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We all know there are more people going to college these days compared to previous times. Some say the problem is that students are pushed to go to college even if they're not college material, but I don't think that's the source of the problem. I think the bigger problem is that (with some exceptions) you need a degree these days to be successful. People that aren't college material go to college anyway because they want to be successful.
The problem is employers "requiring" degrees for jobs that do not really need it, or requiring degrees which are above and beyond the true job requirements.
The reasons for this can vary from laziness in screening candidates, to a high turnover environment that leads to desperate measures for retention (student debt). Many companies claim that students or recent graduates are cheaper, but I've seen starting salaries for new grads which are roughly the same as salaries for existing employees.
There are just too many kids going to college. We pump out 1m every year. The biggest college class ever started in 2008. That is 2.8m kids they will be done in 2012. I have no idea where they are going to work. Now kids are going to grad school because a BA is worth so much less. It is an educational arms race to land a job. The sad thing is most of us will loose because we will have so much debt. They do use it for screening candidates. It is not cool but their are 100's candidates for every job. It has been this way for years. I really hate it when employers start requiring degrees for jobs when it is not needed. They lock out alot of good workers out of a job that way.
It really amazes me to see job postings that require college degrees/advanced certification for pretty basic office jobs. Why does a receptionist need a degree? Or an A/P clerk a business degree + CPA designation? It really is crazy.
I think its a scam. I post a lot on this education board about it, I think its important to talk about.
I graduated highschool back in 1996, and I thought it was a scam then. Thats why I went to a 2 year community college first (then a 4 year state school afterward). None of it made any sense to me at the time.
-To go to a 4 year school, you had to take the SAT, and there were a lot of other things like letters of recommendation, certain dates you had to apply by, etc. Very stressful and time consuming. Community college credits would transfer over, yet you didnt need to take the sat for that. It never made much sense, but I accepted it. I probably saved $1,000-1,500 just by choosing a cc (on top of how cheap the classes were). All told, I didnt have much debt after graduating.
-My teachers in highschool, I think they were really all in on it. Community College gets derided as the 13th grade. Not up to your potential. Trade schools/technical schools were out. There was no real entrepreneurship taught. This was during the computer and internet revolution of the 90's, they missed the boat on that on. Everything was geared towards the all holy college. They kindly left out....how many people are going, how watered down the degrees are getting. And how tenuous the job situation is afterward.
-I think its been a monster scam for this generation. There should be other, cheaper routes to "be successful". I think the employors (really corporate america) are in on it with the colleges. Aided and abetted by the entire k-12 system in this country. Add on top of that all the marketing (US News, World Report Rankings). And silent media (newspapers) that don't cover whats really going on. Every arrow points to watered down colleges.
-Then combine that with this jobless, post 2000 world. The 07-08 recession wiped out all the job creation from 2000 to 2006.The job creation from the middle 90's to 2000 was marginal, a lot of part time service jobs. Combine that with this cult of college since then, it adds up to a scam. $$$ The bankers and sallie mae walk away good.
-I dont see why schools didnt start from the beginning, in elementary school, preparing students for a changing world. That'd give you plenty of time to build skills by the time you're 18. Then elite students can go on to college and earn degrees that make sense and easily pay off. But k-12 would rather be teaching self esteem and happy marks.
-I think also, some of it is to cover the net economic erosion in this country since the 70's and 80's. Much easier to keep kids in school getting hollow degrees than actually stepping outside the confines of the school yard and see the shifts that have taken place in the last 20-25 years. No one is telling them that they're supporting a crumbling gen x and baby boomer economic reality. Its a pyramid scheme, and they're going to get crumbs when its all said and done.
I agree, the problem is too many employers expecting college degrees for the most basic of jobs.
Passing Renaissance English Lit isn't going to help any worker answer the phones or sort the mail better. But for some reason employers think it will--and that it is a substitute for on-the-job training.
I don't think there are actually that many students who are not 'college material' trying to go to college. If they aren't college material they've probably had enough experience struggling in school and they know well enough how unpleasant and hard college will be.
One of the best post I have ever seen on college and the economic outlook. I have been saying similar things for years. The US economic outlook has been going down for years. College was a way to cover that up. No one ever asked where are all the jobs going to come from for all these educated people.
I think this is an interesting discussion and I agree that a college degree is becoming watered down and almost useless in the job market, thus one of the reasons why I chose to go to graduate school. I think that one factor that will become even more important as all of this gets more intense is it will start to matter more WHERE you went to college. Before it was good enough just to go and you could get a good job even if you didn't go to an Ivy League school. Now with so many people going to college, it won't be good enough just to go to State U, you're going to need to go to a top tier school to have any hopes of getting a job right out of college (or getting into a good grad school). When so many people have a Bachelor's degree, employers are going to start looking more closely at where they came from and name and prestige will start to make the difference in who they decide to hire. It's already happening now, but it's going to be interesting to see what happens when it gets even more intense.
I think the bigger problem is that (with some exceptions) you need a degree these days to be successful.
There are a lot of exceptions, but this generation tends to believe that they can't get a good job without a degree. So the market responded and supplied them with easy and watered down degree programs that employers are not going to value nearly as much as much as they did in the past.
Its not the piece of paper that matters, its what it represents. And it represents much less today than it did in the past.
Lots of self-selection occurs out in the real world...
Smarter parents (not schools/colleges) tend to educate their kids from a young age about the scams out there: scams like K-12 and college which have existed for decades and are unlikely to change in our lifetime...and how to plan to acquire skills or needed diplomas/majors/GPAs to get a high-paying job eventually...or acquire useful, potentially well-paying craftsman skills (like servicing Mercedes or building high-end houses, etc) if not college material
Dumb parents tend to produce dumb, ill-prepared kids who make idiotic college/major choices...and then wonder why they are unemployed and in debt as elderly 22+yo losers living with Mommy (and often try to blame someone else, like evil rich people, for their own dumb choices in life)
Smart employers (the ones where smarter kids get high-income jobs) tend to hire <22yo workers who are from prestige colleges and have useful skills worth a >$100K/yr starting paycheck
Highest income jobs are in industries like tech or finance where employers want quant skills, not lib arts nonsense, even from Harvard
Poorly-run, not lucrative employers tend to attract less-skilled, often dysfunctional workers who will take any job, even w/a tiny paycheck
And modern, highly profitable, tech-savvy employers continually automate/outsource/offshore mundane work so they don't need to overpay some US kid w/a useless college degree for such work....world's leading businesses are built to maximize profits for their shareholders; they aren't charities...
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