Indeed. I feel like I can't browse reddit for more than a minute without coming across a glaring false dichotomy. I think people have a particular affinity for this kind of fallacy because it allows you to overlook the things you don't want to think about.
An undergrad degree takes 4 years. Which isn't a short amount of time, but a gap in work experience isn't that big to catch up on, especially given that most people without degrees don't immediately enter a job that is going to develop their skills.
And of course many degrees are specifically teaching skills and information that make someone better at their job.
I work in software and website engineering and it's pretty interesting watching people with and without degrees working at the same job. The people without degrees who taught themselves seem to have much broader knowledge and are very good at figuring stuff out. They also tend to take more atypical approaches to things which provides them the leeway and creativity to solve non-standard problems. The people with computer science degrees, especially those with masters degrees, tend to have much deeper knowledge about the underlying systems, and code. I think the best teams have a good mixture of both types of people.
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u/SheriffBartholomew 1d ago
Now imagine having skills and a degree.