In 2017, What Is More Important?

College or Experience?


  • Total voters
    41
although the vote is 19-4 in favor fo experince, salary says otherwise

The average salary of a 2016 college graduate is expected to be roughly 50k.

Which is roughly the average salary of, say, an apprentice plumber. 4 years into plumbing, at the same time the college graduates are getting their 50k jobs, you would be making 80k or even significantly more.

Edit: Note that I'm talking about people who enter the job market, and particularly trades right out of high school versus going to college.
 
It depends. There's no one answer that fits everything. Sometimes the degree is better. Sometimes the experience is better.
 
its not about what you know but who you know.. both those are important but networking is more important IMO
 
This. There are actual roadblocks that prevent you from moving into certain fields without formal education.

Coding, programming and IT in general is in a grey area. These are relatively new fields and are not protected like other STEM areas the degree requirement depends on the company. Without a degree you can't get past HR in some bigger companies if you are a programmer. At the same time there is nothing preventing companies from getting Indians with H1B visas to work on code or even offshoring the work to people from across the globe.
I got my CS degree at the time when my university had just created the program. There was some rumbling about whether Computer Science should be a professional degree (although there would be a significant overlap with Computer Engineering).

Sometimes I wonder whether that might have been smarter in the long term. Sure, it would be a protectionist and arbitrary barrier to entry, but the distillaton of CS to "Got code?" and the ease of entry of coders into the market is just going to create a race to the bottom.
 
Back
Top