Is A College Degree The New High School Diploma?
Back in the good old days it used to be where one could graduate high school, blow off a year or two having fun and getting a little work under the belt before going off to college to get really serious about life and go after a great career.
Afterward, you get an awesome job doing something that you absolutely love, make life long friends who share your same passion as you get paid above and beyond all expectations then look forward to an active retirement with your mate after the kids go off to college to repeat the same delicious cycle.
It all sounded so easy back then didn’t it?
Well fast forward to the year 2013 and for most to hear of a life plan such as that to most these days sounds literally insane!
Now we know that life happens to all of us in so many different unexpected ways and no ones story ever goes as perfect as desired. We have sicknesses that we didn’t anticipate, pregnancies, death, changes of heart, poverty, unemployment, divorce as well as insanity. May I continue? Thought not, because I believe you get the picture.
But in the present day that world that I just described seems to be something off of a movie but definitely not reality!
Today?
You can have multiple degrees and still feel as though your life plan is a gamble. The job market is lean and whatever may be left up for grabs is shifting and morphing into something else. Many who were at the top of their graduating class are forced because of high student loan debt to take a menial entry level position just to make ends meet.
After several years of this type of very frustrated and esteem sapping existence, many have accepted that this is as high on the job later as they will go and that the degree that used to hang proudly on their walls is just a twisted mockery of all of the effort that they put into an educational hustle of their diminishing dreams.
What happened?
A college degree at one time meant that you could literally write your check because you were a proven product who could complete a task and now was officially a finisher. You really thought this as you put in night after sleepless night dreaming of the time when high level employers would come running to you with checks and perks in hand to reward you for your hard work.
Anyone who merely had a high school education couldn’t touch you as they would eventually fade off into nothingness on their blue collar civil service jobs. But if the truth be told there are so many who have graduated college with degrees untold that would love to have a stable civil service job right about now.
…….once upon a time you had a dream.
Who or what is to blame for the diminished value of the once cherished college degree?
The outsourcing of jobs to other countries?
The failing economy?
The downsizing of companies large and small?
Globalization?
…….or maybe a combination of all of the above.
It seems as though the word entrepreneur was a joke many years ago, it was a term that was viewed in a manner that the one who addressed themselves in this way was a loser who was either between jobs or an underachiever and chronic dreamer. Surely one who flew a bit outside of the corporate box that so many graduating students tried hard to get in HAD to be a headcase but how things have changed!
Today it appears that those who possess that coveted college degree have been locked into a way of thinking that only serves the system that they have been trained to work in. When the system shuns them or shuts down, they appear to be all dressed up with nowhere to go.
Not all, but some, because there are those that have successfully adapted from a mentality of depending on a job to take care of them until retirement into one where the middle man has been cut out to deal direct in their area of expertise.
It must be mentioned that we have a growing amount of self motivated goal oriented high school graduates who have come out swinging determined to make it in the world with a mentality focused on specific goals aided by a booming internet.
It’s a free for all in the present day with many individuals waking up to the fact that it’s not always about the degree but the drive inside of a person to succeed. But in this ever changing world where many don’t even stay on a job but for a few years, has the college degree become the new high school diploma?
I would love to hear from everyone so that we can share each others real world experiences on this issue!
Time: Friday April 12, 2013 @ 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
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