Which jobs require college degree and which do not?

[Lincisman]

Hello folks, recently I have been wondering about what positions require a higher education. Here I ask you to share your experiences and stories of people you know about how did they get their jobs and if getting a degree played a big part in it. By the way, I live in Europe where I can get free university education.

Right now I assume that engineering require college degrees but maybe this is not entirely true, I am not sure.

(Mainly I am interested in STEM but feel free to add all the other academic disciplines and jobs)

I really appreciate your stories and experiences.

That is it I wanted to ask,

Have a good day.

[ilja]

I think house wife requires college education or at least used to. I am not sure though, I better ask my mom again.

[Yarco]

Assume no unless told otherwise.

Would they want an engineer building a bridge or oil pipeline to have a degree? Yeah probably if government is involved or people's lives are at risk. But there are lots of engineering jobs at companies that you could do without a degree. Like being a software engineer or designing your own product.

If you start your own business, you can bypass 99% of degrees except maybe stuff like medicine and law. Nobody cares what your qualifications are for the most part, just what you can deliver.

You don't even need a degree to be a college/university professor depending on the field, but I'm sure it helps. A bunch of my business teachers in college were just small business owners themselves, not like an MBA or PhD or anything.

Unless you have a very specific end career in mind, it's hard to say.

Something like "scientist" is so broad. 99% of science you can just start doing in your own backyard or garage. Want to go out and study the life cycle of native bees in your area, or create a new type of glue? Nobody is stopping you.

Want to be a historian? Nobody is stopping you from going digging through archives or visiting most ancient sites without a degree.

You can probably even crowdfund the equivalent of a "research grant" nowadays on Patreon / Kickstarter from people who are just interested in following your work, if you can show that you're serious about it.

Most people are too dumb to create their own course curriculum of what they need to do to become an expert in their field. So a formal education gives good guidance in that regard. 

But don't fool yourself that a university degree makes you an expert in something or prepares you to immediately start in your desired career. It teaches you how to follow instructions and complete assignments/pass tests, that's about it. It gives an extremely basic base level that employers can start shaping and molding you from.

My city has some of the best universities in my state for business. But at work when I'd have to train new hires, some of these kids were unbelievably dumb or just completely lacking common sense or analytical abilities to figure things out. University doesn't make you smart. It just checks a box for overly-bureaucratic organizations, which you probably don't want to work for anyway.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Yarco

[JohnnyAb]

2 hours ago, Yarco said:

If you start your own business, you can bypass 99% of degrees except maybe stuff like medicine and law. Nobody cares what your qualifications are for the most part, just what you can deliver.

You probably can't. Don't underestimate the fact of everything being normalised these days. Of course you can hire already qualified stuff but a lot of things you cannot do just by yourself with no proper certification.

2 hours ago, Yarco said:

Something like "scientist" is so broad. 99% of science you can just start doing in your own backyard or garage. Want to go out and study the life cycle of native bees in your area, or create a new type of glue? Nobody is stopping you.

Lmao

 

2 hours ago, Yarco said:

But don't fool yourself that a university degree makes you an expert in something or prepares you to immediately start in your desired career.

It's a matter of what you do with your degree and the time spent at the university, not what degree 'makes' you. Terrible misconception. 

 

As to what jobs require a degree. Go with your intuition - most of science and academic jobs, civil/mechanical/electrical etc engineering, loads of government jobs, policy makers, consulting etc. Also, it really depends on your location, insurance policies, demand for employees and more.