Maybe. For the last 20 years, there hasn't been much job security in the radio real world. Lots of people on these boards will say they would have wanted to have a career in radio, but either it didn't pay enough or it wasn't secure enough. It wasn't that they couldn't do the job. But they couldn't support a family on it. So they left for another field. Some went into teaching.
I went to college for me, not for a job. I wanted to learn some things, and college helped me do that. The degree helped me see how big the radio business really was. Take it from me: It can be a lot bigger than sitting at a console playing music. The world is as big as you want it to be. I learned that in college.
I wonder about this too, and I work for a university. We aren't a joke school, we're top 10 in the country and top 50 in the world, and still a lot of our grads struggle once they graduate.
I think it all depends on what degree you do, and what attitude you bring. We don't even offer broadcasting degrees, but if you come here and do your English Lit or Communications degree, get a top grade, and do absolutely nothing else with your time at university, it'll bite you when you come to look for graduate jobs. Just having a good degree from a good university isn't enough any more.
If you come here and take all the opportunities you have while you're studying, you can find yourself in a pretty good position. Because we're a top school, there are employers and non-profits constantly sniffing around for talented people to intern and take part in projects, and that's a great way to get your name known, get some real stuff for real orgs on your LinkedIn, and stick out when you come to start filing job applications.
What I've noticed, working here, is that the difference in attitude often tallies with country of origin. We have so many super talented and smart people from India, China, Nigeria, hundreds of different countries who often do scientific and computing related subjects and grab every opportunity that comes their way. Meanwhile, we have a lot of domestic students from privileged upper-middle-class backgrounds who spend 3-4 years partying and phoning it in, and
expect the good graduate job to come their way because they've never had to fight for anything.
Myself, I went to college
after radio, in my 30s. I had no degree and no real prospects and the bottom had fallen out of the industry here. I did city planning, but while I was at university I started working for the university part-time in the fundraising office to gather some cash while studying. When I graduated, a similar job was available full-time at a neighboring college, and I took it as a stopgap. I got promoted a couple of times quite quickly, and I now at age 40 have a good career and well-paying job not in city planning, but in university fundraising and advancement. I still use the skills I gathered in the radio industry every day. There are a lot of transferable skills out of radio into other fields if you're inventive - people skills, communication skills, marketing skills, networking skills, technical skills.
