These days, networking is synonymous with having a successful career. No matter how big your office is, how good your marketing team does to create colorful and engaging advertisements, how creative your computer skills are or how many degrees you have, it is the quality of relationships you have established in your life with your family, friends, clients and—more than anything else—with everyone you don’t know, that determines the success of your personal and career life.
I say this as a response to an article written by The Oregonian on Nov. 24 titled, “Is a college degree worth what it costs?” My answer to this question: it depends on the degree you obtain. After looking at a few degree options at some universities in the U.S., I came to the conclusion that a major in film, religion, art history, philosophy, communications, dance and so forth is worthless.
Here is why: If you are paying a large portion of your money on an art history degree, chances are the profit you make will not outweigh the money you spent to obtain a degree. More than likely, the only thing you can do with this degree is work for a museum. Each museum I have been to only employs one man who silently reads The New York Times in his booth. I highly doubt there are many positions open in this field.
Another example is philosophy. Sorry, but this isn’t ancient Greece anymore. Sure, going to school is supposed to be a learning experience, but no one in the real world is going to pay you to explain to them something about existence from the hundreds of books you read. Thousands of dollars to pay for a philosophy degree is pretty absurd, as you can just spend $20 dollars for some weed and get a library card.
On the same page as philosophy is a major in religion. Really? Unless you want to work as a receptionist at the Christian Science Reading Room in Southeast Portland for the rest of your life after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this degree from Duke University, go for it. If not, you know the answer.
And lastly, lets clear up the confusion about film and dance. No one in Hollywood is going to care about your short animation about some alcoholic who finds the meaning of life. Unless you know someone working in Hollywood as a film director, good luck. And then there is dance. Besides having to clarify yourself about the type of “dancing for money” you do every time you tell people about your career, there are also no jobs for people who are mediocre dancers. Dance is like art: You have to have imagination and creativity, as well as the dance moves and flexibility for a dance degree and unfortunately, imagination for a choreographed routine is not something you can pay to obtain. You have to be born with it.
So all in all, is a college degree worth your money? Yeah, if you are smart enough to choose the right path. But more so, even if you don’t choose to go into science because organic chemistry is not your forte, the knowledge you gain in school will only take you so far. Emotional intelligence, as in having the emotional abilities rather than academic ones is what will take you far.
According to Gal Baras, in an article he wrote on business for www.ezinearticles.com, “Over 70 percent of the jobs are not even advertised and are filled by ‘word of mouth,’ so your chances of knowing about a new job depends on the people you know.” Networking, more than ever, is the new way to gain a successful life.
Granted, not every person is a social butterfly and many still don’t have profiles on Facebook, MySpace or any other social network. But like all things in life, networking is also a skill that must be learned.
Not everyone will like your product, or want you to try to sell it to them. But overall, the 21st century has definitely become so technologically dependent that it is no longer about your degree. In other, more encouraging words, a bachelor’s degree from Portland State compared to a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University is not about the quality of education we might be missing out on, but rather the network and the people we might meet who can put us in touch with potential employers.