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It used to be that a high school education meant something. But it slowly dawned on the vast parasitic educational industry that the longer a person stayed in the classroom, the more money could be made.
So suddenly, you needed a college degree to get ahead. And now, it's becoming a Masters or some other silly credential. Not because it makes you any smarter. It just is another hoop to jump through.
The other day, a client of mine decided to post an opening for an administrative assistant. He decided to put 'college degree' as one of the requirements. I simply asked, "Why?" He didn't have a good answer.
Well, I wouldn't necessarily classify a graduate degree as another "hoop to jump through." Mostly, you are allowed to define your own curriculum (within boundaries). I found it to be worthwhile.
To a point, the university system has pushed its agenda. However, this was largely because of the demand from employers (especially, large corporations). College degrees provide them with a metric to judge prospective employees by. Many of them simply don't want to mess around with hayseeds. Think of it as outsourcing the nurturing of formative skills, only at the expense of the person requiring them rather than the corporation itself.
A high school degree shows you are capable, a A.A degree shows you can think, A bachelors degree shows you can learn, A Masters shows you can be trained, A PhD degree shows you are ready.
It's painful to have to read some of these comments. I can confidently say that it's a mix of sour grapes and exaggeration. All you need to do is take a look at the the real world statistics on employment, based on educational attainment, and you will see the facts. According to the BLS, back in 1999 and 2000 there were several months where the unemployment rate got as low as 1.6% for college graduates, currently it's at 4.8%. That's THREE TIMES HIGHER. So interpret that as meaning that right now it's three times more difficult for a college graduate to find a job than back then. Overall unemployment rate is 9.4%, which is much higher then for college grads. Another point is that a college graduate makes significantly more income than someone w/o a degree. The Current Population Survey for 2009 indicates that a high school graduate's median income is (rounded) $27,000, a person with some college $32,000, and a person with a bachelor's $47,000. If you took some missteps in your career track (eg, wrong job immediately after graduation) or got hit with a misdemeanor or have employment gaps that are difficult to explain, then you got to pay the price. But the statistics are what the statistics are. They are not pulled out of thin air.
You have to question whether the low unemployment rate is caused by having the college degree or whether the people who have college degrees possess more abilities and virtues of character (higher IQ, work ethic, sense of responsibility, ambition) than people who only graduate from high school. If the college graduates had only graduated from high school might their abilities and virtues of character result in higher employment than people in the other group?
Also, just because a college graduate is employed does not mean that he has obtained a sufficient return on investment nor that he is working at a job that requires or makes any real use of a college education. Someone with a Bachelors degree who works at Applebee's is "employed" as far as the statistics are concerned.
The other big issue is that all of the government's unemployment numbers are suspect. If you look at the U6 number, the government will admit to a 16.7% unemployment rate and if you look at the ShadowStats.com website the real number might be closer to 22.4%. So, the unemployment rate for college degree holders might be higher.
Of course, as I said, we need to keep in mind that just because someone who has a Bachelor's degree (or an advanced or professional degree) is "employed" does not mean that they are not severely underemployed-out-of-field, earning more than poverty wages, or working at a job that makes use of a college degree.
The other problem with using the college employment statistics to judge the current value of a Bachelors degree is that those statistics lump everyone into one group including people who graduates in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies before everyone and their brother went to college and graduate and professional school. It's thus possible that older graduates were able to get established in their fields before the job markets were flooded with college graduates and thus enjoy a lower unemployment rate while graduates from the past decade may have a much higher unemployment rate. That lump statistic doesn't provide any information about that but a plethora of anecdotal reports suggest that the unemployment and underemployment rates for more recent graduates are much higher.
You have great insight...skills are going to be needed.
It isn't that Knit Knot has great Insight. Anyone who hasn't been indoctrinated with dogma about the value of higher education and who understands very simple economic concepts should be able to figure out that if everyone majored in useful fields that we would have a large oversupply of people with degrees in useful fields.
What Knit Knot said seems insightful because most people have been indoctrinated since Kindergarten to take the value of higher education as an article of faith and during their indoctrination they were taught not to attempt to apply simple economic concepts to their contemplation of the issue.
It's funny how I can explain why an increase in the number of your competitors (without the demand for services in your field increasing) is bad for you to a blue collar laborer but not to college graduates. Blue collar people understand that it's better not to have competition, but college graduates have been indoctrinated with touchy-feely politically correct balderdash that prevents them from apprehending such a simple concept.
It used to be that a high school education meant something. But it slowly dawned on the vast parasitic educational industry that the longer a person stayed in the classroom, the more money could be made.
The universities and colleges are not entirely to blame for the problem. It's a collective societal problem that I call the Education Arms Race. It may also sometimes be referred to as "Credential Inflation".
Everyone wants to work a white collar job and earn a high or at least solidly middle class income and to have job security, right? Decades ago a higher education was almost a guarantor of being able to do that. Then all of the people who were working lower wage jobs decided to send their children off to college so that they could work their bosses' jobs. Also, good blue collar jobs started to disappear which further encouraged people to go to college to increase their "ammunition of job hunting credentials".
The end result was that we ended up having an oversupply of college graduates and not enough white collar jobs for them. The value of a Bachelors degree had decreased. So, in order to have better opportunities and job security everyone started going to graduate and professional school, increasing their "ammunition".
Then we ended up having an oversupply of people with advanced and professional degrees, so many people ended up going back to school to obtain additional advanced and professional degrees. (Ever wonder how patent lawyers with PhD's in the hard sciences and law degrees came about?)
By this time people had stockpiled so many educational credentials that bachelors degrees came to have the value high school diplomas used to have and advanced and professional degrees lost value as well.
So, don't just blame the colleges and universities. It is our society in general that's driving the problem. ("I have seen the enemy and he is us.") Basically, as a society we haven't figured out a way to increase the amount of wealth we produce and to distribute that wealth fairly, so everyone feels compelled to invest in higher education in the hopes of getting ahead.
A high school degree shows you are capable, a A.A degree shows you can think, A bachelors degree shows you can learn, A Masters shows you can be trained, A PhD degree shows you are ready.
Any real PhD would tell you that they received the title after it was determined that they had achieved [P]ermanent [H]ead [D]amage
I also totally agree to the sentiment of the education race of sorts.
I am a 28 year old working on my 7th collegiate degree. I was able to attain a nice cushy job akin to what I have now after just one degree, but I actually go to school for the classical pursuit of knowledge. That is to say, I like learning in a quasi-structured environment and getting a big sticker...erm I mean diploma at the conclusion.
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