How Long Is A College Degree Relevant?

While reading resumes for an open position recently, an interesting thought surfaced: How long is a college degree relevant?

This question may immediately make some people start to feel queasy. Specifically, the people that still have huge amounts of debt many years after that coveted piece of paper was awarded at some institute of higher learning. That queasiness cannot be helped by the realization that many years later much of the detailed knowledge that was imparted in those glory days of learning has started to fade.

Yet, this is not an argument for or against a college degree.

From the standpoint of an Engineering Manager, a college degree provides a great deal of value and information when reviewing resumes. The hiring process is all about guesswork and assumptions based on a very limited data set and, while it can be faulty in some cases, it does allow for many variables and assumptions to be set aside in favor of other topics and items of interest.

However, you will not get hired simply because you have a college degree.

Having completed such a course of study, specifically in Engineering, does provide context about you and your abilities. Those courses and classes are not easy. While you may not remember specifically how to load data into registers using assembly code from processors 101 or the heat capacity equations for an isobaric process from thermodynamics, that degree states that at one point you should have at least had the capability to learn and understand those concepts at some point earlier in life.

From this an assertion can be made that a college degree always provides value, no matter when it was obtained.

The real question is, how much weight and value should be placed on that degree and is this weighting dependent on a factor of time?

Should a degree that is “fresher” for an individual be given more weight than one that has gotten “stale” based on nothing more than time that has distanced that person from the rigors and structure of academia?

It is very easy to make a counter argument to this inquiry. That is simply that any degree or coursework cannot prepare any individual for the specific knowledge needed for a particular job or role. In other words, someone new coming into any team will know know what we do and how we do it and therefore, the impact from both a college degree and/or other job and life experience is really a moot point.

This counter argument does have some merit but can be immensely skewed in regards to the specifics of the role being targeted. While discussing this topic with someone with many years of experience working as an Engineer in an automotive manufacturing setting, there was a heaping amount of criticism on the new “engineers” that were being brought into the team.

The story, as it was being told, was describing a new Engineer who had designed a part without completing a solid amount of research and forethought. Once the design was done, the part was relayed to the production floor and upon getting feedback from the non-engineer operators questioning the design a response was provided to the effect of: “Since I am the Engineer you need to make it how I designed it.“

Unfortunately a degree does not also imply humility nor does it impart the wisdom that comes with life experience.

If the question regarding relevancy of a college degree is applied from a financial sense, then the answer is a resounding “yes“. The vast majority of algorithms and metrics that exist immediately cast a person with a college degree into a higher earning class. While the arguments above illustrate a few possibilities that this may be ineffective or potentially biased, in general, higher expectations are placed on individuals with a degree in a justification of the credentials.

In conclusion, obtaining a college degree provides an overall benefit in terms of lifelong earnings that is balanced with higher expectations for output and ability. Both of these factors play into the time variability of the relevancy of the achievement. While specific knowledge for any specific role is highly mercurial and the factors defining this include book knowledge, specific role presumption, and accumulated experience, there is no expiration date to the relevancy of a college degree.

Thanks for reading!