Don't Shortchange a College Degree
There's a lot of chatter
today about the value of a four-year degree. But as an employer, that
achievement still tells me whether an individual has the potential to perform
in a work environment.
BY HOWARD
TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH
INVESTORS@HOWARDTULLMAN1
There's a major national
debate going on about the need and the value of a typical (and increasingly
costly) four-year college education. Vocational schools are having a resurgence,
online universities from places and states you've never heard of are all over
the airwaves, and DEI-focused employers are issuing voluminous press releases
about how they're all looking to hire folks without a degree.
Parents are properly
confused, kids have no real clue, recent grads don't know where to turn and, to
be perfectly honest, there's no simple answer that makes sense for everyone.
The one obvious truth is that there are no shortcuts to the kind of training
and education that anyone needs in order to achieve real career success,
regardless of how you define that goal. Even a BA or a BS isn't a ticket to the
ball anymore. Plenty of recent graduates are finding that their
"degrees" in made-up majors don't mean much of anything in today's
job market.
Some of the "life
experience" ads for quickee colleges that now litter the cable channels
and suggest that you can get your degree done cheaply and in no time at all
(typically because of your work history) aren't really helping anyone -- especially
the mid-career unemployed who are searching for a miracle job offer or a
painless solution. You can't compress the time it takes to grow, learn, and
mature. One thing for sure: ultimate career success is not about securing an
embossed piece of paper with some fancy script on it. Success never comes down
to credentials in the long run -- it's all about competence and commitment.
Smart employers can sense and smell the sweat needed to get there.
Since it's become harder
every year for even the most qualified high school graduates to get into the
top 50 U.S. colleges and universities-- much to the angst and chagrin of their parents--
students have had to search more broadly and consider more alternatives and
flavors of education than in the past. There's no such thing as a
"safe" school anymore; guidance counselors have even retired the
term. Now you're supposed to make a list of "foundation" schools that
you're not really excited about, send out a slew of applications, and keep your
fingers crossed.
Junior's no longer a
legacy shoo-in for admittance to dad or mom's alma mater, affirmative action
programs are under fire, even the jocks are being looked at more
carefully since the Varsity Blues scandals, and
millions of families can't begin to afford the skyrocketing costs of
attending Ivy League or Seven Sisters schools. Keep in mind that
the top, brand-name schools, which get all the press and glory in the
aggregate, admit only the tiniest fraction of all the kids in college. But
don't try explaining that to the people who are trying to keep up with the
Joneses and send their kids to Columbia or Colgate.
The media broadly
promote the annual breakneck competition to get in these schools and the
"exclusive" universities love all the disproportionate coverage they
get about how super selective they are and the insanely small percentage of
applicants they actually admit. Every year there are stupid feature
stories about individual kids racking up millions of scholarships that
they won't use which, of course, screws any number of other
kids who needed those same funds and opportunities.
As someone who has owned
or run both vocational schools and traditional colleges, I believe that each type
of serious and professional education program out there offers substantial
benefits to certain individuals and their families. In part, it's a critical
parental process of helping their kids to prioritize their goals to whatever
extent that's even possible today, and also to honestly help adjust their
expectations to reflect today's realities. In a world where a car mechanic
knows more about your car than your doctor may know about your body, and
probably earns more per hour, maybe aiming for medical school isn't the best
path forward for your kids.
But, if you're really
talking about the end game - the serious and long-term career prospects - I can
tell you as an employer of thousands of grads over the last 50 years that,
while a great school can help open some doors and help build an invaluable lifelong
network, what really matters to employers looking for future leaders is doing great
at whatever school you attend. Even then, it's not simply a quantitative
measure of your grade point; it's the qualitative skills, attitudes, work
ethic, patience, and perseverance that you develop in school that sets you up
for success. These are the people that every entrepreneur and new business
builder wants to hire.
Every entrepreneur will
tell you a few key considerations that they use to sort and select their newest
team members. Sharing these ideas with your kids and new employees as well will
help them better focus on the essential factors that ultimately will make the
biggest difference for them.
First, the most
important life skills are built and formed in the field; they're not taught in
any classroom. They're forged from experiences of all kinds and thoughtful
leaders can readily recognize these abilities. As in successful innovation, the
keys to building these skills are iteration and perseverance -- you try, you
learn a bit and fail often, and then you try again harder. It takes a while to
be an overnight success. There is no compression algorithm for time.
Second, there are just
as many highs as lows in the path forward. There may be momentary plateaus, but
you're ultimately always moving either up or down. And you have to absorb
the bumps and bruises, take the lessons you learn from the choices and mistakes
you'll make, and apply them going forward. Above all, you'll need to understand
that things don't get better over time - they're always tough. What gets better
over time is you.
Third, values are far
more important than skills or talents. We take our values in part from
our parents -- both the choices they've made and the behaviors they've
exhibited - but mainly from two other sources: From our peers, the members of
our community whose values we share and whose support and trust we seek. And,
even more importantly, from our mentors, teachers and leaders, whose actions
and beliefs we try to adopt and emulate, and whose respect we try to earn and
deserve every day, based on our actions. Everyone wants someone to be proud of
them.
Bottom line: there are
things that no one can really teach, but that everyone must eventually learn.