Memo to Gen Y: Don’t Overeducate Yourself
A post over on BrazenCareerist by Milena Thomas got me thinking about education again, a topic I’ve been known to rant about. In an article titled “Think Twice About All That Education You Think You Need” hammers home something I’ve been thinking for a while now: Gen Y is obsessed with education, particularly graduate programs, to the point where their piles of degrees can hurt more than they help.
Writes Thomas:
My most valuable education came after I graduated. I experienced the painstaking trial and error of proper vocal study, bargained with my dreams of stardom versus the realities of needing a steady corporate paycheck, moving in with my parents and wondering how I was going to make a satisfying life for myself.
A lot of what I want to say can be summed up simply: education, no matter in what quantity, is no substitute for experience. And, while there’s obviously no direct causation, the correlation tends to be that more school equals less real, work experience. And so Generation Y is in the unique position of being a generation that’s got tons of expertise in social linguistics or Leninist Russia but doesn’t know how to operate a photocopier or take notes at a business meeting.
Let’s disqualify certain graduate programs right off the bat — specialized programs like engineering are logically excluded from this. There are some university programs that are so geared toward a certain job-type that one can leave them already possessing all the tools they need to find work, and excel.
But this is not true for the vast majority of university programs, particularly in the arts, nor should it be. Universities were originally conceived as houses of higher learning, geared toward the best and brightest. You went to university because you enjoyed thinking and debating and immersing yourself in all things academic. You did not go simply because you wanted to get a good job afterwards.1
What I think we’re seeing from Generation Y is the result of the perception that everyone is getting an undergraduate degree. To separate yourself from the pack, then, the natural course of action is to pursue beyond undergraduate, and land yourself a graduate or Master’s degree.
You don’t need to do this. In fact, unless you have a particular passion for your area of study that makes a graduate program a natural fit, pursuing graduate studies in the hopes of standing out from the pack of applicants is probably a bad idea. Graduate programs tend to be about delving further into the academic, and don’t really bestow the same level of transferrable workplace skills as undergraduate.
The overeducated but inexperienced applicant is not a more desirable choice than the educated and experienced applicant. Remember that as you make your educational choices, and consider where you want your career to go.
Photo by Kiara Kim. Licensed under Creative Commons
- There were, of course, schools that were geared toward getting a good job. They called these vocational schools or trade schools. The unfortunate stereotype now is that this is where the dumb kids go. [↩]
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
