Gen Z grads say their college degrees were a waste of time and money as AI infiltrates the workplace
Four years of classes, thousands of dollars in tuition and one freshly minted diploma — all to be outdone by a chatbot.
I really really wish people didn't just view degrees as simply a means to a job.
Like I completely get given the cost of them in some countries, that you need to do the cost/benefit analysis. But a degree should be a way of expanding your knowledge on a subject primarily because you're interested in it.
Sure I'd be a bit miffed if my degree never resulted in a job, but I don't think I'd ever think of it as worthless or a waste of time.
I mean I agree with you until you factor in the debt load. If it was just the loss of time but both time and being weighed down by debt as you try to support yourself. The system is screwed up.
I agree with you, however as always, context is key.
I'm speaking from the other end of the usual timeline - I wrapped education up after getting fucked about at my further education college. I'd lost interest and continuing my studies in my youth would likely have resulted in extra debt, burnout, or failure (or even the triple crown if I'd stuck it out). I went into employment instead.
Twenty years later, I'm back in part time study and I'm in year five of a six year degree programme - literally taking twice as long to do a normal BSc pathway because of the part time element.
I'm doing it for funsies. I felt like I had unfinished business with it, I really wanted to continue the study at least through undergraduate level, but I've done it for my own reasons rather than for a job or extra coin. The skills I've learned along the way - critical thinking; how to credit people for their work; and the general study material have been more than enough to consider this decision to be a success.
That said, I know I'm in an incredibly privileged position to do what I'm doing, and I'm quite sure that a lot of folk couldn't spunk £160-180 per month for six years, particularly when wages are stagnating and cost of living keeps rising. I've gone in to this wanting to learn about the field I'm studying, and not to hang my hopes of a job on that bit of paper the hopefully comes at the end of it. If nothing else, this course has shown me how little I know about the wider field and the world in general; and also how easy it is to game most systems including educational establishments for the most part - so in terms of employment, I can see how postnominals or a fancy certificate mean fuck all to employers.
I look at it as another formative stage in life - I've learned, I've developed, I'm a few grand lighter, but it opens new exciting doors to be able to get closer to the cutting edge in my current study field, or even pull the handbrake up and turn the wheel at the same time on my study career and pick another topic to read with more confidence.
I think the key is to at least enjoy what you're doing in general. If you hate your field or you're doing it because your job's pinned to it, then you're going to have A Real Bad Time™️ and I can see why people would be bitter about it when things go sideways after all that work.
I personally think I would greatly enjoy college, gaining knowledge for the purpose of just gaining knowledge (after probably a couple years of remedial... everything.) In the unlikely event that i get to enjoy a retirement, that's likely what i would want to do with my time.
Unfortunately, it is financially untenable for me to even consider higher education.
The problem is that most colleges, at least in the US, aren't really about expanding knowledge, they're about checking items off a list. The vast majority of your required coursework isn't supposed to be teaching anything, it's to pad out your hours and inflate your tuition. And for that privilege you'll be paying enough money every year to force the average person into multiple decades worth of debt.
I wish that too, but you'll have to convince companies to stop making it a hard requirement first.
I got a software degree and graduated right before chatgpt was made public. It changed everything.
I've done a few side projects and stuff since then, but everybody only wants AI work now and my education, while really fun and useful to me, was apparently not useful to anybody else the second AI was an option to investors.
I'm a bit bitter. I just want a job.
I'm guessing you either:
a) Were fortunate enough to go to uni when I did, when it was cheap
b) Have had, or had a family with, lots of disposable income
Times are different now, unfortunately. Uni is now a pathway to a job to pay off uni debt. It's not what it used to be.
Not that it doesn't happen here and there, but AI isn't taking the vast numbers of jobs many people think. I use AI professionally and personally a lot. The only things that really impress me are the things I have zero ability in at all: drawing character sketches of my roleplaying characters, composing music, and telling people to go fuck themselves in a professional manner.
The code is garbage. The prose is garbage. Lyrics/poetry are garbage (occasionally entertainingly so). And the longer the prompt/response chain gets the worse the output becomes—AI literally gets dumber the harder you try to get good quality out.
I think AI is amazing, in that it is barely competent to mediocre at damn near any basic knowledge task (presuming you can trust it not to hallucinate). But it's not an expert at anything.
What it can do is generate a first draft of something incredibly quickly, but it will always need a human hand to make it good. And based on my observations, the folks who say that's just today and in ten years no one will need to work—are simply wrong. Time will tell, but this technology seems to get exponentially more expensive for diminishing returns on quality.
The only things that really impress me are the things I have zero ability in at all: drawing character sketches of my roleplaying characters, composing music...
Do you suppose that is the result of Gell-Mann Amneisa?
You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues... and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
You know how to program, so you know the AI sucks at programming. You know it sucks at poetry, synthesis research, etc etc. You don't know how to draw, but do you suppose the AI is good at drawing?
This is a NYPOST article. It links the study, which is an 'Indeed Report' produced by the company Indeed on its job postings. The report does not contain the words 'Gen Z' at all. This is a trash article.
Degrees are nice but I often wonder if I should have gotten an associates and started working sooner with no debt.
Trade school too. Trades are necessary, can pay very well, and for whatever reason are stigmatized in the US, so there is a high demand.
Doing something tangible is also so much more rewarding than dying overweight at a desk typing the same code over and over ad infinitum.
Trades did well for me, and financially nearly all my close friends who went trades are doing better than nearly all my close friends who went to college.
Try a trade job while being disabled, and not in a "helping dad refurbish the bathroom" style scenario. You'll understand why many people are not choosing trade jobs.
Associates are great. Cheap. Not sure they have any value tho. More like a good launching board for a shorter bachelor program if you want to pivot careers in the future
Given the current level of "intelligence" in AI models, I’m pretty tempted to say that if a job can be done by AI without any significant drop in quality, then it probably wasn’t a great job to begin with - and having a machine do it is likely the better path in the long run.
At current level, companies with AI to replace jobs are like people at the poker table trying to bluff they have a royal flush while at best they only have a straight. It's more of a negotiation tool at its current time.
A high-school graduate can do any job on the planet with training.
In a fair system employers would not be allowed to discriminate based on level of education and skill.
Eh, sometimes the training takes 4-8+ years, and is only achievable by people with a certain disposition or talent.
I do think it makes sense for education and work to be better integrated (apprenticeships make a lot of sense)
But "discriminating" based on education and skill is just making a decision based on the two most important factors. I don't want some unskilled HS student as my surgeon.
If anything, I think hiring should be based on skill more, not based on previous jobs you've had and how good you are at interviews.
Shoot, 15 years ago I stopped getting my degree because it was a waste of time and money, and from what I've seen colleges haven't become better since then.
Why was it a waste of time and money?
4 year headstart on my career and 40k for training and investments early in life goes a long way.
Let's put it this way. I dropped out of my degree program. My partner got their masters in the same field. I make more money, in a field that I enjoy, than my partner makes in their degree-adjacent field.
Okay I may just be the exception.
My dad has an MBA. He stopped doing business shit nearly 40 years ago, and makes more money running databases.
My brother just cleared a million dollars this year. No degree, self-taught programmer.
My other brother has 2 degrees, also codes for a living. He says what he learned in school has zero application to what he does today.
My sister graduated with a degree in industrial design, interned with Mattel and Hasbro... She does cloud application development now.
Out of all the people I know, I can think of 4 that had higher education than was relevant to their careers. 3 of them are Boomers, and the last one is my stepdad, who got his degree at a technical college on the cheap.
I ultimately decided to drop when I was applying for summer internships in my desired field, and multiple places told me they wouldn't even look at me for an unpaid internship with less than a Masters. I quit that fall semester and saved myself 20k.
Use AI and start your own business then.
My kid got a degree in computer science and is making the AIs, he's making bank. So I guess his degree worked out!
Fun fact: He started in High School by making a language parser for debate articles.