{"id":1399,"date":"2014-11-25T17:56:07","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T17:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/career-advice\/?p=1399"},"modified":"2019-09-25T14:41:20","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T21:41:20","slug":"is-a-bachelors-degree-still-worth-it-part-1-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/is-a-bachelors-degree-still-worth-it-part-1-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a Bachelor’s Degree Still Worth It? (Part 1 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: This is the first in a three-part series. Read the entire article here<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all heard stories about over-qualified university grads working at Starbucks and Home Depot for minimum wage. Today\u2019s youth unemployment hovers at 13.4 per cent (nearly double the overall national level), along with student debts rising 44 percent from 1999 to 2012. With university tuitions having almost tripled<\/a> during the last 20 years, and projected to rise another 13 per cent over four years, we\u2019re beginning to wonder whether a bachelor\u2019s degree is worth pursuing for our sons and daughters, nieces and nephews.<\/p>\n

I used to think that universities did a poor job in equipping university graduates for today\u2019s competitive job market. As a resume writer, I would sometimes look at a young person\u2019s resume, observe the number of degrees and programs that the individual has taken, and wonder how it is that the person still can\u2019t find decent work in her field, or a job with a promising career path.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all read stories about a \u201cskills shortage\u201d in Canada, and how the government needs to do a better job in promoting the skilled trades as an alternative to a university education. With resource extraction comprising a significant portion of our nation\u2019s economy, particularly here in B.C., this seems to make sense. In early 2014, B.C. premier Christy Clark made a heavy push to try to encourage more people to enter skilled trades for jobs in the province\u2019s natural resource sector and potential liquefied natural gas industry.<\/p>\n

Then last month, I read Maximum Brainpower<\/a><\/em> by cognitive psychologist Shlomo Breznitz, where he asserts that increasingly, more companies now require employees who can think across multiple disciplines and from different perspectives. He points to Toyota, where workers from marketing, sales, product development, engineering are put into a same room to work on the same problem. In praising \u201cgeneralists\u201d, Breznitz says that \u201c as the world gets more complex, fewer and fewer answers can be found within the walls of a single discipline. [\u2026] We have learned so much about every field that most new questions fall within the border of two or three disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n

As much as the country needs mining technicians, oil field welders, and rig operators to work in the burgeoning oil and gas sector, what happens when commodity prices go down (as they are now)? \u00a0What happens when demand dries up in a particular resource sector, forcing entire industries to close down? Yes, we need technical and mechanical workers; but we can\u2019t forget that this economy isn\u2019t driven solely by those who work in the trades. In addition, the social, economic and business problems we face today are so complex and so seemingly intractable, that they require community leaders, business people, entrepreneurs, and policy makers who can take a multidisciplinary approach in finding solutions. And this is where studies in the humanities and liberal arts come to play.<\/p>\n

Read Part 2<\/a><\/p>\n

Milton Kiang, B.A., LL.B. is a professional resume writer with Channel Resume Services<\/a>\u00a0and helps jobs applicants create powerful resumes, enabling them to win job interviews in a competitive job market. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: This is the first in a three-part series. Read the entire article here. We\u2019ve all heard stories about over-qualified university grads working at Starbucks and Home Depot for minimum wage. Today\u2019s youth unemployment hovers at 13.4 per cent (nearly double the overall national level), along with student debts rising 44 percent from 1999 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":5753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5767,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions\/5767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcjobs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}