Three degrees, no job: a degree is no longer enough

Three degrees and several masters, no job offer: the title no longer guarantees employment

Three degrees —Tourism, Law, and Nutrition—, several masters, and several languages. And not a single job offer. A graduate has made her case public and distributed blame: the State, she argues, should guarantee her "the right to education, development, and dignity." The story has peine the uncomfortable question: if titles no longer guarantee employment, what are they for?

Why does a university degree no longer guarantee a job?

Because the market has stopped paying for paper and pays for what you can do with it. The case itself illustrates this: among the credentials are Tourism, Law, and Nutrition, but prior work experience is limited, according to some comments, to volunteer tasks. Three degrees, several masters, and no contract is a CV that impresses in conversation but falls apart in a selection process.

The most repeated thesis is that the degree now functions almost solely as a gateway to the civil service: it is useful for taking competitive exams and little else. The devaluation is not new, but it is evident in a daily detail: more qualifications are increasingly required for the same position. The diploma certifies that someone attended a classroom; it says nothing about whether they will solve Monday's problems. The papers on the wall, summarizes the general sentiment, do not replace experience.

Does age or appearance weigh more than the CV?

A portion of the comments in the thread focuses, with hostility, on the protagonist's age and physical appearance, rather than her educational background. These are ad hominem attacks that do not constitute a verified diagnosis, and the available material does not allow us to know if there was age or appearance discrimination in any selection process. What is clear is that the market filters by criteria rarely written in job offers: availability, team fit, and expected tenure. Those who accumulate degrees and zero experience start at a disadvantage in all of them.

From the other side, the argument is less kind: given equal candidates, the one who has already demonstrated they can handle a position is chosen. Experience, in this sense, is the only qualification that does not expire. And there is a detail that nuances the entire story: part of the analysis suggests that the protagonist is a civil servant on leave, which would completely change the framework of the problem.

The paradox of speaking languages and not moving from home

One of the most uncomfortable points is that of languages. If several are mastered, it is argued, the national market barrier becomes a choice rather than a destination: what is the use of a language never put into practice. The criticism is the most repeated and, at the same time, the one that ignores something elementary. Emigrating requires a network of contacts, degree recognition, and savings for landing that not every graduate has.

Start a business, take competitive exams, or wait for the State

Here the issue splits into two. Some argue that with Law one can open a law firm, with Nutrition a clinic, and with Tourism an agency, and that the only contemplated path is that others create employment. Opposing this is the idea that the State must guarantee these rights, which clashes with a stubborn fact: public employment is filled through competitive exams, not by accumulated academic merits. The exam does not reward the sum of degrees; it rewards the score.

The discussion also leaves a generational portrait. Participants report cases of people with basic training who have worked for years and entrepreneurs who started their business without family support, using them as proof that the problem is not the system but expectations. Others recall that starting a company requires capital, contacts, and courage, three things that are not studied.

The mismatch between what is studied and what is hired

The case reveals a broader imbalance. Against saturated degrees, it is repeatedly stated that technical profiles are missing: industrial specialists, trades learned in Vocational Training, which find a niche more easily than a degree holder with a CV loaded with diplomas. It is no consolation for anyone, but it explains the dynamic.

Underlying this is an uncomfortable nuance: much of that demanded competence refers to traditionally male trades, which is sometimes used as an excuse not to reconvert. On the other side, it is also remembered that some degrees —Medicine is the example cited— open dozens of outlets on their own, preventing us from speaking of a general crisis of titles. What fails is not studying, but studying without a plan.

The disconcerting data is not that a person with three degrees cannot find work. It is that much of the debate centers on her age and appearance, not on the three degrees themselves. When the market discards those who accumulated more credentials, the question shifts from what they studied to who decides, and by what criteria, who is hired.