Why a BA is Now a Ticket to A Job in a Coffee Shop

[MineralMan]

47. Getting a job requires skills, not letters after your name.

If you have skills and you're willing to work hard at getting a job, you'll find one. If you have no skills, you'll have to take crap jobs until you do have some skills. Nothing has changed, except that companies are no longer interested in training people.

Develop skills. Get your degree, but learn something useful at the same time. Learn about an industry. A B.A. is only proof that you have some capacity to learn stuff. It does not imply that you actually have any useful skills.

Thus has it always been. Today, though, without skills, nobody is interested in bothering with you.

There are people graduating with B.A. degrees in all sorts of majors who are landing decent jobs that pay OK. Go talk to some of them. You'll find out that they have developed skills on their own and are bringing them to the table. I have a niece who is now an assistant director of a non-profit that works with people with brain injuries. She has a B.A. She also has a sister with a brain injury, who she has helped care for as a personal assistant. The skills she gained from that landed her the job. It pays OK for a 23 year old on her first real job. Beats the hell out of working at Starbucks. She's continuing her education at the same time. She's smart, tough, and eager to develop even more skills. She'll do well.