You hear it all the time in the media and from the people around you — go to college, get a degree, and have success. But what if things don’t happen that way? You can go to college, attend the school of your choice for around four years, graduate with a degree, and still find yourself jobless in the end. So, what happens when you can’t find a decent job and have student loans to pay? You end up dealing with an incredible amount of debt that doesn’t get erased and will only continue to follow you around for the rest of your life, or at least until you pay off what you’ve borrowed.

 

A college degree might sound good to some, but it’s not a necessity. You may be surprised to learn that these degrees are becoming useless for several reasons. First, of course, you still need to have a degree to land specific jobs, particularly in the medical field, but you can find hundreds of other jobs that don’t require you to spend many years of your life in school, studying for hours on end and taking stressful, time-consuming exams to prove your worth.

 

College Doesn’t Mean You’re Going to Get Hired

 

The most common misconception about college is that it’s a ticket to a high-paying job. It’s unrealistic to assume that a company will hire you specifically because you went to college. You can spend years attending classes, studying hard, taking tests and exams, completing papers, and going above and beyond to earn that degree and still find yourself in a situation where you’re applying to jobs and not getting hired. You’re probably wondering how it’s possible to have a degree in a field and struggle to find work, but it all depends on a few different factors.

 

Why You Might Struggle to Find Work After Graduating

 

First, you’re likely to struggle to find work if you’re getting a degree in a highly saturated industry, where there are more people applying for jobs than there are current positions available. When that happens, the competition is so stiff that it makes it even more of a challenge to get hired. In addition, your college degree doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the best fit for the job. Someone else could come along with more skills and experience than you have and ultimately get selected over you to fill the role you wanted. If you were to experience something like this, it’s naturally going to make you wonder why you decided to waste so much time in college in the first place.

 

With no guarantee of getting hired after spending thousands of dollars and wasting hundreds of hours in college that you could’ve spent honing your talents, you’re probably asking yourself, “Are college degrees useless?” And, at this point, they’re becoming about as useless as the first-generation iPad.

If You Lack Skills, Your Degree Doesn’t Matter

 

More companies are choosing to pay less attention to college degrees and more attention to applicants’ skills and experience when applying for jobs. It helps to know what you can bring to the table. If you have something unique to offer that sets you apart from other applicants, you have a better chance of getting hired for the job you want, even without a degree that other applicants might have.

 

Think about it from the perspective of a business owner. What does a college degree do for them? It’s not going to solve their problems or help them handle the tasks they need to complete. What will help them get work done and remain productive is someone who knows what they’re doing, whether they have a degree in the industry or not. If someone has a degree and still sucks at what they’re doing, an employer won’t want to keep them on the payroll.

 

How to Show Off Your Skills to Get Hired

 

When you’re building your resume, include all the things you’re good at, no matter how important you think it might be. The goal here is to prove that you know what you’re doing and can do it well, even better than people who have a degree and might think they’re above you because of it.

 

If you get an interview, talk about your experience. You don’t have to bring up college. Instead, you can talk about the positions you’ve held and how they’ve helped you expand your knowledge even further. Some employers care more about the life experience a job applicant has than how much time they’ve spent in college.

 

You Can Find a Job You Love Without a Degree

 

We all know that specific jobs require you to have a degree, such as a school counselor, surgeon, psychiatrist, and lawyer, but what about the jobs that pay a higher wage and don’t require a degree of any sort? There are plenty of these jobs, but not much discussion around them and how they can change your way of life without causing you to get into debt in the process. 

 

The Best Jobs That Don’t Require a College Degree

 

Did you know that you could work as a mail sorter, package courier, school bus driver, police dispatcher, or even a digital marketing expert without a degree? These are only five of the thousands of jobs you can get without a degree as long as you have a passion for them. Now that you know more jobs are available for people who didn’t go to college, it’s the perfect time to start thinking about what you want to do. Would you like to work with food, technology, people, or anything like that? If so, you can find jobs that pay a higher wage without requiring you to get into debt to earn such a decent income.

 

Make Your Mark

 

Not only can you find companies willing to hire applicants without a college degree, but you can also make your mark by working for yourself. Whether you’d like to buy and flip houses as a real estate investor, open a digital marketing agency, or even start your own clothing line, there are endless opportunities to do something meaningful while earning money and not stressing over college debt.

 

Skipping College Can Make You a Critical Thinker

 

You probably didn’t know that skipping college could help you improve your critical thinking skills. When you’re not going to college, you have to think outside the box and solve problems to survive. It makes you resilient and helps you become a problem-solving critical thinker ready to handle any obstacle that comes your way. But, on the other hand, if you’re spending that time in college, you’re wasting years of your life that you could’ve spent learning new things. One would probably assume that going to college would enhance critical thinking skills, but it appears to do the opposite. Who knew skipping college could be better for your brain in the long run?

You Have Plenty of Other Options

 

Everyone talks about going to college and how important it is for the sake of having a good career, making money, and affording the cost of living, but you have other options. You can always attend a trade school, which will cost you way less than college while allowing you to learn a trade in a hands-on environment at a faster pace. There are so many great trades to learn, such as:

 

  • Cosmetology
  • Auto Mechanic Services
  • Esthetician 
  • Health Aide
  • Dental Hygienist
  • Electrical Work
  • Plumbing
  • Barbering 

 

You can surely find a trade school that will allow you to pursue something you’re passionate about doing, whether it’s hair and nails, auto services, electrical work, or something else. Besides a trade school, you can sign up for an apprenticeship and expand your knowledge even further, preparing yourself for the career you want to have in any industry. No matter which one of these options you choose, you’ll spend much less time earning a certification in a field of your choice than you would in college trying to earn a degree.

 

Avoid the Constant Pressure and Stress of College

 

Even if everyone around you is trying to put pressure on you to apply for different colleges and attend one of them because they say it’s the only way to succeed, prove them wrong by doing what you feel is right. Why should you have to spend four years in college when you can scroll through TikTok and find dozens of creators making thousands of dollars each month by dancing around to random songs or posting other types of content? If the idea of wasting time, energy, and money going to college doesn’t sound right to you, don’t let anyone pressure you into it.

 

Some may find themselves asking, “Are college degrees becoming obsolete?” Well, it indeed seems that way. You can spend a lot of time in college and still come out of it with so much more to learn. While people will still need to get degrees to have jobs in specific fields, most won’t need to waste their time in college to do what they love.