Are college degrees REALLY necessary for success?

As I peruse the jobs listings, I can't help but notice that virtually all regional and corporate level positions have requirements for a Bachelors Degree or higher. With more companies using outside services, or even in their own HR departments, to "screen" applicants, it seems that this "requirement" is eliminating some potential, top producing folks from consideration. There are those folks who got into this industry in the 70's, when experience was far more important than college, and your availability to work was more important than getting a degree. These people are highly successful, and have executive level experience and abilities due to their time in the industry. After all, which would you rather work for, a person who has worked their way up through the ranks to a CEO position, or someone who has been in the industry for a few years with a degree in Spanish. Unfortunately, with a screening requirement of a college degree, the person who makes the most sense for success will never meet the hiring person or team. I welcome ideas and thoughts. VS

Hi Vicki,

I believe it reaaly depends on the company. I started in the MF industry in the late 80's, straight out of high school. At that time I had no career path in mind and thought I would take a year to decide my future. I grew to love the industry from the beginning and knew that my career was in apartment management. I learned the ranks from the bottom up. Finding a company with the right culture and growth was key for me. In mid - 2000 I was promoted from PM to RPM for one of the largest REITS. It took time, dedication and hard work to succeed. I hope that I am always looked at for my industry experience and not a designation from a college - although I do realize that many may over look me due to my lack thereof. That being said, I would apply for any position you feel you are qualified for, regardless of whether or not you meet what is listed as a predetermined requirement. GOOD LUCK!

Hello Vicki,

I agree with Annemarie, you keep applying and then once you get in show your value and make us all proud! I can tell you though that there are those schools which will give you credit for work you have all ready done and you could be closer to a degree than you know!

There are those companies that will look at experience over schooling. My first position I interviewed against 8 other personnel and I was the only one that did not have a college degree at the time, but I had the experience and I told the interviewer my thoughts and not what he wanted to hear.

Sometimes a little volunteer work helps in the profession as well. You are marketing your skills and at the same time learning something new as well as giving experience gained.

Go to networking groups an stay tuned. Now I have said all of this to also say if you are only looking at the position which you left, you may have to get your foot in the door at a lower level and work your way back up to, but do your homework to ensure that there is room for advancement.

Hope this helped!

@ Vicki-

The market did change in regard to degree requirements. For full disclosure I now have an MBA- but started my career in MF with no degree and was able to be a good contributor to the team. In my opinion, I think what HR folks have found is that people with degrees tend to have better critical thinking skills and may be a more suitable risk profile. While you are accurate that they are likely passing up on some good talent, the desired outcome for HR is to place well while reducing risk. There is likely enough evidence to support use of the degree screen to make it worth losing the outlier few candidates in order to be more expedient in the hiring process. I recently worked on an effort to hire a property manager, out initial resume response was nearly 400 people who thought they were a good fit. We obviously don't want to interview 400 people- screens do help. In the end who got hired? Somebody who came to us through our network. Work your network, if you have done a good job in the industry, the degree won't matter.

Best of luck on your journey.

Although it is great that some of you got started in property management as leasing professionals and moved all the way up to executive levels, I don't think it happens any more. And being with the right company??? What is the right company? I worked for a small management company that was not growing so I left and went to a large company. I applied for every open RPM position and was passed over every time even though I was a Property Manager of the Year nominee at the national level! I was always told I "need more experience" - how do you get this experience if you are never trusted to manage more than one or two properties at a time? It is very discouraging. Yes, it is good to have a job, but I want more than a job; I feel this is my career. Finally, I did ask someone at another company why he thought I was not given a promotion to RPM and he told me that if I studied the executives there, they all had college degrees and were hired in starting out as RPMs, some with experience and some without. And while I knew this to be the case, it doesn't make me any less discouraged. I don't have the money to go back to school yet, but I guess that is where I will go so I can knock that hurdle out of the way. In the meantime, I take every seminar, webinar, and class I can and earned my CAM.

Hello Sad but Striving,

Many roads lead to a position. The most successful people have had many failures before they get there. The main thing is not to give up. Keep hammering away and you will make it. If you do not, then you will know that you have done your best. Check out Abraham Lincoln and how many times he failed at things and ultimately became our 16th President.

Me, and there are other like minded people will place my money on experience any day. Now, here is what I look at and there are others that look at it as well. When you talk about the future and you know you need more formal education, then put that in their as a goal and have it mapped out.

They say those with higher education have better critical thinking skills. Lets break that down on how that is determined; Critical thinking has an element in it called ambiguity and conflicting statements. So, rather than hard facts being put out, the students of higher learning are give as an example written dialogues to analyze. Then in small groups, students must identify the different viewpoints of each person in the dialogue. The students must look for biases, presence or exclusion of important evidence, alternative interpretations, misstatement of facts, and errors in reasoning. The students as a group must decide which view is the most reasonable. You now have an exercise in using and developing critcal thinking.

Now having said all that; a brick layer can place those bricks and build you a wall. It is the engineer that comes up with stress points and whether or not the ground in which the building is going up on can take the weight and if it needs to be prepped before hand. The brick layer only wants to know where he has to put the wall and goes to work.

Then the other question people do not ask themselves is why they want a certain job. Is it because they believe they can do more good, or is it for the money? If it is for the money, then I can tell you that there is going to be an unhappy person.

I have done the Regional and well as Community and I was far happier at the community level because I loved looking into the faces of the families that were happy because of what my team did to make their homes and community safe and a welcome place to come to at the end of the day.

OK, I have rumbled on and I guess out of all of this is "DO NOT GIVE UP" Have a plan to improve and then do it!

All-

I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. While I'm a believer in higher education, there's a lot to be said about years of industry experience. Ideally, I think a combination of the two is a recipe for success. College teaches you so many valuable lessons that hands on experience doesn't always afford.

Some examples (and some of these can certainly be learned in working, but it depends on a lot of circumstances):

* Teamwork. College demands you work in groups; both leading a team and being a member of one. Working in our industry, chances are you'll have this same experience, but maybe not. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who's attended college who hasn't been in this "team" situation.

* Business. When someone says The 4P's, you're not rushing back to google it. You're also not embarrassed when your boss asks you to take a grammar workshop. Not understanding the difference between their mistakes over there at the community while they're working on preparing the market survey you've asked for... will also help you not appear to be intellectually inferior to your subordinates. This is a quick way to lose respect.

* Time Management. Having to figure out, plan for and execute getting from your apartment to your 8:15am Political Science course, then across campus in 5 minutes flat to your Intro to Marketing class and then back across campus to your job in the Bookstore... all without being late and simultaneously organizing tonight's keg party... you'll truly understand how to get things accomplished and not let anything slip through the cracks.

At the end of the day though, if you want to move up or get a job, you have to believe in yourself, network within the industry, build your own personal brand (and I'm not talking websites or business cards... but knowing who you are, what you want and where you want to go, is paramount), demonstrate your knowledge and well; invest in yourself.

Maybe that looks like "going back to school" (and there are a lot of options to pay for school these days... loans, grants, scholarships, EVEN if you're not 18), maybe that's getting industry designations, maybe you DO need to gain a little more experience (and perhaps you could gain it by speaking up and asking for more responsibility in your current role)... whatever it is, if things aren't playing out the way you want them to... maybe it's time to honestly reflect on what you need to attain your personal success in today's business market.

Tara

All:

I am the first to admit that my education was not traditional. After high school, I joined the Army; where I learned teamwork and leadership skills better than any college can teach them. I returned home and did go to college for a couple of years; only to withdraw as I was being pulled to help with my mom's recovery from a dangerous brain tumor surgery that occured the week I arrived home. These responsibilities caused my studies to suffer to the point where I was not performing at school. I never returned; rather I worked full time in retail and split that time with responsibilities at home. I worked for some major retailers and spent 15 years in that industry before getting fed up. Two of the locations I worked at were used as management training stores and I was asked to train new managers. I quickly realized that some of the people I trained had book smarts, but absolutely NO street smarts or skills that worked in that environment. I will say that, while I had some successful trainees that actually listened and learned; most knew less about the art of customer service than I had forgotten.

It was then that I realized that my learning style does not suit classroom learning. You can show me something a couple of times, guide me a time or two, then let me do it on my own. At that point, I have learned whatever skill I need; but be available to me if I get stuck. For me, if I have to do any kind of training; I prefer to do it online as I control the pace and the schedule AND I can apply the learning right away. A perfect example is when an employer had me go through Tax Credit certification training online; which I did at home 'in my shorts'. What I noticed was because I was able to apply the learning right away; the quality and quantity of my work product increased with a decrease in errors immediately as I had a better understanding of what I was doing.

As far as I am concerned, a college degree does not impress me much unless you are a doctor, a lawyer, or a teacher. I say this knowing I have a cousin that is a professional student and has multiple degrees in multiple subjects (she gets a degree and changes her major repeatedly). She is in her 60's and has never had a job in the real world outside of teaching assistant type positions at the schools she attended.

I am not a big believer in higher education, unless you are going into a highly specialized field I just don't get it. What good is a degree in liberal arts if you end up working as a bank teller? I only have a GED. I dropped out of high school the day I turned 18 to take an assistant manager position at the Burger King I'd been working at for 2 years. At 21 while my friends were either still in college or taking any job they could find to pay back their loans, I was buying my first home. Maybe knowing I didn't have a degree made me work a little harder, and I definitely don't advocate dropping out of school, it's the path I chose and have no regrets. I started as a leasing consultant 14 years ago and never looked back. I've built a reputation for myself in the industry that I'm proud of. I have my career path mapped out and plan to move up, but not until I have met all the goals I've set for myself as a Community Manager first.
Who would you rather hire someone fresh out of college with a degree that doesn't pertain to the industry, or someone who is a self starter and has risen through the ranks?
As a side note, just because someone is a great community manager it does not mean they will be a great RPM.

Necessary for success? No. Anyone can be successful--a degree is not a prerequisite. However, many good jobs place an emphasis on higher education , especially in the multifamily industry. I also don't think major is all that important, either although it helps. I say this because my major was in business and I certainly don't remember all the little details of my studies. My two cents about people with degrees and why they're valuable: they can think CRITICALLY. this is extremely important in the business world. If nothing else, people with degrees are more thorough thinkers and better problem analyzers. IMHO, college taught me this above and beyond anything else. If I have two candidates applying for a position--all else equal--I would hire the one with the degree. A degree doesn't just show critical thinking skills, it shows ambition and determination--important traits all hiring managers want to see in any business setting.