Would you rather hire someone who ran a marathon, or had a college degree?’
I remember when I saw the question posed on LinkedIn. It got hundreds of responses, almost all of whom said they’d pick the marathoner.
It turns out, the story most young people have been told about the value of degrees on the job market isn’t true, and it’s getting less true every day.
A few years ago, I talked to a business owner who turned down a candidate I passed along because he had a Master’s degree. He told me, “He seems smart and has some skill, but he’s been in school too long. It will take me too much time to get those habits out of him. Plus, I’ve found people with advanced degrees tend to be entitled and assume they’re worth more than they are.”
The famous venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz developed a framework for evaluating which entrepreneurs were most likely to succeed with their startups. One of the strongest indicators was being a college drop-out. The courage and out-of-the-box thinking needed to overcome social pressure and quit school was a bullish sign.
All of these stories share one takeaway in common: a college degree doesn’t do a good job of signaling employability. In fact, choosing not to get one can be a better signal.
And no wonder. Employers routinely report that college grads lack basic skills they look for in new hires. (See here, here, and here, for example). In fact, less than 10 percent of employers think colleges do a good job of preparing students for the working world. (Study cited here.)
This article originally published in Fee.