The Degree Matters. I Know What It Opened for Me.

I would never frame this conversation as degrees do not matter.

I worked hard for mine.

My education has given me access to professions, tables, opportunities, and rooms I know firsthand I could not have entered without the credentials beside my name.

My path was not traditional. I earned a GED. I later earned my bachelor's degree. Then I earned my law degree.

That progression changed what was possible for me.

Talent matters. Determination matters. Lived experience matters. But there are doors with credential requirements, and no amount of pretending changes that reality.

A degree can qualify you for the opportunity.

It can help you get your foot in the door.

It can give you access to a profession or a room that might otherwise remain closed.

What it cannot do is guarantee that an employer, institution, or economy will always preserve your position.

That is the distinction I want to protect in this conversation: access and security are not the same thing.

Saying that does not diminish education. It recognizes the limits of what any credential can promise.

The part of the employment discussion that struck me most was not simply that Black women were experiencing losses.

It was that bachelor's degree holders experienced the largest 2025 employment-rate decline among Black women by education level in the Economic Policy Institute analysis.

That matters because it disrupts the easy explanation that people simply need more education, one more certificate, or another credential.

Many women already did what they were told to do.

They earned the degrees. They built the careers. They accumulated expertise.

The troubling part is not that the degree did not matter.

The troubling part is that the degree mattered, and still did not make them economically untouchable.

I do not believe we have to choose between what we learned in classrooms and what life required us to learn outside of them.

Formal education can provide knowledge, discipline, credentials, professional standards, and access.

Lived experience can develop judgment, resilience, perspective, adaptability, relationships, and the ability to navigate situations no textbook could fully simulate.

Professional experience adds another layer: repeated decisions, consequences, pattern recognition, accountability, and the wisdom that comes from actually doing the work.

The strongest perspective often comes from the intersection of all three.

It is exactly the opposite.

I know what education can change because I lived the before and after.

I know what it feels like to have ability that is not yet backed by the credential a room requires.

I also know what it means to earn that credential and watch new doors open.

That is why I will never tell someone that the degree is meaningless.

I will tell them something more complicated: earn the education when the path requires it, value the expertise you build along the way, and do not allow your entire economic identity to depend on one institution's willingness to keep your chair.

We were taught to become employable.

I think we also need to learn how to become economically portable.

Can your knowledge, reputation, relationships, judgment, systems, and earning ability move with you if an employer does not?

That may mean another traditional role. It may mean a different industry. It may mean teaching, consulting, contract work, fractional work, entrepreneurship, or a combination of several paths.

Artificial intelligence can help professionals identify and reposition what they already know, but the expertise still belongs to the person.

The technology can assist the search. Human judgment still decides what is true, what fits, what gets submitted, and what carries your name.