No Degree = No Future ?

[Chunky1]

If you have capital, you don't need a degree. The problem is that it's hard to gain capital without a degree. You can get $200,000 in loans to study psychology at school but try getting the same loan to open a business at 18 year old.

Although the internet has definitely created an environment where one can get rich a lot faster than they could have operating solely brick and mortar businesses. I made tens thousands of dollars before even graduating high school and that was off an initial invest of $75.

[maccaroni man]

With the current availability of potential staff in Thailand (or anywhere else it seems) why would you pick someone that didn't have the personal dedication to finish a degree? No, a degree will not measure how good someone may be at a given job, BUT it does measure some things fairly accurately and dedication and determination are two of those things that can be measured.To the OP --- a candidate without a degree may in fact be useful to the team, but I am guessing if you look at the guy's CV it won't show that he has stayed with anything too long and training etc of an employee are costs that you can often avoid repeating by getting people with a track record of sticking to things they start.

this is a very old way of justify hiring a person with a degree, the fact is that many people stay in school long enough to get a degree because they lack the ambition to get out in the real world, stand on their own two feet and go to work.

[TAWP]

My experience being an employer here, hiring expats, is vastly different to yours. What industry are you in? We seldom have enough applicants for available positions and are sometimes forced to choose less than ideal compromises.

You should take the blinkers off and start hiring Thai staff - I have this evening had the privilege of taking the team who have worked for me over the past two years out for a thank you dinner - All Thai, all have turned out a first class performance....... and all degree educated.

You think companies hire foreigners (incl. Indians) because they like get nagged for higher salary or deal with the hassle of WP because it is fun or because they are forced to?

After doing a high number of interviews with a high number of applicants over 2 years I have to say that the computer science degree doesn't really hold up for snuff here. I don't know what is going on, but many applicants cannot program. Which is kinda silly if they apply for a programming position. And so many guys seem to end up in 2.3-2.6 GPA range.

Possible a high number of foreigner would be equally poor, but usually the poor ones in this skill-area isn't over here, they are back home and struggling to get a job...

[WarpSpeed]

With the current availability of potential staff in Thailand (or anywhere else it seems) why would you pick someone that didn't have the personal dedication to finish a degree? No, a degree will not measure how good someone may be at a given job, BUT it does measure some things fairly accurately and dedication and determination are two of those things that can be measured.To the OP --- a candidate without a degree may in fact be useful to the team, but I am guessing if you look at the guy's CV it won't show that he has stayed with anything too long and training etc of an employee are costs that you can often avoid repeating by getting people with a track record of sticking to things they start.

this is a very old way of justify hiring a person with a degree, the fact is that many people stay in school long enough to get a degree because they lack the ambition to get out in the real world, stand on their own two feet and go to work.

Yep and after all, we know that university is more about party time for a high percentage of attendees even more so then the degree which ends up secondary!!

Edited December 17, 2010 by WarpSpeed

[Chunky1]

In the USA, college has become a business fueled by free government money. Everyone goes to college because their loans are guaranteed by the government. Now they owe $150,000 and work at Starbucks. You can look at the absurd amount of Americans enrolling in college and the statistics of those with college debt. It's prime rate mortgage fiasco 2.0.

[jdinasia]

With the current availability of potential staff in Thailand (or anywhere else it seems) why would you pick someone that didn't have the personal dedication to finish a degree? No, a degree will not measure how good someone may be at a given job, BUT it does measure some things fairly accurately and dedication and determination are two of those things that can be measured.To the OP --- a candidate without a degree may in fact be useful to the team, but I am guessing if you look at the guy's CV it won't show that he has stayed with anything too long and training etc of an employee are costs that you can often avoid repeating by getting people with a track record of sticking to things they start.

this is a very old way of justify hiring a person with a degree, the fact is that many people stay in school long enough to get a degree because they lack the ambition to get out in the real world, stand on their own two feet and go to work.

Is there a new way to justify hiring a person with a degree?

Like I said there are many things that having a degree doesn't automatically measure. It does measure the two things I mentioned. If someone with ambition is better than a degreed person, then I guess they won't be applying for work with me (Note -- I have stipulated in other posts when I would give interviews and jobs to people with no degree.) This is Thailand and there honestly is a glut of foreigners wanting to stay and work here. You have to narrow the list down somehow and this certainly is one valid way to do that.

[jonnyscot]

from a personal experience - left school at 15.5 year old,,, not interested in education (silly boy) as the mind was already focussed, determined to follow in father and grandfathers footsteps into fishing Industry in scotland(no degree required to progress there), worked my b--lls off for 16 years there before I realised that there was more to life than working 10 -13 days working at sea and sometimes deprived of sleep for days on end with 2 days at home in between (spent mostly catching up on sleep and geting pissed),, decided I need to change direction and get a life, but no qualifications,,,, oops,,,,, got a job after 1 week job hunting ( longest i've been out of work to date), working in the offshore O & G industry, courtesy of gaining work experience, eagerness to learn and hard work,,,depending on the job but those must be ranked right up there and considered whether the prospective candidate has a degree or not.

[transam]

My wife's family has people with degree's. Some are totally brain dead, think they must have paid for their paper. One now sells cosmetics in Bangkok and is near destitute, so l feel there are some out there who's family hasn't had the funds to pay for uni that are very capable and even better than paper holders, just a matter of taking a risk and as an interviewee reading the applicant, which in itself is a bit of a gift.

[Heng]

Can't seem to find any Microsoft openings that don't require a degree. What's up with that, Bill?

Friend of mine has a hotel on Soi Yensabai and Pattaya Tai and also 'runs' several sois motorcycle taxi drivers in the area, numbered 00 to 300 something. Something tells me he doesn't recruit hotel managers from the non-degree motorcycle taxi corps.... no doubt that some of them work hard though (plenty also double as construction labor and are seen hauling 40-50 kg. bags of cement up 3-10 story buildings in the area).

Everyone has an anecdote.

[Chunky1]

how do you "run" motorcycle taxis?

[Heng]

If you own a particular street, say it's built on your property (and not a public street), or perhaps you own a significant number of properties on a public street, basically you get 1-20 fellows with nothing else to do to sit on the street corner in front of your property to lounge around all day while waiting for taxi fares. You charge these guys for this concession. Any new riders to the 'vin' also have to pay this concession, not upfront, but over time with low interest. Sometimes you charge a low commission per fare. If the concession is low or a guy pays off their 'shirt' fee which it is sometimes called, then they will often just pay you a small commission from there on out. And you don't need any degrees whatsoever, you just need to know how to ride a bike.

[Bagwan]

I started in IT when I was just 18 - I was very lucky to get the job (based on interview and some past work experience I got for myself). I was the only person in my department for my company (a major high street bank head office IT dept) without a degree. I studied later, first with the OU and then later completed an MSc with a traditional University. Over more than twenty years working for major bluechips, I have had : PhD's, MSc and many BSc working with/for me - and quite a few that had managed to get the roles with sideways internal moves from business without degrees (or the odd new intake where they managed to wow the interviewer perhaps). I can honestly say that the best of them (and the worst too) were the non-lettered guys and girls. Some of the most dumb people I have had to work with were the best educated. I have come to the conclusion that a degree means sod all at the end of the day - just missed out on 4 years or more work experience.

The only reason to choose someone with a degree over someone without purely for the reason of the degree, is when hiring new entrants - i.e. trainees straight from Uni. Outside of that, experience (and work history) beats paperwork ten to one. I have hired non graduates over graduates many times simply because they showed a better aptitude in the interviews and assessment days. I have almost kicked people out of interviews when them come in with a snotty "I know it all, because I have a nice new piece of paper that says I do" attitude - I have had to work with such chaps and they nearly always stay at the bottom because they never learn and refuse to be taught as they already know it all; they make few friends outside of similar cliques.

Snap. Within my ambit at a corporate management level within an international mainframe computer manufacturer was the recruitment and passing through development programmes of the company's system and hardware engineers of future years. When I took on the responsibility it was known as the Graduate Entry programme. That changed on day one. Day two's effort was declining to do the 'milk round'. The milk round was the annual trawl round the universities making presentations to entice graduates to come to work for us. I viewed it as a 'jolly' for personnel people to get out of the office, stay in good hotels and eat the sort of meals that they usually could not afford. The Personnel department (which I have always regarded as the dumping ground for the company idiots who had not transgressed or underperformed enough to be dismissed) objected and the matter was discussed at Director level. My thrust was that it was my job to instill knowledge and mental discipline and I was not over enthralled by the prospect of hiring people who had sat on their backsides for twelve years or so acquiring knowledge, much of which was unusable, and then swanning around in universities picking up a lot of opinions at variance with the true world. I pointed out that there were in excess of three million people who were unemployed in the UK and I was inclined to look in favour of those who got off their backsides and came looking for opportunities. Since the efficiency and cost effectiveness of that part of my remit would revolve in part upon the quality of the raw material that we would work with I, and my junior managers would decide on the how, why and when.

Only about 5% of applicants were called for interview. Some of the reasons for turning applicants away were applications on computer output paper (known as eyeline) rather than decent quality notepaper and envelope, incorrect spelling and punctuation and obvious delusions about their current worth in the contemporary business environment. Those who did turn up for interview did nothing to raise our spirits. One young lad entered my office eating a hamburger stating that he was having a busy day and did I mind interviewing him in his lunch hour! Many turned up late and were told that they now went to the back of the queue and would be seen when those who had the courtesy to arrive early or on time had been processed. None remained. Others turned up in jeans and trainers. Didn't schools and universities have people who advised on applying and/or getting a job? Many could not do simple mental arithmetic. Asked what the result of dividing 66.6 by one third was to the nearest whole number many replied 22. Lots more reached for a calculator. Did they not think that what we were looking for was people who could put intelligence into a machine rather than take it out?

While I was in that job the people that got past Checkpoint Charlie were like Heinz varieties - all shapes, sizes, backgrounds, ethnic origins and formal qualifications. One was a young girl from the dark, dank North without dress sense and reeking of Woolworth's scent with barely any qualifications at all. She had pleaded to stay on at her Polytechnic after gaining a certificate of some sort to work without pay as a gofer in the Computer Department. She had borrowed manuals and had taught herself to become better than a novice writing in two computer languages. I met her seven years after she had left my care working in the US as a project manager for one of the companies larger customers - at their great expenses and maybe loss of life. Our only failure was a guy with a Masters degree and a chess player at county level. Intelligent to a degree but without an iota of common sense. He couldn't even manage COBOL, a language in common business use written for use by lesser mortals.

To sum up this mainly irrelevant epistle I would go for those with the fire of ambition in their eyes, those who wanted to get on in life with the fibre to overcome difficulties rather than those waving bits of paper at me. It maybe that I had a bias against those that I felt had been feather bedded since I left formal education at the age of 15 years - and still made it.

Edited December 18, 2010 by Bagwan

[OxfordWill]

My experience being an employer here, hiring expats, is vastly different to yours. What industry are you in? We seldom have enough applicants for available positions and are sometimes forced to choose less than ideal compromises.

You should take the blinkers off and start hiring Thai staff - I have this evening had the privilege of taking the team who have worked for me over the past two years out for a thank you dinner - All Thai, all have turned out a first class performance....... and all degree educated.

We hire both thai and western staff. If you weren't so blinkered by your assuming nature, you might have asked.

[Suzy]

Having a degree or job experience seem irrelevant when job hunting in Bangkok. I know a friend of a friend who, apart from being an alcoholic queen, has no legitimate degrees, no job experience (in the field in which he is currently employed), no worthwhile references having lost several jobs in BKK due to his condition and light fingers, and yet holds a management position in a 4 star hotel near Rama IX Road. Don't these places check on a job applicant's background and contact referees? Or are they so desperate to have a farang on show they will take anybody, warts 'n all. God help the young males!

[emsfeld]

@Bagwan

I agree that in order to be a good programmer you dont need a degree. In actual fact all the guys I know who are great programmers and know their way around on the system level -(working on Windows myself - ie WINAPI) rather than limiting themselves to VMs/ managed environments only such as Java and .Net - acquired their skills through teaching themselves.

IMHO, I dont see a reason for programming to be taught at unis and even see it as a bit of a waste of time. These skills can be picked up easily yourself; nowadays especially. Actually this was the same case 15+ years ago with the difference that the reference media usually were in the form of books and specialised magazines for the young hobby programmer like myself back then (the latter especially for the latest methodologies) and not the internet.

BUT, the guys I am referring to above all have degrees in which knowledge of C, C++, C#,... was simply assumed to be picked up along the way rather than explicitly taught which is very often the case in the hard sciences - Physics, (Electrical) Engineering, and Mathematics in particular.

[pjclark1]

Having a degree and making money are two entirely different things.

Those with a degree have a tendency to a middle class life style making average amounts of money.

Those making huge amounts of money rarely have a university education.

I don't think anyone should come to Thailand expecting to make vast amounts of money.

Although with a degree you can scrape a living as a teacher.

Better to come over here already financed. If you want a hobby job, plenty to do.

[emsfeld]

Having a degree and making money are two entirely different things.

Those with a degree have a tendency to a middle class life style making average amounts of money.

Those making huge amounts of money rarely have a university education.

Where did you get that from?? Looking at population averages from US, UK, OZ,... census data exactly the opposite is true on average! Excluding PhDs as they tend to remain in academia, income increases with education level. This is not to say that the deviations about the averages may be much higher in those categories without uni degrees suggesting that there are the rare few doing fantastically well.

[MJP]

We'll bypass graduates and hire straight from schools: Top accountancy firm says best job recruits may be skipping university over debt fears

[robblok]

Typical responses from those who don't have a degree and those who do. Its plain simple with a degree you have more chance of a future. It does not mean you will always be better then someone without one but in general it will be. There are always other factors like luck,skill and contacts that come into play.

But if you take 100.000 people with a degree and 100.000 without one it will be easy to see who are more successful. Sure there are always exceptions but there are exceptions to every rule.

Also not having a degree does not mean you are stupid (for some it does) but there could be other reasons why someone did not try it (lack of money or stimulation from parents)

[pjclark1]

Typical responses from those who don't have a degree and those who do. Its plain simple with a degree you have more chance of a future. It does not mean you will always be better then someone without one but in general it will be. There are always other factors like luck,skill and contacts that come into play.

I have several degrees, never helped me make money.

When I worked somewhere in the city of London, I worked alongside many who had no qualifications but made 'loads of money'

What those people had in common was a ruthless killer instinct with no mercy or degree.

(I don't consider $250k a year as making a lot of money)

[robblok]

Typical responses from those who don't have a degree and those who do. Its plain simple with a degree you have more chance of a future. It does not mean you will always be better then someone without one but in general it will be. There are always other factors like luck,skill and contacts that come into play.

I have several degrees, never helped me make money.

When I worked somewhere in the city of London, I worked alongside many who had no qualifications but made 'loads of money'

What those people had in common was a ruthless killer instinct with no mercy or degree.

(I don't consider $250k a year as making a lot of money)

I have a degree and the knowledge i gained while getting it has helped me. A degree shows that you can think at a certain level. Of course there will always be people who made it without a degree.. but many more so who did not.

[citizen33]

It's interesting that the same arguments writ large are being made by governments to justify different policies in the face of economic recession. At a time when many nations are increasing investment in HE (and numbers of graduates), my own country - the UK - is cutting back hard, partly on the grounds that few jobs really require a degree We'll see over time which approach works. My feeling is that a lot of people still value (and reward) the risk-based economy much more highly than the knowledge-based economy, and that is a mistake. But time will tell.

[Heng]

One thing a degree or three gets you is that you don't have to waste time (and apparently getting worked up and angry in a lot of cases) convincing people that you're just as able, qualified, smart, etc. and have more in common with captains of industry than the other 4 billion+ daily wage type folks in the world.

[Moonrakers]

One thing a degree or three gets you is that you don't have to waste time (and apparently getting worked up and angry in a lot of cases) convincing people that you're just as able, qualified, smart, etc. and have more in common with captains of industry than the other 4 billion+ daily wage type folks in the world.

Do you mean except for all of the degreed contributors to this thread?

[Heng]

It's one of those things... similar to how there doesn't seem to be that much venom from folks who DID get their sin sod returned, didn't lose their house and half their future earnings to their first wives, or got their dust collecting picture frames with university logos.

[Chunky1]

One thing a degree or three gets you is that you don't have to waste time (and apparently getting worked up and angry in a lot of cases) convincing people that you're just as able, qualified, smart, etc. and have more in common with captains of industry than the other 4 billion+ daily wage type folks in the world.

Didn't you hear, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates both dropped out of Harvard (although not into a ESL course).

[Heng]

Those guys probably didn't spend too many sweaty nights in front of a desk fan printing out resumes whilst pouring through the Bangkok Post jobs section either.

[StreetCowboy]

One thing a degree or three gets you is that you don't have to waste time (and apparently getting worked up and angry in a lot of cases) convincing people that you're just as able, qualified, smart, etc. and have more in common with captains of industry than the other 4 billion+ daily wage type folks in the world.

Didn't you hear, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates both dropped out of Harvard (although not into a ESL course).

And as far as I know, neither has been offered a job since.

I'm certainly not about to offer Bill Gates a job.

SC

[mysterybkk]

I'd like to know how many Farangs have Degrees on this site.

Not the usual lies and reinventons that are normal in Forum life, but the truth,

Than again, you'll never get the truth. So I guess it's a mute, question.

People never tell the truth

well, i'm working on getting my degree from one of the major universities here in thailand. would really love to know how reputable that is outside of thailand....

[TAWP]

I'd like to know how many Farangs have Degrees on this site.

Not the usual lies and reinventons that are normal in Forum life, but the truth,

Than again, you'll never get the truth. So I guess it's a mute, question.

People never tell the truth

well, i'm working on getting my degree from one of the major universities here in thailand. would really love to know how reputable that is outside of thailand....

As any diploma from a 3rd world state...