I may be wrong, but I think that the managers, after long periods of butt kissing, are expecting some attention to be paid by their subordinates to their butt too.

Delphi,
I’m not sure I understand what you meant about steps 5-8. What did you mean? Most people don’t want to take steps 5-8 because they consider it corporate butt kissing and it is very hard work. But I’m telling you that it works. Getting a degree opens a lot of doors for you. If you don’t have one, you are going to have break your back to be noticed. Is it fair? No. Is it reality? In most work places it is.

I know a woman that started in the mailroom (1990) of a major finanicial corporation at 18 years old without a day of college. She used these tips and today she is an executive. Was it hard? You bet it was. Was it worth it? For her it was.

It all depends on what you want, I guess.

Still, I have to admit that the masterate I got helped me much more in my career, as it gave me the opportunity to show up and to prove how efficient I am. Meanwhile, the lack of college studies blocked my wife’s career. It is definitely not fair, but it is as it is.

Eventually, I am not sure if the lady to whom you gave the advices from “10 Tips to Secure a Management Position Without a College Degree” was not right about the tips 5 to 8. Although all tips are good and really helpful, I think that these ones are having some degree of hypocrisia in them. Or I may be wrong.

That’s a real shame but I hope society has gotten rid of this attitude by the time my son is 15-20 years old.

Nice weekend

AD

I guess my logic dictates to me that I make some money first, and then figure out what success really is. If that includes starting a business, or creating something and making a lot of money–so be it.

I also have a lot to say about some of the comments.
Josh–I want to know how many of the 600+ billionaires were millionaires to begin with.
Steve Olson–in my field, you have no choice but to believe that you aren’t as good without the degree and no one without a degree can get “too far” ahead. It seems (and I am sure there are exceptions but very few) that everyone has to be the smartest, the most competitive, and you only prove yourself in those 2 areas, if you have a degree, the pinnacle of that being a Ph.D. This I don’t agree with AT ALL, but it just seems to be the way it is. (I have some comments about that too, but I will save that for one of your educational blogs..LOL)

One of the concepts I liked from the Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance is the concept of educational institutions doing away with grades and letting the people willing to learn progress and as time passes the people that can’t or don’t want to continue learning eventually weed themselves out. No one fails, no one passes, the cream just rises to the top.

So if we keep repeating the platitude “College is the only way to financial success”, and the 82% believe us, what have we done? Created a huge recipe for social disaster. We had better start telling these people that they CAN be successful. We need to encourage them to be successful at whatever they decide to do and stop all this social engineering. We need to tell them to happy with themselves and what they have and stop telling them what they don’t have or what they can’t have.

I think it would be much more productive to motivate these folks with encouragement than frightening them with consequences we don’t even know will occur. I believe people are far more powerful than they realize and we need to tell them that they can exercise that power wether they have a degree or not.

Has it ever occured to anyone that maybe the reason so many non-grads earn less than grads is because they believe they should earn less? Maybe we should work on that belief? That seems a whole lot easier and cheaper than trying to get them to go to college using shame, guilt, and fear.

The claim that society benefits as a whole the more people that earn degrees is unprovable. There is no evidence to suggest such a thing. In fact too many people going to college may just water down the entire institution and make it worth even less. Read this The Decline and Fall of the British University.

College is great choice for some people and very poor choice for others. It’s a sweeping generalization to say that everybody is “College Material.” Charles Murray just did a strong piece on this subject in the Wall Street Journal. Money magazine has even said that as college gets more and more expensive the return on investment will decrease. Many experts are recommending that private colleges are already a poor investment for most people.

If 90% of college is the experiences, not the classes, why is it so expensive?

There’s a business idea…
Charge 50% of the price of college and offer all the experiences, minus the classes. That’d be a good deal huh?

Life lessons in a more controlled environment for starters. Dealing with other people and living with other people. 90% of college is the experiences not the classes. Society benefits as a whole the more people that attain degrees.