‘The degree was the experience’: This Gen Z TikToker can’t understand why her college degree isn’t enough for the $150K-plus salary she’d like. Is she entitled or enlightened?

Sabina Wex
‘The degree was the experience’: This Gen Z TikToker can’t understand why her college degree isn’t enough for the $150K-plus salary she’d like. Is she entitled or enlightened?
‘The degree was the experience’: This Gen Z TikToker can’t understand why her college degree isn’t enough for the $150K-plus salary she’d like. Is she entitled or enlightened?

“You’ll end up working at McDonald’s” used to be something parents would volley at their children to scare them into doing their homework. But now, can you make more money in the service industry than climbing the corporate ladder?

Alison Johnson thinks so. The 24-year-old fitness coach posted a viral TikTok complaining about how she’d face a “massive pay cut” if she left her job as a waitress at sushi restaurant to work in business marketing, which is what she studied in college. Johnson says she wants to make $150,000 to $200,000 working in marketing, but can’t compete against people with more experience.

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“People say: ‘Get your degree.’ But then they don’t talk about how you need experience,” Johnson yells in her video. “The degree was the experience!”

The comments on her video were split. Some new grads empathized with Johnson, while older workers encouraged her to apply for an entry-level job and work her way up to a higher paid job.

But does Johnson have a point? A college degree doesn’t carry the same weight it once did in the workplace, but there’s a clear generational divide when it comes to what it should afford you on the job.

Pros of a college degree

Johnson’s economic analysis of her business marketing degree's return on investment is pretty short-term. The long-term research into the value of a college degree shows that it’s almost always worth the money.

Bachelor of Science degrees, like engineering and pharmacy, can grant you six-figure salaries pretty early on in your career. Even Bachelor of Arts degrees bring “an immediate 25[%] wage premium within a year of graduation,” according to recent research by future of work think tank The Burning Glass Institute for enterprise software company Workaday.

And a degree’s value keeps growing. If you come from a college-educated family and you get a degree, your wealth will likely grow, according to 2018 analysis done by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis. The study adds that even if you’re a first-generation college graduate, you’re likely to increase your family’s wealth by going to college.

Read more: Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now cash in on prime real estate — without the headache of being a landlord. Here's how

Cons of a college degree

Johnson’s right about one thing: a college degree no longer automatically gives you access to a high-paying, pension-securing job. Many may ask themselves whether paying $10,000 and $42,000 per year is worth it when there are no guarantees.

Plus, like over 43 million Americans, she left school in debt. Johnson says her student loans total $80,000. It’s a hard pill to swallow to know that you’ll have to pay for college up to 10, 20 or even 30 years after you graduated, depending on the type of loan you took out. But on average, borrowers take 17 years to pay off their student debt, according to a 2023 survey from Research.com.

And it may not actually be necessary anymore. Companies like IBM, Google and Bank of America have publicly declared that they’re no longer requiring college degrees. It doesn’t make much sense to spend time and money on college when you can work a well-paid job at a major company where they prefer real-life experience over beer pong experience.

So is college worth it?

That all depends on your goals and the type of work you want to do. If you want to be a doctor, there’s no way around going to school. To figure out if you can afford med school, peek at your savings. Is that number somewhere around $218,792? This is the average tuition cost for your four years of medical school, according to the Education Data Initiative. If you don’t have that amount lying around, you need to explore your student loan alternatives — and see if the long-term payoff is worth the cost.

Some students are finding a middle ground between the high cost of college and eschewing it all together by turning to vocational or community colleges to learn specific skills, like carpentry or electric wiring. These schools offer low-cost, low-time commitment and often result in a well-paid apprenticeship or job soon after graduation.

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This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.

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