In countries were top education is essentially free, i really see no reason anyone should forego it, even if they don't value it as much as others. Sure, there is the off chance you might do better without that degree because you can start earlier, but statistically that chance is slim and the benefits of good education will serve you all your life.
I understand the anti movement in the US, because of their state of top education in return for lots of money which might never pay off, but this really should not inspire people in europe to drop studies.
Then again, while I agree with the value of studying for a degree, young people see the vast majority of their slightly older peers with a degree in their hands who can't get a job, so I can see why the young can decide to forego college.
This is Italy I'm talking about, I don't know enough about other European countries. While the average youth unemployment rate for Europe is ~19%, ours got as high as 37%. That is a lot, only better than Greece and Spain.
There are many more factors to keep into account, such as the undeniable fact that a lot of current youngsters feel entitled just because they have a degree, or flat-out refuse jobs because that's not what they studied for, as if it was beneath them. They don't seem to realize that it's no longer like it was in the past decades, when very few people could access higher education, and were of course preferred in job interviews to people who just went to high school.
On the other hand, taxation is extremely high and heavy on entrepreneurs (employees cost ~2x their salary), who then hire under shitty one-off contracts because it costs less, so the whole job market is very hard to get into and very easy to drop off of.
Another issue is that there are a bunch of useless degrees, such as this thing called "Political sciences", which makes you pretty much unemployable, and sadly a lot of people choose it, and wonder why they can't find a job.
There are also many other factors at play here. It's a shitshow, really.
Higher education does have a lot of value in terms of teaching how to solve problems and hopefully teaching you how to network, but there are reasons to either drop out or don't even get into college in the first place.
People don't talk enough about this shit when discussing Europe's poor economy. Most of Southern Europe, France included, is almost socialist (in a bad way) in the way that free enterprise is treated.
I don't see how anyone could think economic growth, entrepreneurship and wage growth is possible when employment taxes are 100% (of salary) and people are encouraged by their accountants to spend just the right amount of effort cheating on their taxes. Add to this a corrupt, purpose-bred government class that consists of people who never held a normal job in their lives.
The EU should get on this problem with considerably more effort.
Amen to that. Employees are awfully expensive, and while we wait for the government to do something, business owners keep relocating manufacturing to places where labor is cheaper, leaving citizens unemployed.
I don't know if the solution looks so simple to me (lower the fucking cost of labor already) because I don't know anything about economy, or because someone is interested in maintaining this status quo.
OTOH, Italy has one of the lowest percentage of people with higher education in Western Europe, and one of the highest unemployment levels. So, the reason why there are so many young unemployed people for sure isn't the fact that we have too many young people with degrees.
You know, I don't feel as comfortable discarding the "too many young people with degrees" argument, because it's still a lot more people with a degree than there were in the past. I think it plays a role, and along with the cost of labor and the (real or perceived) recession and many other factors, it contributes to making the Italian job market what it is today.
Don't forget about the entitlements of the business owners. Many, many, many believe they are entitled to highly skilled and highly educated workers without paying them enough to afford the shittiest house/condo within an unreasonable commute to the office.
So at some point it isn't the workers that are being unreasonable. And I'm really curious what you think that point is? What defines who is being unreasonable among the business owner or worker? Or is that just dictated by which socioeconomic class you fall into?
Before landing my first job out of college I had to refuse quite a few offers because I would effectively have to pay to work on them. And that was in a growing economy in a much more young-accepting climate, besides, rent was cheaper by the time.
The way you phrased it, it sounds entitled. But I guess the people downvoting your comment have no idea what it is to enter the workforce nowadays.
Asshole entrepreneurs are one of the other factors I was talking about. They tend to make it very hard for young people to enter the job market (the famous 5+ years of experience required).
It's a bit of self-entitlement on the part of the prospective employees, and a bit of self-entitlement on the part of the entrepreneurs. The latter are rightfully mad at the government, and since they're in it for the money, they try to save as much money as they can. I'm not condoning these practices, I'm just saying that, when everything you earn from January to June goes in taxes, I can understand them trying everything they can.
I don't think so. I'm from Poland and I've spent a few years in Italy and the situation there is completely different - as in - much worse.
Comparing to the rest of Europe businesses in Poland pay relatively low taxes, youth unemployment is below the EU average and barely anybody can afford to turn down a job opportunity.
I think a big thing people miss is that people like Gates and Zuckerberg dropped out because they already had a promising product. They still took a gamble, but they were past some of the hurdles and already had a lot of the needed education.
Which means your strategy should be going to school so no one gets on your case while you develop your product. And use that school to gather connections and talent. Foregoing school before you have even a mostly developed idea is idiotic. Not saying people didn't make it, ~2000 is a pretty large pool to draw from.
They also gambled from a position where, had they failed, they'd have the support of their family and another chance at college. Making such gambles affordable for more people (so you don't have to make the safe choice -- law school or bigco or whatever) is good.
If there is an anti-movement in the US, there is one here. I mean, anti-vaxxing and flat-earthing became a thing in Denmark around 5-10 years after it became a thing in America.
We don't even have the excuse of a broken educational system.
my god ... some part of my brain can't accept that anyone actually believes this; that they just love trolling people, to "rustle their jimmies", so to speak.
It seems to have gained a lot more traction in the post-post-modern age, where all reality is subjective, opinions are facts, and asserting that something is objectively false is an attack on human rights.
In the US we also have an arguably poor view on what an "educated" person has to look like, and all the condescension that comes with not being "educated".
Specifically, the issue I have in mind is the commonly shitty way that trades are viewed (and trades people not seen as educated). Like plumbers, carpenters, hvac professionals, metal workers, etc.
My understanding is that there isn't as much of a divide or poor view of those paths in at least certain parts of Europe. Germany comes to mind, but I certainly could be wrong.
In many professions they also don't properly value experience (fresh graduate, with a degree), but that's another issue.
>.. i really see no reason anyone should forego it..
>Sure, there is the off chance you might do better without that degree because you can start earlier, but statistically that chance is slim and the benefits of good education will serve you all your life.
Well, yes, when you assume all that it would be hard to see why anyone will forego it, however, not everyone is as convinced that e.g. 'the benefits of good education will serve you all your life' and whatever else you do instead during those 4+ years wont.
Being a Harvard Dropout sends a very different signal than being a Unknown Uni Dropout, which in turn sends a very different signal than Never Even Applied or, worse, Didnt Get In Anywhere.
Going to uni is beyond valuable. Finishing uni ... 80/20 rule. Unless you wanna work in government or super big corpos, finishing isn’t that useful. Go there for the knowledge, not the paper.
Full disclosure: I say this as an extremely bad test taker who dropped out just before graduating after 5 years of undergrad. Just couldn’t make the case anymore that classes are better than making money freelancing.
But the excuse and freedom to explore interesting tech? I fear I’m never getting that back. It was amazing
Guess it depends on where you live. Here a lot of smaller companies won't hire below a bachelors degree, and at many larger companies you'd need a candidate/master.
It's been a bit more open for programmers as there has been a real lack, but these days you won't go far in that profession either if you're self-taught.
I'm not judging by the way, it's just how it is here.
Where is "here"? You can get great tech jobs in most Western European countries without a degree, but getting your first job will probably be the hardest. Experience > degree.
In Europe, where (in most countries) education is free, I would say a degree is even worth less. There is massive "degree inflation". Like, everyone has one. And you can take 5-7+ years to complete undergrad, no problem.
I don't know when it became customary to only hire people with a bachelors degree for jobs like a receptionist or a PA, but I don't even understand what a degree signals these days. In most professions it definitely doesn't signal you are capable, not that you are smart.
I'm danish, I'm also a manager who's interviewed and hired 31 people.
I network quite a bit with other digitizing managers in the public sector, and oversee around 350 contracts for different systems. So I guess you can say I get around our tech scene.
I can't think of a single reputable company which hires non-educated tech staff these days unless they have a really solid record somewhere and a good excuse for not taking a diploma degree while working.
10-15 years ago it was a completely different story, but these days it's hard to get hired without an education.
We do have targeted programming/operations/support academy degrees that are 1-2.5 years though, and those are typically enough unless the company is extremely elitist.
Not having a formal education doesn't mean not having the knowledge or not the ability to, though? People obviously need to be "of ability". But I've talked to plenty of people with degrees who are dumb as a rock, and others without who are sharp and have many relevant achievements. Of course the same applies in reverse: there are plenty without a degree that aren't worth talking to.
Say you found someone who ticked all the boxes, was absolutely great across the board, yet just said: "I didn't bother finishing the degree, because I didn't feel it would teach me any new skills". Would you pass on that person, and if so, why?
I personally don't see any reasons why I would, but I'm curious to know why others would.
Most places an application without a degree wouldn't make it far enough through the hiring system for anyone to actually read it.
I have interviewed a few youngsters who were self taught though, but they lacked a lot of the basic theoretical knowledge about things like best practices. So while they may have been superstars at producing interesting prototypes I frankly couldn't use them in an enterprise environment.
On the other hand I've interviewed a lot of people with degrees who couldn't get their code up and running in a production environment because they had never actually done that. This is a lot easier to rectify than someone who doesn't understand how our peojects are run.
I'm sure this is different from place to place, but in Denmark where education is free, and the government pays you to go to school, it's really rare that talented people haven't gotten some sort of degree.
It's a capacity issue - you wouldn't 'find somebody who ticked all the boxes, but didn't have a degree' in the first place, because their resume would simply not make it into the interview pile. Now that may be shortsighted or suboptimal on the part of the hiring company, but it's a quick and dirty heuristic to reduce the pile of resumes to something more manageable.
