Brian Lehrer: We're going to continue our special series on STARs now. That's workers who are skilled through alternative routes, STARs, meaning no four-year college degree. Today we're opening the phones to hear from some of you with a specific STARs story to tell. Nearly half of all working Americans don't have a four-year college degree, but many of you are thriving in good, stable jobs. Not just in the trades like plumbing and carpentry, which is what a lot of people might think of, but also in fields like finance, IT, sales, marketing, insurance, project management, jobs you might associate with a college diploma, but that some people have gotten through other pathways, alternative routes, community college, military service, boot camps, certifications on-the-job training.

The data tells us these STARs make up a huge part of our workforce in white-collar jobs, but they're often overlooked. We touched on this earlier in the week, but now I'll just explicitly invite a few more such stories with no guest, just you on the phones. Here's the invitation. If you have built a white-collar career without a bachelor's degree, how did you do it? What helped you get your foot in the door? What helped you advance and stay in? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692.

Again, if you've built a white-collar career without a bachelor's degree and you've gotten your foot in the door and hopefully advanced, tell us a little bit of your story. Tell us about how. 212-433-9692. Even if you've just been in your job or in your career for a couple of years, if you're just in your early 20s, even, whatever, without a college degree, or if you've, on the other end of the spectrum, had a whole career like what I just laid out, and you're now retired or anybody in between. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. White-collar jobs, white-collar careers, your stories without a college degree.

Now, we got so many calls when we asked this question and touched on it briefly on Wednesday, far more than we could take at the time. That's why we thought we would open up the phones just to hear some more stories today. Just your stories. As your calls are coming in, and just to set up a little further what we're inviting, here's one of those callers from Wednesday, a little bit of Jonathan from Newark.

Jonathan: I grew up in a rural community in northern Indiana. I went to university for three years. When I was traveling, I met a friend that helped me get a job at one of the largest airlines in the world. Best decision, riskiest decision I ever made in my entire life. I was being groomed to take over the family business, which is a family farm and insurance business. I totally dropped those opportunities in pursuit of moving to this region of the country. After being here roughly 4 or 5 years- I've been here about 15 now- I have recently purchased my own property.

Brian Lehrer: There's a little of Jonathan in Newark. Again, the question is, if you've built a white-collar career without a bachelor's degree, how did you do it? What helped you get your foot in the door? What helped you advance? Of course, you can also talk about if you have faced skepticism from employers that someone with a bachelor's degree might not have faced or if someone took a chance on you. Whatever part of your story. 212-433-WNYC. We'll take those stories right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your stories of building a white-collar career without a bachelor's degree. We'll start with Jake in Brooklyn. Hi, Jake. You're on WNYC.

Jake: Hi. Hi, hi, hi. Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Hi. What do you do or what did you do?

Jake: When I was younger, I was a magazine publisher. Now I am a marketer. Like you say, I didn't have a degree. I actually only did a semester of school at The New School in Manhattan. In terms of the secret to getting my foot in the door and how that all happened, when I was 18 years old, and I first moved to the city, me and all of my friends worked for temp agencies. It seemed to me that they'd seat you in a job that needed filling while they were looking through applicants for these jobs. Eventually, they just turned to you because you were doing the job and they knew who you were. That's how I got my first job in publishing. It was at Playboy just eons ago.

Then as publishing transitioned to the Internet, publishing started to fall apart, and so I wanted to get into marketing. I started telling the story about my career in publishing, which only lasted about three years, not as being like, "Oh, I was a magazine editor," but instead I would say to people, "I was a magazine editor. Really, what I was doing was building audiences around content. I could do that for your product."

Brian Lehrer: I love the part of your story- then I need to move on and get some other people in- but about the temp work. If you're willing to pick up a day here, a day there, and then just show them that you're a good employee, that's a route to a full-time job. Right?

Jake: I really think that is a secret. If you're a creative like me, there is an agency/was an agency called Creative Circle that placed me and all my friends at all the coolest places, and they all ended up working there.

Brian Lehrer: Jake, thank you so much for your call. Raoul in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Raul.

Raul: Hi, good morning. I'm a Spanish interpreter in Queens Criminal Court. Been working 31 years as a court interpreter in New York. I started back in 1987 when I took the test and I passed with a very low grade. Three years later, I was interviewed and I was accepted as interpreter in Brooklyn. Thank God I passed the test and I didn't need any college degree, just the high school equivalency.

Brian Lehrer: For people who are truly bilingual, maybe work as an interpreter. Raul, thank you very much. Anita in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anita.

Anita: Hi, Brian. Thank you. I want to thank you and the radio station for this conversation because I came up at a time, I think, where a college degree was not focused on or required as much. I had over 30 years in the nonprofit sector and worked my way to the executive director and deputy director at different institutions. The reality was that I did hit a ceiling where I could not earn more or go to certain institutions because the lack of the degree.

I was a young mother. I did go to college. I had a lot of credits but just didn't complete it. I think that's an era that may have passed, and that's unfortunate because there's so many people out here with so much experience, a wealth of experience that I think matches, certainly, the educational requirements.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that there is a bias? This is one of the big themes of this series, which will continue for another two sets of three shows per week. Do you think that's a big problem, that there's a bias against people without the college degrees, even if they have the skills?

Anita: Well, I'll answer that with a quick story. I had a colleague that I had worked with for years. One day she broke down in tears because her deep, dark secret was that she did not have a degree, and she was very ashamed of it. I think there is so much emphasis on the degree that there is definitely a bias, but also an attitude about not achieving a certain level of education despite your experience and your wealth, or even how good you are at what you do.

Brian Lehrer: Anita, thank you so much for your call. Grace in Harrison, you're on WNYC. Hi, Grace.

Grace: Yes, hi, Brian. Thank you so much. Great topic. I started off in my late teens as what they called an animal nurse, but it evolved into what is now a veterinary technician. They sent me for many courses. My specialty was hematology. This was without a bachelor's. Eventually, I was hired by hospitals, and I had taken more courses to work in the laboratory. I would take the blood and then do the test.

Then along came a medical publisher. I won't say who, but they were large. They said, "Would you like to work with us? We'll train you as a medical pharmaceutical copy editor." It was a circuitous route from being late teens and then going into corporate. What happened? I agree with the previous caller. Eventually, I was not being hired because I did not have a master's degree, although I had been working for 25 years in that specific area, I could out medical terminology with anyone. I took courses in that. That's what happened. They said, "Well, you don't have a degree." I said, "But I've been doing this for 25 years." That was the end of that, basically, but interesting route, right?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Grace: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your story. I love the diversity. That's kind of the point here, right? There are so many things you can do if you find the cost of the prospect of going to college too daunting, or for whatever reason, haven't been able to get a college degree, or that's just not what you wanted to do. An animal nurse, in her case, and then moving up. An interpreter in another caller's case who we heard from. Somebody in marketing. Oscar, in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Oscar.

Oscar: Yes. How you doing? Good morning. I'm a security guard for over 20 years. I don't have a problem, I'm successful with it. I work in the private sector. I protect a building. I protect the assets of a building, access control. I'm very comfortable with that. Even though I only had 20 college credits I couldn't finish because my father had a stroke, I never went back to college. I've been successful. I've been moving on from that, thinking positive all the time. I'm learning every day. It's a union job, and they also pay for training, so I enhance myself and I think positive. Know what I'm saying? It's a good job, It's a good profession in the private sector. There's a big need for people like myself in the [inaudible 00:12:17] sector. Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: What's the nature of your work? Day to day, like hour to hour what do you do?

Oscar: I do access control. I do a lot of logging, customer service. You deal with all different type of people in the public sector and private sector. It's a good job. It's a very good job. It's the way you look at the job.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Call us again. One more. Mike in Queens. You're on WNYC. Hi, Mike.

Mike: Hiya, Brian. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: [unintelligible 00:12:47]

Mike: One thing you had asked about was where these STARs are coming from. It might interest you to know that your old high school, Bayside, has converted from a "everybody goes to college" to "career and technical education" where the kids now graduate with college credits, but they also get professional certifications. They have digital media, arts, music production, and recording, cybersecurity, programming, personal training.

Then, one person earlier, they also have nonprofit management, which includes grant writing and grant research. It's a situation where the kids are given choices that could start their career right out of high school or do the college route, either way. I think you're seeing this in more city high schools.

Brian Lehrer: For you, as a former high school principal, did you have to have a mindset change, a paradigm shift? Because I feel like the old conversation about this was it's the low-income minority kids who get tracked into "vocational education" because the teachers are biased against them and so they're tracked into this kind of lower status, probably lower-income direction. While it's the white kids, the middle-class kids and up who get tracked to college. I feel like the mindset is changing there, which is related to the genesis of this series and the fact that we're doing this with a Gates grant and they're interested in this. Was there a paradigm shift on how to look at non-college, the kind of training that you're talking about that you do at Bayside High now?

Mike: Absolutely. You are right 100% on the nose. I think that's a reason why the city ultimately rebranded the vocational schools as career and technical education to try to get away from exactly what you just described. I think when it's framed to the parents and to the kids, as we're equipping you with choices upon graduation, you now have a choice you never had before, that is to say, directly into a career, that helps to, shall we say, sell it more than just we're going to teach you how to make widgets.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. By the way, how's the athletic field? That was one of the best things about going to Bayside High School. Such a beautiful open athletic field. You could go and run on the track just as an individual, even if you weren't on the teams like I wasn't. It's a city school with such a beautiful open space facility.

Mike: It's still there. It's been resurfaced. You should come visit.

Brian Lehrer: My parents still live a few blocks away. Mike, thank you very much for calling in. Thanks to all of you for calling in on the latest installment of our series about STARs. People earning a middle-class living in the United States through alternative routes. Success and training through alternative routes without a four-year college degree, we'll continue this series.

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