Right now I have a part time low-paying management job, and 2 years of college under my belt (no degree). I can either go job searching, and quit my current job once i found a better one. Or I could go back to school and get my bachelors. I've heard a few different things. I've heard that degrees don't always mean much especially if it isn't really specific. I've also heard that getting any degree will make it more likely to get a job, and guarantee a higher base wage. What should I do?
Well it is difficult to give you advice without knowing you and knowing your aspirations. But that said, getting a bachelor in business administration will open doors for you and may help you get a job. That said, any degree needs to be from an accredited university. And you need to supplement your resume with internships and work with professional associations. http://www.fma.org/ I have a degree in business administration and it has served me well both professionally and as an individual. A business degree can go a long way in helping you understand how the world works and to be able to take advantage of it.
Yes. These days that's a pretty good foot-in-the-door for many career paths. Indeed. He may have done his first two years at a community college, but he has to spend the last two at an accredited four-year university. That will certainly make a difference. I gather that he's been out of college for a while. This means two things: He can't count on his parents for food and lodging anymore so he needs enough income to support himself. He can't settle for a bottom-end job. Prospective employers will wonder why he spent so long getting his degree. They want people who are mature, ambitious and industrious. Well maybe not "mature" if he wants to go into my industry, IT. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! So his resume needs to be pimped up by exactly what you say. I don't know how valuable a professional association is going to be unless he gets a personal letter of recommendation from the association president. But the internship is a must. Or just getting a part-time after-school job doing office work. Same here. Since I graduated I have never had a job to which my B.S. in accounting was relevant. But it proved that I have the IQ, communication skills and discipline to get the degree. Oh yeah. It's only a slight exaggeration/dramatization to say that modern life is a business. Zillions of people end up with very difficult lives because they can't manage their own personal business competently. Do you think anyone with a B.A. or B.S. in business administration got caught up in the subprime mortgage debacle? Banks were begging people to take out mortgages that they would never be able to pay back, by using the housing market as a Ponzi Scheme! What amazes me is that the executives of the banks fell for their own scam. These people must have degrees from some really crappy colleges. Either that or they simply assumed that the government would bail them out like they did the auto industry. What amazes me even more is that the Controller of the Currency, the presidential appointee in charge of the bank examiners, whose only job is to make sure that the banks remain solvent, didn't see this coming. A Bush appointee, of course.
You don’t get to the top positions with a shoddy education. A degree and education does not imbue immunity to avarice and vice. Two the problem was not with the mortgages, off balance sheet derivative trading caused the crisis. We have had mortgage crises before (e.g. Savings and loan crisis 0f the 80’s -90’s where nearly ¼ of the Savings and Loans collapsed) and that didn’t cause a global liquidity crisis. Changes in law, repeal of Glass-Stegall and related legislation and The Commodities Futures Modernization Act, made it impossible for the Comptroller of the Currency or any regulatory agency to adequately regulate banks. So the fault lies with congress and not The Comptroller of the Currency.
Ask yourself...what do I love? If there is no answer, then ask..what do I like? If there is no answer...you are doomed to be unsuccessful regardless of whether you go back to school or keep working.
I was working on a contract for the Comptroller of the Currency at that time. He sent a memo out to all the employees, apologizing for not having done his job. He basically said the same thing I did. It was a no-brainer that selling subprime mortgages was going to weaken the viability of the banks. In his routine communication with the bank examiners (they all work for him), he was supposed to tell them to start investigating this phenomenon before it got out of hand. But he didn't. He was literally not paying attention. It was very much his responsibility, although there was certainly plenty to go around. The reason that this mortgage crisis was a bigger disaster than the first one is that the percentage of the owners' equity in their houses and condos has been steadily dropping since the end of the 1970s. The aggregate proportion of equity to market value of all homes in the USA is at its lowest point ever. Thirty years ago if you fell on hard times, you could sell your house and be handed a large bundle of cash. Today many Americans would be lucky to get six months' living expenses, with rents inflated by the competition for rental property among people who can't afford to buy--or who have such bad credit ratings after a foreclosure that it will be years before they can get back into the market.
That in a nutshell is hogwash. The Comptroller of the Currency at that time didn’t take responsibility for the liquidity crisis nor did he say what you claimed he said. What Dugan (former Comptroller of the Currency) admitted to was, that he could have done his job better. That is a far cry from taking responsibility for the crisis or not doing his job. And it is a far cry from claiming the agency was at fault. Further the crisis began back in 2000, five years before Dugan was sworn into office and two years prior to the crisis. Additionally the crisis was not restricted to just the banking industry; it afflicted the shadow banking (e.g. AIG) which is entirely outside the purview of the Comptroller’s office. The problem was broad and not restricted to just banking. As I previously stated we have had much more sever mortgage problems before without suffering a global liquidity crisis. The difference this time around was the unregulated derivative trading and risk taking that resulted from the repeal of Glass-Stegall and the passage of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act (allowing financial entities to preempt local gambling laws). Prior to the crisis and Dodd-Frank, derivative trading was unregulated and very high risk. Now, after Dodd-Frank, they are regulated and systemic risk is monitored not by the Comptroller of the Currency, but by the Federal Reserve. Prior to Dodd-Frank no one and not agency had responsibility for overall system risk.
Are you now in the top management position of the firm or is there a "district manager" etc. slot you can aspire to? Also do you like studying / formal learning? Getting a better job is not guaranteed, even with a new degree in these tough times, so even for one with no degree if your firm is doing well and you can help make it do better and higher slots do exist, I think proving your value and earning advancements may be better option for you. - Safer than more debt with tuition, living expenses etc. any way. If you are in a dead end job, like to study hard, learn etc. that makes going back to school relatively more attractive. We can't tell you what to do - just help you consider some things you need to.
