According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 63% of all job openings will require at least some college education by the year 2018. This is because employers have been cutting back on their own in-house training programs for employees and instead expecting them to show up for their job interviews fully trained and qualified. Training has been outsourced to potential employees, so instead of being trained on the job they are expected to be trained in school. At the same time, support for education from the public is down in most states in the US.
Today’s workforce is expected to show up for the job having been fully trained on their own time, and on their own dime. While having a degree isn’t necessary for EVERY job, the statistics on unemployment in the US certainly speak loudly to the very real advantages it gives you.
In 2013, the unemployment rate for the general population of adults 25 and older sat at 7.1 percent. When broken down by education attainment level, people in that same population without a high school diploma held an unemployment rate of 12.4 percent. A high school diploma, 8.3 percent. People with a some college experience but no degree had an unemployment rate of 7.7 and people with a bachelor’s degree dropped to a 4.5 percent unemployment rate. This is a huge plummet. The difference between having some college experience but no degree and having a degree is huge in your ability to find work.
So we find ourselves in a world where a degree is needed, but public assistance and support for education is falling. At the same time, tuition costs are skyrocketing even faster than inflation. To go back to school or not to go back to school?
You don’t have to invest time and money you don’t have in a degree to get a degree you have already earned. If you’ve completed some college but never got your degree, you don’t have to go back to school and into debt to complete it. If you have work experience but no degree, you can have your skills and value evaluated to get a degree you’ve already earned from on-the-job experience and training. You can actually have your cake and eat it too. Visit us at thecareerpeople.com to learn more.