There’s an old expression: “Those who can – do. Those who can’t – teach.” I’m not entirely sure how true it is, but I’m noticing a rather alarming trend. It seems like people used to want to see a college degree on your resume. Now the standard is becoming a graduate degree. In a way, it seems like HR departments are almost discounting experience for classroom time. This frightens me.
When I started my career, and it’s hard to think of it as a career, I was an intern at a radio station. I learned everything about the job I did simply by doing it. And for those things that I didn’t know (or claimed I did to get the internship!), I would go in hours ahead to learn from others. The practical training, the sink or swim mentality, proved to be highly successful. Success came by working hard, not writing term papers.
Moving forward in life, and after spending the requisite time in the classroom, I realized that the stuff I was learning was mainly applicable in theory only. During all of my studies, the most vital class I took was Taxation. It was the ONLY one with a solid, real-world applicability.
At a previous employer, I worked with someone who consistently reminded us about her master’s degree. She managed to work it into a variety of conversations covering an abundance of topics. I have no doubt that she was smart, but the jury’s still out as to whether it was her master’s degree that made her effective. Although we all agreed, it was what made her insufferable. After all, we’re talking about the music business here. Does Coldplay sell better because Chris Martin has an MBA? And no, I’m not saying he does — it’s just an example.
So this places me in a bit of a quandary. I really don’t think that another degree is going to make me that much smarter. Not that I’m brilliant now, but I’m no slouch. [Insert Caddyshack reference here]. It’s almost as if the graduate degree is a cheap and easy way to ween out job candidates. At the same time, if getting the degree amounts to a better job — where I use the skills I learned outside of grad school — should I just take the plunge and go back to school?
