University is the start of so many things: long-awaited independence, a few fumbling first steps toward the real world, a long series of mock-traumas to prepare us for real problems. For many of us, it is the start of a four- (or five- or six-) year lamentation on the fact that we chose to come at all. Decrying future job prospects is an undergraduate tradition, and one to which every student generation feels exclusively entitled. This is why the “drop-up”—the student who leaves college for instant success— is an academic folk hero.
There was a time, it seems, when success followed a very simple formula: ambition, plus hard work, plus talent equaled whatever job you wanted. Take Ernest Hemingway: bright, athletic, and handsome, his writing prowess earned him free reign of his high school newspaper, and he contributed stories to the school literary journal. He studied the Chicago papers and venerated Ring Lardner. When he graduated, he knew exactly what he wanted to do, and saw no reason to delay it. He got in touch with a well-connected uncle, and, four months after his high school graduation, began his first job as a cub reporter at the Kansas City Star. From then on (save for his service as an ambulance driver during the First World War), he was a writer.
We dream of an employment Golden Age, a time when getting a career was as simple as doing whatever that career entailed. Granted, few of us are Ernest Hemingway, but many of us are gifted and prepared to work. Standards have been on the rise for longer than we think, says David K. Foot, professor of economics at U of T and author of the Boom, Bust & Echo books on demographic shift. “One word [for it] is certification creep,” he says. “In other words, every generation has to do a bit more than the previous generation. The standards just keep going up…Once upon a time in the 1930s, if you could repair a pipe, you didn’t have to be a plumber, you’d get a job. Then in the 1960s, you had to have some sort of plumbing certification. By the ’80s, you had to go to college—you had to be in a trades program and get two years of formal training. It just keeps cranking up, and it has, probably, for a century.”
Whether or not you obtain a degree, there’s a good chance you won’t get settled in a profession for quite awhile. “Churning”—the dabbling in many careers after graduation—has been a reality since the ’80s, says Harry Krashinsky, an assistant professor at U of T’s Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources. “In the United States, in the first five to 10 years after graduation, you’ll see people with, on average, something like seven jobs,” he says. As Foot makes clear, it’s simply a matter of demographics: “When the Boomers were all under 40, we had lots of young workers and no old workers. So we had hierarchal corporate structures—a few jobs at the top, lots of jobs at the bottom. In that world, you have a linear career path—you start at the bottom and gradually work your way up through the system. The Boomers then got older—over the ’80s, they started to hit their 30s and 40s, and it looks like a rectangle, only it had a hierarchical structure… By the ’80s, we were talking about plateauing—career blockaging. The only way you can put a rectangle up a triangle is to flatten the triangle…Flatter corporate structures, spiral career path.”
Many grads seem to churn through the service route. As Foot states, most new jobs are in the service sector, and not all of them are low-paying. But there is no shortage of university graduates working in retail, bars, and restaurants. Working amongst friends can be a fun way to spend your 20s, but when your student loan fees total $20,000—the average figure among the 53 per cent of the class of 2000 who graduated with debts—it can be demoralizing. “I’ve become pretty disillusioned in the past three years,” says Chris (he asked that his name be changed), an OCAD graduate with an outstanding debt between $40,000 and $50,000. “Now, a dream come true for me would be some sort of entry-level admin type job in a field that’s not totally dry—an advertising or design firm, anything that’s remotely aesthetic—where I could make enough money to pay back my loan and have a really modest lifestyle. I’ve kind of given up on having time or money to spend on art, which is a really depressing idea, but I’ve come to accept that over the last couple years.”
To some, the answer is simple: forget college, start working. A Statistics Canada study found that university graduates aged 22 to 24 were slightly more likely than high school dropouts to earn less than $360 a week, due to a lack of work experience. The same study found that working more than 20 hours a week in high school decreased students’ chances of earning a degree, but increased their earnings by 20 per cent. If you’re a college dropout with talent and tenacity, the same service sector jobs that plague degree-holders can be mere landing mats, to be worked when necessary and quit when your career starts to pick up. “Throughout my 20s I was kind of determined to work ‘Joe jobs’ as little as possible, thereby putting myself in some bummer situations, like bouncing around in my living situation as opposed to having to pay rent,” says artist/cartoonist Marc Bell, whose comics have been self-published, serialized in Vice and the Montreal Mirror, and released by Fantagraphics at different times. “I had a couple dishwashing jobs, worked Monday nights in Halifax DJing to nobody, worked at Euro Deli in Montreal and couldn’t understand when people were asking for an ashtray. All the while I was doing comics. I lived off of a weekly comic strip for a few years, and then eventually a gallery in NY became interested in my ‘fine’ art and that worked out pretty well. Nothing lasts forever, though, and I get worried I might have to return to a Joe job.”
Perhaps the most compelling reason for finishing a degree is the threat of being caught jobless and underqualified. “In general, good work experience can compensate, but it’s going to hurt in the long term,” says Foot. “You’re going to hit a barrier if you do not have the right sort of formal education. If you don’t have a bachelor’s degree, at some stage—it doesn’t matter how good you are—it’s likely to come up.” According to Krashinsky, a year of education can increase one’s earnings by up to 10 per cent; a university degree can shoot the figure up to 20 per cent. “Economists are rarely unambiguous about anything, but I would argue that the answer seems to be unambiguous here: there’s a big payoff to doing university, and whatever costs you might incur simply get washed out by the overwhelming benefits of actually going and acquiring your degree.” If you don’t have the instinct or the patience for finding and ditching ephemeral gigs, you might want a BA to anchor your CV.
Earnings aside, there is something to be said for choice. Many graduates work jobs they hate simply to pay off their debts. Other graduates would happily accept low wages for the right job, if they could get it. As with anything, we like to blame our parents: the job market is saturated with Baby Boomers who refuse to cede territory. “It is true, the Boomers are blocking your career path,” says Foot. “The Boomers are all in their 40s and 50s. The front-end Boomers born in 1947 have turned 60 now. They will start retiring over the next five years. It’s pointless to preach patience to young students—they want it, they want it now. [But] it’s always been true that getting the first job is very difficult. And that’s always been true, even for my generation, way back when.” While every generation likes to distinguish their troubles from those of generations past, the competition for good entry-level jobs has reached hysterical heights. The University of Dreams, an internship program that guarantees placements at sought-after firms in cities like New York and Los Angeles, charges $4,999 to $9,999 for its services. Late last year, an unpaid internship at Harper’s Bazaar was auctioned for $4,500 at a charity site. It wasn’t the first time a high-profile magazine had auctioned off its starter slots; magazines owned by publishing giants Condé Nast and the Meredith Corporation (Harper’s Bazaar is owned by Hearst) have done so as well, according to the New York Times.
Even your standard, no-frills internship requires a summer’s worth of foregone earnings, or a school/work balancing act that any reasonable young person would want to avoid. Some are able to scrap their way into real jobs without the usual precedents. Seth Rogen —who, at 16, finished second in the Vancouver Amateur Comedy Contest—went from slacking through high school to playing a high school slacker on Freaks & Geeks, then spent what would have been his university years playing a college student on Undeclared. “Of the 17 some odd years I’ve been alive, 12 of them have been spent doing schooling. That’s about 71 per cent of my life dedicated to learning a bunch of stuff I will probably never use,” he wrote in his high school yearbook. “Ever since I started earning more than my own teachers, everything kind of fell into perspective.”
Parental affiliations never hurt, either. Peter Jennings dropped out of school in the 10th grade, not from any grandiose ambitions, but from “pure boredom.” He had experience in broadcasting, hosting a CBC children’s show, Peter’s People, at the ripe age of nine. The gig ended abruptly after his father, Charles Jennings, vice president of the corporation and a staunch opponent of nepotism, returned from a trip and learned what was going on. Peter excelled, eventually, on his own merits. He shuffled through a number of broadcasting jobs, and by 26 he had landed his pivotal gig at ABC. Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, dropped out of high school but landed her first magazine job at the age of 20. Presumably, her father’s influence (he edited the Evening Standard) saved her from a different fate than the one she now enjoys, and her ability to network (relationships with older men, friendships with older women) ensured her success.
Networking is an essential skill, whether you want to be namechecked on Gawker or enjoy a career of quiet study. To most employers, post-secondary attainment is an expectation, not an asset. More graduating students mean more competition: approximately 11,000 students will graduate from U of T this year; many will compete for the same job postings. In rare (and often exasperatingly unfair) cases, networking can eliminate the need for a degree altogether. Blake Gottesman, a high school boyfriend of Jenna Bush, quit college at 19 to join George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. In 2002, he became Bush’s personal assistant (a position for which he received $95,000 a year), and in 2006, despite not having earned an undergraduate degree, he enrolled at Harvard Business School.
Sometimes, networking is all that school is good for. In 1993, The New Republic published Michael Lewis’s “J-School Ate My Brain,” a denunciation of journalism training; in 1998, Lewis began a two-year commitment teaching journalism at U.C. Berkeley. Though he remained sceptical of J-school’s overall relevance to the profession, he gave his students exactly what they wanted: a chance to have their work read by editors at The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Slate, according to Salon.com. As we’ve seen, a highprofile editor’s attention has considerable market value. If you’re an art student, interest from galleries and arts councils are similarly hot commodities. “I think I knew all along that [art school] meant nothing,” says Bell. “Unless you want to teach. Or if you are interested in ways to success other than working—gift of the gab, grants, etc.—which isn’t really going to get you anywhere as far as the state of your soul goes.” Chris agrees: “I’ve got a few friends who are doing super well for themselves, but I feel like the reason they’re doing so well is that they had the foresight to realize that they had to be politicking, so to speak, full time.”
University students who fret about the value of their degrees might consider the plight of the art student. “One of the things that you can sort of take note of and actually take heart in as a humanities student is that, on average, we see a significant gap [in relative earnings] between humanities graduates and fine arts graduates,” says Krashinsky. The questionable value of a fine arts diploma has inspired countless complaints, jokes, and, of course, art. Five years after graduation, visual arts graduates make an average of $21,000 less than graduates of the typically lucrative fields of engineering and architecture, according to StatsCan. “[Art school] is a nice place to be if you have a lot of ideas, because people will demand that you do things with them,” says Chris. “[But] I definitely don’t feel like it was worth it, if by ‘it’ you mean the time and the money. I enjoyed my time there, but instead of enjoying the benefits of my time there now, I’m kind of paying the price—it’s the complete opposite of experiencing something’s benefits.” Bell, who dropped out of Mount Allison University in Sackville after student loan officers began to hound him prematurely, has never regretted his decision. “For me, art school was a good way to develop a social life and meet other like-minded weirdos, that’s about it…I think the best thing art school allows you to do is fuck around for a bit until you have to face the music and get serious.” His sentiments echo those of David Byrne, whose professors at the Rhode Island School of Design didn’t take to his ideas (a performance art piece based on shaving, for instance). He quit after a year, but not without making some indispensable contacts: Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, his future band mates in the Talking Heads.
If you’re gunning for a job in a field that has little job security, developing internal resources can be more important than lining up your credentials. In addition to talent, “luck and simply just being persistent about not wanting to fall into line” are essential, Bell says. “Stubborness and not taking any shit. Art seems to me to be one of the worst fields for getting taken for a ride. Most people are so full of shit and out for themselves—‘Yeah, sure I’ll ship your artwork back.’” John Waters got ahead by ignoring all standards of conduct. He made movies with his friends on an 8mm camera, screening his work in church halls and other makeshift venues around Baltimore. He enrolled at NYU but got kicked out for smoking pot on campus, so he returned to Baltimore and kept making films. By 1973 he had made Pink Flamingos and was well on his way to becoming “the Pope of Trash.”
Some people’s ideas just don’t translate to a formal setting. Bell was asked to leave his arts high school for being too self-directed. “I was kind of upset by this…I guess I understand it more now. I don’t really feel like I needed too much art training. I learned more things outside of school, frankly.” Katie Stelmanis, a Blocks recording artist with years of piano and vocal training under her belt, quit the music program at U of T after a week. “I just hated the classes,” she says. “I don’t like having professors that are so biased and aren’t necessarily the greatest musicians themselves, but they’re just in this position—it just feels weird to be learning from them.” She dropped out, started a band, Galaxy, and eventually put her training to use on her own. “It probably would have been better if I had just sat through and done it, because I would have had a degree. But I was a bratty 19-year-old—like, ‘no way!’” Overall, a degree in an unrelated field might be useful to an aspiring creative professional, if only as a means to a better ‘Joe job’ if necessary. “I feel like if I’m still in the same place that I’m in now when I’m 28, maybe I’ll go back to school for something completely unrelated, just for a regular academic thing. The option’s always there, it’s always on the table, it’s not going to expire,” says Stelmanis.
Iconoclasm, combined with genuine merit, can be an asset anywhere. There are always those exceptional people whose brilliance, or cunning, allows them to sidestep conventional routes. David Geffen dropped out of two different colleges and eventually found work in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency. He needed a degree to advance within the company, so he told his higher-ups that he had graduated from U.C.L.A. The agency sent a confirmation request to the college, and Geffen spent early mornings scouring the mail room for their response; when it arrived, he replaced it with a fake letter.
Some companies—some—pay little attention to academics, preferring to hire young mavericks whose entrepreneurial senses have never been dulled by formal education (or whose independent streaks have cost them their GPAs). In the ’90s, Forbes reported that 15 per cent of the Forbes 400 either hadn’t gone to college or had dropped out. The degreeless wonders’ average net worth was 167 per cent more than the list’s average. Silicon Valley, often praised as a true meritocracy, provides plenty of examples: Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard in 1975, Steve Wozniak left U.C. Berkeley the same year, Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College after one semester, and Michael Dell dropped out of the University of Texas after starting an early version of Dell Computers. Of course, these people are geniuses. “There are people who left university to say, nuts to this, I have a great idea, and I’m going to strike out on my own. But I would say that they’re the exception, they’re not the rule,” says Krashinsky. “What Silicon Valley really thrives upon are these university-trained engineers, or computer science types, or people with master’s degrees— they’re the ones who are going in there and doing the work for things like Microsoft.”
There aren’t enough exceptional people bucking the formal education system to overturn it altogether. “I think [your question is], ‘What’s going to happen to us when we leave here?’ The short answer is, you’re going to be fine,” says Krashinsky. “This question’s been on the minds of students for easily the last 25 to 30 years.” There are countless examples of people who did better on their own than they ever did in school—Steve Martin, Mordecai Richler, and Woody Allen, to name a few more—but most of them put at least as much effort into building their careers as your average student puts into earning their degree (or degrees). Students who consider school to be a period of suspended animation before getting a job aren’t going to have it easy after graduation. There’s no portal to a good career. “Formal education proves to a potential employer that you’ve got a certain level of intellect,” says Foot. “After that, it’s pure human creativity at work.”
