[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Antiventurecapital

Today's 4 year degree is like yesterday's high school diploma. It's the bare minimum in educational qualifications one needs to get ahead.

Ahead of who? You sound like a Board of Education advertisement. If everyone has a degree you're not going to be ahead of anyone. There was a time when having a college degree meant something (when most people didn't have one). Now most young people go to college, so a degree is a pretty poor way to differentiate yourself from others. It has actually gotten so ridiculous now that people are starting to get Masters degrees to stand out from the crowd. Such silliness!

Originally Posted by Antiventurecapital

Things like medicine, dentistry, accounting, law, engineering, architecture, veterinary, psychiatry, etc. Too many to list. Usually it's a "calling".

True, although engineering doesn't belong on that list. Maybe Civil Engineering does but not all engineering. Steve Wozniak for instance was a brilliant Electrical Engineer without any degree when he designed the Apple I and Apple II. In any case, I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that to be a doctor you need to go to medical school. However just having a random college degree isn't going to allow you to practice law or dentistry. Getting a degree for the sake of getting one makes absolutely no sense, and getting a random degree when you're not sure what you want to be doing is even worse.

I suppose if you want to be a Borg Drone employee then you definitely need a degree precisely so you can be like all the other drones. Today this means getting a degree, because everyone has them and having one shows that you're obedient and a conformist, which employers absolutely love. Creative, out-of-the-box thinking people are too dangerous to hire. But if you don't want to be a drone then a college degree is only necessary if you actually need it to do what you want to do.