It has been posted that I am anti-college degree. Nothing could is further from the truth. The country needs all the college-educated citizens it can have, its raises the level of knowledge to keep this as the greatest country in the world. Real degrees in business, engineering, the sciences, math, and medicine provide a graduate with marketable skills. If you are going to go to college, get a real degree from a real university. Do not spend four years getting a degree in Women’s Studies.
We are in complete agreement on this point - and further I agree that a degree (from an aviation university or in aviation) should meet these same criteria.
I have admitted that the possession of a degree may open doors at a few select places of employment in the airline industry.
That's a selective understatement. It's a defacto requirement at virtually all majors, and many other carriers. It's hardly a "select few."
If a prospective pilots just loves flying airplanes, and would be happy making $70-$100K per year with no debt from college loans, a college degree is not necessary.
Particularly if you enjoy starting over at the bottom of the industry and payscale every few years when the carrier you are working for folds. Odds are you aren't going to make $70-$100K per year, year in and year out in the non-skeds, second and third tier freight haulers, they are likely to go out of business, and then you're starting over from zero (sound familiar?) - made even more difficult with no degree. The debt from the loans from a real degree may not only help you get a job, more importantly it may help you get a job doing something you can actually make a living at (which often is NOT flying).
Many prospective pilots may be steered into attending college when they are not college material, not because of a lack basic intelligence, but because it is not important to them. These pilots want to get on with their lives flying airplanes.
What if memorizing limitations or red border items isn't important to them, or perhaps having an understanding of the FAR's. No lack of intelligence, just not important to them - they just want to get on with yanking and banking. It's a question of drive and discipline - if you don't possess a certain requisite amount you aren't going to fare well in aviation or life.
I have seen too many non-degreed pilots reach a good career position with out a degree. My advice is go to school part time or community college and fly, pilots get hired because they have flight time. Flt time moves you up the food chain to better jobs; the degree is not needed until the last step.
{stepping back in time a few years...}
"I have seen too many non-degreed doctors reach a good career position with out a degree. My advice is go to read medical books part time and catch leeches, doctors get hired because they have a large jar of leeches. Having let a lot of blood and owning thick wooden implements to bite on while sawing off limbs moves you up the food chain to better jobs; the degree is not needed until the last step."
You can go to school part time with a full time flying job, you cannot build real flight time while going to school full time. I have seen non-degreed guys go to the Nationals in their mid-20’s.
What did they do when their national went out of business? Again, no one is arguing that it's necessary to operate the aircraft - it's a question of personal development as well as industry enhancement.
I guess we are getting very politically correct and having an option different that someone else’s is not allowed. I continually see the “If you do not have college degree you are not as good as me” I can not accept that, I just too many people who I admire who do not have degrees.
I wasn't aware that you weren't being allowed to have your opinion - in fact the very presence of this segment of the thread testifies to the contrary. It has nothing to do with not being as "good as" anyone else - it's a question of what we want the industry to look like in the future.
Literacy was once the exception not the rule, shall we advocate that it's not necessary because many illiterate people have "reached good career positions," or because they are good people worthy of admiration? Hyperbole perhaps, but it points out the absurdity of the argument.
BTW aT JUS almost every pilot has a college degree, because everyone has them.
EXACTLY. Now - which ones are "stuck" at JUS because the "can't get hired anywhere else?"
