Comment Indeed (Score 2) 306
A university degree or any high degree for what it matters , should show to potential employer two things : 1) that you are at least have the smart to get to that level 2) that once you "bite" into something you do not let go and continue for long period of time.
2) is especially important if you train somebody for a job.
In my experience firms which expect their new employee to be immediately productive are either new start up not having learned the rope, and they will or they will die, or old firm in manager hell. Good firm with manager which are not totally idiot will know and take into account a period of time (varrying depending on the job) in which they consider you to be "in training" and thus only worth a certain percentage of a normal worker workload. I doubt it changed. What probably changed is that in some domain like development, some manager make the mistake of thinking "fuck it, if I have to rain somebody I'll train somebody cheap from india rather than the local guy". but here is your mistake : the architect of your software today, were the apprentice of yesterday. Kill a whole generation of apprentice today, and you will have no architect tomorrow. I expect that roughly 15 to 20 years after the peak of outsourcing, we will see a derth of good software designer , or good software manager. Because those who should have learned the rope on the job and climbed hierarchy, were replaced by cheap worker.