your meant to utilise it and the hard work begins when your graduate, anyone can complete a degree, so long as you are of average intelligence or above, its up to you to separate yourself from the pack.