Hi everyone,
I finally found a community to express what I have had on my mind for so long, damaging my morale.
Let me give you some background: I am a french engineering student from France, but currently living abroad (Australia) for my last year of my master's (already hold the equivalent of 2 masters: mechanical and industrial engineering, actually pursuing my third in engineering management, because I felt like it was interesting). I know I am part of the lucky few who were able to access quality higher education (partly thanks to the french system that makes university free for students), but I am paying for my last year (although Australian Unis are far cheaper than US ones).
Anyway, now that this is said, the core message is: Since I am in my last year, I obviously started looking at job offers online (I plan on staying abroad, maybe in New Zealand). Of course, I look at job offers in my field (Manufacturing industry, with a specific focus on Quality Engineering).
BUT, all job offers mention that the job is designed for someone with a bachelor's degree, and the wage range is not what I expected investing time, effort and money into climbing to masters.
My argument is: What is the point in pursuing a master's if you are not rewarded for it? Is the system a lie, pushing you to do always more (taking on student debt) to keep you paying back loans to the banks while being higher quality workforce paid less (basically being overqualified for your job, thus making good quality work, but paid less than what you should be paid).
I am starting to get worried because the whole point of our education system is to make you ready for the real world (and useful to it), yet employers don't care about this: you just are a profit opportunity to them, and by all aligning on the same kind of offers, they push everything down for the employees (wages, advantages …) and make Bachelor's degrees irrelevant, since all my master's peers are going for Bachelor's jobs.
Reality is hitting me harder and harder: it was all a lie, especially now that costs are rising, that employers think it is okay to push their employees into slavery (just look at the posts on this subreddit haha), and that I know what it is to have a student loan to repay.
And they expect us to indulge in false pleasures to make us forget about this.
What is your opinion on this ?