But a little background on how little college has actually affected my work:
I graduated with a degree in communications in 2017.
Since then I held about 5 or 6 jobs. While in college I interned under someone who won political campaigns, worked for major newspapers, and did other stellar PR work. That internship taught me more about communications than my 4-year degree.
Fast forward. My first job out of college was in fast food. My second job out of college was an internship with one of the greatest naval architecture firms in the world as their communications consultant.
Then I left that internship to work for a political copywriting firm. The firm actually hired me IN SPITE OF my degree. He said he never hired people from my college because they all had the wrong political ideology, but hired me because of my extensive experience as a journalist.
So, that journalism experience came from running my own blog and writing for another one as a paid staffer. I also ran Facebook and Twitter marketing campaigns and such. All of this was experience either with the internship or on my own, while I was attending college.
Then I left that job and started another news outlet. It got pretty big. Not Fox News big, but I have quite a few viral articles under my belt. I left it when, in COVID, all the revenue sources dried up and I was being paid just 25% of what I once was running the website. It just became unsustainable.
Now I work as a Public Relations consultant and I currently have a nationally-syndicated talk show host as my client.
I got, like, 90% of my work due to experience and not a sheet of paper saying I did good and checked the proverbial boxes.
Communications is a dying field, unfortunately, since computers are now writing articles, checking grammar, being the avatars for explainer videos, and writing advertising and other copy.
So would I say college was a good ROI for me? Fuck no. But getting experience in my field, on my own, and building a resume and products that showed my abilities is what set me apart from the other candidates.
But, unfortunately, my route is not viable for most students anymore. They need to start their own businesses, because the workforce is centralizing and computers are taking over an unprecedented amount of jobs. And there is an oversaturation of coders in the current job market, and there are also computers that write and validate code, which means that, if you don't start your own business, or you don't make the right connections to someone who can hire you, then you will be out of a job soon, even with your fancy MIT degree.
What is stopping Google or Microsoft or most other companies from hiring someone from India who only needs $5/hr to survive? Even if they pay the indian $10/hr, he will be living like a KING in his country, and he will probably be doing your job.
But, now with bots being able to pass the turing test and such, and becoming e extremely competent in a wide range of historically human fields, jobs such as marketing, sales, video creation, music production, coding, voice acting, in-person acting, animation, journalism, web design, graphic design, photoshop, modeling, and more are going to be axed almost completely by computers within the next 15 years. Even robots do the bulk of manufacturing jobs, and those robots are getting cheaper by the year. There are algorithms that make hiring and firing decisions before recruiters even look at a single resume. AI is going to seriously fuck up the job market and many, MANY people are going to find themselves obsolete as workers, to quote The Twilight Zone.
So it might be a good idea to start your own company and use the robots to do your work until you figure out job security. Learn coding for yourself so you can build the robots that make your business work, or simply purchase the software that others made so you don't have to do the work.
That is what I see happening, and it will attack e everyone equally, regardless of their college degree.
