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Comment by pygar | Hacker News Reader

Graduate level jobs still require you to have recently graduated from something.

In my field that means "a degree in computer science or equivalent". It's still the path of least resistance for getting through the door. Yes, there are often other routes, but they all involve working harder than everyone else.

Apprenticeships don't really scale for corporate roles, there are too many candidates, and it requires too much investment from employers. College outsources parts of this, it's one last filter to weed out "the weirdos" - the graduates come prepackaged, indebted and pliable, ready to be slotted in and adsorbed by the system.

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Sure if you think of it strictly as binary as in degree vs. no degree.

A better consideration is spending a significant amount of time and money going to one college versus spending significantly less money going to a community college which might also require a smaller time investment. Unless you're attending a top 5 college then I don't think going to an expensive college is worth it. Find a cheaper place where you can still leverage networking opportunities and put your time and money to a more productive use.

>College outsources parts of this, it's one last filter to weed out "the weirdos" - the graduates come prepackaged, indebted and pliable, ready to be slotted in and adsorbed by the system.

As counterintuitive as it may sound, but the entire point of college is to commoditize labor according to a specialization.

Yeah that last bit is important. Businesses are operated by a certain class of people. How you speak, act, make connections, socialize -- if you want to work white-collar, professional jobs (or Grey-Collar ones managing blue-collar ones), you need to have all the appropriate markers and cues. College + the road to college is how those get instilled in you. That piece of paper indicates you have a high probability of correctly displaying all the right traits. Further resume items solidify that.

And yes, for certain technical fields, you will need 4 years of rigorous education in the basics of that field to be basically competent.

For other fields, networks + connections + opportunities is what you will glean (on top of the socialization). And the location matters! I'm sorry, but if you're doing marketing/communication at a state school in Nebraska, you will have a much harder time than the kid going to USC/UCLA/LMU or NYU/Columbia on the same degree. Because those kids will be quickly snapped up for jobs at marketing firms that make enough money to pay them enough money to make the degree worth it.

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