I don’t respect my managers’ college degrees from 20 years ago

by Alison Green on July 13, 2015

A reader writes:

I work in the business/finance office for a large health care system that has hospitals in 5 different states.

It is driving me insane that my regional director of finance does not have any sort of finance education. She started out as a call center rep and has been around for 20+ years. Even the VP of finance has a “computer science” bachelors degree. My newly appointed “supervisor” has a bachelor’s in motion science ( he wanted to be a physical trainer but that didn’t pan out, so he too started as a call center rep and worked his way up).

I’m a few terms away from graduating with an accounting degree and a CPA certificate on top of my masters in Psychology.

The fact that my direct managers and upper level VP of finance are less educated but have “been around” for 20+ years makes no sense to me.

How can a huge organization with a complex financial and billing system be run by people with no education, or education that doesn’t pertain to the job? Does this happen at other large corporations?

It’s becoming a sticking point, so much that I don’t respect or look up to my managers.

Being promoted just because you haven’t left yet isn’t admirable to me.

Oh my goodness.

Are the quotation marks meant to imply you think their degrees are somehow crap? And that your “supervisor” doesn’t deserve the title?

And why are you assuming they were only promoted because they haven’t left? I’d assume that they were promoted because they were, you know, good at what they do.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the work world works, what it values, and what qualifies you to hold a senior position. Some of the people who are best at their jobs started at the bottom and worked their way up. And tons of widely respected, high performing senior folks have degrees in subjects that have nothing to do with the work they’re doing now (or even no degree at all).

Once you have a track record of success at work, what you did or didn’t do in college years before really isn’t a highly relevant qualification anymore. What are their accomplishments? What results do they get? How do they operate? The answers to those questions are what matter.

You asked, “How can a huge organization with a complex financial and billing system be run by people with no education, or education that doesn’t pertain to the job?” The answer is that they have plenty of education; it comes from that 20 years of work experience. If you think that the only education — hell, if you think that the most valuable education — comes from school, you are still very much in need of an education yourself.

You have a deep misunderstanding of who to respect and how people earn their positions.

But do your managers a favor: If this is how you look at them, by all means go work for someone whose college coursework 20 years ago meets with your approval.

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    1. Windchime*

      Yeah, wow indeed. OP, come and check back in with us after you’ve got a few years of work under your belt.

      1. Liane*

        Yes, like about 20 years. Then you can see if AAM has any advice for someone with 20+ years experience and a “respectable” 20 year old degree on how to get the young, just-graduated fools your company inexplicably hired to respect you and your vintage degree.

    2. GigglyPuff*

      I’d like to add if they’ve been around for that long, it’s also possible they actually built the billing system or at least went through every single software change. And FYI the system is probably operating in five different states because of people like them, who know the ins and outs of various depts from having worked in them over the years, more so than you ever will.

    3. Sans*

      Plus, a lot of people have been in a company for 20 years – how many of them worked their way up to the head of the finance dept.? That takes initiative and hard work and flexibility. I’ll take that over a piece of paper from a university.

    5. Phideaux*

      Being one of those 25+ year non-degreed managers, I wish I had a dollar for every newly scrubbed grad who thought he/she held the gold key to the crapper just because they managed to stay in one place for 4 years. While I believe that a college education can be valuable, it is only one piece of the big picture. One of the most important things they should teach in college is that when you graduate and land your first job, you shut up, listen, and assume you know nothing about how to do the job, because most likely you don’t.

      1. mialoubug*

        I once gave this advice to a woman I managed. She was straight out of college, first job and thought she knew everything. I pulled her aside after one eye rolling meeting and basically said that she was not longer in school, didn’t have to prove she was smart, and that she was better off listening more and talking less. And she took it to heart. (I wasn’t harsh about it) Two jobs and four years later, she called me to say that this advice was the best she ever received and thanked me for it. She was still doing it and trying to help her new charge learn the same thing.

        College does NOT really prepare you for real life; only experience does that. And inexperience can be limiting, particularly if you think everything you need to know you learned in class. Not by a long shot.

        1. catsAreCool*

          I went to a community college and then to a college. I think the teachers at the community college were (in general) more focused on what we would need to know in real life than the college teachers.

      2. Ted Mosby*

        I’m 26 and really amazed at how some of my 21 year old interns seem to think 1)that they know things 2)that it’s ok to tell other people what they think they should be doing.

        I was overly terrified and differential at that age.

        I just want to take them aside and kindly explain to them that they don’t know anything, like a new born baby, so please don’t talk for a few months and just do what people tell you.

      3. Brooke*

        ” I wish I had a dollar for every newly scrubbed grad who thought he/she held the gold key to the crapper just because they managed to stay in one place for 4 years.”

        I read this a few days ago and I keep thinking about it, probably because I have family members who see my years in college as just that – staying in one place for 4 years.

        It was a lot more than that.

    6. JenGray*

      My thoughts exactly. The OP has obviously never hear of an equivalent. You could have no degree or an AA plus experience and get hired over someone who has a masters degree. School education does not mean that you are smarter than others.

    7. pinky*

      that is all I can say too. Wow. just wow.
      I have lots of fancy degrees, none NONE of those said degrees taught me about the real work world! Degrees only take you so far….

  2. Former Diet Coke Addict*

    I must confess I enjoy it when Alison takes a strip off someone.

    And why the quotes around computer science? It’s a real thing, it isn’t like they majored in ghost hunting or flower arranging or all their postsecondary education took place at charm school!

    1. The Cosmic Avenger*

      Because apparently that degree isn’t up to the OP’s standards. O.o [<– Monacle stinkeye]

      1. I threw up in my mouth a little...*

        I think because it’s 20+ years ago, from the tone of the letter… Yes, a lot has changed in the CS field since then but a degree is all about proof that you can think practically. Getting a CS degree 20 years ago is just as hard as it is today, and all of the on-the-job learning (whether you’re in the CS field or not) would account for more than 4 years of theoretical learning…

        1. Kelly O*

          Heck, getting a computer science degree five years ago may not be “worth much” if you want to get really technical about it; applied knowledge is priceless in many fields.

          1. the gold digger*

            The software analytics product manager where I work is brilliant and designs fabulous products that make customers drool.

            He dropped out of college after one semester to work. He has been working in comp sci for 20 years. He has never had a problem getting a job because he is very good at what he does and it does not matter that he does not have a degree.

            1. manybellsdown*

              My husband left college before he finished his degree too. He’s been programming for 20 years now and has no problem getting work. In fact, he just got promoted.

              1. little Cindy Lou who*

                And the age old example: Bill Gates is a drop out. Yet look how successful Microsoft has been and how it made computing accessible for the average user.

            2. Windchime*

              The most brilliant programmer I know has an AA in Film and TV production from about 15 years ago. I would put his skills up against anyone with a fancy advanced degree.

              1. AnonaMoose*

                My father is a programmer. Worked 20 years for a higher educational system and then retired – to his own software company. He’s a high school drop out. And that’s what I love about the industry – it really doesn’t matter if you have a degree or not. Your portfolio of work speaks for itself. This OP….I couldn’t even finish Alison’s response because I was too livid from the letter.

                Ungrateful, entitled little shit.

                (phew, I feel loads better getting that out of my system.)

          2. Ezri*

            Let’s be fair, CS degrees aren’t really about learning specific programs either. The languages and software you learn depends on your school. I graduated a year ago and nothing I do at my job relates to any of the classes I took in college. Basically, I learned on Chocolate Kettles and now I work on Strawberry Teapots. It’s more about the high-level concepts if anything.

            Then again, I’m pretty sure my supervisor at my last job (who is brilliant) was a CS dropout.

            1. Kelly O*

              When I got my A.S. it was originally in Management Information Systems, and I had to take programming classes. Let’s just say I’m not qualified at all to do COBOL programming, and I’m not sure if anyone even uses that anymore. I didn’t even learn C++, I think it was just C+. And that’s been not quite 20 years ago.

              1. Anne*

                You’d be surprised at how useful COBOL is. There’s a lot of ‘older’ companies whose database infrastructure is based on it…and they have little intention of spending the money to upgrade. My father is relatively specialised in the older languages that way. Just think of how many companies stuck with Windows XP for so long, despite it being horrendously out of date. It was a practically unbreakable OS. Sadly, the programming gene seems to have skipped me.

        2. Just Another Techie*

          But 20 years ago was. . . 1995? Sure web 2.0 didn’t exist yet, but I assure you CS was A Thing. Mainframes, C, C++, the very early days of Java, the early days of consumer internet. Someone had to build the first usenet servers and bbs’s and Prodigy and Juno and AOL. (Am I dating myself? Sigh.)

          1. Kyrielle*

            Um, Usenet was more established than that in 1995. :) But yes, 20 years ago a computer science degree was quite common – it was a *very* popular field of study in the 90s, actually, because there were so many job openings. You need to go back 30-40 before it was uncommon.

            1. Just Another Techie*

              Yes, and Dennis Ritchie wrote the first spec for C in the 60s if I recall my history of CS correctly :) My point was that by 1995, CS was a very well established field, both professionally and academically.

            2. Jen in Austin*

              Heh – way more established in 1995. The Eternal September was 1993 when AOL flooded Usenet.

          2. Meg Murry*

            CS was definitely A Thing. And in fact, if it was a little less than 20 years ago as in late 90s, computer science was a VERY BIG THING, because there were a lot of computer systems that needed to be updated to fix the Y2K bugs – such as heathcare billing systems.

            Also, my husband studied computer systems in college in the late 90s, but it was under the business/accounting department, not Arts and Sciences, so his degree actually says “Bachelors of Business Administration, Accounting and Business Computer Systems.” They actually learned to build the accounting software and business systems, so they had to learn accounting principles as well and computer science skills. The main hires from his department went to banks that needed major updates to their billing systems for Y2K.

            And for anyone that says “what, Y2K was overblown hype, nothing bad happened” – yes, nothing bad happened because there were lots of people trained to go in and patch the systems so that nothing bad could happen, – without that it could have been really, really bad. But I suspect OP might be too young to even know much about Y2k .

            It is also possible the higher-ups have taken plenty of business courses along the way, either as minors when getting their original degrees, or as continuing education. Just because they don’t have another piece of paper with a degree on it doesn’t mean they don’t have the knowledge to run the department. Or they could be really good people managers and know enough to hire people with specialized education (like the OP) to do the detail work.

            1. ali*

              Yes! those of us who worked around the clock to fix the Y2K bug definitely learned how fickle computer systems can be and how to come up with creative solutions to fix them. None of that is applicable today, I’m sure.

              (I have a BA in Anthropology from 20 years ago and a Master’s on Nonprofit management from 6 years ago. But I have 25 years of programming experience, which is the entire reason I can do my job and do it better than the majority of my (young) coworkers.)

            2. Kelly O*

              I was our designated Y2K person, and I remember being at the office at midnight, sick as a dog, just waiting to make sure everything worked right. It was a LOT of work to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

        3. Cari*

          Tbh a CS degree from 20 years ago is more “proper” than one from now, imo. Me, my mum and my dad all have CS or computing. Mine was a cakewalk compared to the ones my parents did…

          2. Brett*

            In 1995 CS wouldn’t have been THAT different from now. I have CS degrees from the mid 2000s and I’d say the core concepts that have been essential for me are:
            Data structures
            Algorithms
            Big-O
            Number systems and representations and basic logic (binary, hex, etc plus and/or/xor/etc)
            Operating Systems principals (memory management, threads, interrupts)

            That’s all basically exactly the same whether you learned it in 1990 or 2015. Everything else is just a language or framework and those go in an out of fashion every couple of years.

            1. The Beautiful Poem by Richard Brautigan*

              I beg to disagree.

              I taught myself how to program in 1973, first encountered the Internet in 1980, obtained my BS and MS in CS in the early 80s. Some of the items you list are correct (although “Big O” is more strictly speaking on relatively small aspect of Theory of Computation).

              If your list is accurate, then it is leaving a lot of stuff out. Numerical Methods, for instance. Logic Design and Architecture (where we’d get these choice little assignments like “implement 2’s complement division for imaginary numbers, where the numerator is composed of a 32 bit real integer part and a 32 bit imaginary integer part. Prove your solution”. And all of the math: calculus, linear algebra, linear programming (ie, the math that _Good Will Hunting_ is very loosely based on), etc. At least one class each on databases, computer graphics, networks, and fundamentals of programming languages (or perhaps a compiler construction class). And at my school, at least, you had at least one class in elementary circuit design followed by something in VLSI chip design.

              We didn’t get much on “frameworks” – perhaps in part because they were something of a new thing at the time, but also because they were ephemeral and the focus at my school was teaching a solid foundation of stuff that wasn’t going to change.

              All that said, I’m not trying to impress you with my schooling. But if schools are handing out CS degrees without covering the topics I mention, but are instead focusing on frameworks et al, then it’s like they’re not colleges anymore, but trade schools.

        4. Engineer Girl*

          CS from twenty years ago was way, way different than now. It was a lot closer to a computer engineering degree. There was less focus on programming and more focus on system architecture, interfaces, op codes, data flow. Many of today’s software people don’t know about the internals of the machine which make the snobbishness sillier. Someone from 20 years ago can tell you everything about the guts of the machine – newer people can only tell you how to use it. You also learned lots of languages and learned about computer language structure. Compilers were less efficient, so how you coded was important. For example, you could actually get faster code by having a loop count down to zero rather than count up to X iterations – it had to do with what op codes were available.

          The OP is very clearly demonstrating Dunning Kruger – and with all the confidence that someone with Dunning Kruger can demonstrate.

          1. Elizabeth West*

            I really wish I didn’t have this math LD because I might have totally gotten into that. I didn’t learn how to use a computer until 199-something or other (Windows 3.1 if that helps), and I would love to know programming and code. It’s beyond my capabilities, however. *sigh* I also might have been a scientist. Probably an archaeologist.

        5. LQ*

          The CSiest people I know were all English majors over 20 years ago. I wonder if that would meet with more approval?

          1. Nashira*

            Oooh, I bet they comment their code coherently and write good documentation. The writing skills of some of my programming classmates are… Painful.

        7. JenGray*

          I think as long as you have kept up on the latest technology or processes in your field than no matter when you got your degree matters. It would be an issue if you were trying to keep doing things the same way but I don’t think that people would be promoted if you were applying 20 year old concepts that are not used any more. In some fields, 20 years old concepts (accounting, & BTW I have a Masters in Accounting) are still used but unless it is the norm its out of date.

      2. JB (not in Houston)*

        I really wish ghost hunting were a real degree. Sure, it would be ridiculous, but how fun would those classes be?

        2. Lucky*

          A lot of night classes, so it would be a great program to take while you’re working a full-time job.

        3. Lizzy*

          I met a ghost hunter who was a well-known name on those cable reenactment shows about hauntings plaguing families. He had a degree in parapsychology (like the Ghostbusters).

          1. JB (not in Houston)*

            Wait, so that really is a degree? From where, Grant College?*

            *that joke is going to really date me

          1. Melissa*

            From what I can tell from some poking, it looks like a lot of the more legitimate “parapsychology” research is really on human consciousness.

    2. The IT Manager*

      I am super offended by the quotes around computer science since the LW didn’t put quotes around her own areas of study, but computer science is a real scientifically rigorous degree that is likely considered a Bachelor’s of Science rather than a Bachelor’s of Arts – lots of math and computer programming classes which will come in handy when managing a large financial IT system.

      1. LBK*

        And correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t computer science actually a pretty lucrative degree? Programming, web development and IT tend to be on the higher end of the pay scale, even for entry level positions.

        1. The IT Manager*

          Yes! Although I think a wise hiring manager should prefer someone with proven experience over a degree, that degree isn’t so much designed to teach a programming language (you can learn that on your own) but how to program and problem solve.

      2. ThursdaysGeek*

        I got my BS in Comp Sci (30 years ago!) and they keep putting me to work on our business accounting systems! I don’t know accounting at all, have never had even one class, and yet someone (in multiple companies) must think this is the appropriate place for me.

      3. stellanor*

        The BS versus BA distinction is really a weird administrative holdover everywhere I’ve been to school (which is actually a lot of places). I know of one tech school that ONLY gives out BS degrees so you can get a BS in history. I went to a liberal arts college with a pretty broad curriculum that ONLY gave BAs so you could get a BA in biology, physics, or computer science. Where I went to grad school CS is in the college of engineering, which gives a BS, but most of the sciences are in the College of Arts and Sciences, which gives BAs, so you can get a BS in compsci and a BA in chemistry.

    3. abankyteller*

      I love it, too. She’s so tactful about telling people they are way off base. I wish I had her way with words!

    4. AthenaC*

      Ooo! Could I major in ghost-hunting? That’s it – I’m walking out of my (accounting) job today and going back to school.

      1. Lindsay the Temp*

        Just make sure you finish your degree or the other Ghost Hunters won’t take you seriously…

      2. Charlotte Collins*

        I prefer the outdoors. Can I major in Bigfoot Studies? Perhaps minor in Cupacabra Arts?

    5. Ray*

      I mean, it’s nowhere near as relevant to a finance billing system as a … masters in psychology? What? Is there anything LESS relevant to a finance billing system than a masters in psychology?

      After all that, the OP doesn’t even have a remotely relevant degree themselves. Being a few terms away from graduating is not graduated.

      I realize that’s sort of feeding into the OP’s flawed logic to even point that out, since one could be highly successful — or unsuccessful — with an unrelated degree like Psychology, as Alison rightly stated. But I mean… REALLY.

      1. Karowen*

        I totally missed that the degree was in psychology! That makes this whole deal even better.

      2. Green*

        YES. That is my favorite part about this letter. She is indignant about her managers not having something that she also doesn’t have.

      3. ScottySmalls*

        I think this is the problem. OP might have got a Masters in Psych, but couldn’t get where she wanted so she went back to school. So now she has this idea that she needs to have the right degree to get where she wants. Honestly, if I’ve learned anything from the job market now it’s that experience counts more than the degree.

        1. Ad Astra*

          Yeah, I think you’re on to something. OP sees formal schooling as the way to get ahead, so it doesn’t make sense to her that someone could switch fields without going back to school.

        2. Anx*

          I think that might be part of the problem.

          I can’t stand the attitude displayed by the OP, but I wonder if it comes from a place of trying to get started in a career, going to school, and finding out that you’re still in the inexperience trap. Maybe some of this comes from resentment over the inability to begin to similarly amass 20 years of experience in a field.

      4. Older but not yet wiser*

        And how does one graduate with a CPA Certificate? You have to pass a bunch of exams and work for a CPA (and pass an ethics review) to become a CPA. I’m not a CPA so I could be missing something but I know you don’t just get a CPA certificate when you graduate from college no matter what your degree is.

        1. Natalie*

          OP may be referring to the type of program I’m in. It’s a continuing ed certificate in accounting, and assuming the student has an existing bachelors degree, it qualifies you to sit for the CPA exam.

          1. Don*

            The degree in accounting that the OP mentioned will qualify her to sit for the CPA exams, but by no means is it a CPA license in and of itself. In most states, including WA where I currently live, a CPA requires a Bachelor’s degree, 150 semester hours which includes a certain number of general business courses and upper level accounting courses, 2,000 hours of qualifying work experience, 12 months minimum of experience, a 75 or higher on each of the 4 exams (all within an 18 month rolling window), a 90% on a state ethics exam and an AICPA ethics exam, and the experience must be signed off on by a CPA with at least 5 years of experience. And calling oneself a CPA when your state board has not awarded you the designation is a sanctionable offense which carries a steep fine. Source: I’m a CPA.

            I can understand the OP’s frustration with a Director of Finance not having a finance-related degree. It is not one of those jobs where you can learn everything on the job; it can get very complicated ith larger organizations. I prepare tax returns for corporations and part of my job includes adjusting the books so the correct figures for B/S and P/L accounts are used in the return. That is the part of the job that takes up the most time, and it is usually because the small corporation in question has a lay bookkeeper or CFO without a degree who picked up what they could on the job (and much of it was incorrect). Sure, a company may be able to survive by having someone like that as a Director of Finance, but I guarantee you they will not be operating or tracking costs and revenues as efficiently as they would if they had someone who was properly trained and educated in that discipline.

            I do respect the value that the school of hard knocks brings, but there are certain fields where a relevant degree is paramount. You wouldnt want a nurse or doctor treating you if they didnt have formal degrees and simply learned what they could on the job over a period of years, nor would you want a self-taught engineer to be the person designing the car you drive or the plane you fly in. If that company has a Finance Director without a finance or business related degree, then it is likely that the people they learned from at that company didnt either, in which case the instruction/training he/she received is flawed.

    6. Excel Slayer*

      Ooo, can I major in Ghost Hunting? Please? I’ve watched all the Ghost Buster films, so I’m sure I know everything about it.

      1. 2horseygirls*

        Oooh, yes! Like all the people who watch Animal Planet, then think they know how be an animal control officer. Here’s the gloves and the bucket – have a good time cleaning the kennels ;)

    7. catsAreCool*

      I got a BS in computer science about 20 years or so ago. It required a fair bit of science and math as well as being plenty of work in a very useful skill, programming.

  3. Lilly*

    I just don’t even know what to say about someone this out of touch with how the world works. Other than I’m happy they are someone else’s problem.

    1. SG*

      I’m just honestly so concerned that someone could think that their degrees tell them anything about the working world? Like, I majored at a school that is consistently in the top 10 liberal arts in the USA. I can very confidently tell you that my degree means literally nothing when it comes to my job. Every technical thing I do at work I learned through internships or actually working. Someone somewhere along the way really failed in OP with their world view.

    2. Melissa*

      Wait until the OP discovers how “useful” all those college degrees are in the real world. I hope he or she didn’t go deeply into debt to get them, like many others have.

      1. BalticFog*

        My guess she already had the taste of her psychology degree usefulness – hence the accounting and CPA on top of it.

    3. Sarah*

      I’m actually hoping this is someone writing in using arguments a friend makes, to vent, and demonstrate to the friend what other people think they sound like…

    4. Megan*

      I reccomend applying cold water to the burn, but other than that I’m as speechless as you are.

  4. NickelandDime*

    Wow.

    You know what else 20 years of work experience gives you? Spidey Senses to pick up on people like the OP. And the power to get rid of them if they need to.

    OP needs to worry about their own career trajectory at this company. Because I have a feeling they don’t have long for this world.

    1. AdAgencyChick*

      Bingo.

      How many of us make regular use of the coursework we did in school in the course of our jobs? I’d say it’s a pretty small percentage. 20 years of experience trumps the hell out of a degree in the “right” field — or, I’d say, any degree at all.

      1. NickelandDime*

        Very few of us. In fact, I would say we have degrees to check off a box to say we have one so we can apply to professional positions. Even receptionist and administrative positions require a degree these days. But I had to “unlearn” a lot of what I learned in school, as it was taught by professors with absolutely no professional work experience. It’s a totally different ball game!

        1. AtWill*

          Not you checking off a box, HR checking off a box. No degree, in the trash you go. No questions asked, no further scrutiny warranted. Nevermind that you just tossed out a resume from someone who’s been doing the exact same job as what you’re trying to fill for 6 years, if they don’t have a degree, then they can go flip burgers.

      2. Mike C.*

        I fully agree with the thrust of your argument, but I’d also say that I think you use much more of the material than you might give yourself credit for. For me at least, I find myself using those skills in really odd applications – statistical tests originally used to look at plant populations in a field are useful for determining patterns in tool mark locations for instance.

        1. Not the Droid You are Looking For*

          I find I use the skills (writing, editing, logic/reasoning) a lot more than the actual coursework.

          But I think for those of us with Arts & Letters-type degrees, that’s really what a Bachelors is all about.

        2. Aunt Vixen*

          My personal favorite example in my own experience was when I was working in a law firm and happened to be in a database of documents related to some case or other and noticed that the metadata on a whole box of folders was wrong. Not that only someone with a linguistics degree would have noticed that they were coded as being in Dutch but were in fact in Norwegian – but my background and training certainly didn’t hurt.

        3. Chinook*

          “argument, but I’d also say that I think you use much more of the material than you might give yourself credit for.”

          It has taken me 10 years but I finally have an office support job where my colleagues are pleasantly surprised I have a B.Ed. plus teaching credentials and can’t wait until I help them create good questions for their various documentation tutorial reviews, coherent PowerPoint presentations, useful cheat sheets for various programs and an intuitive interface for a new program I helped design with a computer programmer. Any engineer who dared mock my “irrelevant degree” (like a few accountants did before they learned about my proof-reading prowess as well as the ability to read anyone’s handwriting) would quickly be shot down by my coworkers.

          1. The Strand*

            You sound like someone who would make a great usability (UX) designer, or do well as a technical writer.

            1. Chinook*

              Thanks, the Strand. I always wondered what you would call someone who designs interfaces. I have been working with our fabulous programmer and have been lucky enough not only to have similar esthetics but he doesn’t mind discussing why he does certain things. I have been known to “creep” sideways into odd jobs and this is one I have my eye on and seem to have been training for all my life. Now I just need to figure out how to get to do it full-time.

      3. the gold digger*

        Hey! Don’t be disrespecting my BA English! I talk about Dickens and Dunne ALL THE TIME in my job as the marketing person for the R&D group of a manufacturing company.

        1. Last Name here*

          Or my Geology degree that I use as I contemplate the best type of rock to throw through the window of the person I’m reporting as involved in an internet child safety case!

        2. Emily, admin extraordinaire*

          *Donne

          /BA and MA in English with an emphasis on editing and publication. ;)

          1. the gold digger*

            Ooops! :)

            In the manuscript for my book, I used my husband’s name – Chris – and other real names because I could not keep track of things otherwise. (If I ever publish, I will change the names.)

            I typed “Christ” by mistake several times and spellcheck did not catch it. A friend reading the draft did see it. I thought it was quite appropriate for how Doris views her son.

            1. Emily, admin extraordinaire*

              I’ve found myself typing “Christ” a lot too, although much more when I was in college and taking religion classes every semester. :P

              My most recent similar typo was on a timesheet. Instead of “Date” I kept typing “Data.” Sometimes I caught it, sometimes I didn’t. :P

              And this, my friends, is why we need proofreaders, and why even proofreaders need proofreaders. ;)

              1. Alicia*

                Oh man, I do that all the time (swapping data and date), and “electron” instead of “election”. Can you spot the scientist?

            2. Elizabeth West*

              Hahaha, my ghost book’s protag is also named Chris and I made that same error. Now that I think about it, I better go back and check again because I have four queries out!

        3. Elizabeth*

          I used a quote from John Donne in a presentation about integration in health information technology. “No man is an island unto himself … Ask not for whom the bell tolls, as it tolls for thee.”

          1. Chinook*

            I regularly reference various learning styles when discussing why my boss insists on printing out everything and filing it ON her desk in neat piles (she is a visual learner).

        4. Kat*

          My History and Public History degrees actually come in handy all the time at my marketing job at a FI! People are really into nostalgia right now and I looked like a genius when I brought up the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act in a meeting last week.

      4. Not Today Satan*

        I basically never use the “content” of my studies (like facts, etc.) but I definitely use skills I learned in school: writing, communications, analysis, critical thinking, etc.

        At least this is what I tell myself when I pay my student loan debt each month…..

      5. Kyrielle*

        I’m working in the same field I majored in. And yet…okay, I did learn how to think about it and some framework, but other than that? Yeah, my years of experience are a lot more useful than my degree.

        1. Ezri*

          I think my bachelors degree gave me the foundation I needed to start working, but I’ve definitely learned more marketable, provable skills in one year on the job than I did in four years of classes.

        2. YawningDodo*

          I’m in this camp as well. My master’s gave me the context for why I do things the way I do them, but it was hands-on experience that got me to the point where I’m actually good at it. Traditionally people in my field would do ALL their learning on the job; it’s only been in the past decade or two that training became more formalized. I think most people still could do their learning otj, there’d just be a steeper learning curve and less uniformity.

          My first job is where I got the skills I needed to perform my second job, and in my first job none of the experienced staff members who mentored me had the fancy degrees or certifications I do. They just knew what they were doing because they’d been doing it for decades, and I trusted (still trust) their judgment a heck of a lot more than the other young worker who kept bragging about how he got his job thanks to a certification that “no one else at the Teapot Society has.”

          1. ThursdaysGeek*

            And uniformity is one of the main advantages to a comp sci degree. People can learn how to think without it (and often do), and certainly learn how to program. But at least when starting out, it’s good to have a similar baseline of knowledge.

            Software can be all over the place, and figuring out how to read and maintain someone else’s code is a big part of many software jobs. The less all over the place it is, the easier it is to maintain.

            Teaching someone how to think, and giving them about the same starting point — that’s the main advantage I’ve seen in my degree. All the rest, how to actually do the job — that is learned on the job. Every business is different, so every new job requires learning. What is learned at previous jobs is of more value than what was learned in school.

        3. cuppa*

          I’m in a field where a specific degree is required, and even then, the programs vary wildly, and many people still don’t feel like the degree gave them the skills they actually needed in this field. Sure, a lot of that is dependent on your actually day-to-day duties, but still, a degree isn’t everything.

      6. Ad Astra*

        My degree is from one of the “professional schools”* at my state university, so the program is designed to prepare you for roles in a somewhat specific field, and I do use my college coursework daily in my field. But I still developed most of my skills on the job, and I frequently have to learn about new technology or ways of doing things that didn’t exist when I was in school.

        Heck, even people who attend vocational school have to learn on the job and get promoted based on performance. It’s not possible to learn everything you’ll need for career success in a classroom.

        *At my university, professional schools included architecture, journalism, business, engineering, education, pharmacy, medicine (so bachelor-level nursing and stuff in addition to MD programs), and I guess sometimes fine arts was considered a professional school in the sense that it’s not part of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

      7. BananaPants*

        I do, but my undergrad and graduate degrees are in mechanical engineering, which is the area that I work in. Even so, I don’t regularly use a lot of my undergrad education in the workplace. I use a good amount of the material covered in statics, dynamics, measurement systems, machine design, materials engineering, stats, but not so much in combustion, heat transfer, fluids, control systems, multivariable calculus, etc. If I worked in a different specialization it would be different but there are very few generalists once someone has some work experience.

        I suspect people like me are the exception rather than the norm.

      8. Anon for this?*

        I have a Masters in Biology. And work as a software developer in the automotive industry.

        Yeah…

        (Granted, I did Bioinformatics, but still… I rarely use anything I learned at college)

        1. Windchime*

          I have no degree at all. Zero. I have a couple of years of community college where I was working for a certificate in software development, but I got a job offer before I finished so I never went back. My title is now Data Solutions Architect on a BI team, and I’m one of the senior people on a team of 11. About half of us have degrees; the rest are self taught.

          We actually have a person at our workplace who has an advanced degree and she likes to remind people of it constantly. She is arrogant and people make fun of her behind her back because she somehow thinks that her degree makes her smarter than people who have been in the trenches for 20 years. It’s something to think about, OP.

        2. kara*

          I have a degree in History and I currently work as a Program Manager for a major telecom company, dealing with budgets in the hundreds of millions and in technology that didn’t exist 30 years ago when I left college.

          Yeah, OP is a piece of work for sure.

      9. SG*

        Nonsense! Martin Buber helps me everyday with graphic design…OH WAIT. No. Not even a little bit.

        2. Loops*

          Well, when you draw a tree, are you just drawing it or are you CONFRONTING it as its own entity?

      10. Elizabeth*

        One of the classes I took in college was in political science, regarding how government regulations are promulgated in the U.S. Our instructor photocopied an out-of-date regulation from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and gave us each a 3-page section to analyze for style & content.

        Fast forward about 20 years, and a big chunk of my job is to read & analyze government regulations as they affect healthcare, information security & business operations. I didn’t think about or even remember the class until about a year ago, when I was talking with my interim boss, trying to figure out when I’d picked up the skill, and there it was.

      11. Nervous Accountant*

        I’m an accountant (Enrolled Agent) and I don’t have an Accounting degree. Ironically, I was an English major. I fell into this field (did struggle at first) but I’m happy where I am and hopefully in a few years, my major/degree won’t matter.

      12. Shannon*

        Signed. Even as an Emergency Medical Technician, which I did waaaaaaay back in the day, where the coursework paired fairly well with what was expected of an EMT, there was still a wide gulf of knowledge that I lacked and could only be attained in a working environment. I really wish that field had a longer apprenticeship aspect (as opposed to the 70 hours in 3 months the course gave us). There were many skills, both technical and soft, that you just don’t pick up until you are actually working. It’s pretty impossible to learn to interact with a patient from just reading books and going through role playing exercises.

  6. Sans*

    Wow.

    I would say more but I’m trying to stop my chin from hitting the floor.

    This person is going to have life smack him/her in the face, and real soon.

  7. Sans*

    Ok, it looks like we all posted at the same time. And we all said WOW.

    That should tell the OP everything he needs to know.

  8. I threw up in my mouth a little...*

    Allison I am so glad you didn’t tip-toe around this response.
    I was a political science major in college. I now work in Automotive Project Management…
    Our senior VP in our office was also a political science major, 30+ years ago. He’s now the senior executive in our region and has been working in Automotive for 37 years.
    Honestly, when hiring people I value their work experience much more than their college degree. SO MANY (and you’re proof of this) people graduated from the academic world and have absolutely no idea how the business world works.

    1. the gold digger*

      My dad was a Russian history major. He was a maintenance control office in the air force and after he retired, taught aircraft mechanics and then junior high math.

      HISTORY MAJOR, PEOPLE.

      2. Rehabilitating Mr Wiggles*

        > My dad was a Russian history major

        The Russians have long been known for their rather more ‘rigorous’ stance on education. My understanding is that it hasn’t changed a lot since cold-war days. Not that all Russians are smart. But the ones who went to school? I’d love to see 10 or 20 of them come in and take over AAM some weekend. It would be epic.

        1. Marcela*

          At least in physics/chemistry, if you have a problem with high mathematics, go to find a Russian. They have an amazing command of maths, it’s unbelievable. No, no really unbelievable but kind of embarrassing, because we do not have the same knowledge and preparation. And the ones I’ve met are great people. One of them used to give me chocolate when I fixed his webserver, so whenever he had an issue, he was immediately my top priority =^.^= (not really because of the chocolate but because he appreciate and respected what I did, and I would stop at nothing for an appreciative and respectful user).

          1. Charlotte Collins*

            Funny – I read it to mean that the dad majored in Russian history. Not that he was a Russian who majored in history…

            1. the gold digger*

              Oh! My dad is (was) an American who majored in history, the Russian kind. :)

              I will put anyone at the head of the line for chocolate, but I am a cheap date.

              1. simonthegrey*

                My mom majored in Political Science and minored in Russian History. She’s had several jobs in varying manufacturing and inventory control positions, managing shipping (not warehouse work, not that there’s a problem with warehouse work but she did the other side of it).

            2. Marcela*

              Hehe, I wasn’t replying to the gold digger, but to Rehabilitating Mr Wiggles, who was actually talking about Russians :D

            3. Aunt Vixen*

              That’s what linguists call a bracketing ambiguity.

              (That’s about the extent to which I use my Lx degrees in everyday life, by the way. Alerting people to the fact that there’s a name for that particular kind of confusion.)

      3. Chinook*

        “My dad was a Russian history major.”

        My grandfather did the opposite. He was a retired Seargant Major who went on to become a respected curator of a trilingual museum (English, French and Polish) and actively repatriated objects back to the natives long before it was politically correct to do so. He only had grade 9 (from an Alberta francophone school) and only spoke French and English. To do that same job now, I would require a Masters in History and pass language proficiency tests. Heck, he wouldn’t even hire me as a summer student with a grade 12 education because my French wasn’t good enough.

    2. Ad Astra*

      Because I have a degree that was designed for a specific career path, I do wonder how people with degrees in political science or European history or whatever get started in their fields. Did you do something similar part-time in college and parlay that into a career? Did you start out in a fairly low-skill job that required no degree and work your way up?

      I have no doubt that liberal arts-type majors can go on to become successful in all kinds of fields, but I’ve always wondered how they got their first gig without much related experience.

      1. alter_ego*

        I wonder about this too, because my degree is in electrical engineering, so when I was looking for jobs out of school, I just went to the job positing website, searched for “electrical engineer”, and filtered out anything that required programming, because I was terrible at it. I have no clue how you would go about finding any job other than English Teacher with an English degree. I think I’d be really bad at that type of job search.

        1. Ten*

          English degrees get to do everything. People it an think “great writing and communication skills..”

          1. Elizabeth West*

            That’s what I was told when I switched majors. But I have the worst time finding jobs because of the math thing—English also points to “administrative,” and too many companies were mushing accounting work together with the adminstrative stuff.

        2. Charlotte Collins*

          Who do you think is writing, editing, and proofreading the manuals and user guides for the engineering/CS/etc. career paths? An English degree can lead to a lot of things that seem unrelated, but mine has led me to being a job trainer (written and communication skills, and I had been a TA and adjunct faculty, where I learned classroom skills), and now I work on web content. (Other people make it pretty – I make it understandable.)

          Liberal Arts degrees often indicate a flexibility and willingness to learn new things that employers want. (This isn’t always the case – some people think they’re a waste of time.) Also, I’ve known more than one person who had a Liberal Arts major and a more technical minor (or vice versa). Also, you’ll find plenty of people with a Law degree who didn’t do pre-Law but did do a Liberal Arts degree (often Political Science or Philosphy – both often allow you to emphasize law or ethics).

      2. nona*

        Did you do something similar part-time in college and parlay that into a career? Did you start out in a fairly low-skill job that required no degree and work your way up?

        This is exactly what I did with a psychology major and what my friends with liberal arts degrees did. It doesn’t translate to a career path easily.

      3. De (Germany)*

        After getting a degree in Biology, I pretty much got my job as a software developer based on having contributed to open source projects.

      4. I threw up in my mouth a little...*

        I had internships in college in political strategy, which segwayed into PR, which segwayed into marketing, which segwayed into CRM Project Management, which segwayed into automotive CRM & other project management.

        My career has been a lot of ‘right place at right time’ incidents. But it’s all about building on and expanding your existing experience.

      5. Monomynous*

        I got a degree in Literature, but needed to eat, so I started doing tech writing after college in large banking firm. I wound up becoming an SME in our systems, moved into a Business Analyst role, and then finally into a developer position. Of course, this was all during the golden age of 1999-2002, where demand for programmers seemed to outstrip supply!

      6. Anonsie*

        I think the big myth here is the belief that a degree of just the basic required coursework is going to ever qualify you for a job all by itself. You always have to do something extra outside to actually be competitive, and you always need some additional non-classroom experience.

        Even if you’re in compsci or informatics, odds are good you probably have your own interests and did some learning that wasn’t explicitly assigned in school. If you’re a bench science you still (usually, program-dependent I guess) have to find lab time in high level electives, jobs, whatever to actually get the necessary experience to actually work in a lab.

        For me, people like to tee-hee that I dipped at the last minute from chem into my soft science degree like I flunked out or something, but I did it so I could take optional high-level courses that allowed me to do hands-on work. I interned in some unrelated areas through my department as well so I could have some general office type experience. That combination is what got me my big break research job later, and I wouldn’t have done any of it if I hadn’t gone outside the actual requirements of my studies or if I’d stuck with the “useful” degree plan in chem.

        1. Ad Astra*

          This is a great point. I’ve said that my journalism degree led to finding a job in journalism, but that is in part because my degree program required us to work for campus media in some capacity (with the option to do additional, paid work for campus media if you wanted) and the faculty pushed internships really hard. So I still had to do the “something extra” you’re talking about, I just didn’t realize it was extra because everyone around me was doing the same.

          1. Anonsie*

            Exactly. And in many cases it would totally be possible to major in something you really like (concert piano or economics or whatever) while also doing that type of thing as your actual job training. I always wished I had figured that out sooner and spent more time learning some things you never get the chance to really study after college.

      7. kara*

        I put myself through college working in hotels, which required basic accounting knowledge, computer skills, and people skills.

        When I graduated, I took a job as a receptionist with a large company, while I decided whether I wanted to go to grad school or not. And from there it just took off. I learned Excel, found I had an affinity for it, got a promotion and then another job based on my Excel skills, wound up working in several different industries, and ultimately landed in Telecom. My ability to learn quickly, to be computer savvy, and to talk to people has done FAR more for me in my career than my degree in History. :)

        I’ll admit that this is not the career path I had thought about and I never imagined this is where I’d be, but I love (almost) every minute of it and I know I’m damn good at what I do, no matter what some 20 year old punk wants to say about my 30 year old History degree. :)

      8. Chalupa Batman*

        “Did you start out in a fairly low-skill job that required no degree and work your way up?”

        Pretty much. My degree is in sociology-not a whole lot of ads in the newspaper for that skillset fresh out of college. Where it paid off for me was advancement. I would never have gotten looked at for the job I have now with my degree alone, but paired with my experience, it was a great fit. The draw for a degree that doesn’t tie to a specific job is that you can bend it to your will over time, but it’s often at the expense of more immediate secure employment. You have to be patient, driven, and a little creative to draw the connections for employers and to turn the skills you learned both in school and on the job into something measurable. Degrees with career paths built in do some of that for you. I definitely think a more abstract degree produces (and attracts) a different type of employee than a career focused degree. Lucky for us, the world needs both types.

        Side tangent: I hate the popular opinion that social science degrees are useless, because while none of us are probably ever going to get rich off of our jobs, my classmates and I have developed into quite a successful bunch, and I’m pleased with my career trajectory so far. And I use my degree. A lot. As much as I hate “do what you love” as standalone career advice, I really enjoy sociology, so I’ve gravitated toward jobs where that knowledge base was relevant, and tried on several fields before I picked one, growing and becoming more marketable with each job. I promise, parents of soc majors, your child has not chosen an inevitable fate of working three random part time jobs forever.

      9. SG*

        I went to a liberal arts school as did most of my friends and many of us had liberal arts/humanities degrees. Really any position that requires having gone to a good school and being intelligent will hire you. So, a lot of admin stuff, any grad schools like law or business (which lead directly into those careers) and so on. I always think of science/math-y jobs as being far fewer than ones that liberal arts lend themselves to, but that might be just me privileging my experience (if that makes sense). I didn’t work at all in college, just internships or retail during the summers.

      10. NoCalHR*

        I have a BA in History, plus what my school called a ‘teaching minor’ (3 classes/9 credits) in Russian Studies, Psychology, Political Science. My life plan was to teach 6 – 8th graders. Life happened, I went to work as a buyer for a small company, became a purchasing agent supervising a staff of 6; eventually moved to another company as an Admin Assistant, into Technical Support, Customer Service and HR. Now have 2 BAs (History; Management), 2 MAs (Management; Human Science (cross-disciplinary); Ph.D. (Organizational Systems). Knowledge, skills and curiosity, combined with experience = professions I enjoyed, opportunities for growth and development, and lots of wins playing Trivia games!!

      11. Nervous Accountant*

        Good question.

        I started out by volunteering at a nonprofit that prepared taxes for elderly/low income taxpayers….That led to a part time, seasonal, paid position, which led to another position and that experience made me a great candidate for another seasonal position at a small private company. While working there, I learned about the EA license, studied and passed. That led me to my first job as an accountant, and here I am.

        This was all in about 4-5 years. It’s taken a lot of effort and lots of setbacks and tears and sweat. But…..it’s possible. I still have a long way to go, but at least I’m finally there….

      12. Bagworm*

        I often think if I had to do it over again I would have picked a major that had a clear, correlating profession. But then I think again about how much richer my life is because I studied American and Women’s Studies and figure I probably would go that route again. I started out my professional life while I was still in school when I took a temp-to-hire admin type job. I’ve run through a very diverse gamut of areas of work since that time (frontline social service, fundraising, accounting, IT, and now government compliance). I’ve found that excelling at what you do is the best way to move ahead in whatever direction you want. I’ve also found that other folks with interdisciplinary degrees are more likely to hire me. They understand that my degree didn’t just teach me about specific facts and events, it taught me a way of thinking that can add value to almost any position. If you’re talking to someone who had a more traditional/less liberal arts degree, you just have to find a way to communicate that (and/or let your accomplishments speak for themselves). I will also admit that I am a lifelong learner (as cheesy as that phrase sounds) and with every new job, I’ve taken advantage of any opportunity to get as much training as possible in any area I can. It’s not always an easy course and as others have said it’s not often a particularly lucrative one but I absolutely love my degree and career path and would have been much too bored if I’d had a career laid out in some logical order before me at the end of my college education.

      13. MaryMary*

        My first job out of college was an entry-level position in a specialized area that is not covered much – if at all – in any college cirriculum. OldJob was looking for candidates with strong analytical, problem solving, and communication skills. They hired a lot of business, economics, and math majors, but they also hired history, political science, chemistry, English, Spanish, and communication majors. There were a few people without as well. Because it was a specialized area and we used proprietary software, new hires had to be trained from the ground up regardless.

      14. knitchic79*

        There is a running joke at my job that to go anywhere in the company you need a degree in music or poly sci. I haven’t finished a degree, might at some point go back to finish a pastry chef degree (if I feel like my family’s waist lines can take it lol).
        I’ve been with my company nearly a decade. I’ve been a proven performer, order a major section and help train. If I wanted to move up, degree or no, my supervisors would make it happen.
        OP trust me your supervisors know what they are doing, books and classes about your field isn’t how they got there, but they got there. Anyone who can work their way up from call center to VP has earned my respect.

      16. simonthegrey*

        My dad was a Philosophy and Theology major. He was going into a pastoral program to be a minister, but he changed his mind. Instead he took a job working nights at a pretty major company where I grew up, basically carting the tape from the computing machines (pre-computers/early computers) to the archives. He worked his way up to mid-level management across three very large corporations, in charge of billing cycles. He wasn’t strong in the computer side of things, but he was a great manager and knew how to get to other people’s strengths. He has finally stepped down from that role to do something much less stressful, but for him it was just a matter of applying his people skills and motivation skills, more than any hard skills.

      17. Rana*

        Ad Astra, speaking from my experience as a History Ph.D., there’s actually a very defined career ladder: you teach part-time while in grad school (and maybe do some grant-funded research), then apply for assistant professorships upon graduating, which hopefully translates into tenure-track positions in the future. (It can get incredibly arcane; some institutions just require a history degree, like community colleges, where you teach pretty much anything, while others are looking for something like a person with a specialty in environmental history of the mid-twentieth century with a minor in gender studies and communication.)

        That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, a lot of people end up stringing together no-future adjunct positions, hoping to earn enough money to pay off loans while putting higher ambitions on hold. The structure remains, but the number of long-term, sustainable jobs available is dwindling rapidly.

        Indeed, the rigidity of the academic career path has meant that I – and many other Ph.D.s who’ve had to bag the whole thing – have been at a bit of a loss as to how to switch to another career path. Once you fall off the ladder, there’s very little guidance as to what to do next. The idea of starting afresh at age 45 is daunting.

        (I do work as an editing and indexing freelancer, and it’s good and interesting work that somewhat taps the skill set I developed in academia, but I couldn’t support myself on it alone. Still, it’s better than trying to persuade employers that a 40-something Ph.D. with a crappy resume is worth taking a chance on.)

      18. Tammy*

        Political science degree here. I wanted to work for non-profits, so I looked for entry level office jobs that weren’t looking for experience. Now I’m a grant-writer/fundraiser and I do a lot of writing, data analysis, and talking about numbers (all related to my major).

        Just think of it this way–there are a lot of jobs out there which don’t have a degree tailor made for them. No one offers bachelor’s of grant writing, or fundraising, or program design.

      19. Felicia*

        Me too…depending on where they got it. My degree is also designed for a specific career path, and though I’m not doing that now, I’m doing something intimately related. Though there is no school for doing this specific thing that i’m doing. There are several schools here with mandatory internships or co op placement, even for those types of majors, and they get to try a lot of different things so that makes sense.

      20. JayemGriffin*

        While I was doing my English MA, I also held a work/study job in the records department, where I discovered a knack for managing and organizing data. When they decided to implement a new system, they asked me to stay on and help with it full-time, and one thing just led to another from there!

      21. techandwine*

        I have a BA in English and I work as a technical writer/beginner programmer. You have no idea how valuable people in the tech field find solid writing and communication skills.

    3. Shannon*

      My husband works in fairly technical project management in a company where the only bar to becoming a manager or coordinator is having a four year degree. Part of the reason for this is because very few colleges in the country teach his industry. This company has hired people with degrees in everything from their specific field to English majors. Admittedly, the people with a background in their degree have a smaller learning curve, but it’s not unusual for people in non related degrees to have better soft skills.

    4. 2horseygirls*

      I was a public relations major in college. For the last 20 years, I’ve been in a variety of administrative support roles (where I used my classes and degree to some extent).

      However, I’ve also been an equine humane investigator, and now spend my non-working minutes and hours coordinating the training of first responders to safely extricate large animals from trailer wrecks, mud, swift water, holes and confined spaces and more.

      My husband has an AAS in culinary arts, and makes twice+ what I ever will, and is even more passionate about what he does now than when he was fresh out of culinary school.

      My friend who has a BS in Accounting, and her MBA, went back to school to become a counselor. Another friend who got a degree in broadcast journalism worked in marketing and is now head of security for a casino. Another friend who got a degree in fashion merchandising ended up opening her own shop for paper goods and wedding invitations. Another whose original degree was in biomedical engineering went back to school to be a special needs teacher.

      On the other hand, another friend knew she would become a dentist when she was 8, and has built a very successful practice. Another is loving being a history teacher (think Ben Gates as your teacher :) ). Another has had a 15+ year legal career with one of the most recognizable brands in the world in their employment law and occupational health divisions.

      What you decide to get a degree in when you’re 20 is not necessarily what you will be doing the rest of your life. Let’s think about some of the other things we were all so “sure of” at 20 . . . . . (shudders) Eeek!

  9. spek*

    Great response. From the old grizzled seargent with the overeducated newbie officer, to the hard boiled reporter with a 25 year old editor, the naive stupid kid vs the veteran with life experience is a total cliche…but it is still apt, it seems….

  10. NickelandDime*

    And please, no attacks on “Millennials.” I’m not a “Millennial,” but the OP is indeed a special snowflake and definitely not indicative of any particular age group. Lots of people of all ages walk around thinking they are better than others.

    1. I threw up in my mouth a little...*

      Totally concur. I am a millenial and this makes me sick. This person just is so out of touch with the world…
      And yes, maybe quite a few new whipper-snappers in the work place may think this way… but usually you have that slapped out of you pretty quickly.

      My husband had an internship in college. They put him up with 2 other interns in an apartment. He and one guy would always come home after work to find their 3rd roommate home already. When asked why he was already home, “Well, I’m just way faster than all the older people at the office expect the work to be finished, so I just leave…” WOW. My husband was also fast, but when he finished ONE thing he’d ask for the next thing! The guy got an offer from the company, but he’s since been fired. (this was obviously some time ago)

    2. UKAnon*

      As I seem to fall squarely in the middle of the Millenials wherever you date them, all I’ll say is that all the people I know well in my cohort have not necessarily been immune from thinking themselves right on occasion where it may not have been warranted (guilty!) but have all been ready and eager to listen to and benefit from Experience (in all of its forms) Maybe just good selective choosing on my part ;-) but still, just to throw out a data point.

      1. AnonaMoose*

        Well, and I think you now see the issue. Special snowflakes + bad economy = COLD HARD REALITY. Hey, at least you’re catching on to the ‘life can suck more if I let it; I better open my ears’ habits of your elders. :)

    3. Ad Astra*

      As a Milennial myself, I sometimes wonder if our generation is becoming disillusioned with idea of a college education and might, on the whole, value experience a lot more. It seems like most of us were raised with the expectation to go to college because our parents believed it practically guaranteed us a good job with a middle-class income. So we borrowed tons of money to go to college, then graduated into a ridiculously tough job market where bank tellers and baristas all have bachelor’s degrees. Meanwhile, hiring managers have no reason to hire inexperienced new grads when they can pick and choose from people with years of experience in the same field, even sometimes the same position.

      The job market is certainly improving, but the experience has led me to think of my education as an expensive personal development experience (complete with some solid networking) rather than a ticket to career success.

      1. Another Commenter*

        I agree. I actually feel for the letter writer a bit, because this type of thinking is something I believe was more or less spoonfed to Millenials. I generally hate stereotyping generational behaviors, but I think it’s pretty well-documented that Millenials were the generation who were sold the idea that a college degree was Important and THE only right way to get into the working world. I know when I entered the working world, I was a little resentful of the fact that I had supervisors who had less education than I. It doesn’t take long to realize, however, that working knowledge is more important than theoretical. The letter writer will get there.

        1. Tinker*

          One thing I think here is — there’s a lot of stuff which targets Millennials that basically goes along the lines of “well what did you expect, you didn’t get a STEM degree, you wasted all that money on something useless and now you deserve what you get for your foolishness.” I’m thinking it’s something who has a master’s in psychology and who now, AFTER THAT, is going back to school for another degree in accounting, has probably heard at some point. And, it seems, internalized.

          For someone who believes that stuff, it really has got to be galling to see people at higher levels who are rampantly successful despite having obviously done precisely the thing that is now said to be obvious foolishness leading to ruin. But truth is — that stuff is basically just a rationalization to explain the sudden simultaneous dip in the economy and the virtues of youth (funny how that happens, innit?). Really, neither the OP nor their coworkers deserve such treatment.

          1. Tammy*

            This is a great explanation. You can just see it playing out:

            You need a degree if you want a job – check
            Actually, you’ll never get a job without a Master’s (something I heard a lot in undergrad) – check
            Still no luck? Well you’ll never get anywhere without a STEM degree – check

        2. anonnnymus*

          I’m in Gen X, and I was raised with the idea that going to college and majoring in something that I could get a good job in was important. It worked for me, but it’s not the only path. I actually majored in “computer science” about 20 years ago. It’s a tough major, or at least it was. It is nice to have the degree – it helped a lot when getting a first “real” job.

          1. Shannon*

            Same here. I feel that the Millennials have been sold the idea that you should get an education for the sake of having an education, it doesn’t matter what it’s in. Yes, to a certain extent, an education is its own reward. However, most people don’t have the luxury of spending large amounts of cash on self improvement simply for the sake of self improvement. Most people need a marketable skill at the end of the day to put food on the table.

            1. Melissa*

              Yes. People originally told us that we should get an education in whatever, it didn’t matter! and also, do what you love! That’s because we grew up during the relative prosperity of the 1990s and early 2000s. The economy tanked a few months after I graduated from college. The younger Millennials are now being told that anything other than business, computer science, or engineering is worthless and they shouldn’t do it. (And they’ve internalized that too – I moderate an online forum that’s dedicated to college admissions and life, and I’ve actually bookmarked unemployment rates and starting salary data because I’ve heard “you can’t get a job with a BA in English” so many times.)

        3. Fruitfly*

          I also wanted to give a reminder that many people are not has lucky as the OP’s managers. There are many people out there with degrees that are unrelated to the field they wanted to pursue. They developed a lot of skills relevant to their loved field, but they get rejected when they applied for those jobs because many companies still demand a degree. I think maybe is a company reputation thing.

          When people hear these stories, they are not willing to take a risk of just “giving college” to gain work experience. That is also a risky move!

          I also don’t think that higher education is completely useless. In my graduate classes, I learned to write reports that I did not have a chance to learn in my previous internships and current job.

          You can’t think that entering college will definitely give you a job, but you also can’t think that just gaining the work experience would either.

          There is so much factors involved in finding jobs and hiring people.

          I do agree that the OP sounds condescending. The OP should not look down at the managers like that. The OP should just see that different generations of people will have different methods of getting the job. Maybe it was easier to get work experience in the earlier generation than in the Millennials’ generation; therefore, Millennials need to stay in school longer.

      2. Engineer Girl*

        College used to do that because college education was so rare. In your parents generation less than 50% of the people had a college degree. It was actually a discriminator for those with enough gumption to get through. They flunked people more too, so the degree meant something.
        Now almost everyone has a degree so it’s not a discriminator anymore.
        Now days the rare bird is someone with skilled labor, such as a plumber, an electrician, etc. These people are in high demand because there aren’t enough of them for the population. If you are willing to get your hands dirty then it’s better to go this way than a communication major.

        1. Dr. Speakeasy*

          Wait… those numbers are off. Right now about 40% of working-aged Americans hold a college degree. It would have been much lower when “young boomers” hit the job market.

          1. Engineer Girl*

            Actually, I meant it for professional positions. But you are correct for the entire population.
            I just looked up for the 80’s and only 17% of high school graduates got a 4 year degree of any type. Most of those degrees are for a BA, not a BS. So it really did mean something.

        2. MissyMay*

          I think it also is a product of jobs asking for very specific degrees and skills. People start to think that degrees and specific experiences are the only way to be qualified or good at a job.

        4. Today's Satan*

          Yep. My plumber charges $200/hour. Hardly any mid-level white collar jobs pay that much.

          1. Eliza Jane*

            Your plumber almost certainly doesn’t get $200/hour that he works. I’ve had conversations with people about this before — he charges $200/hour, but that is excluding things like his equipment costs, any money he pays to admin staff or assistants or lawyers, advertising costs, his time doing bookkeeping, his time maintaining his certification, insurance, licensing fees, self-employment taxes, etc. The nature of that kind of trade is also that you don’t get to just show up, work 8 hours, and leave — you have much less continuous and consistent income. The money you pay to a business cannot be compared to a salary, even if that business consists of one person, which many plumbing businesses don’t.

      3. Sunshine Brite*

        Agreed, I know that’s been a big problem at my liberal arts school. It’s well known, rigorous, challenging, but didn’t translate nearly as well following the recession into substantial opportunities for students to just get a BA and get going like it used to. When you talked to alums, it was all oh yes, I got this degree and it showed all sorts of awesomeness and I got a job just by sending in my info. Now it’s like, I’m working part-time and struggling and can barely get my loans covered.

        1. Cactus*

          It’s difficult. I have a sort-of-friend who frequently gripes about how he’s never being considered for jobs he thinks he’d be good at (and he probably would be), “even with a bachelors.” I think his sense of the way the world is working right now is somewhat dated…but if I tried to impart a bit of reality, I’m afraid I’d get my head bitten off. (For the record: we’re both millennials, I’m 2 years older, we come from similar backgrounds, but I have a master’s degree…though it’s not like my job is some sort of glamorous wonderful niche thing celebrating the wonder of me.)

      4. CMart*

        I agree with you very much.

        While I think the OP is extremely short-sighted and obviously way too arrogant for their own good, the overwhelming sense of frustration radiating from the letter resonated with me. Anyone who began their career search in the last 10 years has had a really hard time of it.

        It really is demoralizing to be staring down a mountain of student loan debt with your hard-earned degrees moldering in their frames while the regional director of operations of the company you interned for (but couldn’t/wouldn’t hire you) has no formal higher education and worked their way up from a cashier position. That person is probably extremely qualified now, after all of the years of experience, but it’s a bitter pill to swallow. It’s very unlikely these days (barring some tech-specific fields) that a high school graduate can “work their way up” to a senior position. It seems deeply unfair that the current crop of upcoming professionals MUST get a degree-or-two (and bear the huge cost associated with that) while our new bosses likely didn’t have to endure that struggle.

        1. Ad Astra*

          For me, the most frustrating part is that my college debt means I literally can’t afford to start at the bottom and work my way up. It’s not that I’m too good to take a $12/hour gig to get my foot in the door, it’s that doing so would force me to default on my loans. If I weren’t paying $900 or so each month for my education, I could probably get by on $12/hour for the sake of advancing my career.

          1. Ann Furthermore*

            I really feel for you and everyone else out there who has so much student loan debt to pay off. It must feel so overwhelming. I was very, very fortunate that my parents were able to help me get through college. They paid for my tuition and books, and I worked and paid my own living expenses. I was broke all the time, but I managed to get by.

            My stepdaughter will be 18 in September, and will graduate from high school next year. We’ve already told her that we can’t spend $30-$40 grand a year for her to go to a traditional 4-year school. There’s money for college, but not an unlimited amount, and it’s a matter of making sure we’re spending it wisely and getting the biggest bang for our buck.

            I’ve encouraged her to explore the school I attended. It’s in a downtown location, and there are no dorms or high-profile sports teams that need to be funded with room and board fees and/or sky-high tuition. It’s pretty much the last affordable school in the state, and we’d be able to handle the cost. It was a fun place to go to school because there were so many cool things to do downtown, plus it had a great, diverse mix of people, ranging from late teens/early 20’s all the way into their 50’s.

            I told her she could probably get loans to go to a traditional, 4-year school, but that she’d be buried under debt before her first day of her career. She’s very practical, and agreed with what we told her — she lived with her mom, who is the most financially irresponsible person on earth — until she was 14. So she’s had a lot of lessons in what not to do.

          2. Green*

            I get this, partially, because my massive student loans led me to completely ignore jobs I would have enjoyed because they didn’t pay enough so that I could live comfortable while paying off said massive loans. But if I hadn’t been able to get a job that did let me pay it off, I’d have gone with Option B: income-based repayment and getting the best job I could get.

            I get that you won’t take $12/hour job if you have other options, but you literally have to take some job or you’ll default on your loans anyway.

            1. Ad Astra*

              Oh yes, $12/hour is better than $0/hour, for sure. But given the choice of taking a job I don’t love for, say, $20/hour or a job I might love that could help me switch to a new industry for $12/hour, I don’t have the freedom to take the latter.

              In my case specifically, this meant I didn’t have the option of interning after college, which is common for journalists and can get you in at some really impressive publications. Instead, I had to find a permanent position that paid (a little) more in a less exciting area. It still worked out, I guess.

              I am very upset that most of my debt is from a shady private company that doesn’t offer any kind of income-based repayment. Grrrr.

        2. V2*

          It depends on where you work. I work for a large, successful, but privately owned company that was founded by a college dropout. Degrees matter very little there and many employees (including myself) at varying levels of seniority came in through our call center and worked up the ranks.

        3. Observer*

          It’s a bitter pill to swallow. But reactions like the OP’s are just stupid. Sorry, there is no kinder word for it.

        4. anonnnymus*

          “our new bosses likely didn’t have to endure that struggle.” You don’t know what kind of struggles the new bosses did have to endure. Hard to compare when you don’t know.

        5. Sarah*

          Not to diminish the problems of today, but people who began their careers in the early 90s were also doing it in the middle of a recession. I graduated in the UK in the mid 90s and it was a given that everyone had to start in an entry level call centre etc job while they looked for a proper career, and the graduate careers we were promised in school just didn’t exist. These things are cyclical, and it’s very likely the supervisor faced huge debt & problems getting work too.

          1. Natalie*

            Recessions certainly come and go, but they’re not all created equal. This most recent recession is the worst since at least the 40s.

            1. Sarah*

              That doesn’t make life harder for the supervisor who graduated 20 years ago, than for the OP who has a good job in a multinational.

              1. Natalie*

                Yes, if you compare one best case scenario to one worst case scenario you’ll find a great difference, I’m sure.

          2. Ad Astra*

            Not that it’s a contest, but the most recent recession was much worse than the ’90s recession AND people who graduated in the ’90s paid (and borrowed) drastically less for college, even adjusted for inflation.

            1. Rana*

              As a ’92 college graduate and a ’99 grad school graduate, who later tried to switch careers in the late 2000s, I have agree. Both sucked in terms of the economy, but the expectations of employers have grown ridiculously stringent over the interim. Back then, it was a matter of finding a job; now it’s a matter of finding the job and convincing them that you already know how to do it perfectly without any training. (And that’s even without the loans issue.)

          3. Sans*

            I graduated in 82, which was considered the worst recession since the Depression, until 2008. I also was laid off in early 2009. So I experienced two of the worst job markets ever. 2008/2009 was worse. Far worse than anything I’d ever seen.

          4. Tammy*

            Yah, that’s something I heard from my parents. They would mention that they got out of school right in a recession and how that hurt them early in their career. But I also got to see how they moved from job to job and ended up very comfortable.

      5. Anonsie*

        This was a big part of it for me, yeah. My parents were not educated (dad dropped out of 8th grade) or wealthy, and they assumed like many people did that if I went to college I would be able to make enough money to easily pay off whatever debt was incurred with that. They didn’t have any money to pay for my schooling so it’s all debt now, but they were really sure this was ok– in fact everyone in my community did, when I said I didn’t know if I should go to college right away due to cost my high school career counselor and all those types of people all insisted student loans were totally fine and I could just pay them off.

        Of course they’re much larger now than those people anticipated, and it’s hobbled my ability to do save money or even get basic things like own a car. I couldn’t live alone even if I wanted to, I couldn’t make rent. And that’s with me having a pretty good job in the field I wanted now. Before I got that it I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I moved back in with my mom at first and got some manual labor gigs since that’s what I knew (that’s what my dad did) and when I told my dad on the phone he cried and said “this isn’t the direction this family was supposed to go.” This was during the worst of the recession, though, if I was graduating now I probably could have gone into my field right away. But those first few years did kneecap my earnings overall and the affects will likely be long term.

        Pretty classic for what’s happened to a lot of people.

        1. Engineer Girl*

          Just an FYI here, it was hard to own a car back then too (I had a barely working rust-mobile with holes in the sides). I couldn’t live alone (had to have several room mates) and I lived in a skanky side of town. The furniture was all used. I had a degree in electronics engineering, which was fairly prestigious. I earned less per hour than the person that worked the copy machine.
          My point is that most generations have a hard time starting out. People see 50-60 year olds with lots of wealth. That’s because they’ve been saving and investing for 30 years and had time to accumulate that wealth. When we were in our 20’s we were on a strict budget too.
          One big thing is different. In my generation you worked your way through school because student loans were rare. That meant that it took 6 years to get a 4 year degree. We graduated very tired but with no debt. That meant that we could start saving right away. That made a huge difference for wealth accumulation later on.

          1. Anonsie*

            Sure, I’m not comparing generations here. My parents never lived alone, we even had roommates when I was a kid, and we didn’t have a vehicle until I was older. I’m saying the pattern specifically of taking on a lot of student loan debt due to the belief that the resulting income will easily cover it, then being hobbled by that debt, is a really common pattern now and I fit the archetype perfectly.

          2. Not So NewReader*

            My friend commented the other day, “When I got my law degree, you could pay for school as you went along. Unlike now. You just kept working and going to school, it was tight but you could make it. Now you can’t.”

          3. esra*

            The difference is today we work our way through school and need to take student loans. Everyone would be starting their education well into their twenties if they waited until they saved enough to pay for it all.

      6. AnonaMoose*

        Have you seen Reality Bites? We Xers went through the same thing when we graduated straight into a recession. Times move forward, the economy rebounds. It’s like childbirth – you kind of forget how bad it truly was. Just make sure, whatever you do, that you invest in whatever retirement plan is made available to you when you do land a job. You’ll easily make up the difference since you’re starting so much young. Hang in there!! :)

        1. Maeve*

          When the hell are we going to get a job that offers a retirement plan though?

          (28, been working full time since I graduated college, yet to have that perk.)

          1. esra*

            I think that’s where the boomers and gen xers have a tough time wrapping their head around things. They had a lot of the same benefits that just don’t exist now.

            1. Llc*

              Try being a Gen X small business owner. I pay the full load for all medical and dental and will likeky never have retirement and probably work till I drop. That said…the recession didn’t touch me one tiny bit. I give up a lot for my business but many a time I’ve been grateful that (while it could fail) I will not likely lay myself off.

      7. Pinkie Pie Chart*

        I do not have a degree myself, but there are so many places where if you can’t tick off college graduate, you can’t get a toe in the door, much less the rest of your foot. Not that I agree with that. Having just been on the job hunt, it SUCKS when you have everything except one checkbox which throws you out.

        I’m in my final year and will be (finally) getting my BA. But that’s really only good for the checkbox (especially since I’m not going into my major field). My nearly 20 years of experience are MUCH more relevant for hiring purposes.

        1. RO*

          Either way you are out of luck. I worked at a place where if you had no degree (MA in anything preferred) your 20 years of experience did not matter you were not being hired. It is unfortunate because there were individuals with potential who had been in the same role for years and would not move up.

          Fast forward to next organization which values advanced degrees (Ivy type schools preferred). I once referred to some thing someone with a BA had said and my director told me that they do not know what they are doing so I should not pay much attention to what they have to say.

      8. The Strand*

        I think for whatever reason, more Gen Xers had that bitter experience with the idea of college being “something you check off so you can get a decent job”.

        I think when the economy got better, and more competitive… their younger siblings were now encouraged to think you “had to go to college if you wanted to do well”.

      9. Jaydee*

        Also, so many jobs seem to want a very specific degree or certification in a very specific field/major/etc. That makes it that much harder to change fields, even if you have the experience to do the job. Plus, a lot of jobs actually need or benefit from such a wide range of experience that it’s hard to pigeonhole people based on their degree or work history.

      10. Rana*

        The job market is certainly improving, but the experience has led me to think of my education as an expensive personal development experience (complete with some solid networking) rather than a ticket to career success.

        Right there with you, as a Gen X Ph.D. ;)

        (I don’t regret my degree, but I do regret the years afterward when I thought it meant more than it did.)

      11. einahpets*

        The problem is that employers will choose the candidates that do have the college experience over someone who doesn’t, though.

        1. Anx*

          I don’t know if this is true.

          Many times employers will deliberately screen out anyone with a college degree, assuming they are a flight risk and will leave for another job. Other times I think they assume they are more expensive. Which is strange, because I think many college grads would rather have a steady income in the low 20s than scrambling together a bunch of smaller gigs.

          1. einahpets*

            It might not be true everywhere and every industry, but at least in the science / clinical research field (my area) it is for many ‘entry level’ positions. Sure – postings will list Bachelors or equivalent experience, but those postings usually mean 3-4 or more relevant years of experience in the same field, which is going to mean a tough entry for someone without the degree. Compound that with the fact that someone serious about a job in the sciences will likely also be doing some sort of part-time cheap labor job at a research lab during her undergrad (at definitely not a living wage), and it will make it harder for someone out of college to compete, IMO. I am not saying it can’t be done, but I think it is harder nowadays.

            I have heard your opinion in terms of advanced degrees (MS), but never for bachelors degrees.

            1. Anx*

              I’m STEM, too. Many of the jobs in my area are looking for people with an A.S. and experience instead of a bachelor’s.

              But since I wasn’t serious enough about it and worked in other fields outside of science during college, I had to look at many non-stem jobs. I couldn’t even get the jobs I had done before college. Leaving my degree off wouldn’t help because then I’d have a huge 4 year gap right after high school before the recession.

              I think it’s probably regionally dependent, too.

      12. Anx*

        If I knew then when I knew now, I never would have gone to college.

        A lot of my classmates who floundered a lot in high school are doing much better than those of us went to college. They bounced around aimlessly or got into some trouble maybe but after a year or two they got service jobs or entry-level work and got in a few years of experience before the recession hit.

        1. einahpets*

          I guess I was lucky in college in the sense that I had to work all the way through. So I got more than a degree; I got 4 years of part-time experience tinkering around in different research labs until I found an area I was interested in. Those experiences probably wouldn’t have been available to me outside of the university, as they were supported as work studies / undergrad fellowships. But I was lucky to have gone to a pretty well known research university with a really active tradition of getting undergrads involved and opportunities abounded if you looked for them.

          But even my friends outside of the sciences worked through college in a lot of those service / entry level jobs you are talking about… maybe it is partly related to where I went to school (lots of kids from blue collar families) and undergrad being about half what it costs now (so you had a hope of getting through with manageable debt if you worked), but it was not very common to not be working at all during school.

          1. Anx*

            That was probably pretty helpful. I couldn’t afford to do the summer research programs and needed to find paid work on or near campus (I did not have a car). At the time, I thought I’d gain some transferable soft-skills. I ended up working outside of science throughout college. I wish I had done retail or fast food instead of what I did (student services) because then I’d probably have had a better chance of getting those retail and fast food jobs out of college.

    4. nona*

      I’m actually not sure that the OP is a millennial. They have a B.A. in something, an M.A. in psychology, and they’re near the end of an accounting program.

      1. Emily, admin extraordinaire*

        It depends on how they’re counting. Some people count me (born in 1980) as a millennial, others have people born in 1983 as the start, others go even later. It’s possible to be in your 30s and still technically belong to the millennial generation.

      2. VintageLydia USA*

        The oldest Millennials are in our early to mid 30’s (depending on where you put the start date.) It’s possible this person did these degrees pretty much back to back and still be a Millennial, though they’re most likely on the cusp of Millennial/Gen X.

      3. K*

        Yeah, what counts as a millennial? I thought I would be counted as one. I was born in 1989 and have a BA, and MS, and 3.5 years of work experience.

        1. Ad Astra*

          Yep, you’re a Milennial. I was born in 1988 and I think that puts me right around the middle of that range. Because technology has changed so quickly, a lot of People Who Know Stuff have begun grouping generations into smaller ranges. Someone who’s 27 now grew up under very different circumstances than someone who’s 17 now, so it doesn’t make sense to put them in the same generation. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, were born between 1946 and 1964, which is a huge range.

        2. Melissa*

          The most commonly given start year is 1982, although I’ve seen it given as early as 1980. End year ranges from 1994-2000. It kind of depends on the sociologist – some people claim that the Millennial generation is defined in part by being old enough to have experienced and understood the 9/11 attacks, and were between 10 and 20 when they happened, which would make the age range 1981 to 1991. Others define us as the “echo boom” that are mostly children of baby boomers and do it based on the birth upswing that happened from 1983 to 2000. Either way, you’re definitely a Millennial.

      4. Dr. Speakeasy*

        I’m a millennial and I have a PhD and 6+ years of exp. It’s actually the kids coming into college right now that are really no longer millennials (Gen Z? Generation We-haven’t-decided-why-you’re-terrible-yet?)

      5. The Strand*

        I’m thinking they could be as young as 23 or 24.

        That would be 4 years (or 5) for the bachelor’s. 2 years for the master’s. 1 year to prep for the CPA licensure (which one of my friends did only about 6 months after finishing her accounting degree). Assuming they started at 18 (they don’t sound like they took a gap year), 23 or 24.

        1. Shannon*

          It’s also possible that they were able to test out of some college credits through AP, CLEP, and Dual Enrollment while in High School. Those alone can shave up to a year off of your college.

      6. Lindsay J*

        Entirely possible. A friend of mine is considered a millenial and has his BA, MLIS, and JD. (And is now in a career field that uses none of them.)

    5. SG*

      Aaaaamen. I’m a “Millennial” it seems, but I think a lot of what is failing OP here is clearly no good role models or life experience. I was very lucky to grow up with two very hard working parents who taught me a lot about the working world and how one acts as an employee. OP seems to not have people in their personal or professional/academic life modeling workplace behavior or teaching them explicitly about workplace behavior. That’s my only explanation I can come up with for someone being this WILDLY out of touch with how life works.

    6. Coach Devie*

      OP might not necessarily even be considered “millennial” by some standards she may be generation Z (Im assuming she/he was probably born mid 90’s)

  11. JB (not in Houston)*

    Wow, this OP hits a nerve. I’m not going to say much because this is one of those “flames on the side of my face” issues for me, so I know can’t be neutral.

    As an attorney, I’m surrounded by people who think that having a law degree makes them more intelligent and, frankly, more valuable human beings than those who don’t have a college degree. I once had a coworker say that her friend’s fiance didn’t deserve her friend because he didn’t have a college degree. On the other hand, my parents both attended college but didn’t graduate because they dropped out to work to support their kids. My parents are, however, self-educated, and they are two of the most intelligent, knowledgeable people I know. But when my mom was laid off in the recession (bad time to work in retail!), she had a hard time getting interviews because, despite having worker her way up to a corporate executive position at her old job, she did not have that college degree. People who think that a college degree makes you automatically more qualified for a job than those who don’t have a degree–especially when they have no idea what other way that person has become educated in the field–burn me up.

    1. Abby*

      And, as your mom experienced, so many jobs require degrees and specific degrees at that. So, what’s fair?

      1. JB (not in Houston)*

        Exactly! She could have explained why she was qualified if she could actually talk to someone, but it was hard to get past the screening.

        1. Laurel Gray*

          Your mom’s situation is a perfect example about why degree requirements without “substitutions” or in automated online job apps are a joke.

          1. catsAreCool*

            I think situations like your mom’s is why my parents really wanted me to go to college. Sometimes a degree opens doors. It’s not always fair; sometimes it’s not fair at all. I mean, if you have 2 people with no experience, but one has a college degree in what you’re hiring for, that’s pretty easy, but your mom’s probably a much better employee than a newbie who just has a degree. Experience frequently beats education.

    2. Soharaz*

      This. My DH has been in the military (UK) since he was 16 and never went to university, but he is really smart and a great problem solver under pressure (the quality all jobs ask for). I knew someone (no longer my friend) who basically said ‘why doesn’t he have a degree? He must not be smart enough for you.’ Degrees aren’t everything!

      1. JB (not in Houston)*

        No wonder that person is no longer your friend. How do you even respond to that?

      2. Elizabeth West*

        Yep. I almost married a guy who took one semester of college and decided it wasn’t for him. Didn’t bother me any–he had way more practical smarts than I do. Of course, it couldn’t work out when it bothered him that I wanted to do it.

      3. Cath in Canada*

        I also have an ex-friend who was very snobby about my husband not having a degree. Never mind that he taught himself trigonometry from scratch and is now the go-to person at his work for complicated carpentry issues, beats me at Scrabble, chess, and backgammon approximately 80% of the time, has traveled all over, has a very curious mind, and can talk intelligently about pretty much anything – he doesn’t have a degree, therefore apparently he’s stupid and not good enough for me. Whatever, ex-friend!

    3. Aunt Vixen*

      “And this is where you set up shipments to go out.”
      “I don’t think –”
      “No, it’s really easy, we have FedEx auto-shipment.”
      “You don’t understand. I have an MBA.”
      “Ohhh, you have an MBA.”
      “Yes.”
      “In that case, I’ll have to show you how to do it.”

      1. JB (not in Houston)*

        One of my all time favorite commercials, from the “funny ’cause it’s true” files.

    4. Boo*

      Nothing to add to your comment (which I totally agree with) but just wanted to wave to a fellow Clue fan *waves*

      1. JB (not in Houston)*

        *waves furiously back* I so much wish there were regular screenings with people dressing up the way they do with some other movies. That, and for Galaxy Quest.

        3. Kethryvis*

          A couple of years ago, my friend’s RHPS did a shadow cast to Clue and it was the best thing ever. Everyone came dressed in 1950s-esque dinner party attire. It REALLY needs to be a more-regular Thing!!

        4. Henrietta Gondorf*

          The Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters in Austin, Texas do a Clue quote-along and provide you with props and the hosts are in costume. I can’t recall many attendees being dressed up, but it was a lot of fun.

    5. the gold digger*

      My husband’s father thinks that anyone without a PhD is pretty much wasting space on this earth.

      1. He is wrong.
      2. May I add that he used said PhD to teach at a tier-4 school?

      He holds my sister in law, Stephanie, in great disdain because she will say she is just “laying around and watching TV.” Indeed, he is in the hospital and not feeling well at all, but he found the strength to mock Stephanie, even though Stephanie is one of the few people who has bothered to visit him and help out at the house in his absence. Anyone so dumb as to use “lay” improperly has no worth as a human being.

      I cannot stand my husband’s father.

      1. JB (not in Houston)*

        Wow, Stephanie sounds like a saint. As do you, because father-in-law presumably hasn’t been unplugged from his hospital machines? (I kid, but he sounds awful.)

          1. Brisvegan*

            And your blog is great! Also, Sly is clearly an abusive a**hole.
            Stephanie must be a saint.

            1. the gold digger*

              Thank you! Yes, Sly is an abusive a**hole. And I loooove Stephanie. Don’t care for Primo’s brothers or my other sister in law, but Stephanie and her kids are great.

      2. sam*

        Funny joke, that I first heard from one of my college administrators during freshman orientation:

        B.S. degree = “bullsh*t”
        M.S. degree = “more sh*t”
        PhD = “Piled higher and Deeper”

        (it was self-deprecating – she was a PhD herself).

      3. Sigrid*

        My parents, both PhDs, think the same thing. It’s why I got a PhD — and was bitterly unhappy the entire time, left academia to work in industry for a few years (btw my parents also think anyone who works in industry is a waste of space), and am now back in school — medical school this time. I’ve never been happier. I’m also probably the only person in my entire school, possibly the only person currently in medical school in Canada and the US, whose parents are unhappy they’re in med school and believe that they’re “wasting their life” by being a doctor.

        I don’t talk to my parents much any more.

        1. Sigrid*

          PS This was after I already disappointed my father greatly by getting my bachelors in biology, which “isn’t a real science”. He wanted me to get a degree in math, like him, or if I couldn’t manage that, physics or — if I absolutely must deviate that far from real work — chemistry.

          3. Anx*

            I don’t meant to make any assumptions about your parents, but I think it’s actually pretty common for parents not to want their children to go to med school, particularly those from science backgrounds. I think some of this has to do with that medical and biological sciences have the most women, which I’m pretty sure contributes to how seriously they are perceived among scientists.

      4. Roza*

        Ugh, people like that drive me crazy! Not least because as someone who’s wrapping up a PhD and not at all interested in an academic career, I have to contend with people assuming that I’m going to be an arrogant, condescending jerk. When actually I realize that while I’ll bring some valuable technical skills to the table, most of my degree isn’t relevant at all and I’ll have tons to learn from people with more experience in the job than me, regardless of their formal education level.

        Interestingly, my own father has great disdain for anyone *with* a PhD, because professors are “a waste of taxpayer money” and academic research is “useless.” He’s always careful to add that he doesn’t mean me, since I’m not going into academia, and is confused when I’m still offended at his decision to call all of my friends/colleagues/teachers/mentors useless. Jerks come at all education levels, unfortunately.

        1. Lynn*

          “Ugh, people like that drive me crazy! Not least because as someone who’s wrapping up a PhD and not at all interested in an academic career, I have to contend with people assuming that I’m going to be an arrogant, condescending jerk.”

          YES. #notallPhDs?

          1. Rana*

            Yup. At this point my doctorate is as much a liability as an asset (maybe more so, in fact) because a lot of people look at it and think, “Oh, you’re one of those useless people who also thinks she’s better than everyone else.”

            It’s particularly awful for entry-level jobs, which is unfortunately all I seem qualified these days, what with every job requiring a minimum of 2-3 years experience “in the field.”

            (Man, this thread is stirring up all kinds of crap I thought I’d gotten past. Well, there’s a reason I started calling it Post-Academic Stress Syndrome…)

    6. AtrociousPink*

      24-year legal secretary here. Finally finished my B.S. in 2011 … in history, because that was what I wanted to study and the degree was just checking off a box after all. Your attitude is so refreshing for this field! I’ve had paralegals with less experience than I have (and, since 2011, sometimes less education, too) who think they’re a superior species. And don’t get me started on (most of) the lawyers.

      1. JB (not in Houston)*

        Ugh, those lawyers. They are the ones who went to law school because they’ve always known they were important, and they needed some way to make everyone else recognize it.

        I wish I could say my attitude was because I’m a wonderful, caring, compassionate person, but it’s all circumstances. I’ve seen my parents struggle as well as other non-degreed people I’ve worked with, plus I worked for years before going back to law school, and I served my time in admin positions before getting promoted (and then eventually going back to school). I wasn’t any smarter or capable of learning before law school, and so I know that there are so, so many people who could go to law school but are smart enough not to. (plus . . . don’t all of us in this field know some people we are convinced must have faked their degrees? The “how hard can a bar exam be if this person passed” types?)

        The fact that you have managed to survive working for lawyers for 24 years says a lot.

        1. alter_ego*

          I was once helping a lawyer fill out a form at my retail job, and the first box was a drop-down menu for various honorifics. So you could choose Mr./Mrs./Ms./Dr. He WENT OFF on me because there was no option for if you were a lawyer. “Why do you get one if you’re a doctor, but not a lawyer? We work hard too!!!” Seriously angry dude, and no amount of explaining that the English language just doesn’t HAVE an honorific for lawyers, and my minimum wage retail ass had nothing to do with it would calm him down. I finally got him to agree to add Esq. after his last name as a compromise, but he made it clear that he thought I was being very unsympathetic to his rage.

          1. JB (not in Houston)*

            This is exactly the type of lawyer I’m talking about. Most of my lawyer acquaintances are not like this, but we cannot counteract the harm that this type of person does to our reputation.

            1. SG*

              Same- both my parents have law degrees and it always bums me out to hear “lawyer stereotypes” being true. Neither of my parents has ever pushed me to get a secondary degree, and in fact STRONGLY counsel against it unless it is necessary for a career path as they think it’s a waste of time and money unless you absolutely have to go for a secondary degree.

          2. Loose Seal*

            I filled out a drop down once while making a charitable contribution online. They had every title you could think of, even one for “His Holiness.” I got a huge chuckle thinking about the Pope taking time out of his day to send in money.

        2. Natalie*

          “They are the ones who went to law school because they’ve always known they were important, and they needed some way to make everyone else recognize it.”

          And, in case someone still refused to recognize it, the arguing skills to force them into submission. :)

        3. Anonsie*

          They are the ones who went to law school because they’ve always known they were important, and they needed some way to make everyone else recognize it.

          Ooh this is such a perfect explanation of that type of attitude.

      2. Lucky*

        I was a legal assistant/paralegal before I went to law school (because I figured out I was as smart as all the young lawyers I had to babysit, so I may as well get paid like one). Anyone trying to denigrate or talk down to legal staff better just step aside when I’m in the room.

        1. JB (not in Houston)*

          Sometimes we have interns who try to argue with their supervising attorneys. You’re a 2L/3L! You don’t know anything! And if any of our interns who talk down to our secretaries, it’s a big mistake. We know our secretaries are good employees, but the interns need to prove themselves.

          1. Broke Law Student*

            Yes! My dad (a lawyer) is flummoxed by people who insult support staff. He’s like, don’t you know good admins are worth their weight in gold?? We will never hire you if you treat them poorly at your interview/during your internship! But you know, some lawyers and law students are just Too Important to treat admins like they’re real people.

    7. Batshua*

      I had the opposite problem of what your mom had. When I graduated right into the recession, nobody wanted to hire me because I had a degree, but no full-time work experience! It took me 7 years to get a “real” job. You can’t win. :-/

      1. JB (not in Houston)*

        Yeah, the recession was NOT a good time to graduate! You have my sympathies for sure. We had so many interns who could not find jobs. There wasn’t anything we could do to to help since the problem wasn’t getting a foot in the door, it was finding someone who needed newly-licensed lawyers, and that was almost nobody.

      2. BananaPants*

        My husband graduated in December 2008 after working his way through college as a non-traditional student. He’d been laid off from a good corporate job in October of that year and it took him until mid-2009 to land a job selling cell phones for slightly more than minimum wage. He’s since had a multi-year stint in a call center and another year in retail before staying home with our kids. We are children of the late 70s/early 80s and when we were in high school and early college, that degree WAS the ticket to a successful career. Now people working at McDonald’s and as baristas have degrees and are glad to get those jobs.

        We’re so glad that he/we didn’t go into debt for that degree since it’s ended up nearly useless, but wonder sometimes if we would have been better off with him taking out loans to go to school full time and graduating/entering the job market well before the recession when “real” jobs were plentiful. It’s painful for him to see high school classmates who graduated in 2001 or 2002 who are so far ahead of him career-wise that realistically he’s never going to catch up.

        He’s found a new job that he’ll start soon, but it’s in customer service and the pay is the same as he was earning in 2010. Yay for a job, but it’s sort of sad that this is what his “career” amounts to at the age of 35. If not for my career being higher-paying and more stable we never would have been able to buy a home and have children.

        1. simonthegrey*

          My husband’s story is very much the same as yours, only I’m in academia as an adjunct so there is no stability on my side either.

    8. LeahS*

      This just makes me think of the “Legal Advice” subreddit (aka one of my favorite places to lurk online). Many people have questions about whether or not their employers can commit wage theft, if what happened to them was sexual harassment, etc. Somehow the conversation always takes a turn and at least of the (actual) lawyers respond with something like:

      “My advice? It’s illegal, but if you’re working a minimum wage job that a trained monkey could do, you’re replaceable. You might want to think about that before doing anything. This happens in jobs that attract non-skilled workers. Go to college, so you’ll be valuable to employers and make something better of yourself.”

      This makes me crazy. I have a college degree and working a job a “trained monkey” could do because that’s what you have to do to survive. And so many others aren’t as fortunate as I’ve been. College isn’t a remote possibly for some. And some people actually want to move up in retail or food service, love their jobs, and don’t want to change industries. That doesn’t mean they have no value or deserve to be harassed or stolen from!

      *Stepping off my soapbox now*

      1. alter_ego*

        Also the huge amount of people that work those jobs WHILE IN COLLEGE to pay the bills. Like, you can’t just decide to get a degree, and then have it the next day. You’re looking at a minimum of 2 years, more realistically 4 or more. What the hell are you supposed to do for money in the meantime? Oh right, live off your stock dividends and supplement with your trust fund. What was I thinking?

        1. LeahS*

          Wait, what?? I went to bed one night, about 3 months after graduation, and woke up the next with a BA stuck under my pillow tooth-fairy style!

        2. LawLady*

          This is true. Once when I was waitressing (and a bit flustered; the other waitress on shift had gone home sick) a woman actually said to her kid right in front of me: “this is why you have to go to college. so you don’t have to work a job like this.”

          And I was like “Excuse me, I’m a freshman at Stanford, I just need money to pay for college.” And she looked sheepish.

          2. Ezri*

            Urgghh, people like that are why I go out of my way to be nice to servers. I waitressed for one summer in college before I couldn’t take anymore and begged to be put on the food line. Kudos to you for having the composure to respond to something like that in a polite way. People are jerks. >_<

      2. The Strand*

        Yes, but at the same time, are they really giving bad advice?

        The credential creep in our society is really bad, but that’s in part because the blue collar jobs people once made a solid living on are ebbing away and are never coming back.

        I always try to tell not only my young relatives, but young students that it’s an arms race out there, and they need to be realistic about the marketplace. I don’t fault them for wanting to spend a career in food service or theatre or what have you but if they want to buy a house or have kids, as BananaPants says, certain options are better to take.

        1. Natalie*

          Doesn’t that work out just like an actual arms race? If everyone tries to avoid the service industry by going to college, eventually you just end up with a bunch of college graduates working in the service industry.

          1. Ad Astra*

            Which, if you ask me, is why we ought to consider paying food service employees and janitors and the like a living wage.

    9. Lady Bug*

      Also a lawyer and I can’t stand when anyone thinks their degree makes them smarter than everyone else. Nope, my brain is just awesome at retaining info, like the lyrics to 1000s of songs. My husband doesn’t have a degree, and neither of my kids went to college. They are all smart. People with degrees aren’t better than anyone else. People who don’t judge and respect their fellow human beings are.

      1. Lady Bug*

        Don’t judge others and respect them instead is what I meant, that didn’t read right. Stupid lawyer :-).

        1. JB (not in Houston)*

          Ha, I am the worst at proofreading what I put online because I spend so much time proofreading for work, I can’t seem to do it for anything else.

    10. Green*

      I don’t think that’s a general “attorney” thing.If that’s the environment where you work, that sucks. I know lots of attorneys and one spouse doesn’t work or didn’t go to college or works in retail or works in a trade or didn’t go to college but is in the military or their spouse makes 7 times less than them and nobody cares. (And those roles aren’t necessarily tied to gender either.) I’m an attorney, I made 7x more than my husband, my siblings are awesome and work in retail/hospitality and picking up trash.

      I think a law degree makes you a better lawyer. Not a better (or smarter) person.

      1. JB (not in Houston)*

        I’m not in anyway saying all attorneys are like this. I’m just saying that I see a lot of them. I do appellate work, I see a wide range of attorneys, and I see it a lot. Most of the attorneys in my office aren’t like that, but there are some. Whenever you have a field that requires a professional degree and a license and engenders a certain amount of respect or prestige, you will attract that type of person. And when you throw in the power that comes with having a law license, it’s irresistible for some people.

    11. Anon Accountant*

      Exactly. Our firm (for some unknown reason) wouldn’t hire an admin assistant that didn’t have a minimum of an associate’s degree. A degree didn’t make the assistant we hired any more qualified that someone who didn’t have a degree if they had the proper skills.

  12. Violetta*

    You’re following up a degree in Psychology with one in Accounting, and yet you can’t understand that people don’t always end up sticking with one path their whole lives?

  13. BRR*

    I feel like this is going to turn into a huge piling onto the LW. But I’m not sure they deserve restraint because it wasn’t phrase as a polite question but rather extreme judgement. I’m not even sure why “been around” is in quotes because I’m assuming there’s not a dispute about the length of their career.

    Very few degrees actually train for a specific position. I have a friend who has an engineering degree who says he uses less than 5% of what he learned in school at his engineering job. Degrees in many fields are just a box to check to say you have a degree.

    Take a look out how they are at their jobs and come back.

    1. LBK*

      Exactly – no amount of school can truly prepare you to do a job well, especially once you get into management. I’d argue that your degree is actually even less relevant as a manager because so much of being a good manager is who you are, not what you know.

    2. steve g*

      And some fields don’t have degrees or they didn’t exist until recently. I’m thinking my niche in the energy efficiency thing which is now a hot thing, and digital media/ecommerce type courses (and there are hundreds of jobs in those fields I’m finding in my search)….yet when I look at company profiles, I’m seeing lots of early genx faces, so none of them could have degrees in these new niche fields unless they went back to school after 30

      1. BRR*

        I was thinking that as well. I have also noticed people who succeed at school and who succeed at work aren’t always they same people. There is definitely some overlap but there’s also a lot of people who are better at one than the other.

    3. Shell*

      My high school chem teacher gave me some of the best advice in regards to education when I was complaining about titration curves and how I’ll never use them (I was right):

      “You can say that for just about every subject in existence. Going to school isn’t about learning everything, because when you’re on the job, they’ll teach you. Going to school is more about proving you can learn in the first place.”

      (Sure, there are some exceptions like law, medicine, etc. where the fundamentals are a rightful bar to applicants, but his point still stands.)

      1. Marcela*

        Absolutely. In our physics department we were told all the time that we were not there to learn equations. What they were doing was teaching us to think, so we could create new science. The role of everything we learned was to give us foundation and tools, not to be memorized because we were going to be using it the rest of our lives. It was very important that we showed we could learn, so for example all tests were almost limitless: we could be all day doing them and use books and our notes. Of course, ours is a very special field, where each one of us is expected to work in a new and untouched area of knowledge, but it’s important to remember that formal education sometimes is all about learning to learn and think, not learning how to do things.

    4. SG*

      Yeah, that was confusing. Like, what did OP/LW think these people have been doing the past 20 years? Clearly they’re working hard, acquiring skills, doing well by the company and showing leadership. AKA the things that keep you on as an employee and get you promoted…no one is going to care you read some Jung or whoever in college. Like oh boy, he’s read Freud “On Dreams”, someone make him COO! I’m honestly so baffled by this OP’s way of thinking about degrees.

  14. Oryx*

    Oooof.

    Your use of proclaiming your supervisors as being “less educated” than you is problematic. Lots, if not most, professional education happens when you’re actually working in the field. So while, yes, they may have less *degrees* than you do, that doesn’t in any way make them automatically less *educated.*

    I suggest you take a few steps down from your Ivory Tower, OP.

    1. Mena*

      “Lots, if not most, professional education happens when you’re actually working in the field. So while, yes, they may have less *degrees* than you do, that doesn’t in any way make them automatically less *educated.* ”

      +1000000

    3. Anna*

      It took me a long time to get to that point where I didn’t look down my nose at those without degrees. I am over it now and tend to appreciate the on-the-job education that people get. It now makes me cringe whenever I hear someone I know talk about how she has a degree in English, so clearly she knows how to write. Well, she does know how to write, but that comes from practice, not her degree. Most people can learn how to do it.

      1. Tammy*

        This sounds apt to me. I had a coworker who was very proud of her degree in an arts and visual production, and brought up opportunities where she could contribute through design work, events management, etc.

        But I was the one who had to follow along after her organizing her event timeline, checking the event budget, aligning the wonky text in her design work, telling her to use our corporate colors, and so on. In the end, my social sciences degree didn’t matter, but neither did her arts degree.

  15. Malissa*

    OP I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. As you get closer to your CPA certificate you’ll understand how a computer science degree is actually very relevant to finance.
    In the mean time check your attitude about the situation. I fear it’s blocking you from learning and getting to know people that have a vast knowledge of your industry. Forget about degrees for a moment. Realize that there is a path these followed to get where they are. Taking time to get to know them and learning about their paths. There is knowledge there that you can’t get form a degree.

    1. bridget*

      Additionally, at a “large corporation” I’m sure that the head of finance is not doing the detail work (like a careful audit of the books) that you might need the specific, targeted skills one learns being educated as a CPA or forensic accountant. Head of finance is probably making big picture decisions for the direction of the company, based on information and analysis provided by people who are really focused on the weeds. For that, you need to have a lot of practical experience and to have gained a good intuitive sense of what will work for a particular company, because you are really familiar with that company. 20+ years of experience there is way better for a big picture job. Someone who just walked in with a shiny CPA certificate could easily make a bad big-picture decision, knowing nothing about the company and what it’s long-term trajectory is.

    2. Accountant*

      Completely agree. I’m a CPA, and almost NOTHING I learned in school has any relevance whatsoever in my day to day job beyond the concept of debits and credits. All the time spent learning to calculate random things in my tax class? We have software that does that for you. How to use this software? When I started work a few years ago, I had no clue. Because what you learn in college is theory. What you learn in the workplace is practical.

      The people who have been working where I work for decades are geniuses. We all learned the same things in our accounting classes, I assume, but the decades of experience some of my coworkers have are invaluable. No CPA certificate in the world could even begin to compare to the education many of my colleagues have received over the years of giving financial advice and talking to clients and learning about their businesses.

      1. Natalie*

        Ugh, the formulas and ratios. Somebody tell me when I’m going to need to have the AR turnover ratio memorized and calculate it by hand? Never, that’s when.

      2. Elizabeth West*

        Because what you learn in college is theory. What you learn in the workplace is practical.

        YES YES YES. This should be on a pillow. I think it’s true for every major–even if you’re doing exactly what you were trained to do, like say, HVAC or something, every system will be different. No course teaches you how to apply your knowledge in the field. That only comes with experience.

        And one very important thing you learn on the job that you don’t in school is how to deviate from those theories when necessary. Because sometimes situations come up that require a MacGyver approach rather than a by-the-book one.

        1. ancolie*

          My undergrad uni’s motto is actually THEORY & PRACTICE. They didn’t ALways succeed at everyone getting the practice part of it, but at least they have that as a goal and mindset.

  16. Bend & Snap*

    I used to manage someone like this. She took an extra year in school to tack on an MBA and thought it made her more qualified than anyone else, and that she shouldn’t have to start at entry level.

    She was entitled, disrespectful, and bad at her job because she didn’t want to learn. Not to mention a f*cking nightmare to manage.

    OP, the real world is going to clock you one if you don’t change your attitude. Anyone who works their way up from a call center into a senior finance role most likely accomplished it because they’re smart, work hard and good at what they do. Those things are way more meaningful than the “right” degree.

    Also I hope nobody ever judges you this way if you ever try to change careers. What if finance doesn’t work out for you, you try to make a move and someone disparages you for having the “wrong” degree?

    1. Not the Droid You are Looking For*

      I had an employee who thought she should be considered as a “Senior Teapot Polisher” and that she should report to me rather than the Lead Teapot Polisher because she had a masters and the Lead Teapot Polisher didn’t.

      And when we didn’t change the entire departments reporting structure, she went to HR. No matter how much we tried to explain that she could learn a lot from the Lead Teapot polisher who had actually been with the company longer than I had, she just kept stressing that she was better educated.

        1. Not the Droid You are Looking For*

          She basically flitted around the office complaining, but doing just enough work to stay out of trouble, What was ridiculous was she would ask me task specific questions, which I would then forward to the Lead, who would in turn respond to her. She then went to HR because I was “ignoring” her emails.

          I thought our HR manager was going to rage flip her desk at that point. She calmly explained that (a) the questions shouldn’t be directed to me but to the lead, and (b) me directing her email to the person who could actually answer it was actually answering her emails. We had a similar conversation when she forwarded me her one-on-one meeting appointments.

          I’m still amazed how serenely my lead took it. She just kind of was like, “it’s your issue” and went on with work. The woman in question left for a “better job” where people “actually respect her.”

          1. manybellsdown*

            You remind me of a time when my bosses were going to a conference. Before they left, they called me and another employee in and said they’d be leaving one of us in charge for the week. We both assumed it would be Other Employee, as she had a Master’s and I was still in school.

            They picked me, because I had been there the longest and they felt I had more experience with running the place. Other Employee was SO not happy about this, and her shenanigans during that week led to her getting fired.

            1. Not the Droid You are Looking For*

              That’s so crazy. I’ve never understood acting out and losing a job over a perceived slight.

      2. cuppa*

        This reminds me of a staff person that I (thankfully) no longer manage. She was really lacking in some basic skills to do her job and just couldn’t improve. Managing her was a constant slog. She e-mailed me one day and told me she needed a raise because she got her Bachelor’s degree and was now overqualified for her job.

        Uh, no.

      3. ThursdaysGeek*

        I read that as ‘Lead (led) Teapot Polisher’ instead of ‘Lead (leed) Teapot Polisher’ and was considering the nasty health risks of making your teapots out of lead. Although, they do have a higher melting point than chocolate, so won’t melt as quickly, and lead does have kind of a sweet* taste to add to the tea taste.

        *But it’s a bad ‘this is poisonous’ sweet taste, and I’m a bit concerned that I even know that.

    2. Mena*

      Tack on an MBA? The better business schools will not accept someone who hasn’t acquired work experience BEFORE applying to an MBA program. I worked 3 years before going; the work experience provides context to the learning. And I think this is what OP is missing – any context.

      1. Bend & Snap*

        She went to a fairly prestigious college and they offered a 1-year MBA directly following completion of an undergrad degree. I know a few people who did this and none of them was better qualified to enter the workforce based on the degree. Some of them had killer internships thanks to their programs, and those did help.

      2. MaryMary*

        You have it right there: the better business schools look for candidates who have work experience. Many less prestigious programs, and particularly for-profit programs, don’t care if you’ve gone straight from undergrad to their MBA program.

        1. SG*

          Well, I think that depends on where your undergrad was. I’ve known a number of Columbia, Yale and Harvard kids to go straight to MBAs.

          1. The Strand*

            They’ll make some exceptions, but all of the Top 20 schools generally want traditional business students (younger ones, in other words) to have a couple of years of work experience.

    3. Natalie*

      We had a temp receptionist like that. She could have turned it into a permanent position with a fair amount of potential (of the 6 people currently working in my office, 3 of us started as the receptionist and one is the current receptionist), but she would not do the basic work the job required because she had an MBA. Her attitude was just awful. We cut her loose at the end of her assignment period and from what I understand it took her a long while to find her next job, which she then got fired from.

    5. James M.*

      ..was entitled, disrespectful, and bad at her job…

      If there isn’t a rap of this there should be!

  17. grasshopper*

    What an unbelievable sense of entitlement. Being around for 20+ years is what makes them far more qualified than you since they have human experience. A degree is just the starting line.

    1. BRR*

      I completely agree that this is an unbelievable sense of entitlement. But I will say being around for 20+ years does not make a person qualified for anything except saying they have 20+ years experience. Some people have been around that long and not learned a thing.

      2. grasshopper*

        It is true that years of experience might not actually mean that they are good at their job; there are plenty of old relics just floating by and counting down days until retirement. In that case the OP would have a legitimate issue with their current performance. But saying that the reason he doesn’t respect them is because of their lack of formal education 20 years ago isn’t a legitimate complaint.

        1. Not So Sunny*

          Having 20 years experience makes a person an old relic who’s counting down (from a supposed age in the mid-40s) to retirement? Please.

          2. ExceptionToTheRule*

            If I’m a relic, what does that make my boss who has 40+ years of experience?

        2. Judy*

          That may have been true in the 70s, 80s or 90s, but the 00s have not been kind to many. I saw lots of productive over 50 year olds who ended up on the chopping block during that decade.

      3. bridget*

        Sure, but the people who just coast for 20+ years rarely end up in a senior finance position. They stay where they started. It’s the people who really use those years to gain all of the education they can who succeed like that, so these people in particular are people the OP *should* be giving lots of completely due respect.

      4. Kelly O*

        Agreed.

        And I’m not arguing that sometimes people do get into management positions purely by outlasting others. But it’s not always the case, and more often than not it happens when people are good at what they do and work hard to prove themselves.

        One place I worked fairly recently had an interesting situation – the controller for the company had an Associate’s Degree in Accounting/Bookkeeping. But she had been with the company since almost day one. She knew more about how the finances for the company worked than anyone else, and our CFO (who had a Masters of Accountancy and a CPA) would often ask her questions about how things worked, and truly valued her insights. She was excellent at what she did, but did not have the formal education to back it up.

        When our company announced it had been bought and our offices were closing, everyone immediately thought of S and worked so hard to find something for her, because she had been with this same company nearly 40 years, and was not ready to retire, but finding something at her compensation level that would understand her practical, hands-on experience without a formal degree, was a challenge. She was fortunate, and someone helped her get on with another small, family-owned company.

        I say all that to illustrate both the benefits and challenges associated with working your way up, and that there are very intelligent, well-spoken, extremely valuable employees out there with all sorts of backgrounds, and being open to others’ experiences and learning what you can from them will make you a better employee, and quite possibly a better person (not that I’m saying you’re a bad person now. That’s a personal observation on my own part. I am a better person when I look for lessons and open myself to what others can teach me. It makes me more generous, and that’s not a bad thing.)

        Signed,
        An Associates Degree and over fifteen years working in my “field”

        1. GlamNonprofitSquirrel*

          Can I just add how thoughtful you and your former colleagues are? That was a really kind thing you did and you set another local company up for the best damn finance person ever. My office manager at my new(ish) nonprofit gig is 72+ (we don’t ask) and she has no degrees. What she does have is an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that’s ever happened here, a file on all of the things and a warm and gracious relationship with all of our funders and donors. She’s money in our bank, so to speak.

    2. Econ grad*

      As a recent grad, I could not agree more. Too many of my classmates barely knew the basics of economics in their final semester of course work – they’d been skating by, cheating on their online courses, relying on their peers for answers, and whining at their professors for extra credit. By their own admission, many professors were giving them passing grades so they wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout of failing those losers. For too many people, a degree is just proof that they know how to game the system and had enough money/loans to finish, not that they work hard, solve problems, think critically or have any real knowledge in their field of study. Even ‘good’ universities have turned into cash driven diploma mills, and it pisses me off. I worked hard, and I hate to watch my degree become less and less valuable. If I was hiring, I would want to see a proven track record of hard work and achievement, precisely because I know how little a diploma translates into actual skill.

  18. AndersonDarling*

    I have a feeling that if the OP’s executives did have “acceptable” degrees, then the OP would find another reason that he/she is superior to them.

  19. Retail Lifer*

    I would LOVE to work for the company the OP works for. I keep switching jobs every few years because they all wind up being absolute dead ends with no growth opportunities. I’d actually stay at a company that promoted from within and valued your actual contributions, not what some piece of paper said you’d be good at.

    1. NickelandDime*

      This. But I suspect they’ll get themselves fired very soon. No one this unaware is walking around keeping an attitude like this under wraps.

  20. LBK*

    There seems to be a version of Lewis’ Law at work here – letters like this prove why experience is more important than education. I’d venture during their 20 years of experience, your management has learned how to actually pay attention to things that matter like quality of work, a lesson that seems to have escaped you despite all your fancy credentials.

  21. Ash (the other one)*

    Degrees do matter in some fields — like research — but even then, not to the extent OP is implying. For some grants/contracts, for instance, we need to make sure the PI has a Ph.D. But, many of our senior people don’t simply because they’ve been able to show they were successful without one. It just means they can’t go for those contracts or have to partner with someone with a Ph.D. Before she left, the woman I replaced as the director of my research area never finished her graduate degrees and only had a B.A. But she was amazingly successful and I don’t think anyone would think to look down on her because she made it without doing 5-9 years of hard doctoral student labor.

    Moral of the story is, if someone is good it doesn’t matter what their degree is… even in fields where it kind of does matter.

    1. Golden Yeti*

      Agreed. There are cases where that certification matters. For instance, you wouldn’t want to take advice from a doctor who doesn’t have a degree from an accredited institution. But even if the doctor has a degree, if he/she does a crappy job in practical diagnosing and curing, the degree would be meaningless (in fact, there would probably be a few malpractice lawsuits). Because even though this person should know how to treat patients in theory–after all, the paperwork is all there–if they can’t do it in real life, what’s the point?

      OP, you asked: How can a huge organization with a complex financial and billing system be run by people with no education, or education that doesn’t pertain to the job?

      The irony here is that the answer is in the rest of your question: by sticking around long enough to learn it.

      I have an English degree, and here are a few skills I’ve learned just from being on the job: web maintenance and design, graphic editing, shortcuts within our software that nobody else knows how to use, lots of media conversions, etc. I have no doubt everyone here could say something similar.

      The coworkers you are talking about have been able to move up because they’ve excelled at their jobs, from the bottom to the top. And, because they’ve done all those lower level jobs previously, they know how to do the lower job and how to help their colleagues who are in that job. At the end of the day, would you rather be managed by someone who has the educational papers, but no knowledge of the computer system, or someone who doesn’t have the papers, but can actually help you when the system glitches?

      Knowledge is power, OP, and if these guys have it, they’ve earned the right to be where they are. You should really think about learning from them instead of getting hung up on degrees. Because I promise you, when all is said and done, if the lowest-ranking person in the office knows how to do things that the higher ups can’t, that lower person is the one who actually holds the cards, and if management is smart, that person will eventually be promoted–not because they have a piece of paper, but because they get the job done.

      1. Aunt Vixen*

        doctor … degree from an accredited institution

        In addition, I will bet a billion internet dollars that there are lots of times a nurse with 30 years on the job knows what’s up with a patient before a new MD figures it out.

        1. Golden Yeti*

          I just started binge watching Scrubs, and this totally makes me think of Carla. :)

        2. ThursdaysGeek*

          No bet. And I learned that in college when the nurse gave a correct diagnosis and then the doctor (with a lot of experience) did not. I suffered for several more weeks until I went to another doctor and got a correct diagnosis and Rx, one that matched the nurse’s.

      2. simonthegrey*

        Yup, and just having the degree (ie as a doctor) is worthless if the person hasn’t kept up with new information. The degree itself doesn’t guarantee anything. If the doctor doesn’t keep reading journals, they’ll become obsolete no matter where the degree came from.

        1. JB (not in Houston)*

          So true. Just a few months ago, my doctor told me something that didn’t sound right and, sure enough, I researched it and found that his knowledge on the subject is outdated. So now I’m thinking I need to find a new doctor because this one won’t like it if I tell him, “Oh, hey, I did some research and turns out what you said last time wasn’t right, and you put me on the wrong treatment plan.”

    2. Beancounter in Texas*

      Being in bookkeeping/accounting, I can kiiiinda sympathize from where the OP is coming. It can be frustrating to work with people who lack some of the key tenets a formal education offers. Explaining textbook knowledge teaches those who want to learn, but infuriates me when the person refuses to accept that “it’s how *everyone in the field* does things.” It’s easier to deal with someone who “gets it.” That said, I have a bachelor’s degree in applied music and I supervise a very insecure man with a master’s in finance & economics who doesn’t understand debits and credits, but can work in QuickBooks.

      Sorry, OP. A degree is not the only way to the top, but it can serve as a strong foundation. Also, formal education doesn’t always come with a degree in hand. Perhaps these superiors found time to study their field formally too.

      1. Apollo Warbucks*

        Does your coworker know Alice?

        Assets (debit)
        Liabilities (credit)
        Income (credit)
        Capital (credit)
        Expenses (debit)

        That’s how I was taught to remember it

  22. Not the Droid You are Looking For*

    Eeek! I work in a field I do not have a degree in, because well even when I entered the workforce, it wasn’t a degree option. Over my career I have worked with so many people who chose this line of work due to passion, and built up experience because there was no established path.

    In the last ten years or so, they moved from certificate programs and a few specialized MBAs to many, many universities offering undergraduate degrees in what I do. I wonder how many of the folks graduating with this degree are going to look at me and the people who came before me as “not management material” because our degrees are in a variety of non-related fields.

  23. Snarkus Aurelius*

    I’m not defending the OP, but…

    S/he does have a point about sticking around for a few centuries and then getting promoted.  I’ve had a handful of government jobs where supervisors, who also had no degree or field experience, were promoted simply because they were the only ones left standing after an administration had cleared out and it was too much effort to do an executive job search.  Or in one case, an administration, who loathed government and did everything to reduce the size of it, who promoted someone because it didn’t want to given the impression that it was expanding government by advertising the job.  These people were a disaster.  

    That said, it totally depends on the person in the job, OP.  It’ll always come back to that.  Sure I’ve known dinosaurs who refuse to get BlackBerrys or change their ways because, “We’ve been doing it this way since 1972 so there’s no reason to change now.”  BUT there are also people who have been around for decades who keep up with the times.  One of my ex-coworkers worked at that agency for 20+ years, and she was the website whiz.

    I totally see your point about certain types of people being promoted, but it goes back to the person as an individual.  I’d have your back much more if you’d come into this job with eyes wide open and THEN formed your opinion.  

    But it doesn’t sound like you did that at all.

    1. Violetta*

      I’m not gonna that people who don’t deserve it never get promotoed, but OP gave us no information whatsoever on how good or bad these people are at their jobs.

    2. GigglyPuff*

      Exactly if the OP had approached this from actually evaluating them on their work, okay, you have a much more solid foundation, but solely on the basis of their tenure and degrees, ugh.

    3. fposte*

      It’s absolutely true that promotion through stasis is a bad thing. But it’s bad because you get incompetent managers, not because it’s bad to have managers with long-term experience with the organization.

      If the incompetence of the managers were the issue, I don’t think the OP would have been shy about mentioning it.

      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        Precisely.

        In one of my bad examples, the guy that got promoted had always been a philosopher and a historian. (He’s been there for 40+ years.) But when it comes to actually doing stuff, he backs down and claims he needs a bunch of bureaucratic approval when he didn’t.

        It was later I found out he had a literature degree and zero field experience.

        But I can assure you, we all think he’s bad at his job because of the stuff I mentioned in my first paragraph. The stuff in the second paragraph is just icing on an incompetent cake.

    4. I threw up in my mouth a little...*

      Agreed. There are plenty of people out there who’ve been promoted simply because they were ‘there.’
      My company has quite a few people who’ve been around for 10+ years doing the same job… who everyone complains is NOT good at their job, doesn’t respond to emails, etc…. and yes that happens. But we complain because they’re NOT GOOD AT THEIR JOBS rather than because they have seemingly irrelevant – or nonexistant – education experience.

    5. LBK*

      By that same token, though, education doesn’t make you any more instantly qualified to be a manager than experience does. As proven by this letter, I sure wouldn’t want the OP managing anyone just because of her degrees, just as I wouldn’t want someone else managing just because they’d been there the longest.

    6. steve g*

      I can’t argue there because the. Manager of my last branch was literally the laziest person in the office and we all talked about stuff he didn’t but was supposed to be doing, but didn’t. He was the person who was there the longest and was clamoring for a promotion so got the job. Of course, op doesn’t give proof of the boss being lazy beforehand though

    7. AMG*

      This. For the first time ever, I am shocked by Alison’s answer and the backlash on this thread.

      While I am using my degree, I know and respect many people who are nowhere near their field of study in their professional lives. I would expect, however, that a Director of Finance would need to be educated in…Finance. Perhaps there was another way to learn this (on-the-job training?) but I would be wary of that as well, personally, because I would feel much better about my employer knowing that the exec leadership is trained to deal with complex issues. I’ve worked at places where this was not the case and some of the things that go on are frankly disturbing. If it were me, I would take a hard look at how competent these folks are at what they do and if not, it may not be a healthy company. If they really haven’t contributed much and are just there, then yes, that is a problem and you should go somewhere else.

      1. neverjaunty*

        You are making the same mistake as the OP, and assuming that there is only one proper kind of “training” and “education” for this position, namely formal education that comes with a certificate at the end.

        (Although, surely I can’t be the only one who wonders if this is a prank letter. I know that there are people this entitled, but it seems so exaggerated – OP doesn’t just have a degree, she has an MA, *all* of her supervisors have tons of experience, etc., that it almost sounds like a person who has the on-the-job experience writing to twit a co-worker who thinks only degrees matter.)

        1. AMG*

          I think you need to re-read my post. Let me reiterate some highlights:
          I know and respect many people who are nowhere near their field of study in their professional lives.
          Perhaps there was another way to learn this (on-the-job training?)
          I would take a hard look at how competent these folks are at what they do.

          1. Nea*

            20 years of work experience isn’t on-the-job training? I’d see your point if the guy was hired right out of Whatsamatta U with a degree in underwater basket weaving and put in charge of finance. But we’re discussing people with two decades of job experience and even the OP hasn’t said they’re incompetent, just that they are offended that their management doesn’t have a degree that matches their job description.

            1. Not So NewReader*

              OP can be offended, but they will keep their jobs and keep raking in the big bucks, regardless of how offended anyone is. I don’t know where OP will find work that meets her criteria.

            2. AMG*

              It depends on how well it is being done. I could put a car together but would it run? Not without a miracle. If they are doing it well then yes, I would consider that relevant experience. If not, that’s a bad way to run a company and the OP should find somewhere more stable.

          2. neverjaunty*

            No, I don’t need to re-read your post; you were quite clear the first time. For example, “Perhaps there was another way to learn this (on-the-job training?) but I would be wary of that as well, personally, because I would feel much better about my employer knowing that the exec leadership is trained to deal with complex issues.”

            You’re continuing to make the assumption that the issue is competence, when OP didn’t mention anything about the managers’ actual performance – only their credentials. This is a very different letter than “My manager has been in this job 20+ years and is very bad at Teapot Analysis, and I just found out she never got a degree in anything teapot-related.”

            1. Engineer Girl*

              Another point – a degree can never train you for complex issues. Complex issues are all about nuance. The only way to recognize nuance is actual experience.
              I can’t tell you the number of times less-experienced engineers have blasted by warning signs that something was going off the rails. Until you’ve been in the field and seen it, you can’t recognize what it means.

                1. Today's Satan*

                  Come back when you’re the VP of Finance and try and tell me that everything you needed to know to do the job, you learned in school.

                2. AMG*

                  Try to read the post and understand what I am saying. At no point did I or anyone else say that the only way to get relevant experience is to go to college. It is one way. Given the fact that you don’t know my title or what I do, perhaps you should step back a bit. I leverage my education when creating fiancial models and building multi-million dollar business cases all the time.

              2. Chinook*

                “I can’t tell you the number of times less-experienced engineers have blasted by warning signs that something was going off the rails. ”

                I actually steered a less-experienced engineer from going off the rails when I was doing one of my admin tasks and recognizing the complexity of a location she was focusing on that could be known through experience (I drove by this spot a lot when I was younger). Up until that point, she had looked down her nose at me because of my lack of engineering credentials. Now she includes me specifically to do this type of double checking because she recognizes that the knowledge from my experience can find things that her equations and statistical analysis may miss.

            2. AMG*

              People running the company need to be qualified to do so. They could do that by way of a degree and/or experience. Do they have a degree? No? Then let’s look at experience. Is it quality experience or is it that they sat there for 20 years? If it’s a healthy company then let it go. They are probably doing a good job. If not, then go find a stronger company to work for. It’s that simple.

          3. Observer*

            I think YOU need to re-read your post.

            “perhaps” there is was another way? The question itself is clueless and non-responsive. Followed bt “I would be wary of that” shows that you do NOT think it’s “really” a way to learn.

            Your assumption that people who don’t have the degree you expect need to have their work evaluated, but people who do not is a good way to ruin a business.

            1. AMG*

              There is no need to be rude and insulting. If you don’t like my opinion, then feel free to disagree without behaving like this. Yes, there are multiple ways to gain education and experience. I think both are ways to learn. You are reading into my post things that aren’t there.

      2. LBK*

        I’d think it would go without saying that someone who worked their way up to a director of finance would’ve learned on the job – how else would they have been able to do their work in their other positions along the way? I also really don’t think you can learn how to deal with complex issues in school. It’s just never the same doing something theoretical because the stakes aren’t the same and you’re not dealing with real people who don’t act in a textbook way.

        1. AMG*

          I would assume so too, but that’s my point. This is the delimiter. if they are not sufficiently trained and qualified to do the job, then time to go.

          1. LBK*

            That doesn’t seem particularly relevant to the letter at hand because we have no info about the work performance of these people – just their education level. And if anything, I’d think that if the OP were having problems with how they were performing as managers, that would be some part of the letter.

            1. AMG*

              I’m saying that they should have at least one of these things. If not the education, then the experience should be on par with the job title and function.

              1. LawBee*

                And I think you can safely assume that they have the “experience which is on par with the job title and function”, as the OP’s sole complaint is what degree the managers, etc. have.

                Degrees are nice, but don’t forget – “Ds get degrees”. You can graduate 167/168 and have a degree – does that automatically make you a better employee than the 20-year veteran who helped build the company? (spoiler: probably not)

          2. Observer*

            What does that have to do with their degree, or lack of one? Why is this question relevant particularly for people who don’t have the degree you think they should?

            1. AMG*

              My goodness! I am not the OP. I have no preference if someone has a degree or if they don’t. If they are qualified to run a company then run on. If not, the OP should go somewhere else.

      3. Jeannalola*

        If you don’t know what you are doing in healthcare finance, you will be out of business or acquired in no time. The margins are razor thin. So somebody is doing something right.

        1. AMG*

          somebody, yes. But I have seen other departments compensate for poorly performing departments. Maybe everything is ok. But it merits a second look.

          1. Wip*

            So should we all also consider a person’s GPA while in college 20 years ago? It starts to go down a very slippery slope. They have the “correct” degree but maybe they didn’t perform very well in school. Does that affect how you would see the person? Also, the person didn’t step directly into the high ranking role right away 20 years ago. I’m sure it was a series of many baby steps along the way that they built upon to get where they are today.

            1. AMG*

              Perhaps. Are they doing a good job? If no college degree, then use only experience. If they realy did just get promoted by default (and some people do), then I would find another job. If they are truly running the company and doing a good job, then the OP’s concerns are not founded.

              1. Observer*

                The OP’s concerns are not founded. Period.

                Either they are doing a good job, or not. If they are, they should be respected. If not they should be fired. And this is true no matter WHAT degree they did or didn’t get 20 years ago.

                But calling someone uneducated simply because they don’t have a degree is incredibly ignorant.

                2. Observer*

                  Correct, I am referring to the OP – s/he makes the assumption that these people “can’t” be doing a good job, based on their degree only. That’s an assumption that is both unfounded and ignorant.

                  It’s always possible that the people in question really are incompetent in their jobs. But, their degrees by themselves tell us nothing about that.

      4. BananaPants*

        A director of finance in an organization like this is not the one actually keeping the books and doing the finance work – she’s making big picture decisions and directing the work of others who are handling the day-to-day tasks. You don’t start off in a call center and get to be a director for a large corporation by sitting on your hands and waiting to be promoted. This person’s degree may be in another area but she’s proven her skills and knowledge in the trenches, or the board and the C-suite would not have put her in this role to begin with.

        1. AMG*

          Theoretically, yes. But some people are not good managers, or good at hiring (otherwise the forum wouldn’t be here, right?) Is every manager you know skilled and knowledgable? Degrees help with that. If the bosses don’t have them, then they need to show that they have earned those in other ways. if they can’t, then OP should go work somewhere better.

          1. Observer*

            But some people are not good managers, or good at hiring . . . Degrees help with that.

            No they don’t. And finance degrees are not even INTENDED to do that. Management degrees are intended for that, but even those are often not all that good in terms of things like hiring and actually managing people.

      5. Guava Cheese*

        Thank you AMG & Snarkus! Some people need a Monday Chill Pill. Geeeeeez.

        Ultimately this question could have been phrased differently (read: a lot better) and there is a lot of context that is missing. Hopefully, the OP is asking this question because they are seeing a lack of solid foundation (regardless of education OR experience) from higher ups.

        My first thought was that sounds like my husband’s company, where you move up the ranks just by breathing long enough. It’s infuriating and demotivating, among other things. Company’s still manage to trudge along though, right?

      6. Green*

        But OP isn’t very well situated to know what other qualifications the person might have. It’s not like OP was in a hiring position and sat in on the discussions about the relative strengths and weaknesses of each candidate or has been working with and observing these people from a management perspective for decades….

      7. Sarah*

        Where do they get the experience as a Director though? I mean, yeah, knowing about finance is important, but why is it more important than experience in managing people and projects and a whole department? By your logic, only HR professionals or MBAs should be allowed to manage

    8. Manders*

      The way I read this, it sounded like the OP was frustrated with the fact that the organization’s standards for hiring now were much different than the standards for hiring when her now-bosses were hired and promoted to their current positions. So OP had to go out and get an extra degree to get into the field, which might have put her in debt or delayed the start of her career, and she’s annoyed that her bosses never had to go through that.

      This doesn’t excuse the OP’s bad attitude, but I have a little bit of sympathy for her. It can be frustrating to put so much time, effort, and money into qualifying for an entry-level job in your field when you know that your bosses didn’t have to go through that process.

      Or maybe it’s all just sour grapes (or maybe the OP does have a point but it stating it very badly–I certainly have known organizations that promoted people based solely on seniority, and ended up with a lot of dead weight at the top).

      1. Anonicorn*

        So OP had to go out and get an extra degree to get into the field, which might have put her in debt or delayed the start of her career, and she’s annoyed that her bosses never had to go through that.

        I thought the same thing. And it really does stink, especially when you have to wait months to get hired while the grace period on your loan expired if you even got one at all. However, it doesn’t make those higher-ups any less qualified, but I do understand the frustration.

      2. einahpets*

        I can definitely understand this point, as I’ve seen it at my own company as well. I was one of three employees hired within a year at the same entry level position with a MS and 3+ years of research experience each (we are in clinical research field, so relevant), and we are all still at a fairly entry level position 3.5 years later.

        Our department’s associate director (and acting director for the last few months) started out with an associates degree with her only post-degree work as a waitress; she has been with the company ~10 years. I respect the heck out of her, go to her often for advise on projects, and think she does a fantastic job… but there is just no way for anyone to do that at our company (or even in our field) now.

        Our company has grown a lot in those 10 years (3-4x the size it was then), and changed a lot of it’s hiring requirements / job titles in the interim. Because they could. I don’t fault them or resent those who got the opportunities in that time. Since I was hired, our company went through a rough patch for about a year and has been recovering slowly since, so promotions have been scarce even when the workload is heavy. But it is tough to not be discouraged sometimes!

        1. Marcela*

          Yeah, I see what you mean, but you are not losing respect (which I don’t doubt has real manifestations in OP’s workplace) for your director. That’s for me the critical point: you can believe that life is not fair and get discouraged because of it, but you just don’t despise, underestimate or undervalue people because they got a different deal.

        2. Observer*

          That’s the difference between you and the OP. I totally get your frustration, and in many ways it’s not really fair. (Although I would not that sometimes the changes in hiring standards are related to outside requirements rather than “just because we can”.) But, you understand that as frustrating as it is, your boss is good at what she does, if also very lucky. The OP just assumes that they are clueless and unworthy of respect.

            1. Observer*

              Well, the truth is that we do not know how good these people are. And we only have two facts to go on. One is the degrees they got (or didn’t) 20 years ago, and the other is the success of the company. The OP chooses to judge based only on the degrees, which really don’t say anything about current performance. The rest of us choose to asses by the apparent success of the company, which points to them being good at their job.

      3. Tammy*

        That makes sense, that it’s a sort of jealousy that your supervisors had an easier entry into the field than you do. But I also made an assumption that OP is also more educated than her peers (though nothing is said about that)–which would make this a broader sort of jealousy.

    9. Ad Astra*

      Or in one case, an administration, who loathed government and did everything to reduce the size of it…

      Did you work with Ron Swanson?

    10. coriopaxi*

      I can *sort of* see where OP is coming from as well. I also work at a big, multi-site health care nonprofit. In our industry, especially, it was very common (until quite recently), to promote MDs up into C-suite jobs. So basically doctors being asked to make business decisions. The medical mindset and the business/financial mindset aren’t the most compatible (hello, out of control health care costs). Some were able to make the transition and bring something positive into those roles. But many were not. I think especially of a CIO who refused to use email. But he got the CIO job because he was the most senior MD who applied and politically, the organization didn’t want him to walk.

    11. Observer*

      By the way, if it’s a government job, at least in NY, it’s a good job that these people got their job in the first place only because they had a degree, regardless of competence. And, they tend to be “the last man standing” because they don’t really have too many options, and don’t want to / can’t do what it takes to rise elsewhere.

      I am NOT saying that all, or even most, government employees are incompetent idiots. I AM saying that in many government agencies, competence is not what gets you hired – which should not surprise anyone who has read of some of the ridiculous and check-box based hiring procedures some government agencies engage in.

      1. CheeryO*

        I have to say that this really doesn’t jive with my experience as a NYS employee. Yes, you need the degree to get past the gatekeeper, but that’s equally true at many private companies. And I don’t know about the hires made before the recession, but these days, all of our new hires are the kids coming out of college with 3.5+ GPAs and multiple internships. They recognize a good opportunity when they see one (great salary, benefits, and stability), and the competition for our few open positions is pretty stiff.

        1. Observer*

          My experience over the years has been that the rigidity of the hiring process in many positions tends to favor degrees (and other check box attributes) over actual competence. And, that when things start getting crazy, or (as has happened) buy-outs get offered, or anything like that, the people most likely to take a hike are the people with the most actual competence, because they have more options. It’s not universal, of course. And sometimes that very rigidity can work in favor of competence, because it sometimes keeps stupid stuff from being considered. (eg One guy i know whose hair had gone prematurely white was having a hard time getting a job in private employment, despite is his experience and qualifications. One person admitted to him that they were looking for “energetic” types, so he would not be considered. He finally got a job in a city agency where his appearance was a total non-issue.)

          There is also often enough of a pay disparity, that that can also cause someone to decide to go back into private industry.

          I’ve deal with a LOT of city people over the years. They range(d) from awesome to “would never survive 10 minutes in private”. But, all of them had impeccable checklist credentials, regardless of actual competence.

    12. Anx*

      I loved my internship in county government, but one thing I had a very difficult time with was respecting lazy senior employees.

      There was a man in his early 60s making a very good wage who complained about everything and never wanted to start a new project or make an improvement. He had been there since his 20s and had a pension ready to go and was just sitting there collecting a paycheck and going through the motions.

      He made over 3x what a newer coworker of a similar age (and a lot of work experience outside of the department) made I honestly believe she was more than 3x as productive as he was. He also out-earned young workers that supervised him and had advanced degrees. It was pretty eye-opening to see

  24. Case of the Mondays*

    I might out myself with this story but I don’t particularly care. My dad dropped out of high school and joined the Navy. He was a genius to begin with but learned chemistry skills in the military. He was recruited by multiple big name companies right after he left the service. He spent his whole career at a “household name” company. When he retired, he was managing three shifts of chemists, most of whom had masters degrees or PHDs. He has a GED. He mentioned before concerns about people not taking him as seriously because of his lack of degree. I assured him his institutional knowledge is what mattered. I guess he was right that some people may have been judging him. We as a country have done a disservice to many kids by saying that there is only one right track and that track is college. So many would be better off if we recognized their skills and promoted them going into high paying blue collar trades like electricity and plumbing. Not everyone needs to take a philosophy course in life.

    1. AndersonDarling*

      I was surprised to find out some of my exceptionally skilled co-workers have no college degree. But back in the day, there was no college degree for their field. 20 years ago, it just wasn’t that important to have a degree because individuals expected to learn their skills on the job. Generally, we don’t work that way anymore, and you are expected to have some education to get an entry level job. You can take your pick of a myriad of associate degrees, and new higher education degrees are popping up every day. Things have definitely changed.
      To say that managers must have a degree would possibly equal age discrimination.

      1. Kita*

        This. I’ve gotten to see many of my (excellent) co-worker’s resumes while preparing certain documents. I always find it interesting to see what they did earlier in their careers. They’ve been everything from admins, factory workers, medical supervisors, and financial analysts. None of them are doing the same type of work in their current job.

    2. Apollo Warbucks*

      We as a country have done a disservice to many kids by saying that there is only one right track and that track is college

      Well said!

      My sister went to university and studied a STEM subject to PHD level which has done her well. I never went to uni and left school bummed around travelling for a bit fell into an accounting / tech support job that I rally enjoy and I had the benefit of not taking on a load of student debt.

      For all the extra years of studying my sisters done are careers are about equal.

    3. Saurs*

      So many would be better off if we recognized their skills and promoted them going into high paying blue collar trades like electricity and plumbing.

      Great comment.

        1. Green*

          Adjunct literally means side gig. Adjuncts should definitely not be planning on side-gigging a career unless they have some other source of paying their bills.

          1. Natalie*

            They’re generally not planning on being adjuncts. The professor market is just soft and it’s easy for a university to cut costs by only hiring adjuncts, rather than associate professors.

            1. Green*

              I know they’re not “planning” on being adjuncts, but because the professor market is soft, if they want full-time gigs they should probably look in other careers. There are at least two actors here that can make rational decisions.

              1. Saurs*

                Let me guess: one of them is an (Almighty and All-Good) Invisible Hand (of the Free Market)?

                1. Green*

                  The “actors” aren’t the invisible hand of the market. But, yeah, if you’re rational, and it turns out that Medieval Literature isn’t hiring, then you should go be something else. But people have “dreams” they must fulfill….

              2. Rana*

                if they want full-time gigs they should probably look in other careers

                That is a lot easier said than done.

                Especially if the markets were good when you started grad school but collapsed shortly after graduation…. ::waves::

                (But, yeah, my general advice these days is that anyone going to grad school had better have a damn good reason to do so. It’s not a guarantee of anything, so you have to accept that you may end up simply paying for the experience itself, as its own thing, rather than as a ticket to a career.)

          2. Saurs*

            No, that’s not what adjunct signifies. Adjunct refers to the supplementary and low-level role said adjunct plays for the department.

            1. Green*

              It’s supposed to be “adjunct” for both the professor and the department. As in, a department isn’t supposed to rely on them in lieu of full-time staff, and the professor is supposed to be doing something else as well (often a practitioner in many fields) with the income as a supplement. It’s not supposed to be anyone’s full-time job, and it’s not intended as a career.

              1. Rana*

                That’s technically true, but in practical terms that ceased being the case at least a decade ago.

              2. Saurs*

                Once again, that is wrong. Adjuncts as non-tenure-track faculty can be and increasingly are full-time. Yours is an ahistorical, apolitical reading of the rise of adjunct faculty in US public universities. The proliferation of adjuncts have nothing to do with people’s “dreams” — unless you’re referring to the dream of one day paying off student loans — but public universities trying to disempower faculty unions and undercut tenured labor to in order to manage shrinking budgets, denying a large portion of the professorial pool benefits, due process, and input in departmental decisions. Students, meanwhile, are saddled with higher tuitions than ever before, predatory and unchecked lending agencies (professional debt-collectors), and a faculty that has no time or money for scholarship, enrichment, additional training, and research, faculty that may have had a world-class education but now which are bound to flounder, faculty which cannot mentor young scholars.

                You’re right about one thing, higher education is no longer a viable career for many unless you’re interested in administration.

    4. Retail Lifer*

      The family members I have that are in the truck driving, plumbing, and carpentry fields are all making way more than me. Granted, I would be absolutely terrible at all of those things so they weren’t an option for me, but getting a degree has yet to do anything for me while my non-degreed cousins are doing just fine.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        Yeah, me too. Except my sister is the perfect golden child who does everything right. :P But even my brother, who has no degree, lives in a nicer house than I do and makes more money.

        1. 2horseygirls*

          My mom coordinated a celebration for my brother (our family’s Golden Child), his wife and her brother who all got promoted to VPs within a few months. My husband is well on his way to becoming one (with his AAS), and my sister-in-law just celebrated 20 years as a flight attendant with Major Airline, in addition to being a kick-ass, top-producing Realtor.

          Oh, and we can celebrate 2HG’s new (lateral) job too (nine months later….?) – thanks Mom.

          Fortunately, I love my non-paid work – it keeps my from drinking LOL. Alcohol and 1-ton prey animals don’t mix ;) LOL

            1. 2horseygirls*

              Yep. I have a Percheron (draft horse), and the training we do involves throwing everything at the, from the Plastic Bag of Death to tarps, umbrellas, and loud noises. Instantly earns respect from first responders when they realize what 0-45mph in a split second behind a 1,000 pound rocket feels like ;)

    5. AvonLady Barksdale*

      Amen to this. Amen so, so much. I went to college because it was good for me– but there are so many people for whom it’s not a good path. I value education, absolutely, but education comes in many more forms than college.

      1. Rye-Ann*

        Yeah, seriously! It was the right choice for me, but I have a friend who definitely wishes she hadn’t gone. It worked out okay for her, since she did graduate and it only took 4 1/2 years total I think (with a year off in the middle to work, since the school she started attending shut down after her second year and she had to find a new one). However, she has some sort of art degree (I don’t remember what it is exactly), and doesn’t seem to think her art benefited that much from having gone to school. It doesn’t seem like it was worth the money, anyway. She also knows that it’s not exactly the most career-boosting degree in existence. But her parents wouldn’t let her NOT go to college, so an alternative path really wasn’t an option for her.

        Also, my brother probably could not handle being a full time student. Right now he’s a few years out of high school, working retail, trying to figure out what path he will take. But if he ever does get a college degree it will probably take him way longer than most people. The next time I see him I am going to ask him if he has considered trade school, because I think that might very well be a good thing for him to consider.

        They (teachers and such) pushed the college thing REALLY hard on us in high school, and even though it worked out okay for me I do resent my high school a little bit for not presenting other options as though they were legitimate. :\

        1. The Strand*

          Is your friend still in her early twenties?

          I ask because getting out of the starting gate with an art degree, if you don’t have connections, really does take a lot longer.

          1. Rye-Ann*

            Yes, though I’m honestly not sure if she’s going to try to make art her career or whether she’s going to pursue something else to make money.

    6. Twig*

      Thank you for this! My grandfather had a similar story — dropped out of high school to join the Navy — after a full career there, he wound up as a technical writer at a major government contractor. I think he eventually got a GED, but I’m not sure he even did that. By the time he retired as a technical writer, he was running his department.

    7. BananaPants*

      My brother is a very bright guy and went into the military after high school. He gets to work every day doing a job he truly loves (how many of us can say the same?), he’ll get to go to college when he wants to and it won’t cost him a dime, and he periodically gets job offers from defense contractors offering high 5-figure salaries. His formal education to date consists of high school and various military technical specialty schools and if he wanted to he could leave the service next year and earn as much as I do as an engineer with two master’s degrees. Go figure.

      He does plan to go to college, BTW.

    8. Anna*

      My dad got his GED and worked in a skilled job based on needing to support a family. He didn’t get his degree until it became clear he couldn’t move up in his career without that check mark. Like it had absolutely nothing to do with the job, but they needed to check off that box to promote him. He didn’t even have his BS until I was well in to my 20s. He’s taken early retirement because over 30+ years working for the DoD, he was able to. I don’t buy that you have to have a degree to do well and I’m overly degreed.

      1. abby*

        I am also overly degreed. What is funny (and sad to me) is that my dad, described below, was much more financially successful than me. Same with my sibling, who has no degree but is damn smart and a hard worker.

    9. abby*

      Thank you for sharing! My dad also dropped out of high school to join the navy. He learned computer and electronic skills in the navy and spent his career at several very large firms. When he retired, he was managing STEM graduates, many with advanced degrees. I don’t know if my dad ever got his GED.

    10. Not So NewReader*

      Right on. My father made it through high school with Cs and Ds. He took one or two college courses. Over his life time he was credited with over 50 US patents. He spoke simply but had an intelligence about him that made people stop in their tracks.
      OP, if you keep viewing the workplace through these glasses you are going to miss some of the coolest people in life.

    11. BeeBee*

      I think this was wonderful for your dad. Unfortunately, something like that would NEVER happen today (and I also work at a big chem company). It’s really sad, because I think so many valuable people don’t ever get that chance anymore.

      But that being said, I’ve also worked for “business owners” who somehow got money via investors that had little education and/or knowledge about running a business. They would hire people with both experience and education, but treat them with such disrespect because in their mind, the employees “didn’t know crap just because they have a piece of paper.” I’m not defending the OP, but I sense there may be more going on at the workplace and that’s part of the bad attitude.

  25. GigglyPuff*

    Let’s play a little game:
    What you got a degree in (or not have a degree, cause guess what you don’t always need one) versus what your career is

    Economics and Org. Mgmt and now I’m a Digital Archivist (not for a corporation!)

    1. some1*

      I didn’t finish my Bachelor’s degree. I’m an admin and I make more $ than two of my friends who have college degrees; one as non-profit adminitstrator and one is an editor.

        1. LBK*

          Sadly there isn’t too much of a story: I lucked out and found a hiring manager that cared a lot more about attitude and aptitude than industry experience, which allowed me to get my foot in the door and learn about the industry on the job.

    3. MeredithB*

      Technical Writing and an MBA and right now I am a Production Support Analyst (configuration specialist) at a software company. I don’t do much documentation or writing at all!

        3. Cambridge Comma*

          The weird thing is that it makes sense on my CV…but that’s what sticking around for 15 years and picking up knowledge that they don’t teach you at college can do for you.

      2. setsuko*

        Me too! Glad to find out that I am not the only one. I went from politics to physics. Of course, it did involve going back to school. I managaed to skip the BSc part though and move straight to a master’s course and then a PhD.

      1. MicheleNYC*

        Exercise Physiology with an emphasis on corporate fitness. I have never worked in my field of study because by the time I got to my last year of school. I hated my major and just wanted to be out. I started in customer service and for the last 10 years I have worked in Product Development/Sourcing/Production/Fabric R&D.

    10. Malissa*

      I’m very boring in this game. I have two accounting degrees and I’m an accountant. But I am very interested in the other responses.

      1. ExceptionToTheRule*

        I’m also very boring. I have a degree in Radio/Television Production and work in television production. I will say I learned WAY more in my first six months of real life work than I did in four years of undergrad.

        1. AVP*

          I have a similar history! Degree in Journalism and film, working as a documentary production manager and producer. I agree that I really learned everything on the job in my first few years; I’ve used almost nothing from what I studied in school.

      2. BananaPants*

        Me too. I have bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and am a mechanical engineer. But it is interesting to see the variety!

      3. StarHopper*

        Me too! BA in Spanish, MEd in Secondary Education, currently teaching high school Spanish.

        I love what I do, but I’m the likely event that I don’t retire as a career teacher, I want to know how people transition to alternate paths, preferably WITHOUT having to rack up even more debt.

      4. Book Person*

        Glad not to be the only boring one! BA in literature and publishing, MA in literature, Professional Certification in Publishing…work in higher-ed publishing.

    11. Aunt Vixen*

      BA, MA, MPhil in linguistics; MLS in archives and records management. Now I’m an editor with a little writing, fact-checking, and extremely rudimentary layout by day, and a gigging church musician on weekends and some evenings.

      1. Aunt Vixen*

        Oh, huh, my mistake – my bachelor’s in linguistics is actually a bachelor of science. Probably drives the hard/lab scientists buggy, but there really is science in the social sciences. :-D

        3. Ad Astra*

          My journalism degree is a bachelor of science, I guess because the program is focused on preparing you for a career in journalism rather than studying journalism as it relates to society in a more abstract way. Sort of the way you could get a BS in architecture with the goal of being an architect, or you could get a BA in architectural studies with the goal of knowing a whole lot about architecture as an art form, and its history and stuff like that.

        5. Joline*

          I technically have a Bachelor of Technology (with a focus in accounting) because my school was a technical school that had been given the authority to grant degrees by the province.

    12. Banditcoot*

      Dual major speech communications and business management. 17+ years as a systems analyst. I started two weeks after the new system came online and have been involved as both a user, tester and system admin ever since.

    13. Lefty*

      BS in Political Science/Pre-Law, working as a midlevel supervisor and auditor on the government scale

    14. bridget*

      Literature, and then went to law school because what the hell am I going to do with a literature degree, other than beat my friends at drinking Jeopardy!?

      1. neverjaunty*

        And this is how the legal profession gets stuffed full of people who hate their jobs :(

        1. bridget*

          I actually do really like law, or at least my corner of it (serial clerk/appellate litigator). But that was lucky happenstance, not because I made a good strategic move. PLENTY of my classmates who were also there because they didn’t know what to do with their humanities degrees are unemployed and/or unhappily employed.

          1. neverjaunty*

            Speaking as the person with the world’s least useful undergrad degree but who also loves law, concur. I just see so many people who went to law school because “what else am I going to do with [degree] and I have loans”, and they hate their lives.

            1. fposte*

              I was so close to that–I did well on the LSATs and was literally filling out law-school applications when I thought, “Hang on, I don’t actually want to be a lawyer–why am I doing this?”

              2. afiendishthingy*

                My dad did that after he aced the MCAT and got to the question on the med school application that asked why he wanted to be a doctor.

            2. Green*

              Lots of people also think they like law, but then don’t in practice. You don’t really know until you’re doing it, unfortunately.

              1. bridget*

                Right. I LOVED being a law student. I like being a lawyer fine. You don’t find out whether you actually like being a lawyer until it’s way too late (unless you do something smart like work as a paralegal before law school).

                1. Green*

                  Yep. Same boat. LOVED law school. Being a lawyer is just OK. But maybe I just don’t like working.

                2. Clever Name*

                  I’ve heard that people who love law school are more likely to dislike practicing law (specifically litigation) and those who hated law school actually liked being lawyers better. But maybe I read Corporette too much.

            3. Natalie*

              Older and theoretically wiser people fall into this trap all the time, too. At least a dozen older adults in my life told me to go to law school when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my career. And the utter horror of the legal job market was *already common knowledge*.

    16. KT*

      My degree is actually related to my work–but I what I learned in college is already out of date…everything I know I learned from on the job training

    17. Not the Droid You are Looking For*

      BA: Anthropology and History & MA: Writing and I work in Non-profit Management

      1. kara*

        Ha! Also BA in History and Anth. Currently work as a Project/Program Mgr for a major telecom company.

    18. AndersonDarling*

      Associates in German+7 years experience = Data Analyst & Report Builder.
      (But I hope to finish my Bachelors is January!)

    20. Joie de Vivre*

      No degree – now a Strategic Planning Business Analyst, with more than 20 yrs experience at the same company.

    21. Natalie*

      BA in history, currently working in and pursuing a certificate of accounting. I’m also friends with a STEM major who does nonprofit development, a liberal arts major who does event planning for a hotel, a journalism major who shifted into copywriting, and many more.

      1. Natalie*

        Oh, and my boyfriend has no degree and is in property management. He will probably pursue a technical certificate in the future, though, since it’s required in this state for certain aspects of his job.

    22. Eugenie*

      Degrees in History and Museum Studies — just promoted to be in charge of earned revenue streams at an environmental non-profit.

      1. clm*

        Hi Gwen – quick question….do you work in the legal industry? I also work in data analytics and would like work in a law firm in the same capacity. Any info if you have would be greatly appreciated!!!

    25. The Toxic Avenger*

      BS in Psychology with a minor in statistics. I’m a technical project manager. :)

      1. Mike C.*

        That psych degree must come in really handy, I always feel like PMs are more like diplomats than anything else.

      1. Cordelia Naismith*

        Mathematical Biology? Huh! That sounds like an interesting degree program! What sorts of things do mathematical biologists study?

        1. Mike C.*

          From what I understand this field has it’s root* in the 50’s and 60’s when the Green Revolution was going on, and it was a mathematic approach to looking at large scale agriculture. Those techniques then migrated to the ecology/environmental fields, then evolutionary studies and as computers came about you finally have the mathematical tools to deal with genetics. A great deal is understanding biology, then applying models and statistics to deal with the incredibly large and dirty data sets in an effort to better understand and predict how populations of (critters, genes, ecosystems, etc) are going to change over time.

    27. The Toxic Avenger*

      BS in Psychology with a minor in statistics. I’m a technical project manager.

    28. Another Day*

      Liberal Arts B.A. –at various times worked as legal secretary, claims examiner, budget analyst, management analyst, HR specialist, and HR program manager

    29. Blue Anne*

      My degree is in Philosophy. I have a couple of online bookkeeping courses under my belt, and I’m a year into training for my CA status. I’m an auditor with the Big 4.

      I only give this much detail because it’s relevant to the OP – by accounting standards I’m doing pretty well. With a totally, absolutely irrelevant (and I’ll say it – useless) degree.

      1. Robin B*

        Also a BA in Philosophy— and been working in mortgage banking for nearly 30 years.

    31. CrazyCatLady*

      Didn’t finish my degree, work in supply chain and make more money than most of my friends with degrees.

    32. Last Name here*

      Geology. I was in eCommerce fraud, now I’m in Trust and Safety specializing in child internet safety. I don’t even know what kind of degree to recommend for someone wanting to do this!

      1. Sigrid*

        Ooooo, that sounds really interesting (if also potentially depressing). Is there anything about what the job entails that you can share?

        1. Last Name here*

          We monitor what kids are doing in a very specific platform. We see a lot of kids involved in self harm behavior, sexting, exploitation, cyberbullying, etc. On the plus side, we’ve intervened when kids have been in the process of suicide, on the negative side I’ve seen horrible videos of abuse that I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to have to watch. Fortunately those are few and far between, and even then we’re helping.

    34. GiantPanda*

      Diploma (mostly equivalent to MSc) in Mathematics. I am addicted to studying and have been enrolled in various subjects for a long time – collected credits in computer science, economics, business administration, history, political science. More to come. No second degree because I won’t write another thesis unless my life depends on it.
      Work as a DBA.

    35. Saurs*

      BA in Latin, MA in history; graveyard shift at a wholesale bakery, dayshift in a propagation greenhouse, freelance landscape design when I can get it

    36. JB (not in Houston)*

      Law degree and lawyer, BUT my undergrad is history, and I didn’t use that at all other than to annoy friends and family by picking apart historical movies and TV shows (and now I do that with legal stuff, which annoys my sister because now she gets annoyed with legal shows, too, and can’t enjoy them as much). Who has two thumbs and is the world’s most boring party guest?

      1. bridget*

        Ugh. Law degrees make it so difficult to avoid alienating all of your friends due to obnoxiousness while watching tv :)

        1. LawBee*

          I had to cut out “lawyer tv” entirely. When I was job-hunting, it pissed me off because all the shows that were starting were basically meet-cutes for new grads and their ~~~amazing~~~ firms.

          Now, everything is just WRONG and I cannot watch it. Seriously, tv people, lawyers are not as a whole the Cool Kid Sex Machines that you portray us. We’re generally pretty nerdy.

          1. Elizabeth West*

            Cops/detectives/federal agents are the same way. No, it’s NOT like it is on TV! My ex-bf (federal LEO–not FBI though) bitches about the way people on cop shows hold their weapons all the time. Also, he’s incredibly nerdy.

            1. Elizabeth West*

              Forgot to add, this is why I try to research stuff as much as possible. I don’t want readers (if I ever have any!) to hate my stuff because I couldn’t be arsed to check it out.

      2. GOG11*

        I was in a program similar to ROTC as a teenager (paramilitary type thing) and it drives me NUTS when they mess up military customs and courtesies. Just thinking about it makes me make inarticulate grumbling noises.

        1. Chinook*

          “I was in a program similar to ROTC as a teenager (paramilitary type thing) and it drives me NUTS when they mess up military customs and courtesies.”

          DH is the worse for this – he always complain that they wear their beret wrong. I, on the other hand, can’t help but critique every show that shows a Mountie wearing his uniform wrong (whereas DH just laughs it off).

        2. Joline*

          I read that as ROUS. Which is a very different thing. I don’t know what sort of program would involve Rodents of Unusual Size.

    37. Kelly O*

      I have an Associate’s in Business Administration (Management Information Systems) and I am apparently a career administrative/executive assistant.

    38. Retail Lifer*

      Got an HR degree but I’m still stuck as a retail manager, although an acquaintance has a degree in English and she’s an HR Manager.

    39. sarah*

      BA in journalism, now work in IT. Lots of my coworkers also do not have an IT/computer science degree.

      1. Ad Astra*

        Ooh, how did you make the move from journalism to IT? I think IT would be a cool field to work in, but I’m not sure my technical skills are quite good enough.

        1. Windchime*

          You might be surprised! We just hired a person from the medical billing office as a Business Analyst. She’s been on our team only a few weeks, but she shows intense interest in SQL and I can tell that she would be quick to pick it up. We will be sending her to SQL training and I could easily see this person transitioning into a junior developer role in a short amount of time. She’s really, really smart and really, really interested and that’s sometimes all it takes (along with some lucky breaks) to get into IT.

          1. Apollo Warbucks*

            That’s how I made the leap from accounting to IT, but my boss was to tight to pay for a course for me.

    40. SR*

      Not me, but a coworker at OldJob had a BFA and was the head of the 4-person accounting department for our medium-small company. (Very good at her job too – IMHO it’s the attention to detail required that’s consistent between art and accounting.)

    41. AvonLady Barksdale*

      Bachelor’s in Theater with minors in French and Legal Studies. MA in Television. I work in brand research, which is kinda sorta related to my master’s when I have media clients, but I concentrated on TV history. I worked for a TV network for over 8 years, doing stuff with numbers.

    42. Formerly The Office Admin, Now Full Time Job Huntress*

      I didn’t finish my degree and I work as an executive assistant.
      My husband has an Associates in Criminal Justice post high school and a BS in Computer Science minor in Software Engineering that he got 10 years post Associates. He works as a software developer.
      His brother, who I consider the perfect case study for this, has a BA in History and works as a pharmaceutical sales rep and has since he finished college, although he got his degree in History to be a teacher, but went for the pharma money instead :)

    43. MaryMary*

      Degree in marketing, now working in human resources consulting.

      I also did software QA and coding for about five years, and I took one introductory IS class in college that literally started with “this is the keyboard, this is the monitor…”

    44. Anon for this*

      BA in Sociology, MS in Health Administration, and now I’m a contractor doing web administration and front end development in Drupal and Section 508 compliance for the Feds. No formal IT education to speak of.

    45. Sparkly Librarian*

      BA in Theatre Arts (minor in Vocal Performance). I worked at a tech company in various aspects of customer support/user experience/documentation/project coordination for 8 years (completely unexpected, although I never expected to work full time in the theatre). During that time I got my Master’s in Library and Information Science, and then became a public librarian (as intended).

    46. Sascha*

      Bachelor’s in English Rhetoric, job as a database developer/business intelligence analyst.

    47. Ezri*

      Computer Science and Software Developer…. so that’s boring. But it’s only been a year, who knows where I’ll be when I’m 40. :)

    50. Vanishing Girl*

      BA in Fine Arts, Textile Design; MS in Information Science
      Currently using my master’s in corporate media, but looking to go back to archives. My Bachelor’s is a good topic of discussion, but not related to what I do.

    51. the_scientist*

      B.Sc in biology, specializing in molecular biology and genetics; M.Sc in epidemiology and I am now an epidemiologist. Scientific fields tend to be ones where you do need a specific degree to get hired- in my corner of the company it’s rare that people don’t have an M.Sc a MPH. Rare, but not impossible.

      My boyfriend, on the other hand, majored in political science and film and is now a buyer for a big chain of stores in Canada. He learned it all on the job.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        Epidemiology is FASCINATING. One of my favorite novels is this old 1970s thing called The Black Death, about pneumonic plague (gah!) breaking out in New York City. The heroes of the book are public health people–a doctor and nurse-epidemiology team. I LOVE that book so much. It scared the living crap out of me, partly because it’s so well-researched.

    52. Persephone Mulberry*

      No degree, working toward a BS in Marketing, currently a Project Specialist. My goal is to eventually leave here for someplace with an actual marketing department, hence the degree-in-progress.

    53. snarkalupagus*

      English major, concentration in POETRY…now a logistics engineering manager (disclaimer: did later get an MBA in supply chain management, which is field-germane).

    55. Cordelia Longfellow*

      BA and MA in English, working as a crime analyst and currently doing an MSc in that field, which didn’t exist when I started working.

    56. AnontoAnswerThis*

      BA in History, technical writer. I have a master’s that’s closer to my profession, but that came a good 12 years into my career.

    57. Cari*

      Boring here also: CS degree -> software dev and IT tech jobs after graduating. Now I’m getting into jewellery making though.

      BUT! If I hadn’t gone into the field linked to my degree, the supermarket I worked at on the checkouts wanted me to take on a job in their finance office after I graduated. Who knows what I’d be doing now if I’d taken that opportunity.

    58. HistoryChick*

      BA in history and theater arts (costume design) MA in history and archival studies. Working as a graphic designer and PR specialist for an educational organization. ;-)

    59. sam*

      well, I went to law school and am now a lawyer, so that’s pretty on the mark :)

      but my undergrad degree is in poli sci and women’s studies, with a minor in sociology (or as I like to say “I majored in not planning on getting a job after college”), and my career is generally focused in the area of corporate finance.

      I spend my days often reading and reconciling financial statements and muttering under my breath things like “I went to law school because there was no math on the test!”

      1. LawBee*

        As my ethics professor was fond of saying, “who goes to law school? Smart kids who can’t do math!” :D

        2. sam*

          I say it half in jest. I was actually quite good at math when I was younger, but I got weirdly screwed by getting promoted from the “regular” math track into the “honors” math track at the beginning of my senior year of high school. The problem was, there was a whole range of information that the junior honors kids learned that the regular kids didn’t, so I went into the class with a major gap in knowledge, and ended up woefully behind. to the point where I had to drop back into the regular track after the first quarter.

          At which point, I had missed an entire quarter of what they had learned in the regular track, and ended up playing catch-up there for the rest of the year as well.

          People who know me now, and who know my facility with computers and all things technical, often ask why I didn’t go into engineering or computer science. This was one of the major reasons.

      2. Mike C.*

        There was a time when I was having a really difficult time and was thinking about going into law instead of the sciences. I was told by some lawyers I knew that if I wanted to go into law, and they told me that the last thing I should do is stop being a science major.

      3. Chinook*

        “I spend my days often reading and reconciling financial statements and muttering under my breath things like “I went to law school because there was no math on the test!””

        I feel your pain. I somehow got an university degree without taking one statistics course but ended up in a job that requires heavy duty statistical analysis. Every so often coworkers hear me muttering “I am the only one on the floor with an English degree – why am I doing this instead of the engineers?”

    60. Xay*

      Psychology, MPH in progress (started 11 years after my BA). I work in public health, currently as a consultant to a federal health agency.

    61. Skylarcke*

      BA in American History, senior billing analyst for a major teaching hospital. I did go back to school two years ago to become professionally certified in medical coding, and much of the information from that training is already outdated. Healthcare billing changes ALL the time and is very much a learn-as-you-go field, in my experience.

    62. Folklorist*

      Degree in Folklore (with emphasis on the supernatural in storytelling–see ghost hunter discussion above), working at an engineering magazine.

            1. folklorist*

              DO IT!! My local krampus chapter is having a “krampus in July” party this week. I’m super excited! And Nat Geo is fun to work with, but a very tough nut to crack! I’ve gotten to do a lot of temp and contract work with them over several years but haven’t made it full-time yet.

      2. Schuyler*

        This is awesome–the degree and the concentration. Had I realized that my hometown university had a folklore degree when I was there, I may have saved so much money getting that instead.

        1. Folklorist*

          It depends. There are aspects I love about it and I don’t regret doing it, but it’s a lot of explaining to people. I see why it’s relevant to a lot of different things and can connect my skills interdisciplinarily (possibly not a word), but a lot of people can’t…and it sometimes takes a lot of explaining on cover letters, etc. (Or if I try to avoid explaining it so that I don’t sound defensive, people can write me off as a kook. And fair enough; they might be right!)

          I’m so far doing OK in my field (writing/journalism) and am proud that I followed my passions, but there are definitely days that I wish I had done something more “practical”!

    63. GOG11*

      BA in English. Admin Assistant. I’ve worked in retail, social work, and as a second-in-command at a small nonprofit, as well.

    64. Emily, admin extraordinaire*

      English (both BA and MA), currently a program specialist in a highly specialized program in my state’s Special Education department.

      1. Rye-Ann*

        How did that happen? I’m about to have that same degree set, but I’m thinking that I may need to get creative with my job search if none of the obvious job postings pan out.

        1. Jubilance*

          I’ve had an interesting career path. I spent 7yrs as a laboratory chemist; 3 of those at a big company that is known for Six Sigma, and there I got my introduction to process improvement and project management. Then got hired by a large retail in an analytics role, on a supply chain team. Figured out that I really liked supply chain, really liked managing process improvement projects, but didn’t really like fulfilling requests for data from other people, I’d rather pull my own data and come up with my own conclusions. I’m still at the retailer, just now I focus on process improvement and project management exclusively (no analytics work).

          TL,DR answer: I found a company that valued my skillset and I made the leap. Probably wont ever go back to a traditional laboratory chemist role.

    66. INFJ*

      Used to be a medical diagnostic lab tech with a degree in English. I was the person everyone would ask for the difference between “effect” and “affect.”

      I have since acquired a biology degree and am now an editor. Go figure.

    67. Newsie*

      English and Communications (theoretical, not practical) BAs. Journalism MS, which I actually use.
      The English major ALMOST came in handy yesterday, but hardly, since my focus was more nonfiction. And like ExceptionToTheRule mentioned, I learned a lot on the job that I could not have learned in school.

    68. Not my usual nym*

      Economics, currently working as an imports specialist. So it kind of works, I guess.

      However, let’s throw in my parents. My dad has a PhD in particle physics. He is now a bigwig at a government agencywhich is tangentally related, but very very different from the work he did with lasers for his doctorate. My mom has a masters in comparative english literature, specializing in Faulkner – she was a stay at home mom, though she could have been anything she wanted to be. My FIL got his original degree in electrical engineering. He has since gotten an MBA and writes procedural stuff for a energy company.

      1. Marcela*

        Wow. In my next life I’ll get that PhD in particle physics. Then I’ll do astroparticles and I’ll be singing everyday =^.^=

    70. Cordelia Naismith*

      BA in English, M.Ed. in English Education, and Ed.S. in School Library Media. I work for a university as an academic advisor. My students are all biology majors. Not the strangest career path ever, but it’s not what I thought I would be doing when I was in college.

    71. Betty (the other Betty)*

      Degree in Communications Media (Radio and Television Broadcasting); now a graphic designer running my own business. I think I took one art class and no business classes in college.

    72. Amber Rose*

      B.Sc. in Geography and GIS (dual major baby!).

      I’m a technical documentation controller and marketing manager for a company in a pretty niche part of the oil and gas industry. I’ll also end up as the Safety Coordinator by virtue of my ability to manage paperwork like nobody’s business. My job is probably closer to engineering and records management in terms of what sort of education would be most relative.

      In my last job I spent most of my time writing legal documents: restrictive covenants and easements. I had debated going back to school for paralegal education and even found a lawyer willing to employ me to do just that, but I really like my current job and the lack of additional student loan debt.

      1. Ad Astra*

        One of my sorority sisters, who was from out of state, said she chose my university for its GIS program. I had only recently heard of GIS when I took a geography elective, so I always thought it was crazy impressive that a 17-year-old was so honed in on what she wanted to do. Most of the 17-year-olds I’ve known said stuff like “I want to be a lawyer because I love to argue.”

        1. Amber Rose*

          GIS came out of a long talk with the head of the geography department. I was frustrated by my love of science and design and experimentation and my utter inability to do calculus.

          One of my final projects was a program that simulated grass fires. It was super fun. Sadly I don’t use it at all for work, but I did enjoy it while it lasted.

      2. Pinkie Pie Chart*

        I love GIS. :) I wish I had the money to take more classes in it, even though it’s totally irrelevant to what I do now.

    73. BirdyTX*

      My degree is in Classical archaeology and I am working in accounting and about a year away from being a CPA.

    74. LawBee*

      Economics, French minor. Now I’m a litigation attorney who specializes in a teeny tiny area of law that has absolutely nothing to do with a) economics or b) french.

    75. fposte*

      Bachelor’s in English literature (grad degrees as well), academic in library science working with children’s literature and youth stuff.

    76. Elizabeth*

      BS in interdisciplinary social sciences, with an emphasis in geography & history. I work in health information technology. At our hospital, if it isn’t a doctor or nurse, there is a good chance I work with the system, and I do a lot of work the with doctors now.

    77. LeighTX*

      Degree in Business Education (in 1993–I was going to teach typing! Remember typing class?!).
      Now I’m an Accounting Manager/Assistant Controller.

      1. Jill*

        BA in Accounting, Masters in Business
        Currently a policy analyst/political researcher, previously spent 8 years as a political aide.

    78. vKit*

      ASB in Computer Management/Solutions Development. I’m now in Business Intelligence (IT). My current skills/job are related to my education, but represent a discrete specialization.

      My path immediately out of school was: PC/Printer Support Specialist (ugh) for a large company –> Junior Programmer (VB6) for a startup –> Front-end ASP developer for a startup –> Business Intelligence Programmer Analyst for a retail chain –> Business Intelligence Developer for a database services company.

      I’m very happy with where I landed even though I didn’t like databases when I was in school. Considering that my schooling was very affordable and that I’ve been working in IT full time since I was 20, I’m more than satisfied with the ROI of my education. It was just enough to get my foot in the door, but not so much that I put myself or my family in financial stress.

    79. Drama Llama's Mama*

      BA in Music, MA in Arts Administration, MBA.
      I work in healthcare analytics.

      1. Drama Llama's Mama*

        Also, my husband has a degree in history and is…a professional musician.

    80. anon for today*

      I have an English BA and creative writing/translation MFA, and I do accounting work within book publishing. A CPA would have no advantage over me if they came to my job with no publishing experience. Virtually everybody in this industry learns their specialty on the job, and they often get a strong foundation in more than one area. Based on my past experience, I could also easily transition into a job drafting and negotiating contracts, and I have no formal law education. I recently interviewed at a division of a ginormous corporate publisher where the very successful VP of Finance has a history degree. She supervises a team of financial analysts, and when she was hiring, my on-the-job accounting training was enough to make me a finalist.

    81. Sunshine*

      English major (incomplete)… working in Logistics/Transportation. Coming up on 19 years.

    82. Lizzy*

      B.S. in News-Editorial Journalism and an MPA with a concentration in Government Management. I work in Marketing and Development for a performing arts organization. Maybe not too far off from my undergrad degree since I still do a lot of writing, but never in my career did I get to set foot in a news room.

    83. Pinkie Pie Chart*

      No degree, but finishing up one in geology. Now a SharePoint systems manager.

    84. moss*

      Math/CS undergrad, statistics master’s, which got me into the door in my current field. I’ve been a software developer, systems administrator, & now do data analysis for drug studies (but I’m not a statistician! although they get paid way more! because I am a really good coder.)

    85. Anna*

      MA Sociology and BA Spanish.

      I work in marketing and outreach for a federally funded job training program. Marginally related to my MA but I don’t need an MA to do what I do.

    86. AliCat*

      BA in Classics, MA in Liberal Studies, Postgrad Diploma in Palaeopathology…currently work as an admin at a community college.

      1. CollegeAdmin*

        Hey, me too! (Until recently – now in grad school for data analytics and just changed roles at my college to be an analyst)

    88. Tagg*

      Graduated at the height of the recession in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design. I actually managed to get a few jobs in the design field before I realized that I hated, HATED, working in Graphic Design. (fun fact: it’s less designing gorgeous packaging for Apple and more slapping together hideous ads for the local Car Dealership).

      Eventually got a job in customer service for a large healthcare organization, and I’m happier than I ever was in Design. Plus, I actually have creative energy at the end of the day, and can pursue my own side businesses.

    89. Windchime*

      No degree; a couple of years of community college. Senior Data Solutions Architect in a BI department.

    90. Chinook*

      B. Ed in Secondary Education – Major in English, double minor in ESL and Rel. Education.

      Now an office worker (no one has come up with a real title yet) at a pipeline company working with Integrity Department, Procurement and who ever else calls as well as designing and managing a complicated database.

    92. Schuyler*

      BA in music (emphasis in music management), but work in higher education administration as a financial aid administrator.

      I’m also working on an MEd in higher ed admin because higher ed is one of those fields where you really cannot move up without the requisite degrees. (Exceptions: Those who already have a a good amount–10 years or more–of experience in the field may be able to sub experience for a master’s.) This is a real sore spot for me, because as so many have mentioned, a degree can’t and shouldn’t substitute for a track record of good work. I try really hard to keep the bitterness away, tbh.

    94. Rebecca*

      BA in sociology, work in the corporate retail world.

      I mean, it’s not *totally* dissimilar, it’s a lot of analyzing numbers. But definitely not what I thought I would be doing 10 (!) years after graduating college. I worked in retail sales while I was in high school and college, then got recruited to go through a store management training program, did that for a while then found a job on the corporate side where my store experience was a plus.

    95. Beancounter in Texas*

      BA in Applied Music (Piano Performance), working as a bookkeeper/HR generalist/office manager for small businesses.

      1. afiendishthingy*

        I have a good friend who has a BA in Piano Performance and works as a Certified Nurse Midwife. Obviously she did need more schooling for that.

    96. Beezus*

      BA in English, working in Supply Chain. One of my long-timeyest coworkers has a degree in Physical Education. We interviewed a peer candidate with a Sociology degree last year, and he was sooo nervous that his unrelated degree wouldn’t trump his five years of related experience (not a problem, he got the job and does it well.) Most of our hires in the last few years are people with accounting/finance/business/supply chain degrees, though.

    97. Beezus*

      BA in English, working in Supply Chain.

      One of my long-timeyest coworkers has a degree in Physical Education.

      We interviewed a peer candidate with a Sociology degree last year, and he was sooo nervous that his unrelated degree wouldn’t trump his five years of related experience (not a problem, he got the job and does it well.)

      Most of our hires in the last few years are people with accounting/finance/business/supply chain degrees, though.

    98. Elizabeth West*

      Started BA in Vocal Music Performance; didn’t finish (almost did).
      Earned BS in English and AS in Criminology years later.
      Started MS in Ed and didn’t finish.
      Started BS in Professional Writing and didn’t finish.
      Works as administrative assistant for a large technology services company. Owns nothing that is worth a crap.

      I’m done with school forever. I don’t know why I keep running back to the bosom of Mother Education–she has done nothing for me. I owe tons and will end up never being able to retire and will have no Social Security and die alone. :P

      1. Not So NewReader*

        In a parallel universe, EW made a bizillion dollars on her first book, and paid off all her loans in the first month’s royalties.

        Remember the poster of the frog choking the pelican? Just keep choking that pelican.

    99. YogiJosephina*

      Sociology and Classics, and I’m a yoga teacher at a university and work full-time at a grocery store. By choice, after leaving 6 years in non-profit/fundraising.

    100. Dorth Vader*

      Early Childhood Ed (birth through age 5 specialty) and a Social Work minor. I’m a nanny for two kids- one entering 3rd grade and one entering their second year of preschool. I’m not really using all my teaching experience, but it’s really helpful to have the background knowledge of what to expect at each age. Especially when the younger was toilet training.

    101. Clever Name*

      I’m boring and predictable. BS in Biology, MS in Environmental Science. Working as an environmental consultant using both degrees. Whomp Whomp. ;)

    102. MJ (Aotearoa/New Zealand)*

      No degree (I have one semester of a BA in History!) and I’m a Payroll specialist.

    104. Chickaletta*

      Business Administration and now a graphic designer, although I’m considering changing careers again.

    105. LadyErin*

      BS in Architecture – now Retail Manager for a Garden Center

      Everything I know about plant care, plant diseases, and insects came from working my way up from cashier. I don’t have a horticulture or plant pathology or entomology degree.

    106. greenlily*

      Degree: Music major (my instrument is choral singing/conducting, so it was sort of a general major) and theater arts minor (stage management).

      Job: Financial aid administrator at a performing arts college.

      I didn’t know anything about financial aid when I was hired, but the folks doing the hiring thought I would have the necessary perspective on the life of an artist and what kind of financial choices arts students and their families make, and I could learn the rest on the job. It worked out okay.

    107. Clinical Supervisor*

      BA in anthropology. Masters in Education with concentration in Applied Behavior Analysis, BCBA (Board Certified Behavior Analyst). I supervise home-based treatment for kids with developmental disabilities and behavior issues. The masters and certification are related and required for my position, but I held lower level positions in this field for years when I only had the unrelated bachelors. I do definitely use a lot of what I learned in grad school in my job, but my grad school program also required that students were working in the field so we could apply what was being taught. I loved my liberal arts college, I learned a lot critical thinking skills and it definitely prepared me for graduate school, but there also isn’t a substitute for on the job experience.

    108. CA Admin*

      I have a BA in Political Science (American Politics concentration) and I work as a partner-level Executive Assistant in Finance.

      My husband has his BA in Anthropology (Biological Anthropology concentration) and is a software engineer for a startup.

    109. ginger ale for all*

      No degree (just one semester short of a undergrad degree in history, no plans to ever get it) and I work in a university library. I competed against others who have their masters in library science and got the job. My previous experience of working my way up the ladder got me here. I take in extra training when it is offered on the job.

    110. Verde*

      Haven’t formally graduated from anything since 8th grade.
      Currently Manager of Finance & HR. Have taken some college classes in both, and have an HR certification, but have not completed a degree program. Have participated in ten years’ worth of annual non-profit audits with revenue growing from $3mil to $9mil over the years, and the last six were my responsibility completely.
      Prior to that, I’ve done everything from retail record store, to early tech start-ups, working in a club/bartending, PR and Communications Manager, and so on. It’s been a wild pathway and here I am!

    111. pinky*

      bachelor’s – marketing; master’s – special education; post master’s certificate – Behavior (bcba). I’m a special ed preschool teacher

    116. YawningDodo*

      BA in film studies, now a processing archivist. I did come here by way of an MS in information studies, though.

    117. knitcrazybooknut*

      Blended degree in Women’s History, Psychology and Literature. MFA in Creative Writing. Currently working as a techie in HR for a state university.

    119. Soharaz*

      BA in Religious Studies (minor in History) and MA in Publishing. Working as a Marketing Executive at a software company and looking to transition to recruitment.

    120. Interesting!*

      I don’t usually comment, but this is a really interesting game/sub-thread.

      History BA & MLIS — librarian at a college, with a few years teaching in there between the BA and MLIS.

    121. Fact & Fiction*

      Started out studying English Lit and Spanish, got BA in Humanities with emphasis on Lit/History because Reasons, applied to law school because was another interest and worked in legal support services, came to senses due to wanting to start family and the economy tanking, got paralegal cert/Masters instead, worked as paralegal a few years, sold book series, quit legal field, developed freelance writing/editing career, now have full-time job as an editor for a publishing services company and am trying to reinvigorate fiction career.

    122. LiveAndLetDie*

      I hold a BA in History and English and an MA in History, and I work in market research.

    123. Felicia*

      Degree in journalism, do marketing/communications for a small non profit. Actually extremely related and I use some of what I learned in school every day, but I know that’s not the norm.

      1. Finny*

        Oh, yes, and my mother has a BS in sociology with a minor in gerontology, and was a mortgage loan underwriter.

    125. phillist*

      EMT certification; still working on my Bachelor’s.

      I manage Operations for a very well-known non-profit. I’ve been a manager in various industries for almost a decade (I’m fairly young, so basically my entire working life), starting out at entry level and working my way up.

      I drastically out-earn the majority of my peers who have 4 year degrees (besides maybe the Engineers).

      OP would hate to work for me.

    126. MissDisplaced*

      What you got a degree in (Communications/English/Graphic Design) versus what your career is (Communications-Marketing). Guess I’m in the minority. Everything I’ve done in my career led up to what I do now, including all those years working in the printing factory. And it took me almost 15 years to finish my degrees while working full time.

    127. Human Resources Manager*

      Bachelor’s in Sociology/Criminology, work as a Human Resources Manager for a financial institution. I never intended on getting into HR but it’s been a good career path, pays well and I always seem to be able to find positions and move up. I did not finish my degree until I was in my 30’s and was already moving up in the financial field but the degree did allow me to check the box which is helpful as many can attest. I also have a senior certification in my field which I think is completely unnecessary but my company paid for it so why not?

    128. Pixel*

      M.Sc. in evolutionary biology, working as an accountant in public practice with a detour in teaching at a community college. I’m *thisclose* to earning my CPA so I guess I would earn the OP’s approval. However, I don’t hold a candle to my supervisor, who does not have a degree and is behind me on her CPA course, but has been with the company for several years and is really, really good at what she does.

  26. MsM*

    In case you’re wondering why people are being so hard on you, OP, nowhere do you provide any evidence of these people’s incompetence. Which, considering the company has stuck around as they’ve worked their way up the ladder, can’t be all that terrible.

    I do get it. You’ve worked hard for your qualifications. You don’t want all that effort to be in vain. And it may be that this organization isn’t a good fit for you if you’re hoping for a dramatic career boost post-graduation. But there’s a reason most MBA programs want people who’ve been out in the working world for at least a little while: theory might give you a solid starting point, but experience generally trumps it, especially when you’re dealing with complex and idiosyncratic issues.

    1. some1*

      My friend got an MBA and still couldn’t get higher-level job because employers also wanted someone who had managed people before.

    2. PriorityZero*

      This! Maybe these people are incompetent, but we have been shown no evidence of that.

    3. BeeBee*

      I sense there may be more and/or some incidents that contribute to the bad attitude.
      To be fair to OP, I have seen the cases where the people who’ve “been around” or are business owners that are not terribly well educated think they are better/know more than the educated people. And there definitely seems to be a backlash right now towards higher education from the right wing nuts.

      I worked for one such owner who liked to hire very well educated people only to disparage them with the “I know more than their piece of paper and fancy education will ever give them” attitude. He wouldn’t listen to any advice they offered, and of course he soon ran the business into the ground. I always wondered why he hired them… in fact he insisted his employees have the advanced degrees he lacked.

  27. Cassie*

    Wow.

    College degrees are great for getting you in the door. However, a lot of companies value work experience over a degree. A degree means nothing if you don’t have success in your field. Emloyers look to promote people with experience, success, good work ethic, etc. I know people who have started at the bottom and worked their way up with no college degree at all.

    1. AMG*

      mmm…no. I actually use my education. It’s not just a foot in the door. It has practical value once you have a job too, even if it’s not in the same field.

      1. LBK*

        This depends so heavily on your field that I don’t think you can make a blanket statement – and even for highly technical fields where you’ll be able to directly apply knowledge you gained in school, I think you always learn more once you’re applying it to real situations. There’s just too many nuances to real work that you don’t get in coursework.

        1. AMG*

          Agreed, but that isn’t to say that a degree is nothing more than a piece of paper. It’s quite a bit more.

          1. LBK*

            I don’t think people are saying that to devalue the worth of getting a degree, but rather to say that after someone’s been in an industry for 20 years, the weight you should be giving their education is minimal. The odds that the technical knowledge they would’ve gained from that even applies anymore are small, and that’s 20 years of soft skills experience as well that trumps the 4-6 you might get in school.

            1. AMG*

              I see people flat-out devaluing the degree. Of course 20 years of relevant experience is…relevant. I am talking about the statements like this: “College degrees are great for getting you in the door” when the fact is that they actually do quite a bit more.

              1. Blue Anne*

                They can do quite a bit more, but they’re so incredibly varied that it doesn’t make sense to assume they do.

                I say this as someone with an undergrad Philosophy degree from a great university. There is just no application. There really isn’t. Do I think differently now? Did studying Philosophy lead to a lot of personal development? Sure. But basically, career-wise, it’s just a piece of paper saying that I can be successful at sticking with something difficult for a number of years.

                And there’s a huge spectrum between your degree and mine.

                The only common denominator of pretty much all types of degrees is – they get you in the door.

                1. AMG*

                  I think there are other things you can learn in college, and I don’t think getting a degree necessarily gets you in the door. Isn’t that kind of the point of the post? What if there’s a job posting and 2 candidates apply: one with 20 years experience but no degree and one with a degree but no experience? Does the person with the education get the job? All else being equal, the experience would win out. And I’m not saying it shouldn’t. My point it that they both have value.

                2. kara*

                  AMG – you asked: 2 candidates apply: one with 20 years experience but no degree and one with a degree but no experience? Does the person with the education get the job?

                  Let me tell you a story. My housemate has 18 years experience (including multiple training courses and certifications related to his field) running a Sales Tax division for a major manufacturer. Last year his company declared bankruptcy and laid off 50% of their people. He has been applying for jobs since May of 2014. He is still unemployed. You know why? He doesn’t have a degree. He has gotten several interviews, but not as many as he should based on his experience, his knowledge, and his references. In every case he’s been told that if he only had a degree, he would have been their choice.

                  So yes, in a situation where someone eminently qualified with 18+ years experience, sterling references, and tons of non-degree certifications comes up against someone with less experience but a degree? The degree wins.

                  I would suggest that you back down on your dogmatic stance here just a bit. It’s obvious you’re not aware of what it’s like out there for people who don’t have a degree.

                3. AMG*

                  Actually, Kara, I fully understand the value of the degree–it seems to me that there are many people here who think that a degree is ‘just a piece of paper’. I know how hard it is because I went to college late. The only reason why I went is because I had to go through that. For me, it would really depend on my particular hiring need as to which person I would choose. We have a good mix on my team at work.

              2. Xay*

                But sometimes they do just check a box. Every degree doesn’t have the same value in every field or for every employer. I have a BA from a great liberal arts college. That said, aside from my first job, that degree is on my resume to check a box. Similarly, I am working on my MPH now just to check an additional box so I can get higher pay and better chances for advancement. I have 10 years of experience so although what I am learning in school is interesting and enriching, it isn’t a game changer in terms of my job. I’m paying to check a box, credentialize my experience, and add the name of a university that is well respected in my field to my resume.

                1. AMG*

                  Better chances for advancement = better expereince. At least, that has been the case for me. It compounds.

            2. Retail Lifer*

              This is true. My college marketing courses didn’t include internet marketing because the internet was barely a thing back then. Someone fresh out of school is bound to have a better understanding of the nuances better than me, but not necessarily someone who has been in the industry for 20 years and has been learning as things are changing.

      2. I threw up in my mouth a little...*

        I disagree. It is a foot in the door. You can be the most highly educated monkey and have no actual real-world practicality. You have to prove that you’re good at a job in order to STAY at a job.
        For example, I once got an intro to a company through an acquaintance. I got the job, after interviewing extensively. The acquaintance then said I ‘owed’ him for ‘getting [me] a job’ – and continued to do so during the 1.5 years we worked together before he moved on (other personality fit/issues with him).
        He didn’t get me the job. My good interviewing and experience got me the job. And after that, my good work ethic and good work kept me the job. *He did not get me the job; he got me the introduction.*

        Education is, in fact, the ‘foot in the door;’ it might get you the interview. You have to interview well to get the job, and then perform well on the job to keep the job, and subsequently be promoted. You may APPLY you education on the job, true, but it doesn’t get you the job nor does it keep you the job.

        1. Just Another Techie*

          Truth. If it did, our economy wouldn’t be full of unemployed people with college and even graduate degrees who can’t find work.

          1. I threw up in my mouth a little...*

            Per what I said, many people apply their education on the job regularly.

            However, the piece of paper itself saying you have a bachelors or masters in teapots, all it does is get your foot in the door. You have to know how to effectively apply your educational (and real world if applicable) experience to keep the job.

            I think we’re saying the same thing, it’s just tomato tomahto. :)

          2. Anon for this comment*

            You’re seeming a little defensive of your degree – lots of people commenting on this thread have a degree, or multiple degrees. Their opinions about the current value of higher education don’t devalue your degree, or the work you put into achieving it.

            It is very true that in some fields, the undergrad degree and the practical work are married together very well. In a LOT of fields, however, it doesn’t matter what your degree is IN, as long as you can learn the job. And that’s how people move up with no degrees or unrelated degrees to management and higher level positions.

            You should be proud of what you’ve achieved! But also try to recognize that you’re taking these comments really personally.

            1. AMG*

              I don’t think someone else’s opinion devalues my degree, although it is offensive to say that a degree is a piece of paper. And I can tell you that I am selected for specific assignments over my peer with 30 decades of experience on me. I know for a fact it’s because I have a degree, among other qualifications. I just don’t get where on earth anyone would think that a degree isn’t worth anything other than getting a foot in the door, even when it’s not directly related to your field. It’s. So. Weird. I am taken aback by this whole thread.

              1. Rana*

                AMG, I agree with you. I have painful experience with the fact that for many employers, a degree is just a tick-box on their application form, but that assumption is not reality in a lot of cases.

                What my particular degree indicates is the ability to see a difficult, long-term, and complex project through to completion; possession of communication skills honed through writing, teaching, and public speaking; the analytical skills needed to sift through large amounts of data, extract representative examples, and translate that into well-organized narratives; technical skills such as mastery of word processing software, presentation technologies, database construction and analysis, mechanical troubleshooting, and so on… and that’s not even touching on the specifics of my particular subject areas, nor mentioning a highly-trained ability to learn and assimilate new information quickly.

                Now, does that mean that a person without such a degree lacks such skills? No, of course not. Nor does it mean that those skills have been necessarily been used in ways that are immediately useful to an employer in another industry.

                But to say that my degree is “only” a “piece of paper” or “only” a “way of getting a foot in the door” implies that I spent seven years twiddling my thumbs and learning nothing at all of value. That’s pretty insulting!

              2. I threw up in my mouth a little...*

                AMG I am definitively NOT saying your degree is only as valuable as a piece of paper. I really think you are reading into this too much.
                Plenty of people out their get degrees from big prestigious schools, and plenty get degrees from programs that may or may not be very respected. Regardless – it’s all about how you APPLY the learning of your degree on the job.
                Having a degree may check a box on your application. Which may get you an interview (among other experience factors). Once you get the interview you have to be able to effectively apply your learning to real world on the job situations in order to keep the job.
                I have a degree. I worked hard and spent a lot of money on it – my own money, not my parents’ – and I don’t think it doesn’t account for anything. But for on the job experience you could have a degree that is the highest most utmost best looking degree ever, and have absolutely zero ability to apply it in the real world, and you won’t keep the job.
                A degree isn’t a ‘piece of paper’ in and of itself, but once you get the job you don’t keep the job because you have a degree.
                I promise when we’re having conversations on whether or not to fire Bob, we talk about his ability to work with others, his on the job results, etc. etc. I would not speak up and say “oh but even despite all this, he has an electrical engineering biochemistry CPA lawyer degree from Harvard, we definitely shouldn’t fire him!”

      3. Observer*

        But, according to the OP, that’s not true. If notice, the OP complains that s/he cannot respect people who “have no education, or education that doesn’t pertain to the job.”

        1. AMG*

          That’s a fair point; I don’t believe anyone is saying that an attitude adjustment isn’t in order. I’m not the OP. This is what I am saying.

      4. Felicia*

        I directly use my education sometimes, but my practical experience is still far more valuable, which I think is usually the case.

  28. steve g*

    I know where you are coming from, but I don’t think finance is one of the fields where you HAVE to have a degree to get ahead in it (but not having one definitely holds you back so it’s kind of impressive if your boss gets ahead without one). In addition to other work history, I have about seven years in sales ops doing 90percent excel based analysis, forecasting, making templates, etc. I’ve worked with quite a few people who associates degrees or Bachelor’s in liberal arts who can tear through annual reports, accounting statements, and build financial models like someone working in finance, in jobs where we did a lot of work for accounting and finance. The truth of the matter is that a lot of accounting and finance concepts are common sense and easy to look up or buy a book on if you want.

    I think areas you need to have a finance degree in are ones dealing with regulatory and compliance projects in finance, working in regulatory reporting, or if you’re in a role where you are the sole finance employee for a company, or if your in venture capital….but not every job is going to need one.

    You mentioned “running complex systems.” I took a lot of. Accounting, finance, and statistics/econometrics classes in college and that wasn’t a skill area touched. IMHE people running complex systems started out in psuedo-business analyst roles and worked there way into more technical business analyst roles.

    I hope people don’t pile on that you are wrong though! That is never fun to read

    1. Mike C.*

      This is a great point. There is a huge overlap in the sorts of degrees or educational experiences someone can have for the vast majority of jobs. How many jobs require a decent knowledge of math, and how many different types of degrees offer it, for example?

  29. fposte*

    OP, that would also make you undercredentialed, since you’re lacking an MBA but working in the business office. An accounting degree isn’t a substitute. (Do you see how that logic doesn’t really work for what it is you need to do in the job?) (Oh, and maybe dial down on the Googling your co-workers.)

    Given that you’re focusing particularly on post-grad stuff like certificates and master’s degrees, I’m wondering if this is really about you thinking you’re smarter than your managers. Which may or may not be true–you can’t tell from degrees. But even if it is true, it doesn’t actually matter; it doesn’t mean you know better than they do, or that you’d be a better manager than they are.

    And if they do suck as managers, it’s not because they got the wrong degree, so you’re focusing on the wrong issue there.

    1. Saurs*

      But even if it is true, it doesn’t actually matter; it doesn’t mean you know better than they do, or that you’d be a better manager than they are.

      Saddled with an out-of-touch, elitist attitude and unimaginative, rigid thinking about what makes a suitable supervisor, a person would be pretty crap as a manager. Hiring, managing, training, and promoting people require more than a degree, OP. You’d lose out on a lot of bright, hard-working employees because you endorse degreed affirmative action.

  30. Jeannalola*

    I’m not going to do a smackdown on you-although I feel like you deserve it—I’m going to try to give you some advice that may help you in your future career. The value of formal education has increasingly been overrated. Sure, you learn certain things, and there is a discipline required to get through it and get that degree. But there is SO.MUCH.MORE to the world of work than having a degree (or in your case, it looks like three degrees!) Numerous degrees does not help you with a work ethic, office politics, frustrations in dealing with managers and c0-workers, SOPs for specific industries and companies, and, most importantly, particularly in the healthcare finance field, there is almost DAILY change in how things are done. It sounds to me like you have drunk the Kool-Aid that (mostly) proprietary higher education schools have sold to the unsuspecting American public just to get the student loan money. I have worked with so many people that are doing a less than respected masters that will never get them anywhere, because they don’t have the foggiest as to how to work, manage their management, get along with their co-workers, and keep up on the latest developments in their field. And they are paying so much for these degrees; it is pitiful. My advice is to see what you can learn from the folks that have been able to persevere for 20 years in healthcare–the most stressful and difficult field you can be in. Don’t be elitist and see them as enemies. See them as a continuation of your investment in your education and can help you to shine in your field. And don’t be ageist, because you sound like you are!!! Oh, and by the way, can you check back with us in twenty years?

    1. AndersonDarling*

      Agree 100%. The OP is not alone. After paying so much for a degree and putting in so much time, it can feel like there should be more workplace “value” in a degree. It also doesn’t help that colleges and universities coddle students in to thinking they will jump right into a managerial/executive jobs since the school provided a “real world, leading, [inset other buzzwords]” education.

  31. Guy Incognito*

    I used to work for a major financial services firm in the UK (just out side the big 4) and from what I can see degree subjects are kind of irrelevant.

    The former CEO has a History degree the current CEO has a Chemistry degree they are both very talented and capable people. Who have reached the top of their profession and are wildly regarded as some of the most influential people in the City of London financial circles. I can not understand the thought process involved in looking down your nose at someone’s educational back ground from more than 20 years ago.

    I don’t think I can add anything more to what Alison said in the last couple of lines of her answer:

    “You have a deep misunderstanding of who to respect and how people earn their positions.

    But do your managers a favor: If this is how you look at them, by all means go work for someone whose college coursework 20 years ago meets with your approval.”

  33. Artemesia*

    My Dad had a degree in mining engineering. For most of his career he designed aircraft, like the B52 and 747 and missiles like the Minuteman. He was a minor but important player supervising a key element in the design of the equipment that put men on the moon. It isn’t what your degree is in, it is what you can do and most of what we learn in life we learn as we go along on the job.

    1. Mockingjay*

      “It isn’t what your degree is in, it is what you can do and most of what we learn in life we learn as we go along on the job.”

      +1000!

  34. Not Today Satan*

    Honestly, I remember a very very very very very small amount of the things I learned as a college student (and it wasn’t *that* long ago). I suspect that many people are the same way. In fact, it’s for this reason that it really bugs me when jobs require very particular college majors for people with lots of work experience.

  35. Former Usher*

    Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the OP chose to write a letter and seek Ms. Green’s input. I’m hopeful that the OP might now see things from a different perspective.

    1. Kiki*

      Also, OP doesn’t write the article title, the writer does, and it’s usually a bit sensationalized. OP never said they “don’t respect”, at least not in what got posted here. OP’s tone isn’t *quite* as rough.

      1. Bend & Snap*

        Actually, OP did say that. And it’s worse than the headline: “It’s becoming a sticking point, so much that I don’t respect or look up to my managers.”

        1. Kiki*

          I stand corrected on the wording, but I hold fast to my headlines-are-a-bit-sensationalized, as a general rules on this site. Sorry, but I’ve been reading this site off and on for several years and that’s consistent. It pulls in readers…so I get it, but sometimes it helps the pile-on really get rolling.

          1. LBK*

            Really? I find the titles here as non-sensational as possible. They very dryly describe the situation in the letter – which is often sensational in and of itself.

      2. Ask a Manager* Post author

        From the letter: “It’s becoming a sticking point, so much that I don’t respect or look up to my managers.”

        I don’t believe I write sensationalized headlines. I try to write headlines that are extremely straightforward summaries, in fact.

        2. Bend & Snap*

          I write headlines as part of my job, and AAM’s don’t qualify as sensational IMO. Sensationalized = the content doesn’t match the headline. That’s never the case here.

          1. Beancounter in Texas*

            Compared to the trash mags at the checkout lines, AAM’s headlines are mild and IMO, definitively more interesting.

            1. Anna*

              It would be sort of fun if they were more sensational. “Her Boss Doesn’t Have a Degree and She Does! Can They Get Along? Click Here to Find Out!”

              The article, I think, would be very short. :)

              1. Lionness*

                She Found Out Her Boss Doesn’t Have a Degree. What Happened Next Will Make You Gasp…

        3. Ad Astra*

          I wouldn’t say the headlines are sensationalized, but they do often reflect (or at least hint at) Allison’s opinion on the situation. Which is fine, because that’s what we come here for.

    2. Cambridge Comma*

      For me that is the most surprising thing. I think a lot of regular readers could have predicted Alison’s response. Which made me wonder whether Alison received this mail in a different context…is there a story behind it?

        1. Cambridge Comma*

          Wow. Then maybe the OP isn’t a regular reader. (S)he didn’t even ask an actual question.

      2. The IT Manager*

        I think a good percentage of the letters come from people who aren’t regular readers. Less than 50% but maybe not much less.

  36. qtipqueen*

    A degree doesn’t open doors as much as it keeps doors from being slammed in your face.

    3. Ash (the other one)*

      Yup. And even then, a degree can be a disadvantage too. When I was looking for jobs about a year ago I started dropping the Ph.D. from my resume for some positions so hiring managers wouldn’t immediately dismiss me for being too qualified for a position. I’m hiring for a BA level position right now and find myself having to disqualify those with an MA simply because of our structure here (and I don’t need another MA level hire).

      1. Elizabeth West*

        I agree to a point. I’ve been told I’m overqualified for jobs I’m perfectly capable of doing because I have degrees—“You’d be bored.” I always wanted to say, Well yeah, maybe a little bored, because it’s work and not the fun fair. But if I’m applying, you should at least assume I’m halfway interested in doing the work.

        1. Rana*

          Yup. I really wish people wouldn’t make so many assumptions about what a degree means to the person who holds it.

  37. Mena*

    Recent college grads arrive with a piece of paper that shows they can commit to earning a degree and maintaining that commitment. There may be some basic learnings in a focused area too but value arrives with work experience and a track record of success. Or, as the OP’s management demonstrates, long-term success in an organization.

    Rather clueless, OP – and you are over-valuing your possible impact on the organization. You give your management too little credit (and your recent college accomplishments much too much credit).

  38. Joie de Vivre*

    OP – Please understand that not all learning happens in school and academic success/credentials do not automatically translate to success in the work place. Career paths start in different places, take wildly different routes from person to person and are all valid ways to make your way in the world. Some of the best opportunities to learn and grow are when we have the chance to work with people who have taken different routes through life than ourselves. With this type of attitude you are seriously limiting your ability to learn from people who have a different background than yours.

  39. Long Time Reader First Time Poster*

    Wow. This reeks of ageism.

    I see it all the time — people right out of school (especially in tech) assume that the Olds in the office can’t possibly have anything to offer.

  40. JMegan*

    OP, my first job was in a workplace situation sort of like yours. There were about a dozen people on the team, evenly split between young people with shiny new Masters degrees, and older people with no degrees but with twenty years of work experience. (Some of them had more than that – there were a couple who had been doing the same job since before I was born!)

    And believe it or not, most of the kind of attitude you’re displaying here came from the people in the “no degree but lots of experience” camp. They couldn’t believe they had to work with us young whippersnappers who came in thinking they knew everything just because they had a fancy degree. So first, I’d suggest that you try to see yourself from your coworkers’ perspectives – as much as you believe they’re not qualified, there’s a pretty good chance that they are thinking the same thing about you.

    Second, I think if you take a step back and look around a bit, you’ll realize that there’s probably a lot you can learn from each other. There are lots of things that you don’t learn in school, about office etiquette, who has the real power, and how things actually get done once you put the textbooks away. And there is probably quite a lot that you have learned in school that will be useful to your colleagues – a lot has changed since they started their jobs, and it’s possible they may benefit from an fresh perspective as well.

    But you really, really, need to approach this as a “how can we learn from each other” situation. Because if you go in waving your degree around, and thinking that you don’t respect people who don’t have degrees, I think you’re going to be pretty unhappy there.

    2. THE OP*

      When I took my entry level finance job, the then manager stated to me “We’ve never had anyone this educated in this position before”. I’ve also had the Director comment that “I’m smart and know how to work things”. I’m not saying this for my “ego” these things were actually said to me.

      Which made me think that perhaps they are intimidated by my education. I could be wrong, I could have taken it wrong, but after being a therapist for so many years, one can pick up on nuances.

      When I challenged one of their policies that made no financial logic, I was reprimanded for questioning them and as Cartman would say “disrespecting their authoritay”.

      To me it felt as if they were being quite defensive in what was pure logic and mathematically based. Silly me using logic of my schooling and education to bring to light something that financially wasn’t viable.

      1. De (Germany)*

        I really don’t know how you jump from “you are smart and know how to work things”to people being intimidated by your education. The comment doesn’t even imply that you are smarter than other people at your job.

        Likewise with the other comment – so they never had anyone with a Master’s in one of their entry level position – so what?

      2. Kara*

        Honestly OP do you not hear how elitist and rude and condescending and honestly just jerky you come across? If your tone to your employers is anything like what you’re writing here, I’m not surprised they’re reprimanding you and feeling disrespected in the workplace.

        You may have 20 years experience in your field. You may have degrees out the wazoo. But you’re still the new guy in the office and the low man on the totem pole. It sounds to me like you showed up and expected everyone to kowtow to you because you have an OMGAccountingDegree.

        You keep talking about when you were a therapist, but I can’t think of anyone I would want as a therapist LESS than someone who talks about people the way you do. How can you be an effective therapist when you obviously think most of the world is inferior to you?

        And also because you keep talking about how smart and educated you are: Educate yourself on the proper use of quote marks. They’re not meant to be used to indicate emphasis.

      3. AtWill*

        Take it from an asshole: Assholes do not get listened to in the workplace, correct or not. Recently I tried to get a new process adopted at my workplace. I had mountains of backup research and case studies to prove the value of what I was advocating. I presented it as The One Truth, as if not doing it made you an awful human being. It was objectively, provably true, what I was saying, but they did not listen. People don’t like being told that the way they are currently doing things is wrong or stupid, especially when they’ve been there a lot longer than you have.

        Eventually we did adopt the practice, but it was despite my efforts instead of because of them. If you present an argument in the context of “I have an actual degree so I know better than you”, yes, you will get static from your co-workers or managers. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or not. It should, but it doesn’t. Human beings are not robots; they don’t take well to “just do it and shut up because I know better than you”.

        How did you challenge them? Did you do it in private, or in the middle of a large meeting? Did you present it as “I just noticed something, does anyone else see X” or “I think we might be missing something here”, or was it “You’re wrong, here’s why?” People will respond much better to the first two than the last one. Challenging one’s supervisors in a public meeting is a good way to get yourself fired, and it doesn’t matter if you’re right or not. A far more effective method would be to quietly send an email to your manager or other interested parties detailing your concerns. Keep your language neutral and refrain from assigning blame. If you do that, and they still don’t listen, you have done your job, and when it blows up in their faces, you’ve got written evidence that you knew of the issue, presented the issue to your co-workers, and were ignored.

        People are irrational, illogical, petty, self-centered piles of ego. You can’t change that. Either adapt your approach to take that into account if you want to be effective in your job, or find someplace where you don’t have to work with people you consider inferior (and by the sounds of it, that would be pretty darn difficult).

  41. Jerry Vandesic*

    “I’m a few terms away from graduating with an accounting degree and a CPA certificate on top of my masters in Psychology …”

    Just to be clear, the OP currently has zero financial credentials, and thinks they are more capable than people who have years of work experience in the field. Psych, Motion Science; Tomato, Tomahto.

  42. Marzipan*

    OP, I hate to have to tell you this, but your degrees are likely to be of very little interest to, well, anyone, just a few years from now. I’m not saying they weren’t worth doing; they may well open doors and get feet in doors and all that – but they don’t, in and of themselves, increase your own worth, and on a day-to-day basis they will probably rapidly become irrelevant. And that’s not a bad thing – it happens because life leads you down complicated paths that aren’t always the ones you expected, and stuff happens.

  43. Dana*

    There comes a time in many college students’ lives where you realize that a degree is proof you can learn. A piece of paper that says “I can follow directions and get things done”. It is a document that might go on to say “I really like learning in X field” or “I get things done in Y field”. It is a way to demonstrate that you are trainable. If college degree programs taught you everything you needed to know to work in a certain field, there would be no such thing as entry-level jobs. You could walk in a be the VP and make tons of money because you already knew everything there was to know. In reality, a college degree is a starting point and often gets you in the door. But there are also windows. The famous “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” adage means there are other ways to get the opportunity to learn how a certain company works. Plus, all companies are different and many evolve the way they operate over time. It’s a bit hard to image now after going through the recession, but a lot of people were able to work at the same company for 20+ years and grow in their roles, be valuable, and even help the company to evolve themselves. I don’t know how or why you know what kind of degrees the people you work with have, but I’d also like to remind you that taking a course on finance to help advance your knowledge does not give one a degree. And you’re able to learn very applicable things from just a handful of classes without needing to also retake Bio 101 and other gen eds to get another degree. So I’m not sure why you assume your co-workers haven’t done just that.

    Something else to think about is that managers and supervisors can absolutely know how to manage and supervise people and help them get things done without actually knowing how to do that thing themselves. And that’s also not something that can easily be taught in college.

    I encourage you to read everyone’s comments here and think about why the general consensus is not very favorable to your opinion.

  44. Gene*

    Besides, managers don’t need to know how to do the daily work, they need to know how to manage people.

    Our current Plant Manager (title change from Chief Operator) is not a Certified Operator, and that has created a lot of heartburn in the certified staff. Truth is, we needed someone who knew how to manage people, and while the previous COs were great operators, they couldn’t manage themselves out of a wet paper bag.

  45. Natalie*

    I think it’s great that all of these people found good career paths for them, even if they didn’t originally choose accounting/finance. I find there’s an unnecessarily large focus on choosing “the best” major, as though the career you pick at 20 must be your career for ever and ever. When I was 20 I didn’t have any idea what the career for my chosen major (history) was actually like , much less whether I wanted to do that forever or what I might want to do instead. I can’t tell you how much angst I went through at 25 when I realized I had no interest in getting a PhD and truly, sincerely believed I had ruined my life and was doomed to work as a receptionist forever.* Finding a different career path (accounting, coincidentally enough) was a lifeline.

    And FWIW, OP, I’m sure your accounting education has covered audits and other financial controls. Don’t you think a large, multi-state hospital system is occasionally subjected to one of those audit things? Like, probably constantly?

    *Receptionist is a perfectly fine career, just a terrible one for me as I’m generally a misanthrope.

    1. LeahS*

      Not to derail, but thank you so much for this. I’m 26 and truly convinced going to college ruined my life. This kind of made me want to cry, because I had no clue anyone else 1) Felt that way 2) Felt that way into their mid-twenties and was wrong

      1. BirdyTX*

        More people feel this way than you know. Most of us just hide it because we are convinced that no one else feels this way. I was almost 30 before I found what I wanted and what I was good at doing. And after finding what I wanted to do it took me almost 10 more years before I sought professional certification. So, at 42, I am still a year away and I could not be happier about it.

      2. Natalie*

        Have you ever thought about talking these kinds of things over with a therapist? I had a very similar mindset, always assuming I was the only one going through something and shouldn’t talk about it because OBVIOUSLY something was wrong with me. In my case this grew out of my general tendency towards anxiety and a not-so-great family of origin. I spent a few years with a therapist experienced with CBT breaking down and changing that thought pattern. It was very helpful and I’m approximately 1 million times happier.

        On a more practical note, I also found it super helpful to ask older adults (50+) about their career histories. Maybe I just know a lot of weirdos, but I never heard “Oh, I’ve been at Teapots, Inc. since I finished by degree in Teapot Design 30 years ago.”

      3. catsAreCool*

        Having a degree, as other people have stated, can get people take you more seriously, even if it’s not a degree you’re really using. Just because you might not have known what you were going to do doesn’t mean you ruined your life. Take heart!

        I think the people that know what they want to do when their 18 are not all that common. It’s a good argument for people taking a year or two off before going to college and also starting in community college to get the core classes finished.

  46. Blue Anne*

    OP, I’m a Big 4 accountant in the UK. I’m training for CA status, or equivalent of CPA.

    My degree is in Philosophy. I was accepted onto the training program because I have a degree with a good enough grade, was able to demonstrate relevant work experience and skills, and passed the math tests. There are people on my CA program who had accounting degrees and so were exempted from some of the classes, but that’s it.

    This is standard over here. In the Big 4. So much of accounting actually is, in fact, about practical experience. Is the CPA only exam-based? There’s no work experience component?

    You need to knock that attitude on the head if you want to succeed in public accounting. This is a field with way better social mobility than most types of finance, because the emphasis isn’t on what school you went to or what your degree is, it’s having the skills and getting your nose to the grindstone and being there for the team in busy season. If you’re looking down on your superiors because you don’t realize that they are way more qualified than you are right now, you are not going to make any friends.

    2. Blue Anne*

      Aha, I just re-read and realized that I’d missed the part about where OP is actually working. I’m… really surprised. In the UK, to get your charter, you must be able to demonstrate that you have a certain amount of experience doing a variety of accounting work, which would be really difficult if you were doing your traineeship anywhere but a public firm. There are companies who are able to do it, but they’re mostly large multinationals.

      So there you go, OP. Over here the emphasis is so much on experience that I assumed you must be training in an accounting firm. The things you learn in class are incredibly useful but you’re going to be clueless until you’ve applied them, multiple times.

      1. Natalie*

        Like most things in the US, this is annoyingly different by state. That said, by “CPA certificate” I’m assuming the OP is referring to a certificate that allows them to sit the CPA exam. I’m not aware of any way you can get a CPA without taking a big ass test.

        There are generally work requirements, too, but they may not be required before sitting the exam. (In my state we have up to 2 years after successfully passing the test.)

        1. Blue Anne*

          Ah, I should’ve known it’d be a state by state thing!

          Is the test itself standardized across states? I’ve heard rumours that our American colleagues get multiple-choice questions on the CPA, which made me sit down with a bottle of whisky and wonder why I ever left the States. (Expat here, moved at 18.)

          1. Natalie*

            Yep, same test across the country, plus all of our territories and protectorates, apparently. And there is a big chunk that’s multiple choice.

            1. LawBee*

              That’s about the only thing it has over the bar exam. It’s my understanding that the CPA exam is BRUTAL.

              1. Blue Anne*

                That’s my understanding too, which makes me weep, because over here the beginner tests which you take 5 of within a couple months of starting training are the only ones with any multiple choice at all. There’s tests all the way through the three years and for most of them you’re basically just writing financial statements from scratch onto a blank page.

                Sigh. Grass is always greener!

    3. Accountant*

      In the US, in most states you have to have 1 year experience working with a CPA as your boss.

  47. Just Another Techie*

    The cherry on this entitlement and bad manner sundae is that the LW has a masters degree in psychology. A masters. In psychology. If ever someone didn’t have room to throw stones for another person’s choice of subject to study in college. . . (not that I think it’s wrong or a waste to get a degree that’s not immediately marketable; hell I’m in the midst of an MDiv that I expect to have zero impact on my work life at all when it’s done, just, wow, the hypocrisy of bagging on someone for a degree you think is “useless” when your own degree doesn’t qualify you for anything.)

    1. AMG*

      I don’t think that throwing stones back is helpful, nor is a Master’s in psychology useless. I don’t think this is very fair at all. I assume we are here to help the OP, not to perform an online roast?

      1. scoop*

        I think the point wasn’t that the psych masters was useless, as it was that a psych masters has nothing to do with finance, which is what the OP is all in a lather about.

        At least, I hope that was the point. Otherwise, yeah AMG, you’re right.

      2. OfficePrincess*

        But how is the degree in psychology more relevant to finance than the supervisor’s degree in motion science? Unless we can show that, OP’s argument falls apart.

        1. THE OP*

          That is exactly my point. My psych degree is worthless in a business environment ( sorta, there are many facets I can still use from it ), those aside, Realizing that my psych degree isn’t appropriate for the business environment, I went back and am finishing up a relevant business degree. Unlike my supervisor who just continues to ride out the whole Motion science degree in a business environment. I actually had the gumption to go get something pertinent. If my supervisor were to go back to school and get an business related degree then I would have no issue at all.

          1. AtWill*

            Why are you so f*^(ing convinced that someone cannot attain competence in a field without being formally educated in that field? Take my field, for example, I’m a web developer. If you polled 100 of my peers, you would probably find 30 that had degrees in computer science. The rest of us studied something else but pursued this path for various reasons. Some of the best coders I know majored in English or communications or philosophy (seriously).

            Just because you don’t have the initials after your name doesn’t mean you can’t do the job. Five years into your career, what you majored in has become pretty much completely meaningless. After that it’s all about your experience.

    2. Aunt Vixen*

      “Hell, I’m in the midst of an MDiv” is my very favorite accidental irony so far today. :-D

    3. Muriel Heslop*

      I hire a lot of psychology grad student for internships. Many of these degrees are research-based and don’t have the focus on people skills that our culture projects onto psychology. I’ve had some amazing interns and I’ve had some interns that I have prayed stay in research and never interact with people. (We need people skills from our interns.)

      (I have a BA in History and English + an MA in education. No psych degree.)

    4. Ad Astra*

      Most of the therapists, counselors, and researchers I know have a master’s in psychology. It can be a very useful degree, though maybe not so much in the business department of a hospital.

  48. KT*

    I will try very hard to be polite, but it’s hard, as the LW sounds extremely young, naive, and has a sense of entitlement that really needs to be knocked loose.

    Dear LW. Your degree, beyond a piece of paper, really is pretty meaningless. I’m sure you feel very smug and worldly with your degree, but until you are int he workplace, putting out fires, frantically trying to make things work that have actual consequences, you quite honestly don’t know smack.

    Someone with 20+ years of experience and no degree is better equipped than someone with a Master’s and little experience. They have actual situational experience–they have problem solved, strategized, and made things work for decades. You wrote a few papers and passed a few hypothetical tests.

    Rein in the privilege, eat some humble pie, and learn to listen.

    1. AMG*

      I took OP’s comments to mean that someone with 20 years’ expereince AND a degree would be better.

        1. alsoanon*

          Which is the point 85% of the comments are trying to hammer home–“stop judging, OP, they have college degrees AND 20 years experience–yes, they are qualified for your respect as managers!”

  49. Jake*

    My wife and I both work in fields where for many positions a degree is required to legally perform the work. I can understand the OP’s position, but the bottom line in almost any position is can the person do the job? In this particular situation education shouldn’t even cross our minds because the level or style of education doesn’t indicate whether a person is competent. The only thing that matters is if they are doing a good job.

  50. AMG*

    I’m just really shocked at all the comments about how a degree isn’t anything more than a way to get into the job. I would never have guessed such a high proportion of people really believe that. My education helped me to learn many things that come in handy on a daily basis even though I graduated a long time ago. Soft skills, more tangible skills, all of it. I really value my education and degree because of what it has done to advance me in my career and to enable my professional successes and experience.

    1. LBK*

      How much of that is specific to your actual degree, though? I agree that a lot of what you pick up in college is helpful in the working world, but a lot of it you can get with any degree. It doesn’t have to be specific to your field.

      1. Mike C.*

        What exactly do you mean by “specific to your degree”? The analytical skills I learned by taking so many math courses is really useful even though I haven’t used formal calculus in years for instance.

      2. AMG*

        Pretty much all of it. I currently have 3 books from college on my desk right now, and I use them. I have used my education to solve problems my peers haven’t. Statistics, Spanish, Communications, Finance, CIS, International Business, Operations Forecasting, Manufacturing, Planning, Procurement, Calculus, Algebra to name a few.

        1. LBK*

          I’ll take your word for it, I guess. That’s so completely different from my experience that I don’t know how to relate – I never had to do the kind of problem solving for school that I do for work.

        2. LawBee*

          That’s impressive! It sounds like you actually managed to do that thing that so many of us didn’t – got a career in the field in which you studied. :D

          I use literally ZERO of my actual college coursework in my career. Z-E-R-O.

    2. Chickaletta*

      I’m a bit surprised too. I wonder if it’s a sign of a societal shift away from post-secondary education. My nephew recently dropped out of college because he felt the expense wasn’t worth it. He has a point – it’s getting to be so expensive that instead of spending four years racking up debt, you could spend four years earning income AND experience. In a lot of fields, it kinda makes sense.

      1. Phoenix*

        I don’t know if it’s a sign of a shift away from post-secondary education altogether, but perhaps a shift in exactly how *mandatory* a degree should be, and a realistic look at what degrees actually get you in the current job market. I’m three years out of college, and I know a LOT of my peers are disillusioned with the actual advantages of their (very expensive) degrees.

      2. ExceptionToTheRule*

        If I’d known when I was 18 what I now know at 41, I’d have gotten a 2-year associates degree. My finances would certainly be in better shape.

    3. Nina*

      I personally think an education (along with a degree) is extremely valuable, job or not, but that’s not my issue here with the OP. It’s that they’re dismissing the education of their supervisors (the condescending “computer science” comment for one) and because of this, they feel that their managers/supervisors don’t deserve any respect. Apparently, skill and experience don’t count?

      1. AMG*

        Good point, and I think that these are 2 separate issues that are getting thrown into one pot.

    4. MsM*

      I value my degrees, too. But I’ve been surprised by the parts of them I wind up using on a daily basis, and how important the one that supposedly should have made me unemployable outside of the food service industry is in relation to the more advanced one. And while the soft skills have also been helpful, I could potentially have picked those things up via other avenues. I think we all just want the OP to realize that degree does not automatically equal competence or sufficient training or expertise in a given subject area.

    5. MashaKasha*

      My education was in computer science, in Eastern Europe in the mid 80s. You can take an educated (heh heh) guess as to how much of it is now applicable in my day to day job. It did however teach me to absorb new information, learn new skills, apply logical reasoning etc. Not to mention it provided connections that sometimes still come in handy. This IMO is what a college education does – helps you become a well-rounded individual, and provides you with an initial network of connections before you can build one through your work.

      Thing is, going back to OP’s post, a) a degree in Motion Science can provide you with these benefits just as well as a degree in finance; and 2) there are alternate routes to becoming well-rounded and developing a network. They aren’t the easiest routes, but if a person wants and is able to follow such a route successfully, more power to them.

    6. Oryx*

      But how much of that has to do with the actual degree and how much has to do with just going to college? Soft skills are rarely, if ever, taught in the classroom. Instead, they are often learned by interacting with classmates and professors or by interacting with colleagues, regardless of whether or not you went to college. Same with tangible skills: I have a specialized Master degree and most was all theory work. The tangible skills I did learn I don’t use and the tangible skills I use I didn’t learn in the classroom, I learned on the job.

      1. AMG*

        In my classes they were. Negotiations, compromise, sound decision-making, talking through disagreements, and I’m sure there are others.

        1. Chickaletta*

          See, I didn’t learn any of these types of soft-skills in college, I learned these through on-the-job and life experiences. College taught me hard-skills, like debits vs. credits, assets vs equity, the formula to figure how interest rates directly affect real wages…

        2. LBK*

          We must have done wildly different types of classes because I can’t think of how I would’ve learned any of those things in college. I assume through group projects? But I really feel like there are no similarities between working in a team for work and how group projects operated other than at the highest surface level of multiple people contributing to a finished product.

            1. Editor*

              I didn’t learn any soft skills while pursuing an English major and I never did any group projects, although I do use things I learned in my linguistics classes and computer science electives in the course of my work. I took one course in statistics after college, and that has been useful in some of the work I’ve done.

              I learned work skills in my work-study job in the campus libraries. That work led to my first job after college, not my degree. While I don’t view my degree as “just a piece of paper,” I think the usefulness of particular degrees varies a lot by major, department, and college. This is why fit is so important when choosing a college, why I now think a gap year is important before attending college, and why I recommend to young relatives that they look for college programs that support co-op education or internships.

      2. Not So NewReader*

        Soft skills? I would never recommend the soft skills I saw being used in college for use the workplace. Never. Ever. You don’t undermine your cohort, you do not mock your boss, you don’t settle for average or below average work… no, no, no.

    7. Rita*

      I think it totally depends on the job and the career. My husband no doubt uses what he learned getting his bachelors and masters degree in his teaching. On the other hand, my degree in journalism has given me more general skills that I could use towards different roles I’ve had since graduating 10 years. I continue to learn new things on my own and by working with others to help develop new skills when needed.

      1. Muriel Heslop*

        I am sure this varies from person to person, but I learned very little from my education classes compared to my student teaching! It was all theory until it was tested in front of a class (but it certainly underscored for me the value of student teaching, which is coursework.)

    8. fposte*

      I wouldn’t say that’s all it could ever be either; my career path is pretty strongly related to it, in fact. But that’s not the same thing as saying a degree is the measure of your knowledge 20 years on, and I think that’s what people are pushing back against.

      1. AMG*

        Of course–a very fair point. I just take exception to the comments that a degree worthless after you get your first entry-level job.

        1. Emily, admin extraordinaire*

          I don’t think most of us are saying it’s worthless, but the farther away you get from it, it does become of less worth. My dad is an electrical engineer, with a focus on audio. He graduated with his BS in 1985. When he got his degree, the world was still working in analog. Digital audio was starting to become a thing, but it hadn’t trickled down to his school yet. His math classes still had him using a slide rule, for heaven’s sake (he did get a scientific calculator a few years later, but it cost $300, which inflation calculators say is about $900 today. He still has the calculator, incidentally). He was laying out circuit boards by hand. Does he still use the basics he learned back then every day? Yes. Has had to learn a heck of a lot in the intervening 30 years to stay relevant? Oh, heck, yeah.

          When you throw in that he was already working full-time as an engineer for several years before he graduated (mostly self-taught), it makes that degree seem much less relevant.

          1. AMG*

            I think some people are saying the degree is straight-up worthless, but perhaps I misunderstood. If I had to pick between my degree or my experience, I would absolutely choose the latter because I have learned much more that way…over time.

            1. Emily, admin extraordinaire*

              Well, in some fields, the degree might be worthless or almost worthless. I think, though, what most people here are saying is that given a choice between a degree and experience, we should err on the side of experience.

              I like to think about it like this conversation from L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of the Island (and looking over it, how appropriate it is!):

              “Judging from what you all say” remarked Aunt Jamesina, “the sum and substance is that you can learn—if you’ve got natural gumption enough—in four years at college what it would take about twenty years of living to teach you. Well, that justifies higher education in my opinion. It’s a matter I was always dubious about before.”

              “But what about people who haven’t natural gumption, Aunt Jimsie?”

              “People who haven’t natural gumption never learn,” retorted Aunt Jamesina, “neither in college nor life. If they live to be a hundred they really don’t know anything more than when they were born. It’s their misfortune not their fault, poor souls. But those of us who have some gumption should duly thank the Lord for it.”

              “Will you please define what gumption is, Aunt Jimsie?” asked Phil.

              “No, I won’t, young woman. Any one who has gumption knows what it is, and any one who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.”

              1. Mike C.*

                At least for me, i wouldn’t have the experience I currently have without my degree.

            2. THE OP*

              I disagree. Without my psych degree, I wouldn’t have the theoretical knowledge to understand why the patients did what they did or why they thought the ways they did. My education helped me help the patients I dealt with in life and death or suicidal situations, my education allowed me to explain to families how to cope with the trauma or understanding an illness of the mind.

              Perhaps many of you didn’t use your degree, but I certainly used mine, and I could not have done my job with out the theory behind it all.

              So for you to say that you’d pick your experience over your degree, I say I wouldn’t have my experience without my degree.

              1. Loose Seal*

                Are you licensed in the mental health field? I’m confused as to why someone in the finance office is giving mental health treatment to patients and their families. If you are not licensed or under the supervision of a licensed mental health professional while getting your hours needed for licensure, you need to stop all this:

                “…help the patients I dealt with in life and death or suicidal situations, my education allowed me to explain to families how to cope with the trauma or understanding an illness of the mind.”

                Just because you have the book-learning in psychology does not mean you are qualified to do any of that.

    9. Mike C.*

      I’m with you AMG, I wouldn’t have been able to jump industries like I have without the things I learned in my specific undergrad program.

    10. Jake*

      While I use knowledge from my degree on a daily basis, I’m not under the delusion that the only way to obtain that knowledge is through a degree.

    11. Natalie*

      It appears that all three people that OP mentions do have degrees, just not in finance/accounting specifically. They did learn the general soft skills you pick up in college, plus all the field-specific skills for their major (many of which may be applicable to their work) and years of experience. Neither us nor the OP has any reason to think that their 3 upper management people don’t find their education coming in handy on a daily basis.

    12. Cambridge Comma*

      I think what people mean is that few people use the precise knowledge from History of Teapots 101 in their daily work as a spout analyst, and that you can gain the knowledge to be an excellent spout analyst by other means and without having a clue about Teapot History. I suspect that most posters are classing the soft skills you mention as not part of what you learn at college, seeing as the learning of them is incidental.

    13. nona*

      Well, I do value my education. But I could have read the same books and had the same discussions outside of a college. The only things I would have missed would be a study abroad trip and the diploma (which is what I was there for).

      1. Mike C.*

        People say this, but you’re going to miss a lot of the nuance of the material being presented if you don’t have a guide, or only read about it without doing it.

          1. Mike C.*

            I really don’t know many other places that have fully stocked laboratories where complete newbies are allowed to perform experiments!

    14. Juli G.*

      I value my education and my time in college a lot. I think that the experiences and knowledge that I gained have helped me get the career that I have and enjoy.

      I couldn’t do this job without my college work. I do think that someone without a degree could do my job. Not anyone but someone could have gotten the value I got from college elsewhere.

    15. MaryMary*

      They say that half the information students learn in medical school is outdated within five years. I don’t think the percentage is as high in non-STEM fields, but there are lots of things I learned in school that are no longer relevant or useful. There are a few things I learned that I use all the time, or skills I developed that are extremely useful while I haven’t used the actual subject matter in decades (ahem, calculus). That being said, there are a lot of other ways to develop those same skills outside of a classroom.

    16. cv*

      The anti-degree sentiment here has gotten my hackles up a little, too, but that’s probably because I’m currently a grad student. :)

      Grad school has been a great choice for me, though I recognize that it can often be a terrible idea for others. But I’ve gone in with my eyes open – I’m using the degree to get the field-specific knowledge and lines on my resume that I need to switch careers more than a decade out of college, I was lucky enough to be able to choose a top-ranked program with a great alumni network where my classmates who graduated a few weeks ago have really interesting jobs in the field already, and I got the degree paid for via the research project I’m doing.

      I’m in a field where most people don’t have particularly relevant education (it’s not a common academic subject), and there are a lot of smart people doing really good work who worked their way up or have really odd career trajectories. The path I’ve chosen is one way to get where I want to go, and there are plenty of perfectly valid alternatives. But my degree is definitely giving me real skills and knowledge that I’ll be using for a long time.

      1. AMG*

        Exactly. I am really put off by the amount of vitriol over something that’s a positive in people’s lives.

      2. Rana*

        Agreed. On the one hand, my doctorate is as much a liability as a benefit outside of academia and the specialized fields I’m freelancing in, but, on the other, there are so many things I learned while earning it that I can’t say that it wasn’t worth it.

        It was hard, and difficult, and I made stupid assumptions about its usefulness after graduation that I regret, but do I regret having earned the degree itself? No. Not one bit.

    17. Cari*

      In the software industry I’ve gotten the impression experience is more valuable than simply having a qualification, at least from people actually in the trenches as it were. I’ve heard it’s the same in engineering fields (steelwork, welding, metallurgy for example). I don’t agree that a degree is just a piece of paper, but these days it’s not worth the debt if you aren’t making use of the skills and knowledge you gained from either the specific course, or the general higher educational skills.

      Like, CS gave me the ability to understand the principles of programming and gave me a love for databases, but we were taught so many arsebackwards and out of date ways of doing things by some of the lectures.

      In my first job out of uni, I had to unlearn and relearn a lot of the practical stuff, like how to correctly join tables when querying a DB. Then I started to do a masters in computer security a few years ago, and there was one module about databases where the lecturer was *still* using the long since deprecated method of joining tables :|

      If you come out of uni after doing a course where the teaching staff are only working to fund their pet research projects and aren’t keeping up-to-date with advances and practices in the field, with an attitude like the OP appears to have, one may as well use that piece of paper to wipe one’s backside.

    18. Elizabeth West*

      I value mine too. I have to, because I’m going to most likely spend literally the rest of my life paying for them.

      But I don’t really need them to do administrative work. I could do it without them. Even the tech editing–I didn’t know any of it when I started. One of the reasons I quit school this last time was that I realized everything they were teaching me I could learn on my own, and I was just racking up more debt learning it on a campus.

  51. Allison*

    A college degree is a piece of paper, it serves as proof that you passed a series of courses designed to prepare you for a specific industry and/or career path. A degree, plus relevant internship experience these days, is meant to open doors to *entry level* jobs, and is considered relevant in your first few years after college. There are a few industries, like law and medicine, where your degree and alma mater will impact your credibility until you retire, but for the most part, it becomes completely irrelevant once you have real world experience under your belt.

    OP, it sounds like you’re frustrated because you’ve been working your tail off to launch a career in finance, only to see that some people found success in that career path without putting in that same level of academic work. However, you need to remember that they have decades of real-world experience that gave them the skills and knowledge you’re acquiring now, just in a different way. There are many paths to success, some are traditional and some are a little unorthodox, but all honest paths are valid, so stop comparing them.

    1. Allison*

      PS, OP: if you want to advance in your career, you need solid references, meaning you should probably ensure a good reference from your current supervisor. If you don’t respect the people you’re working for, not only are you looking at a weak reference (at best), you may hurt your reputation in the industry if word gets out that you were a disrespectful little brat during this gig. You don’t need to worship them, but you do need to respect them.

      1. JMegan*

        >>You don’t need to worship them, but you do need to respect them.

        This is a really good point.

        1. LawBee*

          and if you can’t respect them as people, at least try to respect that fact that they’ve survived and thrived for decades in the field that you want to work in.

  52. PriorityZero*

    Becoming a CPA does require work experience (supervised by a CPA). I think the rules vary by state. CA is 2 years I believe.

  53. Chickaletta*

    I was going to say about the same thing as Allison and just about everyone else, but I can see the point has already been made. So I’m going to bring up a new point in defense of the LW because there’s something else bigger going on here. Is a college education worth it anymore?

    • College education is getting to be insanely expensive. I know smart young people who are choosing not to get a bachelor’s degree because they feel that the cost isn’t worth it. I think this post is an argument in their favor – if you’re going to end up just as well off after a decades or two, why take on the debt? Why spend four years studying when they could be used gaining experience and starting to work up the ladder?

    • Qualifications for getting a job are much stricter these days and one of those is having the right degree. We’ve all seen those job descriptions that want a very specific list of technical qualifications (degree in A, certification in B, C numbers of years of experience in industry D…) So what gives? The LW kinda has a point, because you’d think that a person in a very senior position has met all the requirements for the job. While it’s true that they probably learned along they way and are probably very good at what they do, it begs the question: is a college degree necessary? Why doesn’t everyone just start working their way up the ladder right after high school? Is there anything that a college education provides anymore?

    1. TootsNYC*

      Well, one thing that happens is: The OP’s managers are the “survivors”–they’re already at the end of the process. They beat the odds.

      How many people entering the work world now will rise that high without the degree?
      And how many of their peers rose very high without the degree?

      The degree may get you the start now; starting without one might not get you in the door.

      It’s sort of like looking at someone who survived a war and thinking that of course they were going to be the experienced veteran when they were done–but they couldn’t have known that at the beginning; guys next to them in the trenches died. The only reason they’re the battle-grizzled veteran is that they were lucky. And when they weren’t lucky, then maybe they were expert enough to make smart decisions (like, no fire in -their- foxhole)–but that wasn’t a guarantee.

      1. fposte*

        I think what’s happening is a change in the meaning of “worth.” College used to be considered the great career ticket–if you have a college degree, you’re set! And it’s not going to do that any more–it’s just too predominant. But financially, it’s still likely to be worth it because of the huge income consequences of going without a degree.

        I would also argue that there’s a lot of value in a university education intellectually and humanistically, but I understand that that doesn’t feed you upon graduation or put money in a 401k.

        1. Ad Astra*

          The question of whether college is “worth” the expense has a lot to do with how much you personally value education, not just whether you’ll make more money in the long run. I’d argue it also depends on how much money you’ll have to borrow in order to attend college.

          I knew I couldn’t really afford college, but I also knew that the jobs I wanted (writing, editing, maybe teaching) required a degree. People advised me to look at vocational programs instead, but I wouldn’t be a good cosmetologist/plumber/mechanic/fire fighter/whatever. So even though my college debt is a significant financial problem, being blocked from all the careers I was interested in would be a significant life problem.

        2. Natalie*

          Regarding your second point, I’m a HUGE believer in the general holistic benefits of higher education, but I’ve been reflecting recently how much of that belief is shaped by growing up in the shadow of the baby boom. Boomers could go to their in-state land grant college for basically no money (often actually no money). Whereas we ask today’s 18 year old to take on a debt burden that will, at best, equal their likely annual earnings and realistically will probably be several times that. Sigh.

          1. fposte*

            Yes, these days I’d put the financial benefits first and the educational growth benefits second. Sigh x 2.

            I found a really interesting collection of stats on long-term benefits associated with greater education here: https://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/Facts_For_Education_Advocates_Sept.pdf

            Obviously there’s some correlation as well as causation going on in some instances, but long-term it looks like even with loans a bachelor’s degree is likely to pay you back.

        3. Mike C.*

          I agree, it’s just that I can’t show any charts or data regarding that last point.

    3. Allison*

      I won’t bash the decision to go to college, I think there’s generally value in a degree, but college is what you make of it, and I do question the people who go hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to attend a prestigious institution, when they have no idea what they want to do, end up majoring in a liberal arts major, and don’t make the most of their time there. Employers want recent grads who’ve already managed to get some (relevant) real-world experience under their belts, so if all you do is take classes, it doesn’t matter if you went to state school or an Ivy League university.

      When I was looking at resumes for an entry-level mobile development job, I was looking for people with relevant internship experience, and/or people who made apps as part of major academic projects, or who made apps on their own and got them published. Sure, the hiring manager did like to see people from specific schools, but only because we’d hired successful developers from those schools in the past, not just because they looked good on paper.

      1. Mike C.*

        From the research I’ve been hearing about (PBS Newshour if you want to look it up), the prestigious universities are the ones with more money and financial aid to offer, especially when you look to the recent cuts to the public systems in many states. I know my out-of-state private school was cheaper than my in state college.

        1. fposte*

          And even smaller colleges, too. Oberlin has that amazing free ride for any kid from the town, which is causing people to move to Oberlin so that their kids can get that education.

          My big state university can’t do anything like that.

                1. fposte*

                  That’s what I thought I remembered–I have friends from Pomona and Pitzer and knew it wasn’t those.

    4. MsM*

      I don’t think you can really compare the circumstances under which someone was hired 20+ years ago to today. As others have pointed out, there are certain fields that you could only get into through experience because they just didn’t exist until recently. My dad majored in political science, and any computer classes he would’ve taken would’ve been zero help in his subsequent career in IT, what with all the focus on punchcards. But I suspect anyone applying for the equivalent of his first job in that field today would be expected to have formal credentials, because now it’s an option and they don’t want to have to wait for that person to figure it out as they go. Maybe the pendulum will swing back and employers will stop listing BAs as a minimum qualification as they become less affordable for more people, but I don’t think we’re there yet.

      1. Editor*

        Re “any computer classes he would’ve taken would’ve been zero help in his subsequent career in IT, what with all the focus on punchcards.”

        Sigh. The focus wasn’t on punchcards. Speaking as a dinosaur who took computer science classes in the 1970s that involved creating punchcards and a person who married a computer science major from the same era, the focus was on programming and understanding the mechanics and logic of procedures in relation to what the machine could accomplish within its architecture. Computer science wasn’t data entry. Each punchcard carried one line of code, properly indented if need be (as far as I recall), and additional cards carried data.

        A lot of the work involved in creating a successful program involved breaking tasks into very small units and foreseeing all the possibilities that might arise. The work was very analytical, at least at our college, but a lot of the lectures involved showing us how such tasks could be accomplished within the limitations of the technology based on binary coding. Donald Knuth’s work on algorithms was fairly recent at the time, to give you some context. The punchcards were an annoying necessity, but no worse than typing out an English paper on an electric typewriter and then retyping the revised paper. Batch processing was a loathsome bottleneck.

        I don’t think any of my introductory computer science classes actually spent any time discussing the art and science of punchcards. Outside of class, there was a tour of the computer science lab where either a TA or a computer operator showed us where the keypunch units were and gave a couple of tips on how to operate them, a demonstration of how to properly submit a deck so it could be processed, the board where the batch times were listed, and a visit to the location where printouts were racked by course and student name — and maybe a trip to a lounge nearby where the vending machines were.

    5. fposte*

      It’s certainly worth discussing, but I’m not sure I extrapolate the same as you do. To me, it’s important to remember that “worth it” isn’t the same thing as “work in a field allied to the title of my major”; that’s the difference between a university and a vocational school. For most jobs, I think it’s a mistake for *only* the credential/degree could count as a qualification. I browsed CFO postings and most of them have “or equivalent experience” after their degree requirements, and I think that makes a ton of sense.

    6. Steve G*

      I had no clue I’d come back an hour later and find so many comments saying the OP is wrong, so I would like to throw out another “fact” in the OP’s defense: sometimes promotions just don’t make sense. Sometimes they aren’t 100% fair. Not sure that that is the case here, but one similar thing that I’ve seen is people job hopped based on inflated job titles, reaching director level by 30 doing basically the same work as someone at an associate level at some companies. It is not fair when you don’t work for a company that gives out fair job titles! But you can’t get mad at the people who have them and use them to make more money somewhere else, you need to get your foot into the door of precisely those companies so you yourself get the opportunity!

      Also concur with the qualifications getting stricter thing. Sad, but true.

      1. einahpets*

        I agree with this point so much! At my company, we have hired people with a job title or two above me in the last year that have certain… gaps in their knowledge. It comes out pretty quickly, and I guess I would prefer to never be in that position myself.

    7. Laura the Librarian*

      Chickaletta,

      My reaction was similar to yours. While I think the OP comes off as way entitled, I understand some of the frustration. OP has a Psychology degree. I’m guessing they realized that degree did not lead to the job they wanted, so OP went back to school to switch careers, only to find that the people above her had degrees completely unrelated to their positions. I also agree with you that the qualifications are much stricter these days. A lot of job posting want only a specific degree, and we’ve heard multiple stories on this blog on online application systems that weed people out if the title of their degree is even slightly off from what the posting requires.

  54. MashaKasha*

    Maybe a career in academia would be a better fit for OP than the one they are pursuing now? (sorry about the “they”, I’m not sure if OP is a guy or a girl.) Because, as everyone correctly pointed out, most professions do not work that way – no one in their right mind gives or withholds raises and promotions to an employee based on the degree they did or did not get 20 years ago, instead of their work experience, skills, and contribution. If this causes OP that much frustration, then maybe teaching higher ed (after getting an appropriate degree of course) would be a better career choice for them? I’m not being sarcastic BTW. I’m dead serious.

    1. Christy*

      Yes, this type of attitude about education equaling qualification and experience not mattering totally belongs in academia. (Which makes sense, as I suspect that’s how OP got their attitude in the first place.)

      1. fposte*

        See, and I’m in academia and I’d have said it was more a government thing. I guess we all think it’s someplace else.

        1. Christy*

          That’s fascinating! My office(s) in the government have not relied upon education hardly at all. I have had some additional success because I have a masters degree, but now that I’ve gotten my new position (seven years into the professional workforce) my masters degree won’t matter at all. I had many high-graded, very skilled coworkers who didn’t go to college.

          My knowledge of academia comes from my girlfriend’s employment in a college library and my own experience in library school. There in particular, they really emphasize the education besting experience.

          What area do you work in where this isn’t an issue? I’m genuinely curious.

          1. fposte*

            LIS :-). I do think it’s different for professional degrees, but, that being said, a lot of us in library schools didn’t get our degrees in LIS and yet here we are. Additionally, I was thinking about the fact that our academic staff come from all kinds of different backgrounds, while our civil service staff–state controlled–have to meet very strict qualifications.

            1. Christy*

              Hah! Fascinating. Her (public university) academic library has a huge class divide between those who are librarians and those who are staff. It’s huge. Those with MLSes get much more respect than those without. Our state also doesn’t have the civil service distinction for non-academic staff.

              1. fposte*

                Ah, I could see that more within the library itself; it’s often literally a faculty/staff distinction there. But a lot of this does tend to be about what angle you’re looking from and who you’re looking at, I think.

        2. LawBee*

          … where did I get the idea that you worked in government, I wonder? Oh, fposte, you are a delightful mystery to me now. :D

          1. fposte*

            It’s a state university, so I definitely work for the state in that sense and have mentioned that–that’s probably why. But once you’re here, there’s a lot of differentiation between civil service and academics, some of whom may not even work on the state budget. (Lucky them, these days.)

      2. Mallory Janis Ian*

        I don’t have a degree (just two years of college as a traditional student, one year as a non-trad, and still planning to complete those final hours that lead to a degree).

        When I was being interviewed for my current job, as assistant to the department head of a university academic unit, I asked the group if anyone had any reservations about my fit for the position. One person spoke up and said that the lack of a degree was a concern for her, because it cast doubt on my ability to finish things. I stayed in my previous admin job for eight years (with a couple of promotions-in-place, including title reclassifications, as my contributions increased). I was hired away by my department Head for his private firm, so it’s not like I left for some random other opportunity. I considered that “sticking with” my boss.

        But at least one person took my lack of a degree as an inability to finish things, and I know that a lot of people see it the same way, even in light of work evidence to the contrary. I still plan to finish; the logistics are just tougher now that I have a family and kids and need to work full time. As NSNR said upthread to Elizabeth West, I still have the pelican by the throat; it isn’t going to swallow me just yet.

    2. SG*

      I worked for a little while in academia…and dealt with some of the stupidest people in my time there. If you want relics, believe me, try dealing with someone who still thinks theology from the 1970s is edgy and has no idea how to use email. WHAT a treat.

  55. Lefty*

    There’s a great term in the Maritime industry that comes to mind as I read this- “hawespiper”. A hawespiper is someone who works his or her way through the ranks of the Merchant Mariner world to become an Officer on a vessel instead of going through an academy to earn that title. It’s an interesting term because it shows that someone started at the “bottom” (maybe akin to OP’s views on call center reps) and earned their way to the rank of officer (or supervisor in OP’s case). It’s a badge of honor to be a true hawespiper to those who are, but just like OP, there are groups who view the academically trained as superior. Interesting to know this schism exists in other industries as well…

    1. Elizabeth West*

      In that particular industry, I’d feel infinitely more comfortable sailing with someone who knew the job that deeply. I’d be nervous of the other one. Like with Goreman in the movie Aliens. Goreman was all academics–“How many combat drops?” “Two…including this one.” He was a terrible officer. Hell, Newt was better at assessing situations than he was.

  56. TootsNYC*

    I have an uncle who was the COO of a international retail company. Before that he was the CFO of a West Coast retail company. Before that he was the CFO of an East Cost retail company.

    At various points in there, he was the VP of IT and the CIO of big retail companies. With multiple stores in almost every state. Because–programs like VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 were the entree of computers into the workplace, and they came into the corporate world through the finance sector. You know–numbers.

    He started out as a bag boy at a Minnesota grocery store. Then he became the bookkeeper of that store, then an accounting manager of the chain.

    He knows more than all the people below him with all their degrees.
    He told me once of his MBA underlings bringing him the numbers and reports. He looked at their report and said, “This number’s wrong–you’re missing about $40,000 in profits, I think.” No, no, they said–it’s right. He said, “Go back and look–something’s missing.”
    they came back in wonder–indeed, though the math on the sheet was right, it turned out that something like $42,000 in profit hadn’t made its way onto that spreadsheet. But it was out there, in the company, and he knew it. Instinctively. Or, subconsciously. Or, rationally and logically but not in a way he could identify immediately.

    Also: People like my uncle, or the OP’s boss, with 20 years of work experience, are often asked to TEACH computer glasses. You know, upper level seminars. From industry pros.

    1. AMG*

      People like this are exceptional, and not the norm. To get to this level, most people need a degree.

        1. Mallory Janis Ian*

          I had a similar thought while reading other readers’ accounts of what degrees they have (or don’t have) and what jobs they have. Especially while reading the English degree-to-tech job [or nuclear physics (!!) job] or no-degree-to-high-finance job, I thought, I’m not smart enough to do that without a degree; I would need to be explicitly taught to learn what they have managed to pick up on their own. Hell, I probably couldn’t do what they’ve done even with a degree. Some people are just exceptional and a degree or lack thereof doesn’t change that for them.

      2. anon for this*

        My dad has a physical education degree and was a decorated officer in Vietnam. While enjoying a very successful career on Wall Street he was asked annually, for several years, to teach a special seminar at Wharton. With a PE degree.

        I work with a woman who has a year of community college classes who works in analytics for our company. She has been here 15 years and she built most of our programs.

        Those are just two people I know who have worked their way up through non-traditional trajectories. The things they have in common are that they are very hard-working, have exceptional soft skills, and they have natural gifts and talents. I think this is more common than we realize in the professional world, but there is a lot of money to be made by channeling everyone toward college and eliminating the vocational programs and classes that were once provided in high school.

        1. fposte*

          And also that they did it 20-40 years ago. It’s a loophole that gets tighter and tighter as time goes by.

    2. sam*

      My dad was a similar way. He never graduated from college and started out working in the art department at an ad agency. He eventually became Director of Marketing for a Fortune 500 company, and he was pretty much considered an industry genius. MBAs would get hired into his department and my dad was the one who always survived every round of layoffs the company ever had (to the point where, when he was ready to finally leave after 20 years, he basically had to threaten to quit to get the “good” severance package because they didn’t want him to go. He continued to consult for them for a few years afterwards).

      He got his foot in the door during an era where people could still get jobs at major corporations without a degree and work their way up. To a point – he was never promoted past a certain point, and never got a VP title (or money), specifically because he didn’t have an MBA (heck, he didn’t even have a bachelors). That’s ultimately why he wanted to leave. I think he made more money from the company in the two years he spent as a “consultant” than in the 5 years prior in salary, and that’s not counting the severance and pension they were paying him.

  57. Ad Astra*

    This post has a very high potential for pile-on, so I’ll try not to contribute to that. The OP might not realize this, so I’ll say, with as much respect and kindness as possible, that this letter makes her sound like quite a snob. If she doesn’t want to be a snob, she may have to re-examine her perspective here. (If she prefers to stay a snob, then I suppose it would still behoove her not to share these opinions with other people, especially coworkers.)

    What strikes me about this letter is the phrase “education that doesn’t pertain to the job.” Twenty years of experience in the field is education that pertains to the job. OP is speaking as if the managers have formal education in an unrelated field and then spent the last 20 years as professional tap dancers or truck drivers or something. It’s clear that they learned how to do their jobs with hands-on training and experience, which is how most people learn to do their jobs.

    It sounds like the OP is fairly early into her career, and thus far everything she knows about finance and accounting has come from formal education. That’s fine, and it will likely mean her first position out of grad school will be something higher up than a call center rep. Great! The right college degree will let you skip a few rungs on the ladder, but it can’t replace a track record of success.

    1. Cordelia Naismith*

      What strikes me about this letter is the phrase “education that doesn’t pertain to the job.” Twenty years of experience in the field is education that pertains to the job.

      Yes, this.

      I am fairly dismayed by the anti-degree sentiment this letter has produced. I work in higher education, and I think there is real value in college degrees that goes beyond what kind of starting salary we can get with one vs without one. Part of the experience of getting a college education has to do with broadening your mind and your base of knowledge, and with being exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking — you can’t really get that kind of experience anywhere else.

      But learning is not restricted to the classroom. If the OP thinks learning stops once you leave school, then they are sorely mistaken. Some of the most valuable learning experiences I have ever had happened outside the walls of the classroom.

      OP, your supervisors have degrees, even though they are outside the realm of finance. That degree shows that they are educated and have the ability and the persistence necessary to learn new things. The 20+ years of experience at your company taught them what they needed to know to be successful in their current jobs. They learned finance by doing, and that is just as valuable as learning in a classroom.

      And, even if they didn’t have any degrees at all but had learned everything they know through on-the-job experience, would that make them somehow unfit for their jobs? Does it really matter so much where they learned what they know as long as they do, in fact, know it?

      I think in recent years we as a society have started to think that having degrees in specific subjects is somehow a necessary prerequisite for doing certain jobs. For some jobs, that may be true, but for most, it really isn’t. So many people have college degrees now, employers have started tacking a degree requirement on to the job listing even when, if you consider what the job actually entails, one isn’t specifically necessary to do the job. If more employers were willing to invest in on-the-job training, I think this kind of false requirement would start disappearing.

      1. Marcela*

        I don’t think people is anti-degree. It’s just that if you put the degree against 20+years of experience, the contribution of that degree to somebody’s daily work is probably meaningless.

        1. Cordelia Naismith*

          In terms of what they do in their job on a daily basis, yes, I’m sure you’re right. The process of getting the degree helped shape them into the people they are today, though, with their own unique thought processes and problem-solving skills.

          But I think you’re right — I’m arguing unnecessarily on a point people aren’t disagreeing with. I’ll stop now.

      2. Windchime*

        I would also disagree that college is the only place to learn to broaden your mind and learn new ways of thinking. It absolutely can happen in college, but only if a person wants to learn to think that way. And mind-broadening can happen in all walks of life; not just in college. To subscribe to this view is–dare I say it?–a little close-minded.

        1. Cordelia Naismith*

          No, you’re right, that was a little close-minded of me. There are other ways to learn new ways of thinking, like travel, for instance. I think I was just annoyed by the number of people saying things like “a degree is just a piece of paper that gets your foot in the door” and overreacting a bit in the other direction…just like the people saying those things are probably annoyed at the tone of the OP’s letter and overreacting against it, too. I think most of the comments agree on the basics, though — not respecting your supervisor because of which degree they got in college 20+ years ago is foolish.

          1. Rana*

            Yeah, I’ve been feeling slightly annoyed and defensive by that framing, too. I have to admit it makes me think “Geez, what kind of crappy degree did you get, that makes you think that?”, which I know isn’t exactly fair.

            But I do think a lot of people end up with degrees that they don’t really care all that much about, and in a fair world wouldn’t have needed to land a job, so I guess I can understand that perspective, even if in my own case I disagree.

            1. Editor*

              I think attitudes about degrees might also be influenced by the total undergraduate experience. For instance, my undergrad experience outside the classroom was and continues to be important to me because of the new cultural experiences, the friends I made that I still have, my family’s tradition at my alma mater, my campus work experience, and the wealth of stimulation from people who had very diverse and esoteric interests and backgrounds. On the other hand, crappy advising marred my academic career.

              I think if you don’t have a rich experience educationally, socially, and culturally, you’re more likely to devalue your degree. In addition, if a person applies to college believing the degree will automatically result in preferential hiring and more lucrative pay, they’re more likely to be disappointed by the perceived value of the degree if economic forces or personal attributes undermine their career expectations.

              1. Rana*

                Absolutely.

                I think too that which degree you get is going to color things, as well as your institutional experience.

                My BA from a small, intensive residential college? Absolutely worthwhile experience.

                My doctorate from a giant state university? Also a great experience in the end (if sometimes hard and shitty along the way).

                My MA from the same university, picked up during the Ph.D. process? Never think about it.

    2. grasshopper*

      There is a feeling of privilege and entitlement from the OP that someone who worked their way into a position from the bottom up doesn’t deserve to be there.

  58. Rita*

    People always can learn new things, and they don’t need a degree or coursework to do that. I was able to pass my Series 7 with a degree in journalism and having taken no finance courses in college. But I learned what I needed to from seeing things in action, learning from my bosses instead of professors, and studying my ass off. Just because it’s in a different setting, doesn’t make it less of an education.

    1. Studying for GMAT*

      I graduated from college about 5 years ago, and have recently decided to get my MBA (it’s will help me to change to the industry I’d like to be in). Despite a liberal arts undergrad degree, I work in an extremely analytical role and thought that I would do quite well on the GMAT.
      Boy oh boy was I wrong! I took a practice test and, while I did score above the ‘average’ score, I didn’t do what I thought I’d do at all. There were so many algebra/math questions that I simply just do not remember; now I have a calculator, and excel formulas, and Google to figure things out. I really didn’t even remember like the basic functions of radicals, formulas to find an area of a cylinder, etc.
      I enrolled for a class on it and have already re-learned a lot and raised my score by 50 points. In essence, I already knew all of this stuff I just didn’t have to use it on a daily basis anymore. I take the actual test in another month so here’s hoping I can raise it by another 50 and get into a top 10 program! :)

  59. Erin*

    I have a coworker who has no college education but has worked her way up from experience. She’s making at LEAST $20,000 more a year than I am and isn’t paying the college loans that I am.

    Jealous? You betcha. But she *earned it* and is great at her job. Experience is not nothing. Especially 20+ years of it, in your case.

    And there are other factors with mine I won’t get into that make our situations unique, as I’m sure is true for you too – please don’t compare yourself to others in this way, it isn’t realistic and can’t come to any good.

    I can see where you’re coming from, because my mother was a college professor for over 30 years – both of my parents really drilled the importance of education into me. Not going to college was virtually not an option.

    It took a really long time for me to come around to the idea that college isn’t everything. I really thought upon graduating that I would not only automatically get a job, but I’d be making significantly more than non-grads – I graduated in 2007, just as the recession was about to hit and I was in for quite a rude awakening.

    So again I see where you are coming from, but it’s just not the way the world is, and not the way businesses function. It’s not all about degrees.

    Furthermore, I’m willing to be there are other reasons your managers are in the positions they’re in that you’re not even privy to and therefore can’t take into consideration.

  60. ACP*

    Just to throw it out there, I’m 22 and all my friends (bar one) have just graduated with fancy degrees….I’ve been working (in an office environment – I worked retail before that) for the past 4 years and I’m higher up the professional ladder and on a lot more money than any of them. I have my own place, my own car, I pay all my bills with plenty left over whilst the majority of them have been unemployed for 3/4 months, still live at home and can’t get a job waitressing or in retail. The market is saturated with young people with degrees who want to jump straight in on £30K (you guessed it, I’m in the UK) because they’ve got a degree and coming from inside the workplace, I can tell you that’s not what companies need at the moment. Given the state of the economy they need time-efficient people, with previous working experience who know how to do the job, not a newbie whose never even held down a bar job but has a bit of paper saying they can sit exams and read books well! Sometimes, I feel very out of touch with people of my generation….

      1. Sarah*

        Well, but they don’t. Lots of entry-level jobs in the UK want some kind of experience as well, unless it’s a specialised role, or a graduate programme. Lots of jobs do, sure, but if there’s a person who has a degree and no extra-curricular activities that can prove they have learned more than their course, or outside work experience, they’re going to lose out to the person with no degree but some great experience and ability to sell themselves.

        And this need for things other than a degree isn’t new. In the 80s my dad did graduate recruitment for one of the biggest banks in the UK, and would take the person with the 2:2 or even the third (do those classifications exist in the USA? Here is goes 1st, 2:1, 2:2, 3rd, fail) if they had experience running societies or organising things or working alongside their uni, rather than the person with just the first, even if it was an Oxbridge first.

        This isn’t knocking degrees at all (my dad was the first person in his village to get a degree and it radically changed his life; I have 2 degrees, and hope for a masters later) but just having a great degree won’t get people into those ideal graduate jobs, in the same way as uni entry comes down to more than just good A-Levels. The choices you make are super-important too.

        (Of course, the importance of extra-curriculars is harder for poorer students who have to work alongside their degrees, but getting to be a shift manager etc counts too)

        1. Aunt Vixen*

          Off your parenthetical – no, we don’t have those classifications in the U.S., but very approximately 1st = 3.8 or higher and probably at least magna cum laude; 2:1 = about 3.2 upwards; 2:2 = about 2.5 – 3.1; 3rd = 2.0 or a C average, that is, you did graduate, but just barely. Our numbers are grade point averages, because we are assessed on more instruments than just our finals. Points on individual instruments are usually either (1) percentages–and ours go all the way up to 100 ;-)–or (2) letter grades from A through F with +/- at A though D and no E at all. An A (or A+) in a particular class is worth 4 points in the final grade point average (GPA), A- is about 3.7, B+ 3.3, B 3.0, B- 2.7, C+ 2.3, C 2.0, C- 1.7, D+ 1.3, D 1.0, D-0.7, F 0. But it’s hard to know why D (and D+ and D-) exist, because in many (most?) universities if you don’t complete a class with a C or better you can’t count it toward your final degree and have to retake it. (You still have to figure the low score into your final average, however.) (That is, it counts as failing, so why not just call it A-C for credit and everything else is failure.) Levels of honors vary from one university to the next, but generally cum laude is 3.5 at an absolute minimum, magna at least 3.7 and usually with other requirements, and summa not less than 3.8 and impressing a lot of people with your work.

          All of this pertains only to undergraduate work. I’ve never known a graduate program in the United States where you didn’t get a stern warning if your average sat on or around B for more than one semester, and earning a B in even one graduate-level class is cause for concern. Earning a C is basically the same as failing. (And on the one hand, ugh, grade inflation; but on the other, how can you be said to have mastered a subject if you can’t get an A on it? So I sort of get it.)

          tl;dr A British 1st class degree is an A average. A 2:1 is a high B or B+ and a 2:2 is a still respectable B average. A 3rd class degree is a C average (but you could go on to be President of the United States).

  61. No Degree Anon*

    Wow. So… this is. Well honestly it’s something I’m self conscious of daily.
    I was unable to finish my bachelors degree due a slew of personal issues. (read as: life happens. Things don’t always work out the way you want) I started temping for a company and this turned into a full time job. This job ended up requiring an 8 week training course on fuel and mileage taxes, and I became somewhat of an expert in this field. I consider myself to be quite intelligent and started teaching myself Microsoft excel, access, and even SQL because A) I was interested and B) I could perform my job better/faster.

    This is something that happened in the current day and age. I’m only 24 so I’m hyper aware of the pressure to have a degree. I’ve been hoping to find a company that will pay my way through college once I have the time to go back again, but in the meantime I’m always concerned it will hold me back professionally.

    My point with all this is, a persons degree frequently has no barring on how well they can do a job. More often than not I’ve met people whose degree has nothing to do with their current job, and they are doing splendidly.

    anyway, this post is pretty much a ramble to say, I don’t have a degree. I’m doing quite well, but I’m self conscious of it every day. Please don’t add to the unnecessary stigma.

    1. No Degree Anon*

      And to clarify one thing, I don’t think degrees are useless. I simply hate the stigma. I also think some entry level jobs do require a degree and some don’t. I personally didn’t have this viewpoint until I found myself in the working world early, and suddenly felt held back.

      Sometimes I want to shake people and just be like “I’m competent!!”

      1. LawBee*

        one of my besties just hurdled the six-figure salary mark (more than I make by far) with no more formal education past two semesters of college over twenty years ago. <3

    2. PM Steph*

      I’d just say that I work for an extremely large (Fortune 500) company, and in software implementation. There are A LOT of people on my team who are a) very valued, b) highly compensated, c) excellent at what they do….and, side note, don’t have degrees.

      I won’t lie – I believe that not having that piece of paper may eventually hold you back from those organization who look for a “check the box” degree. That said, I think that it would have the potential to hurt you MORE when when you move companies (you’re a known quantity where you are right now!), but so will being completely segmented in one area, being a jerk, lots of other things, etc. This is where being good at what you do – and a good coworker — will pay dividends. To someone in your shoes, without a degree, I would recommend focusing not only on building skills but networking.

      Your contacts will help get you your next positions – where you’ll bypass road-bumps like HR systems that automatically reject you without a degree or job-postings that mention “degree preferred” or similar. When someone has you in mind for a position, your resume goes to HR from the hiring manager to get an interview scheduled, know what I mean?

      I’d advise you to learn and use tools (exactly like what you’ve done) and get broad exposure to a lot of different areas. Focus on networking and develop and maintain contacts with people who you see being career mobile (e.g., managers, co-workers who leave your organization and go other places.

      Good luck, and don’t be self-conscious or make apologies for not having a degree. This LW sounds extremely naive and inexperienced in how they’ve presented their situation. They also don’t have a reasonable view of how the work world works.

    3. literateliz*

      It’s funny that this was posted today, because I was thinking about posting on the open thread (and forgot, obviously) about something that happened last week. Someone who was a mentor to me at my first internship is looking for work, and so I talked to my boss about considering her for a position that’s opening up in our department, but added that although she’s absolutely the best and has tons of experience, she doesn’t have a BA. (I wanted to mention it in case it was a sticking point so that I didn’t waste my mentor’s or my boss’s time.) My boss’s immediate response was “Sometimes I think that matters more to the person without the degree than to the employer!” She told me a story about her first job where all the new hires had to fill out some paperwork or something and her friend came to her freaking out because she hadn’t technically completed her degree and was afraid she was going to be “found out,” and my boss told her to just say she had the degree because no one would ever find out or care. She ended by saying that the experience was all that mattered to her.

      My workplace is eminently sane and human in a way that it seems (from reading the open threads and questions) that many employers are not (another example: my coworker is out on maternity leave for four months, we have hired a temp, it is a complete non-issue, and reading most threads here about maternity leave kind of makes me want to die), so I kind of wanted to throw that out to the crowd and see if people agreed with my boss that the perceived stigma is greater than the reality, or if that was just my workplace being too awesome for life again. It’s actually really heartening to see the number of people here who don’t seem to place an undue amount of importance on having the degree.

  62. Mike C.*

    I get that the OP is being a huge jerk here, but there’s no need to completely dismiss the value of formal education in the process. Some of these comments are getting a little silly and anti-intellectual. Education, whether it comes from a book, real life experience, a lecture, a lab class, running a start-up, whatever has great value.

    1. LBK*

      I don’t think anyone is dismissing the importance of education, but rather saying that 20 years of on-the-job experience *is* a form of education that’s probably taught them a lot more than what 4 years of getting a bachelor’s degree would teach you. To weigh one so heavily against the other just because you get a certificate at the end is arbitrary and ignores the true value of professional experience.

      1. Mike C.*

        I’ve seen several comments talking about how useless a degree is. I’ve also seen several make the point you are, which is perfectly fine and one I’ve seen personally many, many times – the mechanics with 30 yrs on the plane are incredibly useful people to know.

        1. fposte*

          Yeah, there’s a bit of overcorrection happening, I think. Not sure if that’s how people would phrase it if it weren’t in response to something so dismissive, though.

          1. Nina*

            I thought the same. When you have an extreme statement from an OP (OP basically saying that the degree is more important than potential experience and/or skills) the comment pendulum can swing the other way (ie; degrees don’t matter; just a piece of paper, etc.) .

    2. Jeannalola*

      I don’t think that this is anti-intellectual. I believe in the value of a college degree. At least when I went to college, it exposed to me a whole world of thinking, literature, scientific concepts, social interaction…..made me grow up from the dopey high school graduate I was. What college basically does is mature you and season you. But unless you are in a professional school (medicine, law, etc.) where that degree is the entry-level credential, what difference does it make what you major in? The world is changing so fast whatever you learn in college is out of date when you walk out of the classroom. That is why it is so distressing that most companies have so cut training and education budgets. The key to staying in the work world is life-long learning. Also, the world needs plumbers and auto mechanics. Mine both have college degrees and love their work! Be a plumber if you want to, but be an educated plumber for your own sake!

      1. Dana*

        This is where I was reading that most people were falling–that a degree is important, but it’s okay to not be doing work directly related to your degree. Which is completely relevant to the OP because they mention their coworkers HAVE degrees, just not THE degree specific to the job. But I confess, I haven’t read every one of the hundreds of comments yet.

      2. Mike C.*

        It makes a huge difference the program you’re in, and the major you chose. That isn’t to say there aren’t areas of major overlap, but having a BS over a BA is meaningful in a lot of different areas.

        Also, there’s a ton of things that don’t change once you step out of the classroom. A lot of fundamental mathematics are still in use decades, centuries or longer (Game Theory, Calculus, Geometry/Algebra) after their invention. Not to mention that even as new breakthroughs are made, you still need the background in what came before it.

        1. Observer*

          Well, the math you learn in accounting degrees and the math you learn in Computer science (or “computer science”) isn’t all that different, although you probably get more advanced in computer science.

          The point is that the amount of difference this stuff makes in terms of qualifications diminishes over time. Either you are learning lots and lots of stuff or not. In the former case you wind up with tons of knowledge that you didn’t have. In the latter, your degree is just not going to cut it.

    3. afiendishthingy*

      Yeah, I learned a hell of a lot in college and graduate school. No, most of it, especially stuff from my undergrad classes at a very good liberal arts college, does not translate directly to what I do every day at work. These days I pretty much never am called upon to analyze seventies blacksploitation films or motifs in Beethoven’s seventh symphony. I don’t think that means it wasn’t valuable. I’m a well rounded person and my critical thinking skills are top notch. That helps me both in my personal and professional lives. Education isn’t just about what you use at work. So I know what you’re saying, Mike, and some of the comments rubbed me the wrong way as well.

      But yeah, when it comes to doing your job, the best way to learn is… to do your job for a long time, make mistakes at your job, try not to make those same mistakes, pay attention to other people who are good at doing similar jobs, try to be like them, or watch people who are bad at similar jobs and try to not be like them.

      Basically we should all be open minded and accept education happens in a lot of different places.

      1. afiendishthingy*

        … also you can be well rounded and a good critical thinker without going to college.

  63. Interviewer*

    OP – when you are sitting there with your accounting degree and CPA certification 20 years later in an entirely different field, I hope you don’t have to worry about people reporting to you who don’t respect your lack of a degree in their field. I get that this achievement looms large in your mind. You’ve likely worked long and hard to get it. I’ve been there, I got an accounting degree 20 years ago. It was an eye-opening experience to realize my first month in a real accounting job that a software package replaced most of what I had studied so hard to learn. Twenty years later, I’m in HR and I love it.

    Is it so hard to imagine that other college students didn’t what they were going to do 20 years later? Not everyone has their lives perfectly mapped out, staying within the lines. Not even you, OP. It just may take you a little while longer to realize it.

    Swallow the pride. Despite the degree, you still have a lot to learn. Good luck to you.

  64. PM Steph*

    I’m not going to say anything new here, but I’d like to comment that your degree may not = what you’re actually doing. There have been a variety of posters here who have degrees in things other than what they’re doing today. I have a degree in marketing, and most of my 17 years of experience has been in various roles within software implementations, including development.

    There are other very successful people in my Fortune 500 company that have no degree – but are successful and in high positions b/c they are good leaders and/or good at what they do.

    LW – Do you disrespect your leaders because they’re bad leaders and you’re pointing to their education as the reason for their perceived short-comings?

    Food for thought.

  65. Random CPA*

    This is coming from a CPA with a bachelor’s and master’s in accounting: accounting degrees are pointless. Learning how to do my job has always been the result of on the job training. The degree helps you get an entry level job because it shows you were interested in that career path and could understand the material. After you move on and want to get a job that requires experience, though employers may care that you have the degree and sometimes certification (and really, I think sometimes they only care because it pares down the applicant pool), what they will drill you on in an interview is your experience and accomplishments in your career, and they won’t care how you did in school or how highly you scored on the CPA exam.

    The Assistant Controller at my company has an Economics degree but a lot of accounting experience because she worked her way up. If she were to leave, I’d have my work cut out for me to replace her. We really value her hard work, management skills, and ability to quickly identify and address issues and those are things that come with experience, not a degree.

    Just something to think about.

    1. Malissa*

      I wouldn’t say the degrees are pointless, they provide a foundation and prove that you can learn. I think these degrees say, “I’ll never truly know my job, but I’ll always know how to gain the knowledge.”

      1. Random CPA*

        I didn’t say degrees in general were pointless, just accounting degrees. And I do mean only the “accounting” part of them. I learned a lot in my first two years of college with the general education. In fact, if I could have had 4 years of general ed and still gotten a job in accounting when I graduated, I totally would have done that.

        Everything I learned when I went into public accounting was taught to me on the job and didn’t draw on my education. Things that they stressed as being important in school were not important in the real world, and I learned so many things at my job that school never even mentioned. I only got a master’s degree so I’d have enough credits to sit for the CPA exam, and I was so frustrated getting that degree because I knew how pointless it was since I was working in my field at the time.

        Don’t get me wrong, I currently work in accounting and love almost everything about it. But there was too much theory in my accounting classes and not enough practical application. So many new entry-level staff I’ve worked with have complained that they get bachelor’s and master’s degrees and then begin working in the field and realize they know nothing about what they’re doing once they get into the real world. To me, that’s what makes accounting degrees pointless.

        1. CMart*

          I say this as someone paying out of pocket for an accounting masters, so take that with a huge grain of salt:

          Maybe, if actual firms think the accounting degrees are pointless, they shouldn’t require their interns and new hires to have them. After getting my BA (in communications) and bartending for a decade I decided I wanted to level-up and get on an actual career path. PWC isn’t going to hire me as-is, you know?

          1. Random CPA*

            Hey, I agree. I don’t think you need one to be a good accountant. It’s just a hoop you have to jump through and that’s what I think is pointless. I’m out of public accounting now and I fought really hard to add an accountant to my team that doesn’t have a degree in accounting, but has all the skills and I know I could teach her the technical stuff. I had my boss convinced, but his boss didn’t go for it, so it didn’t end up working out. I was really disappointed because she would have been great in the role.

          2. Random CPA*

            And you’re right. PwC won’t hire you with out the degree and won’t promote you to senior without your CPA. So in that respect it’s not pointless because you’ll have the opportunity to work there having jumped though that hoop. Spending time to learn something that doesn’t make you any more qualified to do the job in order to jump through a hoop is what I see as being pointless, and if I could do all my hiring without having to get things cleared by other people I would look more to experience than degrees and certifications. The LW thinks a degree is so important and discounts all the experience and industry knowlege his supervisors have gained, which I think is stupid because even if they went back to school to get a degree he thinks they need to respect them, it’s not going to make them better at their jobs.

            1. sam*

              back in the ‘olden days’, there were alternative methods to becoming a lawyer that didn’t involve going to law school – some combination of apprenticeship and still passing the bar exam. Most (if not all) states have cut this option off. So the law degree is a necessary pre-requisite now to becoming a lawyer.

              That being said, everything I’ve learned about actually doing my job as a lawyer, I’ve learned on the job. Proof positive of this? I switched career paths six months in to working – I thought I wanted to practice in one area of the law, and all of my “elective” classes that I took in law school were geared towards that goal. Six months in I realized that I hated it and switched to the Corporate Finance department. Other than the basic classes everyone takes in law school, I had zero academic background in Corporate Finance.

              The basic joke of law school is that they charge you a boatload of money to teach you very little, particularly by way of practical skills, and law firms have so significantly cut back on hiring that only about 50% of grads even have a chance of landing a job. It’s basically created a massive crisis in law school education at this point and is referred to as the “law school scam”. Heck – you have to pay for and take a separate prep class just to pass the bar exam. Fun stuff.

      2. Random CPA*

        You’d be surprised at how little math you actually do in accounting, especially in manager and above roles. A lot of it is researching, problem-solving, finding process improvements, and identifying and communicating issues (so many accounting grads are surprised by how much writing is required, and I often hear “I went into accounting so I wouldn’t have to write!”).

          1. Natalie*

            It probably would be, but as it stands higher level math generally isn’t required for an accounting degree (at least in the US). Maybe calculus will be required but that’s it.

        2. Mike C.*

          The rigorous analytical training that comes with learning mathematics is still really useful in many of those areas.

        3. Bob from Accounting*

          It may because I’m in my first job at a small company, but I had to do very little writing so far. Mostly, I work with anything that involves numbers and the finances. Does it vary depending on the field you’re in? I know that Auditing requires a lot of writing, but I’m doing I guess what would be financial accounting? Not sure though.

          1. Random CPA*

            I was an auditor in public accounting and then transitioned to a manager role in private industry (financial accounting) so I’ve always had to do a lot of writing. But even my staff in private industry do a lot of writing to communicate issues to other departments, so that’s something we assess before we hire someone.

            I guess it can vary by company and industry.

          2. Natalie*

            The big writing component in my field (staff accountants in industry) is explaining things clearly in email. Hundreds and hundreds of emails. And honestly, our accounting department is universally TERRIBLE at this. One of my primary jobs as the non-accountant in the finance department is translating between the accountants and the managers.

      3. Emily, admin extraordinaire*

        It was for me–at least higher mathematics. I haven’t had to do anything beyond basic algebra in any job I’ve ever had, or basic geometry (you know, “how to calculate the area of your bedroom when buying carpet”-type stuff) for anything outside of work. I could have stopped taking math in junior high and been completely fine, except for passing the ACT and GRE.

        1. Mike C.*

          So you’ve never used statistics or game theory in real life? Set theory? Combinatorics?

          I’m willing to bet that you have but don’t recognize it as “higher level math”.

          1. Ad Astra*

            I uhh… I don’t know what game theory or combinatorics is without googling. So maybe I don’t use them? Or maybe I just call them something different.

            My engineering friends once tried to convince me that I use calculus every day without realizing it. Pretty impressive considering I never took calculus or even precalc.

          2. Emily, admin extraordinaire*

            Well, I never learned game theory (and had to google it to figure out what it is), so I probably do use it but without putting a name to it, on a basic level. Statistics, not really– I mean, I read about statistics, and edit documents that use statistics, but I’m not in the business of collecting or analyzing them at all. Combinatorics, only in the sense that I can match a pair of pants with any number of shirts, but have I sat down and done the math on that? No. Set theory (again, I had to google)? Only when playing the game Set. But again, all of the things I’m mentioning here were things I learned in junior high (or never learned at all), including how to play Set, so my point still stands.

            Basically, if I could learn the concept while watching Square One TV (which I did a lot of as a kid!), then I don’t count it as higher mathematics. Calculus, trigonometry, linear algebra, etc., have absolutely no relevance in my daily life. The only time I need to remember whether the equation x=y graphs as a circle or a parabola is when I take a stupid quiz on Facebook (I got the answer right).

          3. alsoanon*

            Isn’t that the point though? If I don’t even know what it is by name (which I don’t know what any of that is besides statistics), I know I didn’t study it. But you’re saying even if I never studied it, I still use it. But I’ve arguably gotten along fine just picking it up as I go if I’m using it…so…it’s okay not to study it then.

  66. Rebecca*

    I’m doing work that is in no way related to my bachelor’s degree. I hope we don’t get to a point where people can only have jobs or deserve jobs in their particular field.

    1. Not So NewReader*

      I agree. How do we decide what degree the President of the US should have? Any degree I can think of is way too narrow in scope, for all the demands of the job. Yet, if we apply OP’s ideal here we must find a prez that has a degree to match the job.

      (Picture how many degrees one would have to have, the job does not pay enough to pay off all those student loans.)

  67. Drake*

    Do you some how thing your Master’s in “Psychology” will benefit the Finance team?

    P.S. Started from the bottom, now we here.

  68. Jady*

    I’m honestly surprised he even knows what degree they have.

    I’ve been in my field for 10 years and no one ever discusses college or degrees.

    1. Blue Anne*

      I’m now picturing a variety of awkward small-talk conversations in which OP might have learned this. :/

    2. Natalie*

      LinkedIn, probably. Or maybe corporate bios, those usually mention education at the bottom.

  70. nona*

    20+ years sounds like a solid education to me! :)

    Try to think of it this way: You had teachers and a more formal education. They had hands-on training. I know it’s frustrating when your education doesn’t get you where you think it should, but really, they are just as educated as you (more, given 20 years[!!!]). It just had a different format.

    1. Bend & Snap*

      I don’t think the OP had a “more formal education.” His superiors also have degrees.

  71. John R*

    Of ALL the coursework I’ve ever done, the only thing that has proven to be directly useful in my is typing, now known as “keyboarding”.

    BUT, going to college away from home and being exposed to people from all different backgrounds, nationalities, etc.; having my opinions challenged by professors and learning to defend them; learning what I am and am not good at; learning how to plan and schedule etc. have all been invaluable things I learned in college.

      1. No Degree Anon*

        Honestly I still value the two years I had in college simply for the networking value.

  72. Dasha*

    OK I’m assuming that the OP is fairly young and on that note, I think the current generation of young people in the workforce had college shoved down their throat so much as children that they put way too much value on degrees, but maybe that’s just me. Tie that in with high debt and pretty bleak job opportunities for recent grads I see where they get frustrated, I’m not saying Alison isn’t right (she is) but just that I see why where this is stemming from.

    1. Mike C.*

      I think you should stop making statements about entire generations of people.

      Also, look for my BLS link above, unemployment is much bleaker for those without degree.

      1. Dasha*

        Woah, Mike C. I think you took my comment the wrong way, geez. I was saying I could see why someone in the situation could have such a view point about older degrees not that all young people are horrible and not that the OP’s view point is correct either.

        1. Mike C.*

          It’s not brainwashing if the data supports the assertion. Hiring rates suck for everyone right now, but they suck a whole lot more if you don’t have a degree. Again, the BLS link I posted above has unemployment data by education level. There’s a direct correlation.

      2. Laurel Gray*

        Mike, I think Dasha is making a pretty fair assumption actually. And she is right, college is shoved down young people’s throats. For the most part all you have to do is not have a drug conviction and you can get a student loan. When you have adults in every environment telling you to go to college if you want to “be something” or one day achieve XYZ, you do believe that college is the only way. So I totally get the resentment (turned entitlement) from people like the OP who feel like they should have X level of success to show for going to college and earning those degrees.

        1. Cari*

          +1 to this and Dasha’s comments.

          I went to uni during the time the UK government were pissing money up the wall on warmongering, and really, really encouraging my generation to go to uni to fiddle the national unemployment figures, pushing us to take out “interest free” student loans that weren’t actually interest free. Then the recession happened, they increased tuition fees immensely, and now we have a whole generation of disenfranchised former students that are at least £15k in debt (much more since the fees increased), a lot of which are late 20s to early 30s living with their parents and are lucky if they get a minimum wage job in the service or retail industry, let alone a low-paid entry level job vaguely related to their degree.

          We’re the generation that will be perpetual renters and only homeowners if we’re super lucky.

          I can’t speak for US, but in the UK ten years ago, I *lived* through the government in particular, shoving uni down our throats.

          1. Cari*

            Also, from what I hear, £15k-30k debt is nothing compared to the student debts amassed in the US…

            1. Aunt Vixen*

              That, sadly, is quite true. We’re accustomed to the idea of borrowing money to go to university here in the U.S., and when I was in Edinburgh in 1997-98 and my fellow students were marching and circulating petitions and so on because of the horror that might be (gasp) ten thousand pounds of debt when they finished a degree (especially a four-year degree such as Edinburgh offers)–look, I’ll never pretend that ten thousand pounds isn’t a lot of money, but (a) most of y’all are only in university for three years and (b) it’s not unusual for an American student to borrow that much every year. My signature would have been meaningless on their petitions as I wasn’t a citizen, which was just as well as it saved me telling everyone to cry me a river.

              Everyone’s got it rough these days, is what I’m saying.

      3. Steve G*

        Not really…”we” need to stop generational stereotypes based on huge age ranges that are also based on individual personalities like “all millenials are snowflakes,” but saying that people who are in their 20s were brainwashed into thinking college is the only way is definitely true, and there have been like 10,000 articles about it in the media over the last few years.

        1. Rye-Ann*

          +1 It’s been 5 years since high school for me, but college was pretty much shoved down our throats at my high school. Back then, I didn’t realize that it was possible to not have a terrible life without a degree (a perspective which has definitely changed now), and trade school was barely mentioned, if at all. I of course can’t speak for what other high schools are like, but it’s possible that the OP had a similar experience.

          (I personally went to college, still am a student in fact, but I now know that plenty of people without degrees do okay for themselves.)

    2. Ad Astra*

      I do think the career/monetary benefits of a college degree were exaggerated, or overemphasized, to many Milennials growing up. They were pushed on us (or, me, anyway) as a ticket to financial stability, when they turned out to be just one of many tools for success. But it surprises me that the OP has been working in a professional environment for any amount of time and hasn’t realized that education isn’t everything.

    3. Manders*

      Yeah, I suspect what’s happening here is that the OP started out thinking, “Hang on, I was told I needed all these qualifications to get into this field, why haven’t my bosses jumped through all the same hoops I did?” And instead of concluding that things have changed in the decades since her bosses entered the workforce, she decided that her bosses must less qualified than her.

      Also, if she’s recently out of a Master’s program, chances are good that she’s just come out of a program full of professors giving her terrible advice about how to get a job/what kind of job she should expect right out of school/who she should look up to professionally.

  74. SerfinUSA*

    As one of those ‘uneducated’ people who got to a fairly decent standard of living and professional respect just by sticking around as a door stop or other non-thinking obstacle type object, I applaud your reply Alison!

    I’m sure younger people feel cheated that their stint in higher ed wasn’t the meal ticket they were promised, but how can anyone in the working world not realize how much knowledge comes from experience??

  75. Sara*

    I have a degree in the industry I am working in. I use absolutely nothing I learned in school in my daily life.

  76. CollegeStudent*

    *sigh* This is one of those posts where I automatically think, “Oh, that’s definitely a troll post, because people can’t POSSIBLY be that entitled/dumb/self-absorbed/etc.”

    But, you never know. Maybe this guy is 100% serious.

  77. Come On Eileen*

    I’ve been reading a lot of Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist) this week, and he said it better than I could, so I’m just going to quote him:

    “School is one thing. Education is another. The two don’t always overlap. Whether you’re in school or not, its always your job to get yourself an education.”

  78. baseballfan*

    If the president of Southwest Airlines can be someone with no degree who started off as an administrative assistant – then executives can come from someone with any background.

  79. GOG11*

    My boyfriend has a high school education and about 15 years of experience in the IT field. Until recently, he was the head of an IT Department at a large health organization. He was very, very good at his job.

    I graduated early, top of my class, with honors, blah blah blah, from college, and I’m a paper pusher and, some days, little more than a glorified gopher (though it must be said that I’m a pretty darn good gopher).

    If you didn’t know the background or job history of those who you’re referring to, would you really know that they hadn’t gotten to the top through other means (i.e., education)? If they treat you poorly or have never been courteous or respectful toward you then you have an issue with a poor work environment, which can exist in all types of organizations regardless of the level or type of education your colleagues have received. If what you’re experiencing has nothing to do with their behavior, you can change your opinion, you can get a new job, or you can continue working there and resent your colleagues.

  80. The Other Dawn*

    I’m really offended by OP’s letter, as I’m someone who, over the course of 17 years, worked my way up the ladder to third in charge at my former company. I didn’t go to college and get an Associate’s degree until maybe 6 years ago, and it was only for personal enrichment. It wasn’t because I felt I needed to go. I just decided I wanted to have something to do at night, really.

    I’d be really offended, and hurt, if my direct reports felt that my 17 years of knowledge and experience was worth nothing. Sure, two of them attended college and received a degree, but they’ve only been in banking for a few years, which means I have way more knowledge and experience than they do. Just because someone has a degree doesn’t mean they’re qualified for this particular job, or are smart for that matter. I really don’t give a shit, to be honest, whether my employees have a degree or not. I care about their work ethic, that they are open to learning, do a great job, and treat others with respect.

    1. Laurel Gray*

      Strongly agree. I went to VeryExpensiveButRespected business school and they served the “college degree or die” Kool Aid for the entire 4 years. The reality was that nothing is or was guaranteed but how much better off we will be without one is shoved down our throats that the Kool Aid drinkers like the OP do not surprise me. Sure, the advantage is actually something that is over time, and even that depends on several factors. OP’s sense of entitlement and degrees will never beat years of experience on the job from someone who was willing and able to learn and work well with their fellow colleagues.

  81. MaryMary*

    I know of a director of finance who contacted a colleague to help her develop an annual budget (January fiscal year) in April. The director of finance has an MBA, my colleague has an associate degree.

    Doing well in school, including grad school, means you’re good at school. Some people can transfer that knowledge to the working world and perform very well. Some cannot. And some people thrive much more in the working world than they ever did in school. Your academic record is not necessarily a predictor of success in the business world.

  82. Ad Astra*

    I do want to push back on the idea that a college degree is “just a piece of paper” or “simply checking a box.” Earning a college degree requires a huge amount of time and work, and in the process you gain a huge amount of knowledge. And knowledge is valuable, even if you never use that specific knowledge to make money.

    I understand that you don’t need a college education to be successful, and that many people who have college degrees don’t regularly apply the things they learned in school. But it’s shortsighted to consider education useless just because it doesn’t directly impact your income; you’re still a better, wiser person for having completed that education.*

    Anyway, carry on.

    *Better and wiser than your previous self, not better and wiser than other people who didn’t finish college.

    1. Windchime*

      I think when people are mentioning “checking a box”, they just mean that a lot of jobs can be done without a college education, but many jobs are now listing it as a requirement.

      My workplace has just recently made rules stating that people at a certain level must now have degrees. Many managers and Directors have been grandfathered in; their many years of experience are enough. Obviously, a college education isn’t required; otherwise, these people wouldn’t be able to do their jobs. But anyone new who applies is being required to have a degree. Also, those Managers and Directors who are grandfathered in are not eligible to be promoted further up the chain. It seems short-sighted to me, but there you go. If those people were able to check the box that they had earned a degree 20 or 30 years ago, then they would be promotable. Because they didn’t, they are stuck where they are.

      1. Dana*

        I think when people are mentioning “checking a box”, they just mean that a lot of jobs can be done without a college education, but many jobs are now listing it as a requirement.

        THIS.

      2. RO*

        My workplace did not grandfather them in and some of them had to take on staff roles. It was awkward interacting with a former managers in a non-managerial roles.

      3. Ad Astra*

        I think when people are mentioning “checking a box”, they just mean that a lot of jobs can be done without a college education, but many jobs are now listing it as a requirement.

        I think you’re right, but I don’t like it.

  83. Nancy Drew*

    I have worked with so many idiots who have degrees, some of them advanced degrees. I don’t know how they did it, but they were able to make at least C’s and D’s in their classes even though they were unable to add a column of numbers, write a grammatically correct sentence, or put together a coherent plan. I could take OP on a tour of my city, and prove that everything that he/she said was wrong.

    1. Cari*

      Amen to this. I learnt more about the English language and how to articulate thoughts, from 15 years socialising on the Internet than I ever did in high-school, college or university…

  84. MM*

    Get some ice for that wicked BURN!

    Sorry for the immaturity – but that was a perfect response.

  85. HR Ninja*

    The noobs who do the hiring/firing/promotions for your company had a enough sense to hire you, so . . .

  87. Newbie*

    Hear, hear, Alison.
    I noticed a lot of complaints about their lack of education but absolutely nothing on the actual quality of their work or work ethic. Twenty years experience is worth so much more than a college degree. Leave the holier than thou attitude at the door.

  88. CC*

    I’m agreeing with everybody else, of course, but for me I have a personal end on this: I’m an engineer, and my professional mentor did not have a college degree. I loved working with the man and his approach to problem solving and success with creative solutions was incredible. We made a good battery because we respected each others skills and were willing to learn a lot from each other. He retired and I miss working with him, having great jam sessions where ideas like liquid nitrogen and crazy compressed air guns are put on the table before we settled on 50 cents worth of wire.

    I don’t think degrees don’t matter – I bet he would have been more effective if he did have more formal education in engineering principles, but ultimately filling in those (rare) gaps was part of my job and why I was hired, and that’s the role I took.

  89. Denita*

    As a youngish person (mid-20’s), I cringe at what the OP is saying. College degrees are great, yes, but it only shows when someone worked towards an area of study. Some jobs may need college degrees as proof you are aware of the field (especially entry level jobs), but they’re most seeking people with the right experience. Heck, some of the smartest people I know never went to college or got Associates, and they have great jobs due to hard work and learning hands-on!

  90. trilby*

    I’m sure the letter writer has a great explanation for how his psychology (masters!) degree is directly relevant to his accounting job.

  91. Mel in HR*

    What the hell?!

    I’ll never understand this viewpoint and I *AM* someone who had a degree relevant to what I do. However, I started out with a completely unrelated degree. In fact, the place that hired me with my first HR job had tons of people with unrelated degrees… all of which were upper management. The Contracts Manager and Finance Manager both had music and/or liberal arts degrees, but they knew their stuff after working it for so many years. My degree helped with only one thing: I understand Employment Law better than my coworkers who worked their way into the HR field. That’s it. Book knowledge is so vastly different than practical knowledge. Having said that, in the town I live in, most places require a Master’s degree or about 10 years experience. As it takes much less time to get a Master’s, I opted to get one so I could work sooner rather than later. But it’s not for everyone and it certainly doesn’t make me view my bosses as not deserving of my respect. My office manager does all the AP/AR and Payroll and has a communications degree. My CEO/founder doesn’t even have a degree. Who cares?!

  92. Sunshine Brite*

    OP, how long have you worked there? Are you just fed up with the work? Why is it a sticking point and something to lose respect over? People just have so many different paths. I would’ve done horribly in a visual or applied field, my brain doesn’t work that way. I need concepts, writing, critical thinking ideas more. I have a masters. My dad and brother, polar opposites, my dad built something to hold a car just by looking at his friend’s and a couple online and building it from scratch. They have the same tech certificate and could work circles around me who would at best injure myself horridly trying 1/38238 of the things they’ve accomplished over the years.

    I worked for someone who had been with the company for years, all of the management had. She had a lot of strong points as a supervisor including building a great team that she should have relied on. Her main sticking point for me was micromanaging and getting upset with the professionalized members of the team (those with certifications above BAs) when we had to stick to a code of ethics that she or other members of the team weren’t bound to. It wasn’t a large corporation. Sometimes we got so frustrated that she didn’t have to hold a license when all the other managers who came later did but that was mainly from the misunderstandings that arose from interpretations of events/best course of action. The lack of understanding was the problem, not her lack of degree. What’s your real problem?

  94. AE*

    to the OP: how much have you learned working at this job? Multiply this times 20. That’s why the people in charge are in charge.

  95. Observer*

    I haven’t read the responses yet, but it looks like there are a lot of “wow! what on earth!?” responses. (probably some are more strongly worded than that.

    I’m sure I’m not the first to mention this, but lots of unarguably successful people don’t have the educational qualifications you require in order to be worthy of respect. It’s not an urban legend that Steve Jobs fropped out of college. Larry Page “only” has a computer science degree, yet his “lack of education” doesn’t seem to be keeping him from running a pretty successful company, with the financial complexity that comes from operating in multiple COUNTRIES.

    Let me tell you something else interesting. The college I attended works a lot with “returning learners”, and because of the they do a lot of credit based on work experience. The reality is that people who have solid work experience and also have the discipline and drive to keep learning ARE educated, whether you understand that or not, and when you evaluate what they know, they generally know at least as much as a student coming out of a class.

    I’ve been through their evaluations, and I can tell you that they are thorough, and done by the professors that teach the courses you would otherwise be getting credit for. In one case, in fact, I wound up going through the process because my instructor told me that I was wasting my time – I was way overqualified for the course. He told me to drop the class and apply for evaluation. The point is not how smart I am, but that the school (which is properly accredited and is NOT a diploma mill) has a whole program based on the reality that people can and do get a LOT of learning done in venues other than a classroom.

  96. TT*

    OP, the responses to your letter may be a bit rough, but I hope that you are reading them in the spirit with which they’re given – a wake-up call is really what you need here.

    Somewhere along the way I’m sure you have felt that someone has not listed to your suggestions, or maybe not taken your input seriously. It’s a horrible feeling when that happens. Please do not ostracize your senior leaders and co-workers by actively thinking less of them because their degrees are not hot off the press.

    In many cases it is your role to be up on the latest technology, techniques and industry standards. It’s their role to make sure you have what you need to get the job done – usually in the form of resources like money, staff and time. These are the people who will make or break your career at the company. Please show them the respect that they deserve. It can only help you in the end.

  97. Lamington*

    My vanity degree is my JD. I graduated at a really bad time from law school and even during recruiting there were 2 or 3 law firms just asking for resumes. My BBA is in MIS so I work on Digital Communications. I don’t really use the JD at all. Interestingly, all of my bosses, including the big kahuna are former attorneys.

  98. Be the Change*

    Mercy, everyone. More than 500 comments tearing a new one for the OP is enough, don’t you think? Allison did a fine job, no need for all the rest.

    OP, good on you for ASKING and not just simmering. I hope the responses here haven’t put you off asking a question of anyone, ever again. And now go forth and sin no more in your thoughts or deeds.

    Also (irritably) enough with the “I threw up in my mouth a little.” It’s gross, and *old*, and you didn’t.

    1. I... edited for you... a little...*

      Hmm well, normally I just have one post and change my title for each comment, but in this case I got into it and therefore felt for consistency I should keep the same ‘name.’ Apologies if it bothered you but I did feel that I was contributing to the conversation as opposed to simply bashing.

      (also it’s a quote from a movie, Dodgeball, not like… a real thing)

        1. Be the Change*

          Thanks, that’s the one I keep throughout. …and fall down regularly on achieving. :-/

          1. I... edited for you... a little...*

            Yea, I try to think of something catchy each time, and relevant to the topic at hand. In this case, I was just so flabbergasted that someone could possibly have this opinion that, it was my knee jerk reaction…. 10 posts in, the name was getting a bit old, but like I said, I felt I had to stick with it for consistency. Usually I just have one comment per post.
            (My ‘name’ on another thread today is ‘You Know Nothing Jon Snow’)

      2. Be the Change*

        Sorry for the pearl-clutching, the phrase just icks me out I guess. It’s used as an expression of over-the-top disgust which would be completely unwarranted in most situations. Hearing about child abuse, yes. Hearing ignorance from a “special snowflake,” no.

        Never watched Dodgeball; I think I’ll definitely skip it.

    2. Natalie*

      Well, at least 150 of them are people identifying their degrees and their current field.

    3. Anonsie*

      Well, if you read the comments, most of them are not directed at the OP at all but rather discussing how degrees and experience and actual jobs relate to each other.

    4. LawBee*

      “Also (irritably) enough with the “I threw up in my mouth a little.” It’s gross, and *old*, and you didn’t.”

      Agreed. that line needs to go to the internet graveyard.

        1. Adam V*

          Actually, Alison suggests “Wow” as a response when someone has an outlandish request or makes an outlandish statement. It’s a way of saying “I can hardly believe you just said that, but I’m not going to start a conversation about it”.

          1. This is ridiculous*

            LOL, but comment #1 was the only person to successfully do that!

            All the other 15 (or 27) wow’s involved further comment/conversation by the poster.

            In all seriousness though, while I realize this is the internet, in real life “wow” usually does not add value to the conversation and is just passive aggressive as hell. Time and time again AAM proves that communication is key. How can I better phrase this? How can I ask this person to not do X any more? Etc. AAM has helped all of us use our words and think of things from the management perspective.

  99. I threw up in my mouth a little...*

    One thing to keep in mind is that CPA isn’t a degree – it’s a certification (some people need a Masters in Accounting to have enough course credit to get it – some people have enough after just a Bachelors).

    A certification is completely different from a degree, and is something that – in theory – you would need to do a job correctly. However, some people who may have been doing it for years and years may have proved their worth without that certification – a certification that would be incredibly cost prohibitive and time consuming for someone who doesn’t yet have a Bachelors and the correct prerequisite coursework. Where’s the ROI in that?

    I’m sorry, but if I’ve been working for 10 years, and I’m making 100k doing what I’m doing, and they tell me I can make 110k (or even 120k) if I get my CPA – and I have none of the prerequisite coursework required, and would therefore need YEARS of study to get my CPA – I’m not going to do it. There is no ROI there.

    1. Malissa*

      At $20K a year in increased earning’s that’s like a 3-5 year return on investment. Great if you’re early career, not so good for late career.

      1. Depends...*

        I think that depends on how much it would cost you to get that certification. If you’re just a few credit hours from being able to sit for your CPA, then yea, that’s a no brainer — but if all you had was your GED, or if all you have is a BA or BS in a completely irrelevant field that wouldn’t count towards the credit hours required for the CPA, and then beyond that you’d need a masters… that would require going back to college, and then getting a masters, just for a certification.
        Like I said it just depends on how much of an investment you’d have to put in to get the certification. It’s not just time – it’s also money. $120k over 5 years yes is an additional $100k, but if you had to go back to college, and get a masters, and then take the certification (which isn’t free) that might put you at well over $100k in the hole, and then on top of that the time commitment.

  100. Amber Rose*

    My mom always said that the only difference between having a degree and not having one is speed. The person with a degree will take less time to reach a high level career than the person without.

    Right now there’s a thousand sources of degree level education online, many of them free. Professors at universities record their lessons and make them available. You can find materials for learning free and pay for certification testing.

    Is a degree worth it? Yes and no. Certainly not having one is not the barrier it used to be, if you’re reasonably hard working.

  101. Cari*

    Knowing there is a company out there that values its experienced employees cheered my dad up, so thanks for that OP!

    My dad has 30+ years experience in the computer industry, with a maths & computing degree. He was made redundant along with a load of other older and experienced employees 4 years ago, and has found despite the wealth of knowledge and experience he has in the field, it’s been impossible for him to get back into the industry. He knows others from his generation with the same experience. The “qualifications are everything” attitude is destroying our industries, whose businesses prefer to spend loads on younger, qualified but not necessarily as experienced, contractors to develop systems instead of investing in the permanent employees and retaining valuable assets wrt knowledge of those systems.

  102. Anamou*

    I believe it was Mark Twain who said “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
    There are many, many ways to get an “education,” not to devalue whatsoever the traditional kind. I think for many, perhaps, the real education begins after graduation…and for hopefully the rest of your adult life. The lesson to be learned here (I hope) is that the 20 years of experience is certainly valuable, regardless of whether the OP feels like they are capable or not. Basing your judgement solely on what a piece of paper from 20 years ago says is devaluing to the emotional intelligence of the OP not to mention the executives “in question.” The Golden Rule could certainly be practiced here. Just my 2cents.

  103. Chinook*

    I know this has probably been said, but I want to add another voice. One of my best bosses was a VP of Finance for a national professional organization. She started as the receptionist 25 years earlier and, while she did some evening classes, she has no where near the education of those who are member of the that professional organization. The VP of Technology started as the lone IT support 20 years earlier (and was hired because his wife was on the national board and they needed someone to help with their first computers). He never had formal IT training but runs a tight IT ship and knows how to hire good people with the right skills. They will never be president of this organization, but only because they don’t hold credentials for that profession (i.e. they are not nurses) but they are a terrific resource for each new president that comes in.

    All education does is give you a background and a leg up. There was time when educational opportunities weren’t as available and on-the-job training was an acceptable way to “grow your own.” What these people have learned as they worked their way up the org chart can not be taught in school and should not be discounted because they didn’t have to pay for it with tuition fees and time with their butt in a desk, listening to lectures.

    1. Not So NewReader*

      Not snark, a sincere question, why not use that degree in psych to find work-arounds to go up against the feeling of loss of respect? So many things can be made into tools if we allow it.

      I think the real question here is, “OP, how come you allow yourself to lose respect for your bosses, when it’s reasonable to assume this is a self-defeating path?”

  106. RVA Cat*

    OP, while it’s possible that your finance degree did not include coursework on literature, please let this English major remind you of the opening lines of _The Great Gatsby_:

    “In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in the world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.'”

    *mic drop*

  107. Techfool*

    Never mind, in twenty years’ time a newbie will be looking down on your by then irrelevant degree but you’ll be too experienced to give a …..

  109. PSHT*

    Please! Work experience is very valuable, and it says a lot about these individuals that they worked their way up.

  110. AthenaC*

    All right, so my qualifications to comment here are:

    – I’m a CPA
    – I have worked in public accounting as an auditor for 7 years.
    – As a result, I have worked with accounting personnel (up to and including CFO’s) for a wide variety of companies – some of them educated in accounting, some of them not.

    I have noticed that in many cases (though by no means all cases), accounting personnel without the accounting education lack the conceptual framework to understand why we might want to bludgeon certain accounting realities into the billing / accounting / financial reporting system a certain way. They may know how to navigate the system, how to teach others how to use the system, even how to pull data out of the system that management cares about, but if something unconventional occurs, they will probably not know how to prioritize the various attributes of the transaction in order to make sure it’s treated correctly for accounting purposes. Unless their auditor explained it to them, in which case never mind.

    At any rate, I could write a book of hypotheticals regarding why the OP is having trouble respecting their superiors, but none of them impact the advice I would give:

    1) Experience counts for a lot. Open your eyes to all the things your superiors know that you don’t; this will be key in changing your attitude to one of respect. When appropriate, ask them to teach you what they know and thank them for their help / guidance. If you think they are wrong about something, phrase it as “Have we thought about X?” Keep it humble; maybe they have thought about X and decided correctly that it didn’t apply (or whatever).
    2) If you find yourself unable to respect your superiors for whatever reason (either their incompetence or your preconceptions), go find a new job. You are not a good fit.

    1. aNoN*

      THIS! I was a finance major and got a job in corp accounting. I realized I like what I was doing so I went back to get enough hours to sit for the CPA exam and here I am, ready to conquer BEC next week!! I have learned accounting on the job through required training and various roles. I always thought I would be an investment banker or stock broker but here I am, sitting in an open office hoping I pass my exam.

      The extra classes I took helped so much! There is only so much you can learn at work. The classes really help build the framework and from there, the work environment can serve to develop your skills. I think accounting, like engineering and other STEM degrees are technical in nature and some level of education is needed in order to have a basic understanding of your first couple of jobs.

      1. AthenaC*

        Well welcome to the field! Remember CPA stands for “Certified Public Accountant” and not “Certified Professional Alcoholic.” :)

        Good luck tackling the rest of your CPA exam!

  111. This is ridiculous*

    This is the biggest pissing contest I have ever seen on AAM. Jesus Christ.

    Can we all give the OP the benefit of the doubt that they asked a poorly worded question and don’t honestly believe that 20+ years experience amounts to nothing?

    2. Dana*

      Absolutely, but what was the question? “How do I respect someone I don’t respect because they don’t have the right degree (to me)?” I don’t see another question in there since they aren’t complaining about poor management or incompetence.

      1. This is ridiculous*

        Hey now, there are 2 question marks in OPs email to AAM :)

        I think the question is pretty direct: How can a huge organization with a complex financial and billing system be run by people with no education, or education that doesn’t pertain to the job? Does this happen at other large corporations?

        Companies run on people with education and/or experience. Yes, it happens everywhere. The end.
        Now everyone and their mama’s are coming out telling their Mark Zuckerhambuger/Steve Jobs success story. Good. For. You. You have clearly made it up the ladder based on your drive, work ethic, smarts, etc. otherwise, you wouldn’t be where you are today! I don’t think anyone is going to comment: “I made it to VP because I stuck around long enough yet I still don’t know what I’m doing, but here I am!” Yet, this happens at companies all the time. Maybe not at VP level, but still.
        I still think the OP left out crucial information, i.e. My regional finance director doesn’t know how to use a calculator and even after 20 years of experience I still don’t know how they made it…
        Twenty years in the workforce usually means great things, great knowledge, great experiences, but sometimes it doesn’t!

        2. Not So NewReader*

          I have many questions about how organizations stay afloat given their givens. The employees’ degrees is really the least of the worries out there. I remember one HBS case study that referred to a very well-known company as a hidebound bureaucracy. Pretty damning words, in my opinion.

          I have always wondered if anyone at that company ever read the case study.

          1. This is ridiculous*

            Good leadership. That’s all I’ll say for now :)

            It’s bed time, so more on this tomorrow.

    3. Helen*

      +1 to pissing contest. I liked AAM’s response. Watching people trip over themselves to get at the OP was embarrassing.

  112. Ashley the Nonprofit Exec*

    I also want to add that sometimes there are geographic issues at play – or there were a long time ago. I live in a small urban area that is in the middle of a very large rural area. Until the 15 years or so, there were NO – I mean NO graduate degrees available within a 2 hour drive, and then it was a very limited selection. Online degrees from reputable universities were not available. That’s not the case anymore, and now there are (limited) opportunities for graduate degrees in a few dozen fields. But this is new. As a result, my area of the state/country has an unusually low rate of people with graduate degrees for the number of people with undergraduate degrees. The rate is now increasing. It’s not even really an issue of income – just population density.

    What were businesses supposed to do 15 to 20 years go? They hire the most qualified person they can find. And frankly, this is the same thing they do now. Sometimes, “most qualified” means a specific degree, sometimes it means experience, sometimes a combo of the two. Just ticking the box of getting a degree sometimes isn’t enough to equal vast experience.

    1. Chinook*

      “I also want to add that sometimes there are geographic issues at play – or there were a long time ago”

      Yes 1,000x!!! When I grew up, an engineer drove a train and the closest secondary education site was 200 km away. I had friends who found it just as expensive to go to university on the other side of the country as they did to go to the closest city. I always wanted to be a news reporter but there was ONE journalism school in Canada at the time. U of Alberta was known for churning out respectable journalists (and, oddly, politicians) through the university newspaper because none of us could afford to move to Ontario for that type of training. Instead, you took an extra year or two to complete your B.A. and became an editor for little to no money with a volunteer staff. This meant only those who could afford to do this got to, so I didn’t.

      Why would you spend $$$ and 4 years away from family and friends to earn an accounting or business management degree if you could learn on the job and work your way up? You only made that type of sacrifice for jobs without an alternative learning method like lawyer, doctor, nurse or teacher. Everything else you learned through official and unofficial apprentice type jobs. But, once my sister finished high school, you need at least a diploma from a recognized hospitality program to work in hotel or restaurant management (including being a front desk clerk). But, in the time between me and her graduating, the number of colleges doubled and on-line education became more acceptable.

      1. Ashley the Nonprofit Exec*

        Yes, It’s become so much more common for employers to expect a specific degree. There may or may not be good reasons for this, but it’s still useful for OP to realize that this was not the case 20+ years ago – and even much more recently depending on the location, field, etc.

        There are two parts of my job – the nonprofit management part, and the human services part. My master’s is in the np management part. I find that I am much more knowledgeable about many aspects of social work/human services that some of the people I supervise – and all of the recent grads. I have a lot of experience, but more important for me, perhaps – I. Read. Everything.

  113. AllieJ0516*

    Just adding to the WOWs. I dropped out of college at 19 to get married and have a baby. My major at the time was paralegal/legal assistant. I started on my career path in supply chain services at 21yo as a receptionist/office manager. I learned the business from the ground up, working in admin, sales, events and trade shows, product and project management, production planning, inventory management, you name it, I’ve done it. 30 years later I’m still in the field but with 30 years’ experience under my belt. Would my degree have helped me out? Not in the slightest. I love what I do, am GOOD at what I do, and if anyone were to question my ability, work ethic or knowledge, I’d tell them to pound sand. AND, FYI, respect is EARNED. If someone were to treat me with disrespect, I’d have a hard time respecting them.

    1. AllieJ0516*

      NOT to mention that sure the degrees were from 20 years ago. What do you expect? That they should have been going back every year to take continuing education courses to meet with your approval? That what they learned 20 years ago is so irrelevant that they need to keep “refreshing”? Do you intend to continue taking classes for the next 20 years yourself? LORDY. I used to work with a girl (I use that term intentionally), who graduated from a 2 year college and came into my office as a sales assistant. Within SIX MONTHS she was griping that she was not yet in management!!! Most of us in that office had 20+ years’ experience, but she thought that she somehow had a line on an inside fast track, simply because her father was in the same industry. Such a sense of superiority and entitlement does not fly with us old dogs. Old dogs from whom the pups could learn a thing or ten.

      1. Not So NewReader*

        If OP lives by her ideals then this is what she will have to do. She will have to keep going to school and getting degrees. The thought of the weight of the student loan debt boggles my mind.

        1. Ted Mosby*

          It wouldn’t surprise me that much… OP has a masters in an unrelated field and is now getting another degree/certificate. What is with this current “the more degrees the better” culture? So many of my peers are in unfunded masters programs with no particular end goals because “more education is always helpful!!!!!” Insert eye roll. I always want to send them all of Alison’s letters on why this is. not. true. but it’s kind of like telling someone their tattoo sucks. Too late and not asked for.

          1. Not So NewReader*

            Well, OP can bring her ideals down to earth and that would release her from being a perpetual student.

            More education is not always helpful. I remember my father explaining to someone if a task takes one person a hundred hours, it is not necessarily true that 100 people could get that same task done in an hour. The person my father was speaking to actually did not understand why this would not work. And this is where real world experience is an absolute must.

            In short, I agree with you. I think that half the people on this forum probably do not meet OP’s criteria. And it makes me sad. I would happily work with most of the people here. I have no clue why OP wrote in to Alison, except maybe to vent.

  114. Hadley*

    Thank you. I totally agree with your answer…and in fact, live it to a degree. I have done what I do for over 20 years, with no degree, and have managed departments, been the sole trainer for departments and have grown in my various positions. All without a degree. This business infant needs to grow up.

  115. Saurs*

    How can a huge organization with a complex financial and billing system be run by people with no education, or education that doesn’t pertain to the job?

    You’re the fresh, up-to-date student (and an employee there): how is it run? You’ve provided no particulars. That suggests either that you don’t know enough to say whether there’s something lacking, or that there isn’t but you think it’s unfair that the aging call-center plebs whose experience should count for nothing are in charge of you.

  116. voyager1*

    I hate to say this, but I know people just like the OP. Some have MBAs and other good educations. We have a generation of entitled folks who think having an education = success.

    1. Verde*

      I worked at a start-up back in the day that no one wanted to take a risk on, so all us outcasts who were smart but weird busted our butts at it and made it go. Suddenly, everyone wanted to work there and we were surrounded by MBAs who had *zero* understanding (or desire to have one) of the company, the supply chain, how to use the computer system, etc. I literally heard someone whining in the hallway one day, “I don’t understand why my [stock] price is so high…I have an MBA!” Eventually, they began to weed us out, as they wanted a certain image for the company, and that was too bad, as they lost a lot of really excellent talent and experience.

      I admire anyone who can stick it out and get a degree, that’s something that is hard to do. But it’s not better (or worse) than someone who learns by doing, and I expect everyone to respect each other and their individual strengths and skills. I have no degree, but I know how to do a lot of things and I have proved myself that way time and again.

  117. Katy*

    But, original poster, do you have any complaint about how effective these people are at their jobs? Do they make poor decisions? Are they out of touch with current practices? Do they not know what they are talking about?

    Coming at the question from a different angle: Is *your* education required to make sense and analyze the impact of, for example, potential changes to the Medicare 14-day rule?

  118. Chayele*

    I think the OP has a leg to stand on in certain cases, because I’ve seen people who clearly haven’t kept up with the times and are still coasting on successes from decades ago. This is fairly common in academia, but I’ve seen it in management positions, too. I worked with a high-level manager who had a 1980s MBA, and you could tell. He was slash and burn Jack Welch style, and hadn’t kept up with innovations in management or office operations. I’ve even worked in offices with senior executives who can’t use email and have to get their assistants to print out their emails. They then write a response on a yellow legal pad and have the assistant type it up and send it. THAT type of person may be what the OP meant, and if he or she did mean that, then I get it.

    1. LucyVP*

      I agree, but the OP doesn’t give any specific evidence of incompetence or even ‘not up with the times’ issues. Only that they have no degree or unrelated degrees.

      If OP had said that they were concerned that the Finance Director doesn’t seem to understand basic accounting terms or that they are seeing a policy that works against the best practices they learned in school, or similar then we could better evaluate the problem.

      At the least (if there IS serious incompetence), the OP needs to be more aware of how these kind of statements are received. The OP’s focus on education over actions is the issue.

      1. frequentflyer*

        “The OP’s focus on education over actions is the issue.” – Totally agree. OP should have worded the letter better, that way he/she would have gotten better advice. Now it seems everyone is just worked up over OP’s apparent prejudices.

    2. Observer*

      Sure. If I had a boss like that, I think I’d go nuts (or find a new job.)

      The thing is, though, that this has nothing to do with what degree they hold. To the extent that you can generalize, which is VERY little, I would expect that someone working their way up from the bottom, and someone with a CS degree to be less likely to be this way that pretty much any other group, education-wise. But, ultimately, it’s far more about the person and his / her attitude towards learning and adapting than formal education.

  119. Amaya*

    Lol burn! They had it coming.

    I don’t have a college degree, but I have been working my way up for the last 12 years. I have made a serious effort (often on my own time) to learn every aspect and become as knowledgeable as possible. Now, I have people with 2 masters degrees calling me for help with their accounting. It isn’t all in the degrees.

  121. Monet's Money Monkey*

    Majored in Graphic Design, but have a successful 15+ year career in Investments & Insurance. Like most people in my field, we planned to do something else, ended up here, and found we were really good at it. But I suppose, according to OP, I should have no professional credibility unless I majored in business or finance? Bollocks! A CPA *could* do my job, but our euphemism for CPAs who sell investments is Can’t Produce Anything. You don’t want to know how we refer to CFPs… ;)

  122. ginger ale for all*

    I read a lot of the comments this morning but I haven’t read them all yet. I just wanted to post this article on Scott Walker and his lack of degree. I am not a Scott Walker fan but I think the article is worth reading on the subject because it has stats about college degrees and jobs and then discusses whether or not you need one in politics. I think the subject will come up more if he stays in the race. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/17/scott-walker-never-graduated-from-college-so-what/

  124. AMG*

    And props to all of those who managed to discuss like grown-ups and nice people. Holy Crap!

  125. Anon Accountant*

    I’m writing this as a CPA with 8 years experience. There are some people I’ve met that don’t have any degree but are great at accounting and finance tasks. Several of my best clients that have small businesses don’t have degrees but have some training or learned along the way. I’ve met some CPAs that were NOT great and in fact we have had to follow behind and correct a large portion of their work.

    Please don’t disregard what you may learn from your bosses.

  126. Not So NewReader*

    OP, if you are still reading, you are a better person than I would have been. This has been a tough read because drilling down through really makes a person question what they know about how life works.

    I referenced this upthread, OP, but it bears repeating. These are your bosses and cohorts. The object of the employment game is to find reasons to respect all different kinds of people. If you want to find reasons to dislike/disrespect someone you probably will find it. It’s a pit, OP. Do not fall into this pit. It’s the quickest way to finding yourself escorted out the door. I am not sure who told you that you have to have a degree in your field of work, but it’s simply not true. You don’t, as we see here.

    If you live by your own ideals, your career path may suffer for it as you pigeon hole yourself into certain jobs and avoid others. We all need to eat and have a roof over our heads, for your own well-being take a second look at these ideals.

    I have to go back to what a former boss said, “Part of what you are being compensated for is your willingness to get along with others.” There is no college degree for that willingness, OP. If you cling to your ideals, you will make your road much harder than it should be. You are going to find a lot of people who do not have a degree in what they are doing. And you, yourself, maybe faced with taking a job that does not use any of the degrees you have. Please reconsider your stance, even if it is only for your own future.

  128. frequentflyer*

    Alison, I usually agree with your advice but I have to disagree with you on this one. There are a few cases where having proper qualifications is very important. Finance is one of them (plus legal, audit etc etc). There is a big difference between professional roles and… (I don’t know if it’s the right term) non-professional roles. I do think it is very very rare that VP level staff (in a professional role) do not have the appropriate professional certifications. If OP was writing about her higher-ups being in a non-professional role (operations roles, other roles like PR or HR…), I would say she doesn’t have a point. But for professional roles… it does seem strange.

    I do see from the comments that many people think as long as OP’s bosses have the know-how, it’s ok… But this is not stated clearly in the post and I’ll give OP the benefit of the doubt and assume the bosses aren’t as competent as the norm. I guess OP should have worded the letter in a way that states the various incompetencies experienced by working with people without the relevant professional qualifications.

    I guess I feel very personally about this issue because working in my department absolutely requires professional knowledge and recently, my boss left and was replaced by some guy who absolutely had No Experience in this profession. It’s ridiculous and it could definitely happen in dysfunctional companies. The repercussions would be terrible because my new boss can’t catch the nitty gritty things that an experienced eye would be able to, I’m sure something bad is going to happen and I can sense the start of a mass exodus. Sigh.

    My advice to OP is – if you don’t like what you see, you can’t really change it anyway. It looks like a good company that promotes from within, but if you want to gain experience by working with competent people (and you don’t think your current bosses are competent), go look somewhere else.

    1. SystemsLady*

      Something about the letter (the focus on “bachelor’s”) gives me the feeling that these two managers at least have an MBA, though.

      I’m not sure if that’d be any better because I’m not familiar with the intricacies of the field, though.

    2. Observer*

      Interesting note though – you mention how your new person is not qualified because he HAS NO EXPERIENCE. Not, because he has the wrong degree.

      The OP clearly states that he doesn’t believe that these people are competent because they don’t have the right degree. He doesn’t provide any reason to believe that they are not performing up to par, but just says that they “can’t be”, because, the wrong degree.

  129. UpTheLadder*

    A little bit of context, here.

    The reason younger people (and by younger I mean younger than me, so younger than their early 30s) are baffled by the idea that someone with a degree in Romanian poetry can be promoted up the corporate ladder or hold on to a senior position for decades is because we entered a work force where training doesn’t happen.

    In my entire career, I have never had a workplace mentor. I have never had any on-the-job training whatsoever besides the bare minimum of company-specific quirks. When instructional material exists at all, it is usually woefully out of date and it is expected that you will fuss with it only when there is absolutely nothing else to do; the process of training has been almost entirely outsourced to the employees themselves. There’s no incentive for training, because if you can’t “get it” on your own, there is a line of applicants out the door desperate to prove that they can; as one of my former bosses put it, “We throw them at the wall and see who sticks.”

    Want to learn a new skill? Want to switch to a different role within the same field? Then you’d better be prepared to dig the money out of your own pocket to get a new certification, or take out loans to get another degree and a new opportunity for the internships that will allow you to jump the hurdle of HR folks reluctant to hire anyone to do something that they haven’t done before professionally, even if they have a long background in similar roles.

    Of course, it wasn’t always that way, but it’s easy to make that assumption when one isn’t paying attention.

    1. SystemsLady*

      This definitely isn’t true in all industries (thank goodness!) but yeah, it’s an alarming trend in quite a few.

      For some reason I was aware as a younger person that “go train yourself!” was a modern trend before getting into industry, but I can’t remember why.

  130. Samiam*

    Long time lurker lured out by this letter. It is an eldritch event that published this today. I faced an eye rolling department new hire today who actually muttered “ludicrous” in a staff meeting. His comment related to the fact that our team only has two “real” accountants on it, the director has a forty year old degree in CS from a US college with a far east division (ex military), and the team lead has high school, Vietnam, and started out in the company as a night operator for a card reading mainframe donkey years ago.

    Our area is the main support structure tasked with translating the CFO’s vision to the technical team. We always say we are multi-lingual – conversing in fluent CPA, accounting system, and tech jargon. Most of the upstream systems were built in the seventies and behind every pretty GUI screen is a hidden 80 column card.

    On a good day we field about thirty emails in the support box, run and analyze a few accounting tests, add accounts, write up specifications for process changes, set parameters for new KPI reports, balance systems, and answer the immortal question “But why can’t I run detail on an account with 200+ million records to my local printer?”. On a better day the floodgates open and everything multiplies and we get choice moments to ponder the reality of PEBKAC*. We have loads better than good days.

    Our newest member is fixing to find out just how much he never learned in school.

    *Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

  131. SystemsLady*

    Just to give the OP some perspective – where I went to school, the students in the computer science and engineering college (it was weirdly combined) considered the college of business to be where all the engineering dropouts went to thrive, then subsequently brag about being the best. It was a very, very popular trope.

    There was a T-shirt floating around campus with the x-axis showing the college major [engineering freshman, engineering sophomore, transfer to business] and the y-axis (GPA) dipping low and then sharply rising to the high 3s.

    There was even a negative stereotype of engineers pursuing after MBAs after graduating – “bet they had a bad GPA and couldn’t find a job!”

    A lot of these students, and, oddly, particularly those in the computer science department, also ragged on people pursuing basically any other liberal arts degree.

    The trope may have accurately described one or two particularly distasteful students per year (that’s a very, very small percentage at this college, for the record). But I hope those who were particularly attached to it discovered just how wrong-headed their views of business and other degrees were the moment they stepped into industry.

    Like the others have said, you don’t actually end up using your major skills directly. The education itself is usually important, but it’s not going to automatically translate to on-the-job skills.

    You might occasionally be able to pull in things you’ve learned from college to help with a problem, and sometimes it will help you learn certain skills faster than others from different disciplines might.

    However, you will often pick up just as many things from other disciplines. You’ll also find yourself stumbling when learning skills that don’t fall in with what you learned in college. For example, perhaps when learning about the computer program your VP put together for the department…

    I would also note that I suspect the VP would’ve started out programming in computer science, ended up writing finance-oriented programs, then ended up liking finance, and moved on from there. Your career can be just as much of a learning adventure as college is.

    OP, I hope you’ve read through these and found the wakeup call you needed. You remind me a lot of those “haha business degrees!” students, but I also think you’ll definitely start to pick this up from here on out.

    (To add to the crowd, I use both my major and minor far more at home for fun projects than I actually do at work…my work is maybe 5% of both.)

    1. SystemsLady*

      And yes, I realize OP has a business degree; however, the story stands as a pretty good contrast.

  132. Gabriel*

    It’s very likely your uneducated finance VP built the system you believe he is unqualified to run.

    Be sure their 20 years running the place made then much more skilled as managers then you are right now, and perhaps better then you will ever be, as they have an better grasp in their diploma topics that will help them in unexpected ways.

  133. Deni*

    Sometimes the best person for the job is the one already doing it. I would rather have someone who knows the company inside and out than a little whiner who thinks he is entitled to something special because he has a degree.

  134. Anonaconda*

    I don’t really understand what the OP wants his “supervisor” (quotes his, not mine) to do? Go back to school and get an accounting degree? Will that really prove to the OP that his boss deserves to have her job? Ultimately, college coursework is a couple of years out of your life. Compare that to 20 years in the working world and it’s clear which is more valuable. I wonder how OP would feel, 20 years from now, if someone were ignoring his work experience and focusing on the quality of his bachelor’s degree.

    Now, have I seen people who have been with the same company for years and years and have risen to high positions despite being utterly useless? Absolutely. Does their uselessness have anything to do with their degrees? Not at all.

    I think it’s good for all of us that a lack of a degree isn’t a bulletproof barrier to career success. I know lots of brilliant people without college degrees who would do fabulously in jobs where they’re unfortunately out of the running by not having a bachelor’s. That is a real shame to me.

    1. THE OP*

      “Go back to school and get an accounting degree?” – Actually yes, that would be a good start. Nursing used to require a simple associates degree. Now it requires a BA minimum. At my facility they have set a deadline that all nurses need to get their BA’s or lose their job.

      Why should it be any different for someone handling the institutions finances? Why should there be a double standard?

      1. Ask a Manager* Post author

        I’m confused. Do you actually think everyone should have a degree in the specific field they’re working in? How do you reconcile with the fact that little of the work world agrees with you / operates that way, and that so many successful people don’t?

        1. THE OP*

          In short yes

          I reconcile that fact by understand that things “used to” operate that way. They don’t anymore. Last I checked I haven’t seen any Apprenticeships on Monster, LinkedIn or Indeed.

          I reconcile that fact by knowing those people who have no degree but were lucky enough to get where they are without it, will soon be a story told to our grandkids. “There once was a time you could get a job without a higher education”

          Now a days, You want to work in HR, you need an HR degree, you want to work in accounting, you need an accounting degree, hell I have a friend that works in a bakery and she needed to finish her culinary degree to keep her job.

          In the past if you had experience you could be “grand fathered in” or get an apprenticeship. Doesn’t work that way anymore and hasn’t for sometime.

          Yes I think if you’re going to work in finance you need to have some sort of finance degree relevant to your position. I’m not handing over my money to a financial investor who has a degree in English literature. I’m not having my taxes prepared by someone who isn’t a CPA and doesn’t understand tax law. I’m not hiring an attorney that doesn’t have a law degree. I’m not hiring an electrician who isn’t certified and passed the required exams.

          1. Ask a Manager* Post author

            I’m not sure why you think this, but it’s not true. As you can see by the many comments from people above, loads of people do well in their fields with a degree in some other area. Yes, there are fields where that’s not the case (law, for example). But those are more the exception than the rule.

            At this point I’m almost starting to feel trolled because I’m getting increasingly skeptical that you truly think this in the face of hundreds of intelligent people explaining otherwise.

        2. THE OP*

          Last post and then I’m done:
          Please, answer my question instead of deflecting it into another “I’m confused” statement.

          Why should it be any different for someone handling the institutions finances? Why should there be a double standard?

          To be more precise why should a RN, therapist, Dr, Pharmacist etc be held to one standard ie; having relevant degree’s, continuing Ed courses etc, meanwhile the people running the finances are held to a different standard. Are not the finances just as important if not more so? If the finances are off then everyone loses, I would expect the finance people to be required to have relevant education, and by education I mean schooling, with book n stuff.

          Please provide insight on this double standard. Thank you.

          1. Ask a Manager* Post author

            Because there are lots of different ways to learn your field and become equipped to excel in it. The most common is learning by doing. What you’re saying is the equivalent of “I only trust people who learn through textbooks instead of lectures” or vice versa. It makes no sense; there are lots of ways to learn things. The test of whether someone has learned enough to excel at their job is whether they excel at it. If they do, it makes no sense to say they had the wrong kind of training.

            It’s been a long time since I’ve been so stunned by a poster here.

            1. Loose Seal*

              What’s the most stunning is that the OP’s own career disproves her stance. Practitioners in the mental health field have lots of hours actually working under supervision before they are licensed (for example, in my state, it’s two thousand) so her first field valued hands-on learning. If one could learn everything from textbooks, OP could have been licensed immediately after getting her Master’s.

              Even now, OP is working in finance without yet completing a finance degree. If degrees germane to the position are so important, why was OP hired prior to finishing one? Why did she even apply knowing she didn’t yet have her degree so (in her view) couldn’t possibly be good at a job in finance?

          2. einahpets*

            Well, at least in one of your examples, there isn’t an industry wide standard requiring a degree — RNs don’t all have bachelor degrees. A RN has passed a state licensing exam and that is what requires the continuing education. See my other post below posted yesterday for the numbers / link, but less than 10 years ago less than half did.

            As a society, I do think we have checks and balances in place for people with jobs that could impact many lives and livelihoods. I imagine that your hospital does, on occasion, have internal and external audits? (If not, then that is worrisome on another level.)

            In my line of work (clinical trials), we do have audits / inspections from clients (pharma companies) and governmental agencies — these include an analysis of the qualifications of our people — which is more than just education background but includes years of experience in the field / specific indication / demonstrated knowledge via interviews, etc. But 50 years ago? A lot of those regulations weren’t in place in the industry and had to be set up after mistakes were made.

      2. einahpets*

        Ugh. Nursing and bachelors degrees! This is a sensitive subject to me.

        My mom is an AMAZING nurse just a few years from retirement. She went to a diploma school; with the two years of university she got before entering she did do over four years of education to get her RN. In her department, she has the seniority to take on the difficult cases (that the new nurses with the fancy bachelors degrees don’t) and does on a daily basis.

        Her hospital did talk about having all the nurses go back and earn a bachelors degree… but you know what that would have cost at this point to do a distance learning / online learning program, considering her prereqs would be worth nothing to a university now? 50k a year. FOR A NURSE THAT EXCELS AT HER JOB OF TAKING CARE OF PATIENTS! Thankfully her hospital decided to only require bachelor degrees for those that go into management.

        I think this situation is a perfect example of how things were entirely different 20-30 years ago (where diploma nursing schools were the common, accepted way to become an RN) and it is doing a disservice to your employees / coworkers to discount what the years of experience and a different timepoint mean. In my mom’s case, most of her entire senior cohort would have left, which would have also been a disservice to the patients at the hospital.

        For the record, my younger sister DID do a bachelors in nursing when she entered the field 5 years ago, so I am not discounting how it is different now. But even she agreed that my mom is way more educated based on her experience in the field than she was at graduation.

        1. einahpets*

          Also, because I like facts, I went ahead and looked up the numbers on RNs with diploma vs degree background: http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/nursing-fact-sheet

          “In 1980, almost 55 percent of employed registered nurses held a hospital diploma as their highest educational credential, 22 percent held the bachelor’s degree, and 18 percent an associate degree. By 2008, a diploma was the highest educational credential for only 13.9 percent of RNs, while the number with bachelor’s degrees as their highest education had climbed to 36.8 percent, with 36.1 percent holding an associate degree as their top academic preparation.”

          Essentially, you’re assumptions that a person isn’t qualified in this field in particular unless they have a bachelors degree or higher means that you only believe that 36.8% of nurses can do their job. Just because your hospital has put in a policy to get all nurses at its’ hospital to a certain education level does not make it an industry standard nor does it say anything about their qualifications to do their job. Especially for RNs, who do have to maintain a certain number of continuous education hours ever year to maintain their licensure, no matter what education level.

          I am all for higher education, considering I have a BS and a MS and a professional certification in my field. But I am not going to judge my very successful colleagues on anything other than their work quality now.

  135. Yellow*

    Oh god this makes me so embarrassed for my generation (Millennials). It is these people who give us a bad rep. He will trip on his own ego one day and come back to the real world, I’m sure of it.

  136. THE OP*

    I’ve been reading, silently composing my thoughts, allowing folks to respond.

    First a little background. I am in my 40’s. I worked in Mental Health as a Mental Health Professional for almost 2 decades until recent changes in the delivery of mental health services no longer make it financially rewarding nor personally rewarding.

    I chose to leave mental health and start working in the “business world”. Hence I returned to school to get an accounting degree and a CPA cert.

    My initial post was based on my utter disbelief that someone in a financial upper management position could not have the corresponding education.

    At no point in time in my mental health career did I experience this. If you wanted to be a therapist, you needed to have the corresponding psych or social work degree. Nurses need an nursing degree, pharmacist need a Pharm degree, pharm techs need to be nationally certified, Dr’s a Ph.D. and so forth.

    On top of needing the corresponding degree, yearly continuing education needed to happen to keep one’s state certifications valid and in good order.

    That’s the world I lived in for almost 20 years. You could not work in these fields without the corresponding degree and continuing education. I unfortunately made the assumption that the world of finance would be similar as your dealing with complex applications, money and the like. The financial world is changing every day, and I “assumed” people in this field needed to be educated and current.

    According to the responses, I was mistaken apparently.

    Since my eye opening entrance into the “business world” 2 things have become evident.

    1) How fortunate most of you are to be able to have jobs that are not as regulated, where you can have an unrelated education or none for that matter, and still have a job AND get to hang out for 20 years AND if you outlast most people, get promoted.

    2) Times are changing, getting a job with little or no education doesn’t cut it anymore. Since returning to school I understand what corporations are looking for in this modern age. I attend work fairs, talk to head hunters and network. Those people with “20 years of experience but no education” are a dying breed and will be gone soon. Times and requirements are changing vastly. Hang onto it while you can.

    1. Numbers1206*

      OP, I’m interested to know your thoughts. I’m 3 weeks from my MBA and have my bachelors in Accounting. My boss recently told me that while this education is wonderful, I don’t have the experience to back up my education. I have three years experience in my field. Would you agree with his sentiments or do you believe that he is incorrect?

      1. THE OP*

        I believe its the same as its always been. When I earned my Psych degree, I started out volunteering at a small lowing paying non profit, then was hired part time, then full time, eventually moving up to bigger jobs and eventually landing in Trauma departments and Psych units at hospitals.

        I don’t foresee that changing. With my new foray into the business world I took an $8 hr pay cut and am starting over at an entry level finance job while finishing up my degree, and WITH MY EDUCATION, plan to work my way up as before. However I have 20 years of professional experience working in high stress environments on my side this time around.

        1. Tinker*

          So it sounds like your unusual background actually does have transferable skills for your new line of work. Do you suppose that sort of thing might happen to anyone else?

      2. Richard*

        MBAs are great degrees, but they aren’t entry level degrees. They’re mostly useful for people who have about 5-10 years of experience. More than that, the degree has diminishing returns. Less than that, you likely aren’t in a place where you can apply the experience.

        1. numbers1206*

          I agree with you, but it doesn’t read as though the OP feels the same way. I was curious to his/her thoughts. While I’m learning a lot from my MBA program, I feel like the experience I’m encountering at the same time is supplementing my knowledge.

    2. Richard*

      One thing to keep in mind is that, in most fields that are frequently changing, continuing education is the enemy of keeping current. School accreditation doesn’t happen overnight, and as a result, the way to know how to work with today’s tax laws or finances is not to go take a class – it’s to be hands on with the current work.

      Take a look at the curriculum for an MBA. How many credit hours of that curriculum have anything to do with what you’re talking about (continuously changing regulations, etc.). You’ll see marketing classes, economic theory, etc. Perhaps 2 classes/6 credit hours will have to do with the kinds of things you’re talking about. 6 credit hours is supposed to equate to 6 hours of in-class instruction a week and about 12 hours of homework a week for 16 weeks. 18*16 = 288 hours – about 13% of a year’s work. MBA’s are great degrees, as are many other degrees, but they aren’t the same as hands on work. You’ll also find that today’s undergraduate business degrees have huge overlaps with CS degrees at most schools, although business degrees tend to have less rigid accreditation requirements than CS degrees.

      In terms of finding a job – my experience has been that the best way to find a job is to do well at your current job and earn the respect of both your peers and superiors. At that point, people will help you out. Agreed that finding a job cold is often harder if you don’t meet the expectations of the hiring manager, and if your resume is in the slush pile. The mistake is getting your resume into the slush pile.

    3. Ask a Manager* Post author

      1) How fortunate most of you are to be able to have jobs that are not as regulated, where you can have an unrelated education or none for that matter, and still have a job AND get to hang out for 20 years AND if you outlast most people, get promoted.

      Please stop saying this. Most people do not get promoted simply because they outlasted others and stuck around long enough. You should be assuming that people in high level positions are there because they’re qualified and great at what they do, until and unless you actually see otherwise.

      1. THE OP*

        I guess this is where we can agree to disagree.

        Because where I came from, like I stated, if you didn’t have the corresponding education, yearly continuing ed, meet government and regulatory agency standards, then you don’t have a job. These requirements are YEARLY, not every 20 years.

        If these types of regulations exist in the financial world I have yet to see them. Not saying they don’t, I haven’t come across them or learned about them yet.

        Furthermore, I’m sure you have a whole list of why people get promoted other than simply being good at what they do. Nepotism, brown noses, People that “you know” and so forth. Look at the guy who ran FEMA during Katrina. No experience running a government agency, yet through people he knew landed that job. I can count several other reasons someone would get promoted other than education and doing a good job.

        1. Ask a Manager* Post author

          You’re coming from a field that specifically regulates what qualifications people must have to practice in it. Surely you recognize that that’s unusual and most fields don’t operate that way?

          And yes, of course there are people who get promoted for the wrong reasons. But that’s not the norm, and assuming it’s the case without actually seeing evidence of it is really wrong-headed and insulting to highly effective people.

        2. Observer*

          Because where I came from, like I stated, if you didn’t have the corresponding education, yearly continuing ed, meet government and regulatory agency standards, then you don’t have a job. These requirements are YEARLY, not every 20 years.

          Which is utterly irrelevant to the conversation. The point is that most people who get promoted to the positions they hold, get there because of their ability to meet the requirements of the job. That does mean competence, and SOMETIMES it also means degrees and /or additional formal continuing ed. It never means “staying around.”

          Is is true that some people get into positions they are not qualified for? Sure. Do some of them even manage to rise despite their lack of qualifications? Sure. But it is still not in any way a reasonable thing to assume just because someone does not have the qualifications that you are used to seeing in the world of medical service.

          1. AthenaC*

            “Which is utterly irrelevant to the conversation.”

            I disagree. It sheds light on what 20 years of workplace experience has taught the OP and why they assumed what they did about their new field.

            The OP has already admitted that it is now clear these assumptions were incorrect.

            1. Observer*

              Actually, the OP says that this is why s/he is still convinced that all of the people who don’t have the “correct” degree “can’t” be good at their position. They must be in their positions for other reasons, which is possible because their fields are unregulated.

        3. sam*

          comparing someone who has spent 20 years learning on-the-job in a career path that doesn’t necessarily have specific continuing education requirements as your prior one did (and mine does – i’m in law) to someone who got a political patronage appointment with zero years of experience is utterly unfair.

          There are millions of jobs that are not part of highly regulated industries. I’m not actually sure whether finance is (or should be) one of them. But you’re comparing apples and snowshoes.

          1. sam*

            I’ll also add an anecdote…

            back in my crazy law firm days, I was working on a crazy deal over in europe. it was one of those multiple-all-nighter, all-hands-on-deck kind of things. We had been working on it for months and were in the final stretch. Our team included several partners, the senior associate (me) a junior associate and a paralegal.

            Fall had rolled around so we grabbed up one of the brand new incoming fall associates for the final push. We figured he probably didn’t know much, but we could use the extra body to just process documents, etc.

            The guy went to law school and had a shiny new degree, unlike our paralegal.

            At one point, at about 2am, the paralegal asked him to do some work – type up some riders for one of the documents or something. The guy refused, because it was somehow beneath him. Mind you – I and all of the other lawyers who were much more senior to this guy were ALL doing this work, because it needed to get done and we were on a massive deadline.

            That was when we needed to have a serious discussion with this dude about the fact that his law degree didn’t mean crap in this situation, and that the paralegal had more knowledge in his little finger about the deal and how we worked than he could ever know, having been at the firm for all of 4 days, and he’d better get his act together.

            I don’t think he lasted very long at the firm.

            (that was also the deal where the paralegal ended up making more money than the associates on an hourly basis, because he was non-exempt and got to bill overtime, while the associates were all exempt employees. I alone billed about 400 hours that month to the client. there was a stretch at the end where we didn’t leave the office to sleep or shower for about 3 days. it was ugly.)

        4. frequentflyer*

          “Because where I came from, like I stated, if you didn’t have the corresponding education, yearly continuing ed, meet government and regulatory agency standards, then you don’t have a job. These requirements are YEARLY, not every 20 years.

          If these types of regulations exist in the financial world I have yet to see them. Not saying they don’t, I haven’t come across them or learned about them yet.”

          Yes, CPAs and CAs in my part of the world have yearly CPE (continuing professional education) requirements.

          1. Tinker*

            I’m kind of surprised that someone who is almost done with an accounting degree hasn’t heard of that. My dad’s a retired CPA (whose undergraduate degree is in, uh, psychology) and I’d kind of assumed that the reason a person would even GET an accounting degree would at least somewhere involve meeting the education requirements for licensure.

      2. A Bug!*

        That bit also reads as if these people in high positions were originally hired into positions for which they were unqualified and just kept getting promoted for 20 years without picking up any sort of relevant skills.

        Except that it’s not unheard-of for someone to get hired into a very entry-level position and work their way up from there by developing skills and displaying competence and ability at each level along the way.

        OP, I’m sure it was jarring to move from a highly-regulated field to an unregulated one where nobody needs a piece of paper to prove they can do their jobs. But you need to make that adjustment before your attitude starts harming your ability to progress in your new career.

      3. AthenaC*

        I’m sure my own experience working with a wide variety of companies’s accounting departments is coloring my reading of all this, but a function like accounting is particularly at risk of allowing people rise above a level where they should be because of the intersection of a couple things:

        1) a well-designed accounting and financial reporting system will basically run itself if you only train people to do the basic inputs. This seems to happen more at larger companies with larger departments where responsibilities are divided up such that any given individual has rather narrow responsibilities.

        2) Management of a successful company knows what they want to see and how to get it out of the system, but other than that they don’t understand much about accounting and thus dn’t know how to assess where people ought to stay or whether they are competent in their role.

        As long as not much changes, everything goes fine, but the minute something unique happens, those same people that know everything there is to know about the status quo (and to be clear that’s a pretty impressive accomplishment all on its own) start to mess things up because they don’t have the background that an accounting education (or the continuing education requried to keep up a CPA license) would give them. Until their auditor finds what they did and has to untangle it with varying degrees of success.

        “So what?”

        My point is that while the OP admits they assumed far too much about their superior’s lack of finance / accounting education, I think many people are assuming far too much regarding the superiors’ experience. With the caveat that it’s based on what I’ve seen, of course.

        1. Observer*

          That could be. Or it could not be.

          A good CS degree is often a very good training ground for the kind of thinking that leads to the ability to handle complexity and unique cases. This is because good systems design requires you to think about edge cases and interfaces to other system.

          Also, the flip side of the insulation that these systems give you, is that they allow people who are not proficient in the technical details the ability to really see a lot of higher level stuff and really get a sense of the financial flows and how they affect, and are affected by, many other issues. For people at the top, that can be more useful that actually knowing how to code a specific type of transaction.

        2. frequentflyer*

          “My point is that while the OP admits they assumed far too much about their superior’s lack of finance / accounting education, I think many people are assuming far too much regarding the superiors’ experience. With the caveat that it’s based on what I’ve seen, of course.”

          100% agree! I know of Finance people who don’t have Finance related degrees, but they take other certifications like CPA/CA to get the relevant professional knowledge before moving into their finance management roles. If I see a CFO of a listed company without something like that, and who doesn’t have many years of finance-related experience under their belt (I would ignore the call-centre, working from operations experience), I would never in a million years invest in that company.

    4. Kara*

      I know I’m late to this, but can I just say that this comment really rubbed me the wrong way:

      I “assumed” people in this field needed to be educated and current.

      Most people who have been in the business world for a while understand that smart and educated and current and competent are not necessarily synonymous with “degree”. It is possible to have taken courses, self-educated, learned on the job, and be perfectly qualified and competent to do a job – even a high level job.

      So your assumption (no need for unnecessary quotes, btw) that someone without a degree is uneducated or otherwise not current is not only snobbish, it’s ignorant.

      None of your explanations are really making you look any better except that we now can’t write your really condescending attitude off as the hubris of youth and must instead acknowledge that you are really pretty offensive.

      1. frequentflyer*

        “I “assumed” people in this field needed to be educated and current.”

        This assumption is not wrong. People in this field DO need to be educated and current. Most people take offense that OP assumed that his higher-ups are NOT educated and current, just based on their lack of relevant educational qualifications.

    5. Cari*

      Your supervisors and VPs *do* have an education as well as 20 years or so xp in the field.

      You seem to be confusing education and qualification. Qualifications in themselves mean sod-all if you didn’t learn anything when you obtained them.

      And this attitude you and today’s businesses have regarding a bunch of letters and paper, is actually detrimental our industries. While you do want employees to stay up-to-date in their fields, it also does not make sense to throw out experience and knowledge accrued during the time working, in favour of employing cheaper people that tick the right letters box.

      You came from a completely unrelated field and have had to get a qualification to make yourself relevant to this one. Presumably your supervisors don’t have to go back to school with you because they’ve spent 20 years keeping up-to-date in their industry in other ways while working.

  137. CompGirl*

    Is this a Real, Actual question? Oh my goodness.

    OP, YOU are the one who has a lot to learn.

    Even if you ARE a genius and more knowledgeable than anyone else in your field, no one likes a snob. So, stop it. Look up the word “humility,” work on your kindness, and take a serious look at your character. It seems that some major introspection is in order for you.

  138. vKit*

    “I attend work fairs, talk to head hunters and network. Those people with “20 years of experience but no education” are a dying breed and will be gone soon.”

    This statement shows how much you really don’t know about the business world.

    1.) Work fairs: We’ve been to work fairs too. Keep listening to low-level HR staffers and interns, then, instead of the wide breadth of experienced professional folks that responded to your original letter.

    2.) Head hunters: We’re familiar; it’s how I got where I am now – go figure! (Yes, even lowly old me.) But go ahead and listen to a glorified recruiter’s sales pitch so that they can get their placement fee instead of heeding the well thought out concerns of AAM’s readership.

    3.) Network. Maybe you should network with people outside of your umbrella of experience. Diversity of experience and backgrounds is key.

    4.)”Those people with “20 years of experience but no education” are a dying breed and will be gone soon.”: When they retire with very healthy 401ks.

    Seriously. Step back and ask yourself, “Why did I write AAM if I am not willing to concede that my tunnel vision might harm my career?”

  139. THE OP*

    “You’re coming from a field that specifically regulates what qualifications people must have to practice in it. Surely you recognize that that’s unusual and most fields don’t operate that way?”

    I recognize that now, still flabbergasted by the whole concept of it (who would want a CFO without a finance degree?), and as far as I’m concerned, coming from the regulated workforce that I have gives me the upper hand.

    1. Chinook*

      “as far as I’m concerned, coming from the regulated workforce that I have gives me the upper hand.”

      Ummm…I beg to differ. I currently work in a highly regulated industry and have been a member of a different, highly-regulated profession and have worked in regulated and unregulated workforces and I can tell you that a highly regulated field doesn’t prepare you for working in one that isn’t or in one that is regulated in a different way. Regulations force you to meet certain expectations but doesn’t prepare you to think about what needs to be done when those regulations don’t exist. You are used to being a round peg fitting in a round hole and are angry because those with square corners have figured out how to fit into that same round hole. What you don’t see or acknowledge is the 20 years it took them to round their corners to fit. True, they may not fit well elsewhere but they probably fit that hole where they are perfectly because that is what they molded themselves to.

      As I said earlier, I have worked for an amazing CFO without a finance degree (she got her bookkeeping credentials 20 years earlier via night classes while she worked there). Part of the reason she was a great CFO was that she knew what she didn’t know and had no problems calling on experts when she needed (in fact, she probably would have hired someone like you, without the attitude, because you have the training she doesn’t). What she did know, though, was how the organization grew and changed and how that effected its short term and long term fiscal reality (because this was a 100 year old organization when I was there, so long term planning was vital).

      The key to great leadership isn’t that they know everything. A great leader surrounds themselves with experts and uses them to help fill the gaps in their knowledge. She would hire someone who knows regulations regarding finances precisely because she knows she is not an expert and would never hold herself up as one.

      1. frequentflyer*

        “The key to great leadership isn’t that they know everything. A great leader surrounds themselves with experts and uses them to help fill the gaps in their knowledge. She would hire someone who knows regulations regarding finances precisely because she knows she is not an expert and would never hold herself up as one.”

        It is definitely different working for a boss who has professional knowledge vs a boss who doesn’t and just happens to be a good leader. For a boss who relies very much on his staff for expert knowledge, his staff are not able to learn from him with regards to application of technical expertise, professional judgement etc. You also seem to assume that all the staff under this boss are “experts” who can stand on their feet and have a lot of technical knowledge, which may not be true. For professionals who are starting out and have say less than 10 years experience under their belt, it is very helpful to have a boss who is more knowledgeable, who can catch things that people with less experience (e.g. OP) may not catch.

        If a CFO does not have enough technical knowledge or experience, he may have to rely very much on his auditors to highlight risk areas. Also, I noted some people saying that since the company seems to be doing well, the CFO must be competent. How do you know that the company’s books are really reflecting the true situation? How do you know whether the company is performing as well as it can? Just because it looks healthy doesn’t mean it really is – something could be brewing underneath. Just because it looks healthy doesn’t mean it is as healthy as it can and it should be.

        1. Observer*

          All of these things are true. But, ultimately, that’s true regardless of what degree the leader took. Also, no matter what degree the person took, the higher up you go, the more specific technical areas the person is not going to be an expert in.

          As for “How do we know that the books are reflective of reality”, that’s a good point. But, that has more to do with leadership and integrity than technical expertise of the CFO. OF all of the cases that I can think of the issue was never that the CFO / Controller didn’t know what he (or she) was doing. To take two of the highest profile scandals in recent memory – Enron and WorldCom – these were situations where highly qualified people either ignored or engaged in outrageously incorrect accounting practices. It’s not for nothing that Arthur Andersen never recovered from the Enron scandal, even though the Supreme Court reversed their conviction.

    3. Kara*

      I recognize that now, still flabbergasted by the whole concept of it (who would want a CFO without a finance degree?), and as far as I’m concerned, coming from the regulated workforce that I have gives me the upper hand.

      So in other words, you STILL don’t respect your managers and you think you’re superior to them. Yes, yes, that will get you the upper hand. I suggest you go tell the company management that they’ve been doing it ALL WRONG all these years and that you with your newly minted Accounting Degree™ will quickly set them straight and put it all right again.

      1. numbers1206*

        I agree. I’m ecstatic that accounting isn’t highly regulated! As long as you follow the law, you can do whatever you want in accounting! One of the best parts of this field is that as long as you can justify your decision and your decision is legal, there’s no wrong answer. There may be a better answer, but you almost cannot be wrong. I feel like the OP may struggle with that.

        1. frequentflyer*

          “One of the best parts of this field is that as long as you can justify your decision and your decision is legal, there’s no wrong answer.”

          Creative accounting. This is where fraud gets started. For the good of investors everywhere… I really hope companies hire qualified finance professionals.

          1. numbers1206*

            When you’re arguing if a piece of hardware is classified as administrative expense or direct care expense, that’s not fraud. There are extremely valid reasons for classifying it in either category. As I stated, if there is a strong argument and it is LEGAL, there’s no wrong answer.

    5. Observer*

      coming from the regulated workforce that I have gives me the upper hand.

      Not if it gives you such a skewed vision of how the world operates. Illusions of any sort get in the way of getting ahead. Failing to recognize that there are multiple paths to competence is also going to lead you to misjudge a lot of people. And, tends to lead to unpleasant consequences.

    6. phillist*

      I work in your previous “highly regulated industry”.

      Your highly regulated peers work for me.

      Even though I’m significantly younger than most of my direct reports, I have been managing as long as most of them have been working. I have spent that time racking up accomplishments and making connections that continue to give me ample opportunities for career growth.

      I have one semester left on my degree. In, let’s say, Teapot Relations.

      I’m very glad my team of highly-regulated professionals (and my highly-regulated professional boss) judges me on my accomplishments rather than the subject matter of my degree.

      I think your need to reevaluate whether your opinions on the business world actually match up with realty.

  140. Not So NewReader*

    OP, at this point I am totally lost. You said that you were having a hard time respecting your bosses.

    It seems that we have failed to help you to figure out how to find respect for your bosses.

    Let’s look at this from another angle. Let’s say “Okay, you’re right. Bosses should only be extremely educated people.”

    Now what?

    How will you find a job where you can be assured of everyone’s educational background?

    In the interim what will you do about your lack of respect for your current bosses? Will you be able to keep your job?

    And lastly, if something crosses your desk that you lack the credentials for how will you handle that?

    1. THE OP*

      “Okay, you’re right. Bosses should only be extremely educated people” – I never said that, although it would help. What I said was, upper management should have education that corresponds to their current role. Ie: you’re a CFO you should have a finance degree and so on.

      “How will you find a job where you can be assured of everyone’s educational background?” – Its called google, LinkedIn, Yahoo finance, glass door etc. Its called research. I can research the company and see the credentials of the CFO, VP etc. I can pull the Financials and look at corporate structure. Its not that hard really.

      “Will you be able to keep your job?” – Exit strategy: I plan to keep my job long enough to get the tuition reimbursement, get certified in Lean and 6 sigma. finish my degree / cert and then take my education and skills elsewhere.

      “if something crosses your desk that you lack the credentials for how will you handle that?”- this is the easiest of all. In the health care field we have what’s called “scope of practice”. If something is “beyond your scope of practice” you simply state it and someone who does know how or is better suited to perform the job is delegated. I have no qualms setting boundaries if I don’t know how to do something. I’d rather be upfront and say I don’t know how to do something than mess it up pretending I can. Furthermore, if my managers would like to teach me how to do what ever task it is, Ill be glad to listen.

      1. Observer*

        Will you be able to keep your job?” – Exit strategy: I plan to keep my job long enough to get the tuition reimbursement, get certified in Lean and 6 sigma. finish my degree / cert and then take my education and skills elsewhere.

        Will you be able to suppress your disdain long enough to do that?

        “if something crosses your desk that you lack the credentials for how will you handle that?”
        You didn’t address the question. Not have an official credential does not mean you can’t do something, or you can’t figure out how to do it. The question is will you be willing to do what it takes? But, your response does indicate that you would not be willing to do that.

        Here is the thing. In most fields, you won’t be able to operate that way and keep desirable jobs. “Scope of practice” is not that rigidly defined, for a whole host of reasons. And, of course, that sometimes gets abused. But, in a significantly large segment of the business world, you simply cannot stay within your rigidly defined box and be successful.

        1. THE OP*

          The question is will you be willing to do what it takes? But, your response does indicate that you would not be willing to do that. — please re read my response ” Furthermore, if my managers would like to teach me how to do what ever task it is, Ill be glad to listen.”

          1. THE OP*

            I forgot to answer ‘Will you be able to suppress your disdain long enough to do that?’

            You bet, free tuition assistance, free Lean / 6 sigma training. I can keep my mouth shut long enough to achieve the over all goal. I haven’t lost sight of the grand scheme of things, nor what I have to do to achieve it.

            1. Observer*

              You really think that it’s enough not to tell your boss that you think he’s uneducated and incompetent at his (or her) job? People who have worked their way up generally have a very good nose for people who don’t respect them. You are going to have to do a LOT more than keep your mouth shut to avoid tripping their sensors.

            2. AllieJ0516*

              Note, OP, that a lot of times “planning to hang on” isn’t always what happens. You may not be aware of this, but there are a lot of companies (including large healthcare corps) that find themselves having to lay people off, downsize, “right”size, or just fire people who have bad attitude and do not respect their teammates. So while you have a plan, it may not be up to you.

              Are you also aware of the number of college graduates who are unemployed or under-employed? Are you aware that we are still pulling out of a terrible time for jobs, employers and employees? That a college degree is not a guarantee that anyone would be able to get a job in their field?

              You are not living in the real world. You are judging books by their covers. I’d be willing to bet that many of the people whom you do not respect feel exactly the same way about you. I’d also bet that the majority of the people whom you reference in higher-up positions without a degree could probably not only teach you a few things, but could teach any of the college courses to those trying to get the degree that they lack. Practical use of anything learned from a book out in the real world is ten times more encompassing that you could learn sitting in a chair in a lecture hall.

              You need to let go of some of the megalomania. It’s not attractive.

          2. Observer*

            I see. And if your manager says “Figure it out or take a class” you’re going to tell him no?

      3. Cath in Canada*

        The thing is, you can’t extrapolate from healthcare to other fields. You just can’t.

        I work in a research department of a large healthcare provider, and you can’t even extrapolate from healthcare to what my department does within the same organisation. (Ask me how much sense some of the questions on my annual performance review make for someone with no patient contact!). Of course nurses, doctors, and other medical professionals need specific educations – it’s the nature of the field! But outside of strictly regulated professions such as healthcare, law, etc., the concepts of specific certifications and especially stuff like “scope of practice” (I’ve worked in three different research departments of a healthcare organisation for a total of 11 years and have never heard that term) just don’t apply. My colleagues, all of whom are working in genomics research, have degrees in everything from biology to stats to chemistry to electrical engineering. I think we have a couple of humanities majors among the grad students too. If you don’t know something, you go and learn it.

        You can bring transferable skills in from other fields, but you can’t always extrapolate the larger concepts, the reporting structures, and other cultural elements.

  141. THE OP*

    “Maybe the people they work under got where they are because of connections”-
    Ding Ding Ding, for what its worth, there is an internal investigation going on regarding favoritism and people being hired into lead and management positions that 1) have not even been employed here long enough to be able to apply for those positions, much less be hired into one. 2) people with MBA’s and other corresponding relevant degrees being passed over for the above mentioned “connected people”.

    1. AMG*

      Well, I commend you for coming back to talk about this–this is a tough crowd. I hope you will provide an update, especially as it relates to the internal investigation. The results of that will tell you a great deal regarding whether or not you should stay on with this company.

      1. This is ridiculous*

        1. Sorry you had to go through this, I knew there was more to the story. I mean, I could hear the frustration in your question so there had to be more.
        2. I feel you. I really do.
        3. I find it hilarious that you are a 40 year old man while many people probably thought you were a 20 year old, young whippersnapper.
        4. Maybe there are better things to come somewhere else.

    2. Jeff*

      Thanks, OP, the information in your second in your second post paints an entirely different picture.

      As a result of post #1, opinions were so overwhelmingly biased against you because of your perceived ability to quickly reach seemingly ill-conceived conclusions using scant data. Ironically enough, many of us, including yours truly, may have initially been guilty of the same after reading post #1. Perhaps we’ve all learned something new and unexpected.

      (Notwithstanding that, the law employs something called the ‘four corners doctrine,’ which provides that, in reaching a decision, a judge is required to look no further than the four corners of the document submitted in support of an argument. After reading your first post, OP, in the eyes of this group, your argument – despite its weakness – was effectively complete, so you can’t fault anyone for trashing it. :) Cheers.

    3. BeeBee*

      Yes, thanks for coming back and giving some clarification. The tone of the letter showed some bad attitude, BUT I had a feeling there may have been more going on here.

      I’ve also been unfortunate enough to work at places like that, or work for a “business owner” like that. Sometimes those people will even seek to discreet or disparage the people with the degree (accounting, IT, marketing are often targets) even while asking for their advice because they may have no experience in that area. It’s really a weird insecurity-passive aggressive thing.

      It’s not always that way though. Many, many people have worked their way up with no degree and are educated in a hands on manner. They’re wonderful to work with generally, so don’t let your experience here give you a bad impression.

  142. Cool Blue*

    I mean…a lot of successful people (i.e. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs) did not even complete their education….Because to Alison’s point, “they were, you know, good at what they do.”

    I know it’s a different industry but I’m #justsaying…

  143. Not So NewReader*

    One can raise the bar very high and insist on very high standards. Sometimes what happens next is that person is held under scrutiny by his peers/cohorts that no mere mortal could survive.

    If your single criteria for evaluating people is education, be forewarned. The man who prescribed chemo unnecessarily for 595 patients had plenty of education, he was a doctor. Those people’s lives are irretrievably ruined. But he had education and probably did his CUs. Just because a person has education does not mean they have ethics.

    We can point to other people who have education and they are not very well-liked. (I don’t want to give names here, let’s just say we see it in the news.) Just because a person has education does not mean they are well-liked, respected or are supported by their friends and coworkers.

    Referencing my story up thread about the man who wanted to know why 100 people could not do a task in one hour, if it was a 100 hour task: Just because a person has education does not mean they can wrap their minds around situations they have not seen or have not been a part of.

    I see you are concerned with nepotism, favoritism, etc. I hope you do not think that education and other credentials are the magic bullets in preventing these types of problems. Even the most educated people in their fields can be vulnerable to these pits. Googling the educational background of potential supervisors/bosses tells us nothing about what they are like today or how they handle their business activities today. All it says is that they can pass a bunch of tests. It says nothing about their ability to play fair.

    The world is not a perfect place and workplaces are not perfect, either, OP. I understand you want to protect yourself from bad workplaces and bad situations. But targeting one thing, such as your bosses’ education background may not protect you. If this actually worked, none of us would need Alison. We would just need Google.

    I wish you the best.

  144. JeanLouiseFinch*

    Oh my! This letter reminds me of a job interview I went on where the 2 attorneys interviewing me were smirking because (in addition to a law degree), I had a Fine Arts degree and experience in advertising instead of a pre-law degree. I told them that I planned to use my creativity and ability to look at issues a bit differently as an aid to my law practice. Needless to say, I did not get the job. However, as an appellate lawyer, I won a number of appeals against that firm, so I think I can safely say that their policy of not hiring attorneys with any sense of imagination has not helped them at all. In many departments, it is the varied backgrounds that make the team stronger, especially when coupled with experience.

  145. Beancounter in Texas*

    Dear OP,

    Having read “When I challenged one of their policies that made no financial logic, I was reprimanded for questioning them,” I can see your frustration and irritation. And while perhaps most of us are fortunate to work in unregulated fields without degrees in our current field, then I feel compelled to point out that many people do not have the resources – even with sacrifice – to pursue more formal education. And to boot, there are many positions and areas of expertise for which a degree does not exist.

    Best regards,

    The Beancounter without an Accounting Degree

  147. Karen*

    Geez … this OP has the elitist attitude that I unfortunately find among many academics. There is the general idea that college is the ONLY way someone will ever be educated. Worse, there is the assumption that people who do not go to college are not only intellectually challenged, but they are close-minded bigots (fill in your choice of -phobia).

    OP, a college degree can be valuable but your attitude is toxic.

  149. JohnB*

    I honestly wish there were more managers out there who worked their way up from the bottom, there is nothing worse than the current trend for graduates with truly useless degrees (sports science, media studies, giraffe mating calls) who come into companies and jump straight into management roles. They display the same level of disdain for experience as this person clearly does, they also have this attitude that anyone not degree educated must be an idiot.
    Some of us have a genuine passion for what we do and we look to learn more than we need to simply pass a test, but unfortunately others go into further education for the party life, the gap year back packing, the drugs, the alcohol and they come out the other side thinking the world owes them a top job. They’re the one’s who talk their way into jobs and then screw over their colleagues until they reach management.

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