Unemployed, Unhappy, and …. Educated?

by Tom Tang

Joshua Persky, an unemployed financial engineer, stands in front of the Charles Schwab building at 50th Street and Park Avenue with a sign proclaiming "Experienced MIT Graduate for Hire" June 24, 2008 in New York City. Persky, who lost his job in the volatile banking industry six months ago, thought standing on a corner passing out resumes would be a novel approach over networking and writing emails at home. Persky is married and supports five children.

http://www.nysun.com/business/out-of-work-banker-employs-unusual-job-search/80563/

 

As I get closer and closer to finishing my first term at Sauder, I’ve been thinking more about where I want my degree to take me in the future. As I was reading my classmates’ blogs, Chloe Chow’s blog addressed one of the big issues nagging in the back of my head: What will my degree get me?

According to Chloe and Francesca Preece’s blog, a university degree isn’t worth much with these lackluster economic times. Both blogs talk about the difficultly in competing for too few jobs among too many applicants. Consequently there are also more university educated students now, diluting the worth of what was traditionally a valuable qualification.

However Chloe’s blog suggests that this problem can be tackled by incorporating an active social, work, and volunteer experiences to bolster degrees while Francesca feels that students should pursue more trade orientated careers in place of a university. Francesca blog does present a valid point on the oversaturation of degrees but I agree more with Chloe’s argument that degrees are still valuable when augmented with life experience. No matter how bad the times can get, comprehensive university education combined with useful life experience will always be in demand.

Declining Value of University Degree Video