Did you utilize your college degree (if you had one)?

We're a self-selected group here, of course. Engineer/INTJ/saver types are more common here than in the public at large. The final quarter of the 20th century was especially kind to that group with an abundance of high-paying tech jobs, so many here who got an engineering degree likely had opportunities to put it to use.
 
Got a BS in Industrial Engineering in 1973 and worked as an IE for two years and got promoted to Plant Engineer of the large manufacturing plant in Connecticut. Got a promotion to Plant Operation Superintendent at our Detroit, MI plant and four years later got promoted to Engineering Manager back at the big plant in CT. Shortly after, became Plant Manager, the youngest one ever to do so in the company.

In 1980 I finished my MBA in Finance going nights.

ARCO bought us out in 1980 or so and I got got gobbled up and sent to ARCO Corporate in Los Angeles to work in M & A. I left in the late 1980's and started my own engineering firm and ran it for nearly 20 years in Texas.

So I kind of did use my degrees. They were nice to have.
 
mountainsoft said:
I'm curious how many folks here actually used the college degree they went to school for.

Our daughter got a bachelors degree in English. She now works as a receptionist at an assisted living facility.

One nephew studied agriculture in college. He now sells real estate.

One niece studied music in college. She has had a few different jobs since then, none of which involved music.

Another niece studied zoology. She became a stay-at-home mom.

There are many more examples, but I can't think of a single person I know who is actually doing the job they went to college for.
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The problem with your samples is the very poor choice of majors. Did none of them consider the job market before choosing their majors? I would not have paid for my children to take any of those paths because there are insufficient jobs.

I earned an AAS from a community college, then transferred to university and finished my civil engineering degree. Then was immediately employed in first private industry and then local government and still am after all these years, 26+. Choose a marketable degree and the value of college is much more obvious.

Lots of people couldn't cut it in engineering school. Most were filtered out in the early years with the heavy math.
 
Highbeam said:
Lots of people couldn't cut it in engineering school. Most were filtered out in the early years with the heavy math.
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Correct, my step grandson is at U of Texas in ME and I told him to do all you can to get through the 5 or so calculus courses, linear programming and Diff E and the rest will be fun. He will do it as he is bright and driven.
 
aja8888 said:
Got a BS in Industrial Engineering in 1973 and worked as an IE for two years and got promoted to Plant Engineer of the large manufacturing plant in Connecticut. Got a promotion to Plant Operation Superintendent at our Detroit, MI plant and four years later got promoted to Engineering Manager back at the big plant in CT. Shortly after, became Plant Manager, the youngest one ever to do so in the company.

In 1980 I finished my MBA in Finance going nights.

ARCO bought us out in 1980 or so and I got got gobbled up and sent to ARCO Corporate in Los Angeles to work in M & A. I left in the late 1980's and started my own engineering firm and ran it for nearly 20 years in Texas.

So I kind of did use my degrees. They were nice to have.
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Yes, but what did you do with all that left-over free time?? :cool:
 
Highbeam said:
Lots of people couldn't cut it in engineering school. Most were filtered out in the early years with the heavy math.
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Yeah, when I was a TA, I had to teach some of those kids who started out in engineering but couldn't cut it so they switched to CS and couldn't cut it. They finally settled on Occupation safety and health which (in theory) was a softer science. Heh, heh, most of them couldn't cut it there either. It wasn't quite as "soft" as they had been led to believe. I washed out about 50% with my introductory course - especially the lab!
 
Like Lewis and Clark, my first degree was a prerequisite for my job as a submarine officer in the Navy and, in my case, in my next job as an engineer at a nuclear power plant. And my second degree was a prerequisite for working as a lawyer until I retired.
 
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Yes, Nursing degree, then later in career went back for degree in healthcare admin and business management.
DH got his degree in criminal justice.
DS got BS and MS in sociology and psychology, then went back for teaching, which is what his primary work has been.
DD got her degree in early ed, but is currently stay at home Mom, which she says is her best job ever!
 
Yes. From day 1 until retirement Through several career changes.

University degree-finance and accounting.
 
Yes, the AA degree in Law Enforcement was a requirement at the police department I ended up working for. And later on, you needed a Bachelor's for any promotions. However, they only required the AA/Bachelor's degree - they didn't care what the degree was in because they wanted that wide range of expertise. At my first assignment the station commander had a degree in animal husbandry - I didn't know there was such a thing, but it made sense when I had a call for cattle rustling and this suburbanite had no idea where to start with that. So the station commander became the "go-to guy" for that one.
 
Walt34 said:
Yes, the AA degree in Law Enforcement was a requirement at the police department I ended up working for. And later on, you needed a Bachelor's for any promotions. However, they only required the AA/Bachelor's degree - they didn't care what the degree was in because they wanted that wide range of expertise. At my first assignment the station commander had a degree in animal husbandry - I didn't know there was such a thing, but it made sense when I had a call for cattle rustling and this suburbanite had no idea where to start with that. So the station commander became the "go-to guy" for that one.
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I've heard it said that no learning is ever truly wasted. Interesting story, Walt.
 
If you earn a degree in a STEM field, the chances are much higher that you’ll actually work in that field or something closely related.
I have two majors, computer science and economics/finance, and I worked in IT my entire career, spending about half of it on financial systems. I never pursued another degree because it would have been a waste of time and money.
I knew I wanted to work in IT from the age of 14, when I studied it in a vocational high school.
We used the same philosophy with our kids: we agreed to pay for their first degree only if they chose a field with solid job prospects. They’ve been working in their fields for more than 15 years now, and they’re happy with their careers.
 
mountainsoft said:
For instance, my wife never went to college and had a great career. But anyone new coming in her same position (or most lower positions) has to have a college degree to qualify. And yet, my wife said all the new people coming in with the degrees still had no clue what they were doing. The degree didn't translate into actual work knowledge. At a time when student debt is out of control, it seems a college degree is often just a box you're supposed to check off and not something you actually need to do the work.
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Other than specialized professions, no it never translated to something that conveyed knowledge for the actual work - at least not in a vast majority of business/white collar stuff. A business degree would never have helped with what I actually ended up doing, in terms of "oh I know how to do that because school."

I saw people coming up behind me with degrees required, and it was always on the requirements list for promotions, but to some extent that could be overcome with experience in the company. I knew of two VP's who didn't have degrees (AA's only) so I was pretty comfortable knowing that.
 
Our daughter who chose fashion design was already skilled in that field as a high-schooler. Though we were a bit leery of such a "nebulous" sounding degree, we thought it would be a good (pardon the expression) "fit" for her.

We were concerned that she would need to move to a "coast" to find a decent j*b, but she had the guts for such a thing - or so we thought. But when she graduated, she found a go-getter husband who preferred a SAHM and agreed to keep her in the kind of life-style she preferred. After 15 years, it's still going strong for them, so I guess that's okay.

She did design and put together a stunning wedding dress which would have not been out of place in any of the fashion magazines.

Sometimes a degree is just a degree. It may end up being pointless from a financial point of view, but the experience is still a part of a well rounded life if one makes it so. We are happy with the way it turned out for her and her brood of kids.
 
Yes-two engineering degrees and another in informatics. My Reserve military career used them tangentially, ie, the technical background helped with my acquisition jobs. However, my civilian career was definitely related to what I studied in grad school-both times (biomedical engineering and informatics). Interestingly, with the limited consulting that I now do, I have had to brush up on my bachelor's subject (mechanical engineering) and parts of my more hard-core graduate engineering courses (biomaterials, sensors and bioinstrumentation).
 
Koolau said:
Our daughter who chose fashion design was already skilled in that field as a high-schooler. Though we were a bit leery of such a "nebulous" sounding degree, we thought it would be a good (pardon the expression) "fit" for her.

We were concerned that she would need to move to a "coast" to find a decent j*b, but she had the guts for such a thing - or so we thought. But when she graduated, she found a go-getter husband who preferred a SAHM and agreed to keep her in the kind of life-style she preferred. After 15 years, it's still going strong for them, so I guess that's okay.

She did design and put together a stunning wedding dress which would have not been out of place in any of the fashion magazines.

Sometimes a degree is just a degree. It may end up being pointless from a financial point of view, but the experience is still a part of a well rounded life if one makes it so. We are happy with the way it turned out for her and her brood of kids.
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The young wife got a BS in textiles and fashion design. She worked in a fashion house immediately out of college. Then she married me and followed me around the country for a couple years while I was a sailor. During that time, she substitute taught wherever we were, because as long as you had a degree, any degree, you could sub. She really enjoyed it. So when I left the Navy, she went back to school and got her MA in Teaching and a teaching certificate. That got her into the career that she enjoyed for 30 years until retirement. Now, she has gone back to her first love and is a costume designer/creator for local musical theater.
 
While I needed my college degree (a BS) in order to get the one job I had after graduating college, the courses I took toward that major (Economics) were not nearly as important as several other courses I took toward what I can best describe as a double-minor - Comp-Sci and Math+Stat.

I worked in the actuarial field for 23 years. But they hired me back in 1985 because of my strong, nonmath+Stat background. They wanted someone who had enough Math and Stat skills but who also had stronger computer programming skills than their typical actuarial candidate. I wasn't applying for a systems analyst, so not having a Comp-Sci degree was okay.

I was basically the big-fish-in-a-small-pond because of the special combination of these skills. I had enough programming skills to become the head of end-using in my division, writing and maintaining the many programs we actuarial folks ran every day. The IT folks loved working with me on their big projects because I knew how to "speak" their language.

But all of this became possible because of my special combination of math/stat and comp-sci skills which were part of my college degree, even though it was a BS in Economics. Kudos to the actuarial interviewers who foresaw this back in 1985, hired me, and placed me in an area where my skill set would be put to best use.
 
Were the content of the books I used in my major of industrial engineering used directly? No. All of that was programmed into the software or already part of the standard operating procedures for the manufacturing company.

Did I use the background knowledge of industrial engineering? Yes, in the first few years.

Then I became a self-taught programmer and was swept into I.T. and that was the majority of my employment. It was always system implementation and customization for manufacturing, but the work experience was way more of an influence than the degree.

The degree was a necessary foot in the door.
 
yes I used my EE degree in all my jobs. I never figured out anything better to do, it gave me a focus
 
BSEE and MSEE

I worked for 31 years as a digital IC design engineer. I utilized my degrees.

I am now recovering from being an engineer. My DS is a senior in college for BSME. He was telling me about the project he is working on. It all started coming back. Once an engineer, always an engineer.
 
I could have not been happier with my sociology undergraduate degree during my business career. My job was really never about the P&L and balance sheet. I did need to understand it and appreciate its impact. But, it was understanding human behavior that drove most of my accomplishments.
 
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