Degree of Success

J. Kevin Tumlinson

I will be a student for the rest of my life. I love academia! There's something about the learning process that has always kept me completely addicted. Sure, I hate taking tests. And I've been known to miss a class or two for no better reason than the weather was perfect for golf (shame on me). But there I am, week after week, pursuing more knowledge.

Of course, education isn't limited to the classroom. Most of the really important things I've learned have come from direct experience. I've worked in a broad range of fields, and every one of them has had something to teach me. I feel that I could literally do any job, and do it well (a possible exception might be "street mime." Really, why would anyone DO that?)

But of course, there's a catch. Though I've managed to snag more than one degree (the count is up to three at the moment), and though my work experience has given me skills and talents that would be valuable to ANY employer, I sometimes find that these treasured attributes aren't enough. I don't have a piece of paper that says "advertising expert" on it, and therefore most advertising agencies won't hire me. I don't have a degree in Art, so I can't get that job I've always wanted as a CG artist for film. It doesn't seem to matter that I can do these things, and that I even have a portfolio to back up my claims.

I'm paperless.

It occurred to me - college students across the country go through years at a university, majoring in a variety of fields, only to come to the same place. When it's all said and done, they've busted their collective rumps just to earn a piece of paper that limits them to a narrow range of fields. Never mind that they may be perfectly qualified to do other jobs. There's a lot of "cross-training" going on in nearly every major now. It doesn't seem to matter. They have effectively narrowed down their lives to a field they may or may not enjoy.

Of course, there are also those who end up working in a field they did NOT major in. These people went through years of college, focusing on a specific field, only to discover they weren't happy with it in the end.

So here's an idea - instead of channeling everyone into specific majors, how about giving people a broad education that covers a variety of fields? The students can specialize as they like, but in the end they simply get a degree - the same degree as everyone else. While they're in college, however, they can start building a portfolio of work.

Of course, the portfolio idea poses a problem for some people. Art, writing, photography (pretty much any liberal art), these are all fairly easy to build, but a portfolio for Accounting or Chemistry?

Why not? Think back - how many essays did you write in college? How many experiments did you document in Chemistry? How many sample books did you keep in Accounting? You received a grade for those things, right? So, you cull out your best work and you use it in your portfolio, and you can never say that you did all that work in college for nothing.

There's a hidden, added bonus here. Have you noticed it yet? If every student is getting the same degree, and every student is building a portfolio of his or her best work in order to land the job they want, then wouldn't it stand to reason that every student who was serious about having a dream job after college would work harder and learn more? For the first time ever there would be a direct correlation between actual learning and better jobs. The more you actually learn in college, the better your chances of success afterwards.

Our society is currently set up in a strange and confounding way. We don't seem to care if someone can do the job, we only care that they have the piece of paper that SAYS they can do the job. So how about this - stop judging people on the piece of paper they carry and start looking at the range of skills and knowledge they possess. I promise the benefits will be much higher.

J. Kevin Tumlinson is a writer and a schoolteacher living in Lake Jackson, TX. One more degree and he gets a free decoder ring!