Yes, I'm in a similar situation and see the same reactions. People have a very irrational concept of post-secondary schooling. In many cases it's a very personal thing for them. Many've grown up thinking they'd be the first-in-family college graduate, holding that as a life goal, and listening to their parents and grandparents complain about how they never had the same opportunities as the college grads. Others have grown up with the expectation that they'll keep in the family tradition of graduates and not bring shame by failing to graduate. They've paid dozens of thousands of dollars for a degree. They've invested four years or more of their life, and all of that is epitomized in the "degree", when they're pat on the back and told they're a real grown-up now. And many seriously take this whole process to heart, and the less real value in a career, the worse this degree snobbery gets. They feel their degree has given them everything (and honestly it probably has, since their personal commercial value is often negligible). It almost becomes an idol to them. It is, therefore, considered a heresy if you speak evil of that system, and heretics are not well received.
Because of all this social programming, there are few who will admit that modern undergraduate programs, and often their graduate counterparts, are a horrendously inefficient, slow bureaucracy that provides a form of pseudo-independence for developing adults, cater classes to the lowest common denominator in order to pass more students, and occasionally have desirable network-building properties. But that's the reality.
We tie up adult identity in degrees very, very closely in our culture. Someone who never graduated college (or worse, high school) is automatically considered lower class by many. It is considered an essential of both personal and professional development in the white-collar world. Their whole lives people are told, "Go to college so you can get a good job." Is it any wonder those who've "paid their dues" and gone through these motions feel entitled to employment, even if they have no commercially viable skillset (and, this is critical to understand: most don't)? It's becoming a large social issue, but no one is willing to admit the real causes.
Because of all this social programming, there are few who will admit that modern undergraduate programs, and often their graduate counterparts, are a horrendously inefficient, slow bureaucracy that provides a form of pseudo-independence for developing adults, cater classes to the lowest common denominator in order to pass more students, and occasionally have desirable network-building properties. But that's the reality.
We tie up adult identity in degrees very, very closely in our culture. Someone who never graduated college (or worse, high school) is automatically considered lower class by many. It is considered an essential of both personal and professional development in the white-collar world. Their whole lives people are told, "Go to college so you can get a good job." Is it any wonder those who've "paid their dues" and gone through these motions feel entitled to employment, even if they have no commercially viable skillset (and, this is critical to understand: most don't)? It's becoming a large social issue, but no one is willing to admit the real causes.