Games Game February 2010

Education is much more than a line on your résumé  (February 2010)

Hey, look, so everybody says you need a bachelors degree but I found a school where I can get a degree, well actually a diploma, in 1 or 2 years and the school says it's just as good as a bachelors degree so should I go for it?

Unsigned

Hi Unsigned,

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but this is a carcass that deserves all the whipping it can get. Sorry for that metaphor. If somebody comes up with a better metaphor, I'm all ears -- and they're flapping in the breeze while I beat the dead horse. Yuck, I need to delete those 3 sentences. This whole paragraph, actually.

The college education has much more usefulness than you are thinking. It's not just a line on your résumé.

When you graduate high school, you are not done learning. There's a lot more to learn, about life and about being an adult human being and about being part of sodiety. One thing you learn in college is critical thinking. You learn how to solve problems, and how to learn what you have to learn when a new problem arises.

As you mature and make your way in society, you eventually make new friends and come to value them in different ways than you did in high school. Friends and contacts that you make in college will prove to be much more meaningful and valuable. Many companies have been formed from college friends -- a lot more than have been formed from high school friends. As you take advanced education courses and pursue advanced projects, you'll learn more about your own strengths and where the gaps are in your strengths. And you'll learn the value of the different strengths of others you get to know in your junior and senior years. Those contacts often prove crucial in the years immediately following graduation as you start to make your way into the professional world.

And you'll be subjected to directed learning in pursuit of a full bachelors degree. The programs make you study stuff that you wouldn't be motivated to study on your own, and you will definitely discover that it was useful learning, later in life.

And there's another reason why the 4-year bachelors degree is twice as good as a 2-year diploma.

Employers look at your résumé, and when they see a 2-year education, they know you're someone who rushes everything, that you always look for the easy way out, that you seek instant gratification. What they want is someone who can stick with a project for the long haul. Many of our game projects are 2 years, sometimes even double that. If you have a 4-year degree on your résumé, then they know you're someone with the ability to commit to the whole project. They don't want guys who will jump ship halfway through.

A school that says their 2-year diploma is equivalent to a 4-year bachelors degree are skewing the facts. It is reasonable to be skeptical of their motivations for making such a claim. And it is reasonable to be skeptical of the validity of such a claim. But if you like their offerings, see if their course credits are transferable. Maybe you could take their program, then transfer to a 4-year school for the final 2 years of your education. Or you could get the bachelors degree first, then go for the diploma as additional useful learning.