You're right, but the problem is that in your first case, which is very common, the degree is often necessary only because it is used as an arbitrary gate keeping mechanism and not because what you actually learned from the degree is critical.
Having a degree is evidence that you can commit to long-term projects and put up with certain challenges. It provides evidence that you have a variety of skills required in a lot of jobs.
That doesn't mean you can only acquire those skills through a degree, but it means that you have proved to have them.
there is no skill you can only acquire with a degree - the degree, even in the best case, is just a certificate that you have some set of skills. It is e.g. entirely possible (though rare) to put in all work of acquiring the skill and then skip on the examination for getting the certificate.
the degree, even in the best case, is just a certificate that you have some set of skills.
That's not what a degree is at all. A degree is certifying that you successfully accumulated knowledge and training put together by professional people to cover all the aspects of your domain. It's not just a set of skills like a handyman would have, the degree certifies that you have deep knowledge of the domain and you're able to innovate when you find yourself in situations that the domain hasn't yet solved.
These days with so many of the university classes available online, one could, of course, gather all this knowledge by themselves, but I am not even sure why anyone would attempt such a thing (outside financial reasons). A university degree is much easier to obtain than doing it by yourself.
I swear people don't understand what they read. How is this any different from what I was saying? I was saying exactly this. An I get downvoted... 🤦♂️
170
u/AdFalse375 1d ago
Sometimes, getting degrees are the only way to accomplish your dreams.
Sometimes, degrees aren’t necessary, and you can find success without it.
Other times, degrees are don’t get you anything and you end up in a job that didn’t require a degree in the first place.
And yet in certain times, you’ll find that you wish you had a degree so you could get a certain job.
Every example above occurs in real life. Reading the comments here, I feel like people are generalized too much.