A degree may be a good thing to have on a resume, but it isn’t a necessity for many jobs.

While you are undoubtedly going to want to have a fancy piece of paper or several if you are a doctor or civil engineer, the types of work where having a college degree is an inarguable necessity are not as varied as the job market can lead us to believe. Sorry, business majors, but the white collar world is filled with people who could have just learned on the job instead of dropping thousands of dollars on a college education.

This isn’t to say higher education is useless, but the reality is that many roles demand a bachelor’s or higher because it is one of the simplest ways to filter out applicants. It’s not like you need to be a professor to complete 95% of the tasks required by the world of corporate.

In anything, this is proven by the fact that even in the ultra-competitive hiring market of today, there are plenty of applicants doing just fine with only a high school diploma (and occasionally they don’t even have that). So long as they find a job that is willing to hire them, they have the opportunity to prove themselves.