Education & Work Going To University is a Waste of Time??

Personal drive is not dependent on having or not having a uni degree.

It's a largely irrelevant discussion. It might as well be "social tennis players make more money than social cricket players and here's an anecdote that proves it".

 

I wouldn't engage a lawyer who doesn't have a degree. Most of my colleagues have degrees even my Thermometer is calibrated in degrees.

My tradies don't but all of their kids do.

Even my batista has a double degree in advanced maths and computing - his brother didn't complete his degree and earns 5x as much.

Not all jobs call for a degree but any where you are required to join a professional association will set standards for membership which require that you hold the appropriate qualifications.

 

One of my mentors did a 'Masters of Entrepreneurship and Innovation'. I had never heard of it before I met him. There are interesting degrees out there.

 

Wow how do you follow a step by step procedure in being creative

 

Not sure what was involved. But I imagine it was about expanding your mind and thinking outside the square type stuff. Looking for what others can't see and finding a way to monetize those opportunities.

 

@York - a degree in smoke and mirrors?

 

Whatz a digree?

 

@Biz - a digree is a qualification awarded in Nu Ziland

 

Chur bruh

 

They can't teach people to have ideas but they can teach people how to implement them. It's not easy taking an idea and turning it into a profitable business. Imagine how many innovations have been wasted because the people having the ideas never knew how to get them implemented. If you have watched the inventors tv show or dragons den, you will see great ideas but sometimes the people have no clue about how to take them to market. I don't think many people have that skillset. Perhaps that is the movtivation behind the Entrepreneurship and Innovation degree?

Edit: example here Business idea

 

I am of the opinion that people skills and communication are far more important that a paper degree. I think if you can get on with people and get things done, you are able to get ahead. Irrespective of uni or not.

 

Whether university is a waste of time depends massively on the degree that you get.

If you're doing medicine, dentistry or engineering type degrees then I'd argue that you learn a lot of important skills that translate directly to your future career and it's time well spent learning in an environment where your mistakes aren't costly.

As a commerce graduate I'd argue that the time at uni getting the degree is just about a total waste of time, I basically attended my 16 exams a year and spent a couple of hours doing the assignments and never attended a lecture and only attended tutorials if they were worth at least 10% of my mark (which was about 5 of the 26 units I did). I dare say I could have passed all my exams if you gave me about 6 hours to prepare for each one, given that would be more time than I spent on all but 2 units anyway. Absolutely the hardest part of a commerce degree is the amount of group assignments that you're forced to do with people who are just lost causes and the amount of time wasted to do group assignments over just doing the assignment yourself (it wasn't until my final year I worked out you could pretty much always do a group assignment on your own if you pretended there were personal issues that broke your group, this would save a good 10-15+ hours per assignment and was probably the best thing I learned doing the degree).

What I will say though that doing a "nothing" degree made university a hell of a lot of fun, getting a valuable piece of paper at the end of 3 years of partying is certainly better than just doing 3 years of partying and having nothing to show for it and I'd absolutely do it all again if you asked me.

Of course then you get to the arts degrees and other similar areas where you can make a real case that even the piece of paper at the end is useless...

Ultimately I'd say for most people that university is a worthwhile experience, you'll generally get good social experiences out of it if nothing else and even if you don't end up using the degree showing that you can complete something is a worthwhile resume block but I dare say that for a large portion of occupations you could absolutely learn on the job better than at uni, especially with the way that the assessment structure basically guarantees that most people will cram something in and leave it all on the exam page and not really learn much.

 

Having an Economics degree and not utilizing it at all probably skews my judgement towards thinking uni is fairly useless unless you study medicine or engineering. In some other fields nursing, education, law etc. having a degree is a necessity, but with the oversupply of graduates a degree no longer guarantees a good job/career in the field you studied. Getting a trade seems better than having a degree these days. Learning to weld, fab, or doing a licensed trade like plumbing or electrical will give you a more useful skill and a higher paying job than a lot of bachelor degrees will.

I often see people justifying uni by saying that those that get a bachelors degree make some amount (millions) more over their lifetime than those who don't. The statistic is meaningless because where you have longitudinal data (the 50s, 60s, and 70s) about lifetime earnings getting a college degree was something done disproportionally more by wealthy people. Really, is it surprising that people who are born to wealthy families make more over their lifetime than those who are not? You could easily say that children who do equestrian, rowing, polo, or wear sweater vests make more over their lifetime than those who don't...Unfortunately the statistic about lifetime earnings and univeristy degrees is as much as that a degree leads to class mobility as it is that Australia is not quite the meritocracy we wish it was. Networking and who you know often beats what you know!

 

How do you move from working class to middle class, Education !!!.

 

We do need uni grads in the workplace.
All the "uneducated" entrepreneurial type need someone to hire to do their work for them.
How ironic...

 

I agree. I have never understood why trades are looked down on. It's like going to TAFE is the 'poor brother' of going to uni. Except that some people love the trade work. A couple of my mates from uni went into trades and love their work. My cousin is an electrician and he loves his work too. I have been out on site with him and seen his work and he is very good at his job. He makes good money from it too.

Besides that, if we all became doctors, lawyers and accountants, who would fix our cars and build our houses? I reckon the trades are a great vocation. Put it this way, if all the lawyers and accountants disappeared and all the plumbers and electrians disappeared, I know which one I would miss first

 

Did my bit and kept a few lecturers in a job while I slept my way through Uni.

 

I've got a degree but have probably used around 5% of what I was taught since.

What I did learn that has been valuable was research skills, and the ability to quickly absorb information. This has helped me to quickly adapt to career changes.

I think a higher degree however is a waste of time. There are several people I have worked for and with who won't recruit anyone with a higher degree. (I did employ someone with an M.Sc once, one of the worst recruiting decisions I made)

 

net worth

 

Education that can lead you to increased networth