The typical four-year college degree has large costs, but it's questionable whether the benefits are usually there. In fact, students who secure college degrees are increasingly unlikely to make up the costs, despite higher pay. Should everyone go to college? Would vocational training be more profitable?
FTA:
...the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) has unearthed what I think is the single most scandalous statistic in higher education. It reveals many current problems and ones that will grow enormously as policymakers mindlessly push enrollment expansion amidst what must become greater public-sector resource limits.
Here it is: approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled - occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less. Only a minority of the increment in our nation's stock of college graduates is filling jobs historically considered as requiring a bachelor's degree or more...
Even with alternative assumptions, a majority of the increased college graduate population is doing jobs that historically have been filled by persons with lesser education...
An example or two from specific occupations is useful. In 1992 119,000 waiters and waitresses were college degree holders. By 2008, this number had more than doubled to 318,000...
Take cashiers as well. While 132,000 cashiers possessed college degrees in 1992, by 2008, 365,000 cashiers were college graduates.
...the push to increase the number of college graduates seems horribly misguided from a strict economic/vocational perspective. It is precisely that perspective that is emphasized by those, starting with President Obama, who insist that we need to have more college graduates...
More simply, it takes 18 years of schooling (including kindergarten and the typical fifth year of college to get a bachelor's degree) for persons to get an education to do jobs that a generation or two ago people did with 12-13 years of education...
...all of this supports the notion that credential inflation arises from a perceived need by individuals to demonstrate potential employment competence through a piece of paper, i.e. a college diploma. Employers are using education as a screening and signaling device, at a low cost directly to them (although not costless because of the taxes they pay to sustain much of this), but at a high cost to the perspective employees and to society as a whole...
Many of those advocating more access are well meaning and have pure motives, but they are ignorant of the evidence. But higher education is all about facts, knowledge-learning how the world works and disseminating that information to others. Some in higher education KNOW about all of this and are keeping quiet about it because of their own self-interest. We are deceiving our young population to mindlessly pursue college degrees when very often that is advice that is increasingly questionable."
DISCUSS!
Original posting by Braincrave Second Life staff on Dec 13, 2010 at http://www.braincrave.com/viewblog.php?id=403
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