Do you want a career and a successful life to do you want a worthless degree and a boat load of debt? That is the choice being given students today. Too many jobs demand a college degree, when any kid with a brain could do the work better—without going through riots, bigots, haters and ideological warfare to get a degree (though NOT an education)
“The role of a secretary or administrative professional was once a key starting point on the career ladder for workers with only a high school diploma. In 1990, just 9 percent of secretaries held a bachelor’s degree or higher. But that share has since risen to 33 percent, and is set to rise. An even greater proportion of job advertisements for secretaries require four-year degrees, and some quick calculations show that more than 750,000 secretarial positions could close to workers without degrees over the coming years.”
This education “inflation” is the cause of debt, grief, misplacing of personnel. It is time to use college for education for the sciences, medical field engineering and a few more. You do not need a degree in ethnic or gender studies to be a bigot—your entrance into these fields is proof enough.
How unnecessary college degree requirements hurt the working class
Also: Making sense of the latest loan cancellation announcements, and the Biden administration suffers another court setback.
| PRESTON COOPER , FREOPP, 8/12/23 https://substack.freopp.org/p/how-unnecessary-college-degree-requirements?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email , |
Welcome to The Tassel, FREOPP’s newsletter on higher education policy, written by senior fellow Preston Cooper. Each month, The Tassel dives into our latest work on higher education, along with a handpicked selection of research and articles from around the web that we think are worth your time. To manage your subscription preferences, visit your Substack settings.
The role of a secretary or administrative professional was once a key starting point on the career ladder for workers with only a high school diploma. In 1990, just 9 percent of secretaries held a bachelor’s degree or higher. But that share has since risen to 33 percent, and is set to rise. An even greater proportion of job advertisements for secretaries require four-year degrees, and some quick calculations show that more than 750,000 secretarial positions could close to workers without degrees over the coming years.
This phenomenon—degree inflation—is the focus of my latest report for FREOPP. Degree inflation occurs when employers increase education requirements for given jobs, such as requiring bachelor’s degrees for occupations that were previously open to high school graduates. The result is that positions which were once open to workers without a four-year college education are now closed to the majority of the population (62 percent of adult Americans lack a bachelor’s degree).
This phenomenon might be benign if workers’ higher levels of education made them more productive on the job, translating into higher earnings. But that is not always true. Rather than helping people in lower income brackets rise up the income ladder, degree inflation causes the education levels of those lower income brackets to rise. The share of workers earning between $40,000 and $60,000 who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher increased from 26 percent in 1980 to 38 percent today.
My report quantifies degree inflation by examining the increase in the share of workers in each occupation with a bachelor’s degree or higher between 1990 and 2021. I combine this measure with each job’s overall importance to the economy in 2021 to identify the occupations which are most responsible for overall degree inflation.
The exercise shows that the five occupations driving degree inflation to the greatest extent are: managers and administrators, registered nurses, computer software developers, salespersons, and secretaries. While degree inflation has affected white-collar jobs the most, few sectors of the economy are immune from the phenomenon.
Fortunately, employers have begun to recognize the problem. Companies such as AT&T, IBM, and Accenture have made a concerted effort to remove the bachelor’s degree as a requirement for many roles. Thirteen states (and counting!) have removed degree requirements for most jobs in the state executive branch.
But public policy can play a greater role. States should repeal laws and regulations that require workers in certain occupations to hold degrees. (Why do you need a college degree to be a home interior designer in Virginia, but not North Carolina?) The federal government should ensure that funding streams such as Pell Grants do not unduly privilege traditional colleges and universities over alternative postsecondary pathways that could prepare students for the workforce faster and at a lower cost.
A college degree should not be a requirement to enjoy a middle-class standard of living. But private-sector initiative combined with smart policy changes can begin to turn degree inflation around.
To learn more, check out my full report at FREOPP.org. You can also read my interview on the subject with Ben Wilterdink at Profectus Magazine.
