Reply #158: A degree is ass-coverage for HR managers.

[lumberjack_jeff]

Thank you for being candid. I find some irony in a manager using a degree as a proxy for independently determining an applicants level of skill - then criticizing lazy students.

I am unemployable in the engineering discipline in which I spent 24 years, 5 of which in a management capacity, because my resume, when scanned by the labor saving resume OCR machine (a panacea to the hardworking, risktaking HR manager), places me in the "uneducated" category.

Fine, I'll build houses. I set my own hours, there's more money in it and no one cares if I have a degree.

The college industry is less adding value to the workforce than it is just creating it's own marketplace - a perception that their services are indispensible, and worth the price of five years' salary.

I often wish that I'd had the opportunity to go to college, but the reality is that if I'd done so, I would not have begun investing until I was 30. I would have remained dependent on a salary till old age.

I guess to the OP, there's nothing worse than a college student who recognizes that the real value of a college degree is the checkbox in the OCR database.