Recently, one of my clients came to a group coaching call feeling torn about her next steps, and she was asking a question about if she should go back to school and get this master's degree. So in her mind, she had identified this two year master's program in Applied Cognitive Science, and she's wondering, okay, is this going to be my next step? This is something a lot of us do when we're at a career crossroads. When we're thinking about making a transition, one of the first places we look is going back to school, getting a degree. So maybe you are wondering like, should I go get my MBA and go into health administration? Or maybe you want to get your MPH and do something in public health, or maybe you want to get a certification in lifestyle medicine or obesity medicine. And you're not totally sure if this is something that you should do. Sometimes the idea of having to go back to school to get another degree can be super discouraging. Having to sink more time, having to spend more money to go back to school for another career path, that can feel It's really prohibitive so in this episode, I am going to share my hot take on why I think degrees and higher ed in general is kind of a scam that nobody is really talking about. And I'll talk through what we should actually start pursuing instead of degrees. In this type of episode, I'm going to start releasing on Tuesdays, and I think I'll call them Hot Take Tuesdays, or maybe Tuesday Tips, or Tough Love Tuesdays, but they're going to be these short, bite sized episodes with practical takeaways and tangible tips, all in 15 minutes or less. And if you want personalized coaching and guidance to find your own authentic career path. At the end of this episode, I will let you know what to do, but for now, let's dive right in. You are listening to life after medicine, the podcast for healthcare professionals who want to make a difference, make a living and still have the freedom to enjoy their lives. My name is Chelsea Turgeon. My mission is to help you, the frustrated health professional. Find your authentic path to helping others and generating stable income without having to sacrifice your own health and happiness in the process. So here's my hot take on degrees and higher ed in general. I honestly think it's kind of a scam that nobody is talking about, because guys, this is not Norway. Schooling is not free. And in fact, it is wildly expensive in the US. I just don't think the value proposition is there. I don't think the amount of money you have to take out in student loans is ever really worth the degree and the education that you get especially if you already have your bachelor's or already have a graduate degree, you have spent enough time in school. You probably don't need more schooling. It's not that I'm against degrees entirely, it's just that I want people to approach the idea of going back to school and getting a degree with so much intentionality and to save their time and save their money and only go through that process of getting a degree if it's literally absolutely required. Because a big problem I see is that we tend to pursue degrees for reasons that are not going to lead us towards a fulfilling career path. One thing I see my clients doing is procrastinate learning, right? So wanting to go back to school to get a degree because learning feels safe. School is a safe path. It's a very known route, right? If we're in a school program, there's somebody giving us assignments and telling us what to do and we don't have to deal with any unknowns. We also tend to seek degrees and certification because It gives us a sense of validation. If we have letters after our name, we can feel more valuable or feel like we matter, and other people would recognize us. But it's not just our own internal reasons that make us so obsessed with degrees. There is this societal pressure to get degrees as well, so there's actually been this phenomenon of degree inflation that started in the 1980s and it initially happened because technology Provided this ability to automate repetitive tasks and then jobs started requiring higher levels of both cognitive ability and social interactions and soft skills, like the ability to work in teams and to work interpersonally. And so employers started using college degrees as this proxy for soft skills. They assumed anyone who had a college degree. would also have these additional soft skills that were starting to become required. Then, after 2008, this actually worsened because of the climate within the job market. People were willing to take on jobs that they were overqualified for. without any additional increases in pay. And all of these trends were reported in a Harvard Business Review study back in 2017, which was called Dismissed by Degrees. And it talks about all of the problems that degree inflation caused in today's economy. There has been this trend in society to overvalue these four year degrees. However, this trend is now actually starting to reverse. There has been this movement towards a degree reset or a down credentialing. So essentially, certain companies, certain fields are dropping or decreasing degree requirements. There was a report done in Glassdoor that said between 2017 2019, 46 percent of middle skill and 31 percent of high skill occupations experienced degree resets. Certain companies have made these like really public commitments to drop degree requirements. IBM is one of them, so they made this announcement in 2021 that they were going to strip the bachelor's degree requirement for more than half of their U. S. job postings. So in general, there is this trend of moving towards skills based hiring practices. Which I've also seen anecdotally With my friends, as I travel I meet people who are working online earning income online. Many of my friends who are earning six figures are doing a job that is not what their degree was in. So they graduated from college or even did a master's in something, but the job they're doing now that is earning them six figures is not that thing that they went to school for. So some of the examples they've done coding boot camps, they've done UX UI boot camps, which is user experience, user interface. So that's sort of designing apps, designing webs. They've taken online courses to train in skills like product management or even project management. And so there's this trend that I have personally noticed that's also being reported. Towards a skills based hiring environment. And so in that type of environment, it makes more sense to gain skills than to acquire more degrees. One way to acquire skills A more cost effective way is through online certification programs. In comparison to degrees, which tend to be like one, two, three, four years, that tend to be really expensive and that are maybe more broad in scope, certifications tend to be more accelerated and they're more specific to Certain skills and certain industries. And there are websites where you can go to learn skills, and get certified in those skills that are professionally recognized. And then you can go on and use certifications. Those skills to get hired for a job. Obviously, completing a certification does not mean that you're immediately going to be hired or that that's a guarantee, but there's these ways to acquire skills online that then you can use to become qualified for these high paying six figure jobs. Google Career Certifications is a really powerful way to do this. They offer. Certifications and things like project management they've got UX design, IT support, and then even health care IT support specifically, digital marketing, data analytics, that's within Google career certifications. That's something you can try for free for seven days, and then you can get a subscription for 49 a month. I I don't get any money from this. I'm just sharing information that I have seen. And so that is a really powerful way to develop skills in a way that's also very affordable. I have a friend who I'm actually co living with right now, who, when I told him the topic of my podcast, he's like, this is literally what my company does. So the company he works for is called TriHackMe. com and they offer skills certifications for cybersecurity, which is one of the most lucrative skills to learn in 2024. I also have one of my clients right now is doing a free coding class from Harvard. These are just a few options. I'll drop links in the show notes for, all of these places of ways to get online certifications so that you can, develop skills for certain career paths so that you don't have to go back to school and get a degree before transitioning. If you are like my client who was struggling to figure out if going back to school and getting a degree was the next right step for her, I want to offer you a series of questions that you can ask yourself. Number one, why do I want this? What's my motivation here? Two, what will it allow me to do once I get this degree that I can't do now? And this is sort of asking, like, do I absolutely need this degree? this in order to do the job or do the thing I want to do. Number three. Am I romanticizing the learning or the degree getting process? Because sometimes we can look back on our times at school and just have these rose colored glasses around what it was like before we entered the real world. But is that romanticizing? Is that really true? And is that really what we want to be doing? Or does that just feel safer? And number four, is this actually something I'm interested in? Like, am I interested in the reality of it? Or am I interested in the idea of it? That kind of goes along with the romanticizing, the whole process. And then number five, if the reason you want to get the degree is to learn a or learn some new information. Are there other ways to learn that? Are there books to read? Are there YouTube videos that you can watch? Are there ways for you to get started learning this for free just to see if it's something you enjoy? And then if you want to go deeper, then taking those steps at that point. So these are the questions that I went through with my client to essentially assess her motivation for going into the master's program. And what we realized during that process is her whole idea of doing this master's program was just a distraction. See, she has this dream, she has this thing she really wants to do, but she just doesn't think it's realistic. And so she's coming up with all of these alternative plans, these other ways that she can kind of go on a traditional career path, even though it wasn't actually in alignment with what she truly wanted to do. And that's the power of asking these questions, of going within, of really understanding deep down, where is this coming from? And what do I really want? Because a degree is not going to save you from feeling unhappy or unfulfilled in your career. Usually that's a much deeper process that has to happen. So essentially the purpose of this episode is to introduce you to a new way of thinking because it's 2024. We are down credentialing, we are degree resetting, and you do not need another degree to change careers, especially if you already have a bachelor's. or a higher degree, which most of you have, we're moving towards a more skills based hiring practice. So if there's an industry you want to enter or if there's something you want to pursue, instead of trying to get another degree, what I recommend is starting to gain skills in that area and potentially doing that through online certification processes. There's so much that you can learn online, a lot of times for free and sometimes for low cost. You don't need to go back to school or get another degree unless you absolutely want to or unless you live in Norway. If you're listening to this and you want a career that gives you freedom and fulfillment, but you need help figuring out what that is and how to go about it, then I want to invite you to join Pathway to Purpose so that you can clarify your purpose, your career direction, and your next steps. All you have to do is head to the link in the show notes and book a career clarity call. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. This was a Hot Take Tuesday, Tuesday Tips, or Tough Love Tuesday, pick whichever one you want to call it. This is going to be a new weekly series that I do to give you short, bite sized episodes with practical takeaways and tangible tips, all in 15 minutes or less. Alright, until next time!