As college becomes more prominent amongst the average student’s educational experience, college education’s aura of higher intelligence and opportunity for success is being reevaluated, gone are the days where a college degree is required for every field.  

Most graduates of college end up working in a field separate from their degree or employed in a field which does not even require a degree to begin with, this goes to show that a majority of enterprises prefer learning capability than a college degree, furthermore; colleges no longer monopolize higher education, with rapid advances in technology, online resources, and increased access to learning tools. 

In fact, according to the Washington Post and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, only “27.3% of college graduates work in the field of their degree,” comparatively, according to the same study, 62.1% of employed graduates aren’t working in what they majored in, or they aren’t even working in a job that requires a degree at all. 

 For decades, the conventional wisdom has dictated that a college degree was the surest path to securing a stable, well-paying job, the promise of a degree was that it provided not only specialized knowledge but also that the holder possessed a certain level of intellectual integrity, commitment and discipline. 

However, now that higher education is available to the public, without a need to attend an expensive and prolonged college education, degrees have lost their unique value to a resume. While higher education is naturally crucial for better opportunity and employment, the necessity of a college degree is waning in our modern age, naturally, a college degree won’t harm a resume and could even secure a prestigious position at an exclusive opening, such as a prominent law firm who hires solely Ivy League school graduates, but it is no longer a unique experience and is losing popularity to trade schools, which are cheaper and only take up to 1 year to complete, 3 years shorter than a bachelor’s degree at college. 

When hiring, most businesses are now choosing to widen the pool of applicants by including those without degrees in their particular hiring field, withholding those candidates only harms the company’s potential success now that those applicants could be educated without a college degree. 

With the advancement of technology and education, a college degree is no longer vital to achieve success. Higher education has adapted, while a college degree still has merit, education is no longer a one-size-fits-all endeavor, an array of experience is required to thrive and college is only one of many ways to achieve this experience.