Reply #27: One reason so many jobs require a degree...

[FreeJoe]

A degree shows that a student was able to handle what amounts to an expensive four year project that required considerable short term sacrifice for a risky long term gain. Presumably, someone able to pull that off is more likely to perform well than someone that couldn't. In other words, it's not just what they learned in college that makes a degree valuable but what they were able to demonstrate in achieving it.

With that said, I've hired several degree-less people in my time. The thing that they all had in common was 10+ years of work experience in fields normally requiring a degree. Someone else was willing to take the risk on them.