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Oh, to specifically answer your question, no. Most people went to college in the 60s and the rest went to secretarial school or technical school for a year or two. There were lots of jobs for people without a four year degree and at first you didn't even need a masters.
But to hit the streets right out of high school? People joined the military or maybe worked in a factory. Someone with only a high school education could work as a waiter or waitress or work in a gas station. I guess they could work their way up so they could own the gas station or maybe own the little place where they waited on tables. That didn't need college but most good jobs required college--and the right degree.
Is there a typo there? Because MOST people certainly did not go to college in the 60s. Heck, most people don't go to college now. In good school districts the percentage is high, but it is usually the exact opposite in inner cities or in poor rural areas.
Even in to the early 70s you could graduate high school and get a family supporting job. It depended on where you lived. If you were in places like Pittsburgh, Detroit, or any place with a thriving blue collar sector then good paying union jobs were around. Unfortunately those days are long gone.
Grew up in the 60s and 70s. Things were NOT as complicated and technical back then as now. Computer use was very limited. Granted there were careers you HAD to have a degree in like physician, teacher, engineer. A H.S. degree back then was like an Associate's or better now. Lots of places, from what I remember, provided technical move-up training to select employees that wanted to advance. A lot of places gave OJT (on-the-job-training). Manufacturing jobs and the like were plentiful, paid well, gave good benefits and liked to hang on to their employees for a career. Now EVERYONE wants to see that almighty sheepskin for just about anything..
My Dad was a graphic designer who never went to high school at all.
During the depths of the Great Depression, he only made it to the 8th grade before he had to go to work to support his parents (who were both unwell) and five siblings.
By 1960 -- after years of toiling in factories and warehouses -- he landed a mailroom job at a major American banking corporation. He had always been an amateur artist and musician. His artistic skill caught the eye of people in the corporate art department. They offered him an entry level designer job.
By the end of the Sixties, he was promoted to Art Director. Fathered four kids. Bought a succession of ever-bigger houses. Retired comfortably with a pension during the 1980s.
All with an 8th grade education.
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Last edited by DillyDilly; 11-12-2013 at 11:42 AM..
I graduated from High School in June of 1979, and Joined the Carpenters union the next day. By March of 2009 because of roll over credits I was eligible to retire. I did retire in March of 2012. Took construction related coursework while working, and have 56 units of upper education. I now supplement my pension, and saving programming fuel injection for street rods (self taught computer nut). Today's can only get good pay with a degree is bs, but it is what we're left with in our globalized economy.
To answer the first question, yes, good jobs were available to those with only a high school diploma (or less, drop out rates approached 50% historically through the 1960's). Those jobs would have been mainly in factories or trades where you would start out at the bottom, job title would be a variation of "Gofer". You'd learn the job and move up.
People with an aptitude, and a high school diploma, could, as someone mentioned, move into the professional ranks by being there and learning. I know several people who worked as engineers for defense contractors who started out with only a high school diploma. Same way in other industries. Many times, if you were really good, the company would pay for you to get a college degree.
Many companies wouldn't hire someone right out of high school because of the draft, especially once Viet Nam heated up, hence I think in_Newengland's post about pumping gas or waiting tables. They didn't want to take the chance, and cost, of training you and then having you go away for a couple years and keeping your job open for when you came back.
College really took off in the 1960's, partially because of the Baby Boom and partially because draft deferments were available to men who went to, and stayed in, college. Reference the movie Animal House when Dean Wormer tells the guys that he will be informing their local Draft Boards about their lack of academic success.
The military at that time, or maybe a bit earlier, started to require college for officers. Almost all college men had to take ROTC while enrolled.
I worked in a couple factories for the same company in the 1970's and my guess would be that fully 1/2 of the workers did not have a high school diploma. This would include not just the people who stayed right on the production line but also the mechanics, the electricians, even the shift foremen and a couple plant engineers.
I graduated from a small high school in 1965. Plenty of my classmates went to work at good paying jobs right out of high school. The business curriculum taught typing, shorthand, full cycle bookkeeping and business law. The vo-ag department taught welding, machining, automotive and heavy equipment repair, farm management and horticulture. The english department taught creative writing, debate, journalism and news reporting. College prep included portions of all the above, plus math through first year calculus, history, civics, foreign languages, physics, and chemistry.
This was in a high school with only 200 students, 42 in my graduating class at the leading edge of the baby boom. Many of my classmates went to work right out of high school. Some went on to college, one was first in his class from a prestigious law school. Even the dim bulbs could get a job on a logging crew or in the lumber mill pulling green chain for enough to support a family.
Most modern high schools have talented and gifted programs that duplicate the standard curriculum from the early '60s. I was shocked to learn that most high schools don't offer a year of business law to students. That was a decent overview of contracts, torts, loan structure, titles, common law, etc, all taught to us before we turned 18 and our signature on a contract became binding.
My personal opinion is that our educational system could do better if it were not built on a 19th century model and it catered more to the exceptional than the mediocre. They should be teaching symbolic math and computer programming in the first grade or even earlier, while the brain is still malleable enough to make it a native thought process. First graders take to algebra automatically. By the time they are 14, they are too old, and the smart ones have all died of boredom.
My Dad was a graphic designer who never went to high school at all.
During the depths of the Great Depression, he only made it to the 8th grade before he had to go to work to support his parents (who were both unwell) and five siblings.
By 1960 -- after years of toiling in factories and warehouses -- he landed a mailroom job at a major American banking corporation. He had always been an amateur artist and musician. His artistic skill caught the eye of people in the corporate art department. They offered him an entry level designer job.
By the end of the Sixties, he was promoted to Art Director. Fathered four kids. Bought a succession of ever-bigger houses. Retired comfortably with a pension during the 1980s.
All with an 8th grade education.
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My dad had to drop out of school in the 6th grade to herd sheep during the depression. The rest of his life he was self-taught, except for a night school course in welding that got him a job building liberty ships. When he retired 40 years later, the ad for his replacement required a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering plus 5 years of work experience.
To be a doctor or lawyer, you had to go medical and law schools, and other occupations like teachers and engineers one would require the appropriate degrees.
I grew up in New York. My dad had only a high school diploma and during the 60s a buddy of his got him a job as a clerk for a transport company.
He worked there his whole life and was able to buy a house and put a kid through college. So yes, it was certainly possible back then to make a decent living without a college degree.
I agree that many good jobs were available for high school diploma holders in the 60s and 70s. It was fairly common to receive on-the-job training and be able to work your way up in the company. I did this myself and eventually held a position that would have taken a master's to qualify for now. Those of us who did this were well aware of the culture change in more recent years toward degrees and we kept those jobs!
Professional jobs still required a degree back then.
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