A Degree Is A Piece Of Paper

I believe a degree is a piece of paper.

A lot of people do not like hearing that, so let me start with the part where I am wrong.

In some fields a degree really is required

Medicine is different. Without a degree nobody will let you near a patient, and nobody should.

Engineering has the same rule in many places. Some work legally requires the qualification.

So this is not about every field. This is about ours.

What actually happens in our line of work

If you build websites, design, draw plans in AutoCAD, or set up online stores, no client asks you for a degree.

He asks one thing. Show me what you have built.

And here is something worth noticing. Even with a degree you still have to show it. The graduate walking in to ask for work gets the same question: have you built anything?

So what is the real thing here. The work.

Even with a degree you still have to prove it. So the proof was the real thing all along.

What you learned goes stale

There is something that weakens the degree further in our field. Half of what you learned four years ago is no longer useful.

Let me give a simple example. If you are still doing everything by hand today, and you do not even know that the same job can now be done in half the time, the problem is not your degree. The problem is that you stopped.

Society keeps moving. You have to move with it. Keep learning the new thing instead of holding on to the old one.

So what goes in place of the degree

A folder. With your work in it.

Twenty drawings, ten designs, three websites, whatever your field is. Even if you made all of them for practice and nobody paid you a rupee.

A client does not ask who paid for them. He only looks at whether you can build.

This is not me telling you to quit studying

If you are studying, keep studying, especially if your family wants it. There is no need to hurt them over this.

Just learn a skill alongside. And build something with that skill.

Then if the degree turns out useful one day, good. And if it does not, you still have something to show.

Two questions

I am thirty now, is it too late?
No. In this field nobody asks your age. They look at the work. And a thirty year old often has one thing in greater supply: knowing how to talk to people. With clients that counts.

I do not have a laptop, can I do this on a phone?
Some of it, like design and social media. Not AutoCAD or coding. But start on the phone, land the first job, and the laptop comes out of that earning. People have started exactly this way.

One last thing

A degree is not a bad piece of paper. It is just not enough on its own.

You need to know the work, and the work needs to be showable. That's it.