[anbende]

I have a small company developing software in the mental health area. College degree provides a convenient filter for us in hiring. The percentage of quality applicants without a degree is just so low we don't even look at their applications at all.

Are there tech companies that do things differently? Absolutely. But you'd never get an interview with us or anyone like us without a degree. And there are a lot of businesses like us. It's up to you whether passing that filter for certain kinds of jobs is worth finishing your degree.

[protonimitate]

> College degree provides a convenient filter for us in hiring.

That's a damn shame. I don't agree with it at all, but can understand it.

To OP - if you want to work for these types of communities and decide you want the piece of paper, why not consider community college or a cheaper state school to finish out? In the end, the most valuable learning will come from self taught or job experience.

Imo 60k for zoom lectures is totally not worth it, but I also think that all degrees are overvalued, so ymmv.

[dminzi]

What would the difference be for an applicant who took a year in the middle? Would you still consider them in the degree bunch? Also, if schools are all online next year, do you expect the quality of college applicants to go down?

[anbende]

I wouldn’t care at all if they took a year off. Not one bit. I don’t particularly care about gaps in employment either. I only use college degree as a filter, because if I don’t I end up with a landslide of unqualified applicants to sort through. I haven’t found that with gap periods so far.

I don’t actually expect quality to go down from online offerings. I’ll be keeping an eye on it though, for sure.