College Degree?

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Schuin

Schuin

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Ok, I know that many airline jobs require a 4 yr. degree, or "highly desired", but i dont get why. If my job is to be a pilot, then i should have all of the qualifications(i.e. all the ratings and time) If a degree is to show that i can apply myself, i think that having all of my ratings is proof enough that i can show self discipline and motivation, and hopefully financial responsibility.
And as for having a backup plan, if there is no guarantee that my aviation career is going to fly, is there a guarantee that my backup career will work out? Just some honest quetions, in the end, maybe it is the game i have to play.
What are the legitimate reasons, and what am i missing?
 
The short story: The most desirable airline jobs require a college degree. Why? The reasons are varied, but you still need it if you want desire a job high on the career food chain.

From Cheechako's thread about Alaska Airlines:

14 Classes
121 Total hired
0 With 2-year degree
108 With 4-year degree (89%)
13 With 4+ year degree (11%)
47 Previous ALPA (39%)
21 Ex-Horizon (17%)
17 Military (14%)
89 Civilian (74%)
15 Combined Mil & Civ (12%)
5,554 Average Flight time
13,300 High flight time
2,000 Low flight time
35 Average Age
47 High
26 Low
103 Retirements
43 Early Retirements
Click to expand...

And as for having a backup plan, if there is no guarantee that my aviation career is going to fly, is there a guarantee that my backup career will work out?
Click to expand...

Nope. The only certainties are death, taxes and that the cable news media will be talking about Britney Spear's bald head for the next millenium.

It's a game you really just have to play.

I hated doing lazy-8's because it was a skill I felt I wouldn't ever use and they were difficult. But if I wanted a commecial certificate, I had to learn to perform lazy-8's to commercial practical test standards.
 
Doug Taylor said:
The short story: The most desireable jobs require a college degree. Why? The reasons are varied, but you still need it if you want desire a job high on the career food chain.

From Cheechako's thread about Alaska Airlines:





Nope. The only certainties are death, taxes and that the cable news media will be talking about Britney Spear's bald head for the next millenium.
Click to expand...



EVERYTHING the previous poster said was a lie.
 
College isn't just about preparing you for a career - it's about making you a well-rounded person. While there are other ways than college to accomplish this, the general education that a university provides will assist you in dealing with many other situations you will encounter as a pilot - i.e., communicating with passengers/crew from different cultures, developing logic and reasonining skills that aid in risk assessment and decision making, etc.

I doubt you will find many people with a (credible) college degree who will say that their time in school was wasted. I use obscure knowledge I picked up in random required classes every day in my job - stuff I never thought would apply to my career field.

Aside from this, for many people (myself included), college was the greatest time of their life. If you're considering passing it up in order to get to the right seat a few years sooner, I'd reconsider. Just my 2-cents, though.
 
Schuin said:
Ok, I know that many airline jobs require a 4 yr. degree, or "highly desired", but i dont get why. If my job is to be a pilot, then i should have all of the qualifications(i.e. all the ratings and time) If a degree is to show that i can apply myself, i think that having all of my ratings is proof enough that i can show self discipline and motivation, and hopefully financial responsibility.
And as for having a backup plan, if there is no guarantee that my aviation career is going to fly, is there a guarantee that my backup career will work out? Just some honest quetions, in the end, maybe it is the game i have to play.
What are the legitimate reasons, and what am i missing?
Click to expand...

To the major airlines, its not proof enough unless you have a degree...As everyone has said in the previous posts, it is the competive advantage if you have the degree and it separates you from others..Not only does it make you a well rounded person, but why limit yourself in learning? Dont settle for the minimum, while you are in college you will learn a lot more than what you get from the classroom. Get involved on campus. You will learn a lot on how to interact with diff kinds of people and trust me, there are some odd ducks on a college campus. This has been the best 4 years of my life and i finish in May, and let me tell you it has flown by. Im sure someone will come behind me and drill me on this and say otherwise, but SOME regionals are starting to hire only with a 4 degree despite what their minimum requirements are. Remember being a professional pilot means you are a PROFESSIONAL and I have met few PROFESSIONALS who settle for the minimum....Good luck and i hope you make the right choice

/rant

Colin
 
:yeahthat:

It's all about competition and utilizing all the appropriate tools to be one step ahead of the competition. Well rounded sounded superb; total aviator could be another example. When all things are equal to decide promotions, advancement, perks - every little bit helps. A degree is a "positive" towards that advancement.
 
Because trust me bro, flying is a VERY small part of being a professional pilot. They're looking for well rounded, well educated individuals.
 
Schuin said:
What are the legitimate reasons, and what am i missing?
Click to expand...

What exactly would you consider legitimate?

It's about education, life experience, and being an over-all well-rounded person. Not that someone without a college degree can't be educated (learning happens outside the classroom too), experienced, or be a well-rounded person. Just having a college degree adds to your education, experience, and well-roundedness.
 
Schuin said:
What are the legitimate reasons, and what am i missing?
Click to expand...

As everyone else has said, they're looking for "well-rounded" people. It's a LOT nicer to fly a 4-day trip with someone who has experience outside of aviation, because otherwise there tends to be a lot of mind-numbing silences. Additionally, ground school at an airline is probably unlike any of the training you've done up to that point--it's much more analogous to a college course, where you have to study your ass off in a short period of time.
 
All of the reasons given have legitimate points, but do not require a degree to learn them. I am not looking for any shortcuts, i just want to make sure that i do not waste any money that i don't have to. I kind of look at this way, if i want to be a business man, and get my degree, would my prospective employer require me to have my ATP, reasoning that flying makes you alert, helps solve problems under pressure and forces you to budget and deal with people. No, therein lies the confusion, because flying does do all of those things for you without a college education, but people reason that those skills are immposible without a degree. SOOO, after listening to the answers, it seems that the degree is just part of the resume.:) Not trying to pick a fight:)
 
I think getting most of your ratings at least through Commercial is a quicker proposition than getting a Batcherlors degree. While getting my ratings wasn't easy, I considered getting my batchelors degree to be more difficult. It took 4 years, and required significantly more time preparing for class. Getting flying experience after that was what alot of time and effort.
 
If you're not willing to do what company X says is required or needed to get hired, then go work somewhere else.

But understand - don't be jealous of those that did get a degree, and are now working for Company X making 40-50% more than you are.

This isn't a difficult subject - either you have a degree, or you don't. You have to make up your mind which is more important to you - the degree . . .or a sub-standard flying career compared to everyone who does have a degree.

The choice is yours, and yours only. Don't blame anyone else but yourself if you are unhappy with your sub-standard pay and benefits because you didn't get a degree to put you into the category of pilots that do have the degree - and as such - are hired at a much larger company, with better benefits and pay.

I'm actually - slowly - starting to get tired of the excuse that a degree is simply part of the resume.

No, it is not just a part of the resume. It is part of this profession. We have to set ourselves apart from everyone else in our society if we even wish to attain the level of professionalism and respect that this career once had in decades past. Why should the profession support GED and HS diploma only individuals when we are asking for pay in the six figures?

There is no reason someone, who is seeking a job at a legacy major, should not have a degree. I know many here on JC that are flying at regionals, and taking college courses to finish up their BA/BS degree so that they can be more competitive in the legacy major realm of our business. Hell, even some of us are working on graduate degrees.

It is all about what YOU want, not what someone else is telling you. This decision is all on you.
 
Schuin said:
All of the reasons given have legitimate points, but do not require a degree to learn them. I am not looking for any shortcuts, i just want to make sure that i do not waste any money that i don't have to. I kind of look at this way, if i want to be a business man, and get my degree, would my prospective employer require me to have my ATP, reasoning that flying makes you alert, helps solve problems under pressure and forces you to budget and deal with people. No, therein lies the confusion, because flying does do all of those things for you without a college education, but people reason that those skills are immposible without a degree. SOOO, after listening to the answers, it seems that the degree is just part of the resume.:) Not trying to pick a fight:)
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Schuin,

I asked the very same question last summer, with similar reasoning to yours. I got a variety of responses with varying levels of hostility. :) But the answer that made the most sense to me was this one:

There are thousands of applicants for the jobs at the majors. One way to weed out applicants is to eliminate the ones without degrees. Clear. Simple. Made sense. <shrug>
 
How College helps me every day:

Every time I write an Irregularity Report (something every airline pilot writes), I was thanking Dr. Gilbert in English Comp 101 for his red ink chicken-scratch notations demanding proper punctuation, grammar and syntax.

Every time I had to address a large number of people (standing in front of a plane load of passengers to explain why we haven't pushed off the gate yet), I thank Mrs. Arnold for her semmingly unreasonable speech-a-week in Communications 101.

Every time I calculate my top of descent or figure out how much fuel we can tanker to get us through Nome, I thank Dr. Armstrong for his annoying attention to detail in College Algebra 201.

While presenting myself to the hiring board, I thank my instructors in college flight training who required me be professional, hold myself to the highest standards, and for gods sakes wear that stupid tie in the 90+ degree east Texas summers!

College isn't about grades and making it through Applied College Physics for Rocket Scientists, it's about learning the high standards of being a productive employee in today's corporate world.
 
Cheechako said:
How College helps me every day:

Every time I write an Irregularity Report (something every airline pilot writes), I was thanking Dr. Gilbert in English Comp 101 for his red ink chicken-scratch notations demanding proper punctuation, grammar and syntax.

Every time I had to address a large number of people (standing in front of a plane load of passengers to explain why we haven't pushed off the gate yet), I thank Mrs. Arnold for her semmingly unreasonable speech-a-week in Communications 101.

Every time I calculate my top of descent or figure out how much fuel we can tanker to get us through Nome, I thank Dr. Armstrong for his annoying attention to detail in College Algebra 201.

While presenting myself to the hiring board, I thank my instructors in college flight training who required me be professional, hold myself to the highest standards, and for gods sakes wear that stupid tie in the 90+ degree east Texas summers!

College isn't about grades and making it through Applied College Physics for Rocket Scientists, it's about learning the high standards of being a productive employee in today's corporate world.
Click to expand...


Thanks, that is the kind of real world info that i needed.
 
I don't know why people struggle with the initiative to get a Bachelor's degree.

Get the degree folks. It makes you a more well-rounded person. Not having a 4-year degree is just like not having graduated high school.
 
Chris just gave a perfect example of how even a non-aviation degree would help you in the aviation world. Take it even further with an aviation degree and you've got an understanding of how/why management works (okay, so SOMETIMES you do), more involved knowledge of the physics in flying (lets face it, the ratings you get don't delve NEARLY enough into this), aviation laws and procedures, the history of how aviation got to be where it is today (so the mistakes of the past aren't repeated) and a potential knowledge of complex systems you might not get while doing your ratings.

I'm not saying "get an aviation degree," but pointing out how one might help you in an aviation field. My honest opinion is get a degree in something you enjoy and will finish. I could major in business as a fall back, but it would be useless. I'd pull my hair out before I'd finish the degree, and I'd not only have no fall back, but no degree.
 
this has not been said yet. I think a lot of you give good reasons why your 4 years of college was helpful & a good time. I spent 3 years at the university of kentucky before I joined the Air Force. I'll be 125% honest I didn't take away anything other than life long friends that is useful to me today.

Which brings me to my point, I ended up finishing my degree online. So the advantages of friends, good times, etc are thrown out the window when one compares a typical college experience to the guy who got his degree online.

My degree is a joke but its a 4 year from an accredited college. Thanks USAF :)

So how does one rebuttal this approach?

The other way I relate to this, I'm a computer guy always have been. Things that might not seem normal to someone else I just get. And it pains me to see people who go to a tech school, get a microsoft piece of paper and then the job market says oh lets hire them.

When you have someone like myself who knows several different programming languages, could run a companies computer system, and do it all very cost effective, yet the guy with the microsoft piece of paper is who they would hire.

So in summary, I agree with you 100% Schuin however the world we live in today requires us to have a degree.
And if the guys on here are telling you to get one then I'd listen to them :)
 
Very interesting posts. I think that i will summurize what i have learned through these posts.
In the airline business, get your degree, because it's just the way it is.
That really bothers me:confused:
Thanks for all of the input:)
 
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