The spreadsheet story is nice, but even having these skills back in the 80's was way less common than today. The article should also have looked at how much tuition was relative to the cost of living/salary Evans was making, and if Ramos could afford it today.
> Evans was a full-time employee of Kodak. She received more than four weeks of paid vacation per year, reimbursement of some tuition costs to go to college part time, and a bonus payment every March. When the facility she cleaned was shut down, the company found another job for her: cutting film.
She was able to bootstrap her career at least in part because Kodak offered tuition reimbursement and other benefits.
I did.
What I would be curious to read is an accountant taking a look at Ramos finances and figuring out how she could afford (or not) to get the same degree.
> Yet the biggest difference between their two experiences is in the opportunities they created. A manager learned that Evans was taking computer classes while she was working as a janitor and asked her to teach some other employees how to use spreadsheet software to track inventory. When she eventually finished her college degree in 1987, she was promoted to a professional-track job in information technology.
> Less than a decade later, Evans was chief technology officer of the whole company, and she has had a long career since as a senior executive at other top companies. Ramos sees the only advancement possibility as becoming a team leader keeping tabs on a few other janitors, which pays an extra 50 cents an hour.