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It wasn't that you could be a teacher or a curator with just a high school diploma, it was that there were plenty of trades you could learn which were enough to make a living. Or you could go to work for the phone company or the electric company or something like that. You still had to have a degree to be a teacher...my mom went to college in the 60's and she got her master's degree so she could teach at a college. She has interesting stories of what it was like to be a college student in the 60's, she said her school took the hands off of all the clocks because they felt like people put too much emphasis on time, among other weird stories.
A very few of my classmates went to a 4 year college; more went to a trade school, and the vast majority - probably over 60% found jobs from which they moved up the corporate ladder. A close friend of mine never had more than a hs diploma and became a vice-president of an insurance company. We graduated high school in 67. The only reason a large percentage of males in our graduating class went to college was that it was an automatic draft exclusion.
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Originally Posted by in_newengland
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.
I totally disagree with this. Many of my classmates learned on the job with nothing more than a hs diploma. In fact, I finished only 2 years of college right after high school and was offered a job teaching elementary school. I also worked as a paralegal before the word even came into existence. On the job training was often worth more than a degree - at least back in the 60s.
Also, back in the 60s, a liberal arts degree was far more valuable than one in one of the trades - as they were seen as limiting.
The pendulum has swung yet again and liberal arts degrees are not valuable except for those heading into higher education.
I was applying for a permanent job at the company I was working for on a temporary contract. The manager of the accounting department who interviewed me for an accounting tech position said he would hire me in a minute with my skills, but I didn't have an accounting degree. When I asked him why a degree was required to simply process invoices, he said that all new hires needed to be "promotable", and that the degree would be necessary for higher positions. A month later I was hired for a permanent position in another department of the same company. I was promoted 7 times in 21 years and retired making more than that manager was making. I am not saying this to brag, but to illustrate that a degree is sometimes necessary in a hiring supervisor's mind, but these things can be overcome, and to not give up and be discouraged. There are plenty of good positions that pay well and do not require a 4 year degree. Check out Parade magazine's "How Much Do They Make?" edition. Many positions requiring advanced degrees make far less than tradespeople and those in medical, non-physician positions.
I was applying for a permanent job at the company I was working for on a temporary contract. The manager of the accounting department who interviewed me for an accounting tech position said he would hire me in a minute with my skills, but I didn't have an accounting degree. When I asked him why a degree was required to simply process invoices, he said that all new hires needed to be "promotable", and that the degree would be necessary for higher positions. A month later I was hired for a permanent position in another department of the same company. I was promoted 7 times in 21 years and retired making more than that manager was making. I am not saying this to brag, but to illustrate that a degree is sometimes necessary in a hiring supervisor's mind, but these things can be overcome, and to not give up and be discouraged. There are plenty of good positions that pay well and do not require a 4 year degree. Check out Parade magazine's "How Much Do They Make?" edition. Many positions requiring advanced degrees make far less than tradespeople and those in medical, non-physician positions.
The problem is the issue of degree inflation. Far too many companies are over-inflating the "need" for degrees. I get some jobs need them but say does being a janitor would having a chemistry degree be necessary to be a good janitor?
Absolutely. There were more manufacturing jobs back then and anyone who worked for one of the auto companies had a good future. You would see men, yes men, waiting on women in shoe stores and they would feed their entire family on the commissions. It was a lot easier to get a civil service job. Working for the post office was considered a good secure job with good benefits. If you were techinically inclined, you could be a dratsman. My cousin started out that way at Grunman and went to college later to become an engineer. The application process was much easier too. You could walk into any large insurance company, the telephone company and tell them you wanted to fill out an application. You might even be interviewed and hired the same day. Companies were willing to train you or there were "management trainee" programs. On one salary, a guy could buy a house, a car, and feed his wife and three children.
You could certainly make a decent wage in the 60's with just a high school education. We had several members of our extended family who did just that. One relative in particular started in a blue collar job in the telecom industry right out of high school.
He got drafted, picked up some additional electrical skills in the service. When he got out he went back to his old job. Back then it was the law that your employer had to hire you back if there were positions open. He also got credits on his pension for military service.
He wound up doing the same job for 40 years. His union contract provided automatic contractual pay raises, annual cost of living increases and medical benefits paid 100 %. The union had no layoff clauses in their contract with the employer. If there was no work in his home town they had to send him to another part of the country to work, all on the company's dime. Paid transportation, hotels and meals.
He retired at 62 with a pension set at 50% of his highest paid year of employment. He also received a bonus of $ 200,000 from the employer to retire early. Not a bad deal.
my rent was 80 a month. groceries 7 dollars a week gas was 29c a gallon and i made 13 plus an hour working in a steel mill with a high school diploma.
oh i forget the girls lined up to be with me.
My landlord in Canada(in his 70s now) often told me about studying hard and in between those long lectures he'd say how back in his day people could just graduate high school and earn a living. Is this true?
Oh, heck, yes! Lots more manual labor back then and all without the complications of "digital". If you had a skill, great. But employers were a lot more willing to train back then, too. A surprising amount of my classmates entered farming like their parents did and they all carved out decent lives for themselves.
Of course, the cost of living hadn't yet launched into stratosphere ~ another factor in the ability to be more self-supportive back then.
A person graduating HS in 1961 could expect to work for the next 40years. Hopefully a person picked an industry that did not experience severe layoffs in the late 1960s or early-mid 1970s. You were soon to be laid off if involved in commercial ship building and have a high probability of losing their job if in the steel industry.
My landlord in Canada(in his 70s now) often told me about studying hard and in between those long lectures he'd say how back in his day people could just graduate high school and earn a living. Is this true? By that logic in the 80s a bachelors would have been enough to get a great job. But how is it even possible?
Let alone engineering or medicine related gigs, even something like being a curator would need something more than a high schoool diploma, or a teacher would require some more experience.
Was he just trying to scare me because it doesn't make any sense. I can understand the rise in competition and all that, but still.
No, he wasn't trying to scare you. He was just telling you the way things were back then. Since then, manufacturers purchased machines to replace those HS graduates/dropouts or are outsourcing business to other countries. You should be scared....because it's damn scary out there. He's right, you need to study hard.
Even into the 90s my mom was successful in her career without a high school diploma, but of course she did stay at the same job for several years.
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