I’m in my last year of college and for some reason, I decided to design my own major, and I feel like I made a mistake, I’m looking at jobs RN and feel like no employer is going to understand it at all. And that I don’t really have much in demand skills? (FYI - it’s a BA in community development, so kinda like urban planning but more expansive, my major Combines Social Work, Business, and Sustainability)
In y’all experience, does a college major matter much in the long run?
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I won’t say it doesn’t matter, but I will say that having the degree is a thousand times better than not having one at all, whatever major you chose
Yes. For many companies, a 4-yr degree is a non-negotiable requirement. Any 4 year degree just to be considered. If you manage to get a good job without a degree, you will still be categorized by HR as a degree holder or not. This doesn’t always factor into raises, promotions, layoffs, but it can.
Outside of the hard sciences where youre there to learn necessary specific foundational knowledge and technical stuff - mech/elec/civil engineering, high level medical, etc - it really doesn’t. The degree is proof that you can put your head down and manage yourself well enough to survive in the white collar world.
And the debt that degree costs will keep you beholden and subservient to the corporate overlords.
They’ve outsourced their own training and shouldered the costs onto teenagers.
There’s a reason it’s called “fuck you” money.
Yeah student debt is no joke. I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I could commute and had enough student aid and scholarship to go debt free first 2 years and use savings from working part time to pay next 2 years off in (less than 6k each year). But I wish more companies would invest in proper training than push that on students and college to do (poorly imo).
It entirely depends on the degree and career path you are after.
Definitely does in engineering. There’s a lot of stuff you learn on the job, but the stuff from school gives you an idea where to go for more information so you won’t be blind sided as easily.
As someone with what feels like three more or less made up degrees, I’ll say having a degree in general is often a prerequisite for many jobs so it is better than not having a degree for sure.
In terms of hard skills, I also wish I’d developed more in college, but it’s still possible to develop those outside of school either on the job, on your own time, etc.
Your first job or your next job might not be your dream job or even all that relevant to your studies. But its much better to build skills and experience while also bringing in income, and it will make your next job search all the better.
Good luck, I’m currently job searching too and it’s soul crushing but we’ll make it!
I actually think community based sustainability is going to be a huge in demand area as climate change worsens. Depending on how much you want to sell your soul to the capitalist machine, there will be plenty of work opportunities in helping companies implement sustainability initiatives.
Also, social work and community development are widely applicable across the human services industry. You could get a job in government or not for profit organisations. In order to qualify as a social worker you’d probably have to do a masters, but there’s plenty of community based roles that you can get into with a bachelors.
I was actually a Sustainability major but switched to Social Services then made my own, because I wanted to focus on stuff I was interested in. But yeah, thinking about it I feel it just depends on how I market it. And I was considering grad school and might get a MSW or MPA.
I have a MSW and wish I did an MPA instead lol.
I hear that alot! I feel like for people who are interested in more macro works a MSW has kinda been pigeon holed in micro work sadly. Like I care about social economic policy mostly. I think a MSW is valuable but a MPA might be more so for what I want to do.
Yeah, it sounds like a great starting point if you want to work for a local government.
It really depends on the field, lots of jobs just like to see that you went to college and got some kind of higher education. Its OK if you don’t necessarily use 100% of what you learned it just more demonstrates that you have the capacity and drive to constantly better yourself. Did you have a particular kind of career in mind when picking these majors?
I mean there are obviously exceptions, like if you want to be a doctor you’d better have gone to med school.
I decided to make my own to mostly avoid classes in each of the majors I wasn’t interested in tbh. I wanted to go into some type of urban/housing career, but after interning in a planning department for my city, I realize how limiting this career really is. I have been interested in community development since high-school.
Playing devil’s advocate, I’d be worried you’d avoid doing work you don’t want to do, but is core work that needs to be done. Not all employers want or are set up to employ wildcards. You may have to make your own path here, too.
That’s fair, I have done jobs and internships and I have learnt there’s just things I don’t like about but I tough it out. I wouldn’t frame it like that in a job interview tho! I would say it was about to best use my time in college studying and developing a topic area I was passionate in! I go to a small liberal arts college with alot of different topic areas but not a lot of depth, and didn’t want to transfer due to financial reasons so this was good compromise.
If you’re looking to get into urban planning I can tell you that your undergrad is not that important. I did my undergrad in geography which is a typical route and it was helpful in some aspects but I wouldn’t say it was necessary. In my masters cohort we had people with degrees in psychology, business, art history, philosophy, ect. and a couple architects from India.
A lot of degrees are useful to urban planning, even if they aren’t the typical route. It’s really about how you apply that degree and understanding to the field. Philosophy and sociology are good for the policy part, business is good for the finance and economic part, ect.
Working for a city can be challenging especially if you have aspirations and want to see real change, something that was drilled into my cohort in school but took a couple years in the field for some people to figure out. Maybe non profit or a private company aligned to your values might be a better route than public of you’re looking to get into something adjacent to public planning. That being said, just being an active member in your community and speaking up for projects you believe in at council meetings is more impactful than writing the policy.
Good organizations will recognize the problem solving you did for your own learning outside of just following a curriculum. You may need to spell that out on the resume and interview
Some fields require a degree. Some degrees add significant value (you’ll gain more relevant knowledge in 4 years than you would working 4 years).
Depends what you want to do. You can always do consultancy work, those consultancy firms usually just want to see that you have a bachelors degree. Since that means you are trainable. They usually train their new recruits internally. You probably not gonna end up at the big firms like EY or BCG, because they only hire people from Ivy leagues or through their own social network. But there are plenty of smaller firms who will hire you.
And you can always just get a bunch of a Salesforce certificates to improve your resume.
Thanks for the salesforce tip! I saw a listing on LinkedIn for a Community Development Associate for ICF or something and applied anyway despite having a couple more months till I graduate. I have been looking at consultancy firms and engineering services firms as well. I was kinda stuck on working in local government but I have learnt there’s actually alot of options to try for.
Local and state government jobs are great
Also look at nonprofits. Many would be interested in this major
This absolutely doesn’t come from informed experience, and is speculative drivel, but:
I think just mentioning that you “designed your own major” may help a lot in various types of job search. Regardless of what the actual process is like (I have no idea), it sounds impressive, and makes it sound like you’re a person with a lot of initiative and drive. That could help make up for any perceived competitive disadvantage.
Of course your mileage may vary, especially if you’re applying for a job that would heavily revolve around topics covered by a very specific major. But sometimes it helps to stand out, and “I designed my own major” could help you do that.
Not unless you go to a specific field that has hard legal requirements. Doctor, Teacher, Psychiatrist, Urban Planners, etc. Software engineers, producers, artists, project managers, account managers, I’ve seen go very far without a degree at all. Some even have a degree with a major from an entirely different field.
So it highly depends on the field. For your field, I’d say, yes your degree and major matters.
I could suggest buffing it up with a Certified Economic Development FInancial Professional credential? I’m working on mine myself. Could be a decent choice. A lot of the value in community Dev this day comes working with Ec Dev
Yeah, certs seems like alot of ppl advice. I was looking into completing Eco-districts and some tech-y certs
I graduated with a degree in French.
I’m a software developer. I’ve literally never used it on the job.
C’est la vie, c’est non ?
In your field, it might. But honestly, what makes the biggest difference is who you know and how well you fit in where you work.
I majored in film with a minor in photo, perfect track to be a cinematographer. Found out I didn’t really like that industry, just loved making pretty images. I learned a lot of other skills but the most valuable one was how to relate to people and understand what they’re saying when they’re not actually saying what they want. I’ve since switched careers to something totally different, but I use so many things I learned in college unrelated to focusing cameras. You have learned a lot that’s going to help you for the rest of your life. You might not know it for a long time, but you’ll eventually find your way.
Depends entirely on what you want to do. For some professional careers, the degree is everything (engineer, lawyer, etc.) For other career paths it may not matter at all.
Could you find something doing “community development” with the degree you have? Almost certainly, since that’s an extremely broad description, as you noted.
Without more information on what you actually want to be/do, it’s tough to give any useful advice.
The answer is yes and no.
I worked a lot of different jobs with no degree at all, out earning a friend of mine who got her batchelores in fine art, sculpting specifically, and who also worked a bunch of different jobs (that didn’t gave much to do with her major).
We both went back to college around the same time. She got her masters in interior architecture, and I got my AS in industrial design and drafting for manufacturing.
I got a job first in a civil field that doubled my previous salary. She got a job soon after in an architecture field a dollar less than me per hour.
I got promoted at 8 months with a pay raise of $4. Now I make $5/hr more than she does.
All this to say, it matters what you get your degree in, to an extent. My friend and I both use CAD for our jobs, but her masters hasn’t paid out as much as my Associates has so far.
I think she enjoyed sculpting a lot for her BA degree, but faltered a lot on what to do with it. It’s a degree you have to really figure out how it can become applicable in regular jobs, because “sculpter” jobs are few and far between. She also wasn’t willing to move to places like LA or NY which might have had more opportunities for her skill set.
So yes, in a way it matters, but also not really very much.
It’s cool that you got to create your own major, I would have lived to do something like that.
