Posted on 09/11/2011 12:13:03 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
More and more Americans are going to college, but that doesn’t mean they’re learning valuable skills or improving the economy. Professor X on the ridiculous premium placed on a B.A. in this country.
Is there really such a thing as a "college premium," the increase in earnings over a lifetime that one can expect to get with a college degree?
A recent report, “The College Payoff,” examines the data and not surprisingly answers the question resoundingly in the affirmative. I say "not surprisingly" because the study was sponsored by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. What possible economic interest could the folks at Georgetown University have in promoting ever-increasing levels of college attendance? As the authors tell us in their introduction, they "are honored to be partners in [the] mission of promoting postsecondary access and completion for all Americans."
They might have wanted to tag this statement with a big SPOILER ALERT. This study couldn't have turned out any other way.
"The data are clear: a college degree is key to economic opportunity," the report concludes, "conferring substantially higher earnings on those with credentials than those without."
Some of what the report reveals is obvious. Workers who never finish high school often don't make all that much money. Workers with professional or graduate degrees sometimes make a boatload of it. It's good to be a doctor or a lawyer. And as for the vast swath of jobs in the middle, the ones between janitor and cardiologist, workers with a bachelor's degree will indeed earn more than their less-educated counterparts. A human-resources manager who has not attended college can expect to earn $1.9 million over the course of a working lifetime; throw in a four-year degree, and the figure increases by a cool million. A food-service manager can expect to take home $1.2 million in a 40-year work life; that same manager with a bachelor's can pull in $1.8 million. A college sheepskin will boost the figure for a paralegal or legal assistant from $1.7 million to $2 million, or about $7,500 a year, figuring an employment span of 40 years.
OK, so the college premium exists. That doesn't make it necessary or right.
What the study reveals inadvertently is most interesting: just how many positions are currently being filled by those who never made it past high school.
Some numbers will come as no surprise: 71 percent of janitors have only high-school degrees. Fully three quarters of all pest-control and grounds-maintenance workers are in the same situation. A little more than half of barbers and cosmetologists have a high-school diploma or less; the same holds true for 67 percent of tobacco-roasting-machine operators.
But did you know that 11 percent of "chief executives and legislators"—the study's categorization—have been only to high school? The figure jumps to 23 percent with an associate's degree or less. Eighteen percent of general and operations managers never attended college. Education administrators—now that might seem a highly educated group, but 5 percent have seen no reason to pass through the gates of higher education, and 14 percent have only some college. Claims adjusters, appraisers, examiners, and investigators—18 percent haven't gone beyond high school, and twice that don't have a four-year college degree. Fourteen percent of advertising salespersons went to high school and then called it quits. High school only: electrical and electronics engineers, 4 percent; industrial engineers, 8 percent.
ome of these percentages might not be large, but their very existence demonstrates the fact that those without college, or without a completed college degree, can probably do their jobs just fine.
American colleges would have us believe that the skills they purport to teach, the critical thinking and higher levels of reasoning and all that, are crucial to competent performance in the workplace. This is baloney, less a line of reasoning than a sales pitch rooted in academic snobbery—a naked appeal to our intellectual insecurities.
Do we want to extend the argument, and say that those lacking a Bachelor's degree are the absolute worst at their jobs? Twelve percent of financial managers have only a high-school education—are they the ones who plunged the country into the recession we can't seem to climb out of? Perhaps the 14 percent of human-resource managers who didn’t go to college are the ones who are keeping our unemployment rate hovering at 10 percent. The 4 percent of miscellaneous engineers, including nuclear engineers, who didn't get past high school—did we dispatch a delegation of those Homer Simpson-like nincompoops to help set up the safety systems for Tokyo's nuclear reactors? I guess we should blame the bottom 8 percent of securities, commodities, and financial-services sales agents for designing all those toxic-mortgage instruments.
The surgeon and the rocket scientist require specialized training, but most occupations are not brain surgery and not rocket science. The students I teach as an adjunct are pointed toward midlevel careers. If not for America’s lopsided love affair with higher education, none of my students would really require the B.A or B.S. degrees toward which they labor painfully. High-school literacy math skills would be quite sufficient. Four years of college are, for them, a waste of time and an economic burden. According to the latest figures from The Project on Student Debt, it’s fair to assume that more than 60 percent of them will graduate with student loans, and those debts will average about 25 grand.
The college premium exists, unfortunately, but it's an artificial construct. Colleges have inserted themselves squarely in the occupational world. Industry and academia march hand in hand to a song of credential inflation: young people who aspire to working at anything beyond fast-food assembly won’t get a look without the college diploma. Most B.A. degrees say little to employers in terms of specific skills; they are a marker, like a hand stamp that gains one entrance to a nightclub. They point to little more than a willingness to pay college tuition and complete degree requirements. Those lacking higher education find themselves ineligible for promotion, herded to lesser career tracks.
There are more college graduates in the United States than ever before. Are things running noticeably more smoothly?
A firefighter with a college degree can expect to earn, in his lifetime, $600,000 more than his counterparts without. When my house is burning down, when I'm trapped on an upper floor, I want simply the best firefighter to come to my aid. I want someone brave and true and skilled in the art of rescue. I have no interest in reading his research paper on Maslow's Hierarchy or his final exam comparing To His Coy Mistress and My Last Duchess.
Well obviously we need the govt to step in and keep people out of college. Heaven forbid people should want to go.
***American colleges would have us believe that the skills they purport to teach, the critical thinking and higher levels of reasoning and all that, are crucial to competent performance in the workplace.***
Critical thinking and reasoning are crucial - but they are not taught in college. They are learned in life, in the military and in the work place.
If language, science and math were taught more thoroughly in high school - instead of social studies etc., there would be more scientists and fewer global warming bureaucrats.
You need a four year degree for most jobs today. Sorry but that is just the case. Is it right? Maybe not, but that is just the facts. I am very glad that I have an MBA today because without it, I probably would not even be in the position I am today. A Bachelor’s is ok to get in the door of a company. I guess because I have not tried to get a job without a degree I don’t have that experience. Maybe you guys think it is a breeze and want your kids to go that route. I will guide my children towards getting a degree. They can join the military first if they want to but other than that. I will guide them towards college.
The truth is, however, that many employers require a bachelor’s degree, at the least. They see it as a sign that the applicant for a job has some ability to stick to a task for four or five years. If you want a job that’s indoors, clean, safe, at a desk, you need to have a degree.
My daughter went through her university’s graduation ceremony several months ago but in fact she needed one more course to get the magic paper. She had a LOT of work experience and glowing tributes from past and present employers, and had a summer job, but when she applied for serious jobs the hiring people all said, “You look fantastic, but come back when you actually finish that last course.” So she did. She was instantly inundated with job offers and just accepted one. (No, she is not in a technical or health field.)
And I find that increasingly that the master’s degree is what the BA used to be. If you want to advance in a lot of ordinary jobs you need a master’s. I have a bachelor’s degree, but my competition in the job search often has a master’s.
So while I do have family members who have a great career and are very prosperous without a college degree, the fact is that they started their careers many years ago, before the recession, before employers could be so darn fussy. This is certainly the case with those people the article cites who are CEOs without a college degree: they either started their own business and picked up the know-how elsewhere, or they got a job in the company and worked their way up starting many years ago, when the standard wasn’t so high.
The most valuable skill you must learn for this economy is how to look busy.
Education is important but a solid moral work ethic is essential.
I see many kids going to College not so much looking at what kind of field of work they want to ultimately be in but rather an extension of the high school partying days.
JMHO
It is considered discriminatory to give aptitude tests as part of a job application. Thus, employers are reduced to the poor proxy of hiring those with college degrees.
And now that so many have college degrees, it is suggestive of below average drive and intelligence not to have one.
I understand his point, and much of what he says is true... but the real problem with this college-fever is the cost. There’s nothing wrong with young people getting four more years to mature, nothing wrong with them actually reading To His Coy Mistress and My Last Duchess, nothing wrong with a couple years of a foreign language, nothing wrong with a closer, more in-depth look at some era of history, or a particular line of thought in Philosophy, or a few more courses in Statistics... nothing wrong with learning to write 12 page papers, reading heavier stuff than you could handle when you were 16 and distracted by the girl in the tight jeans sitting in front of you... the financial burden is the only drawback. Well, that and the liberal slant most humanities are infected with.
The Higher Education Industrial Complex, probably a bigger scam than the Social Security ponzi scheme.
Cut bachelor degree programs to 2 or 3 years, stop government subsidization of worthless majors (80% of them), and move away from the “college is for everyone” mindset. Undergraduate education has long become the replacement for high school at most colleges and universities. There’s a reason this country is failing compared to other first world countries academically.
I'd like to draw a distinction between needing the degree to get hired and needing the degree to do the job.
A college degree (for mid-level positions, as described in the article) is mainly used as a screening tool, a way for lazy people to whittle down the number of resumes they need to look at.
There used to be a far more efficient way to narrow the field, a simple IQ or aptitude test. It is a MUCH more efficient predictor of workplace performance than a degree.
But such tests have "disproportionate impact" on minorities and were therefore made illegal. So employers started using a degree as a rough and inefficient way of weeding out the same people they used to weed out with the IQ test.
My personal experience has been that while a degree may be necessary to get hired, once you're hired most organizations care a bunch more about what you accomplish for them than about your formal education.
BTW, the studies in question are probably severely flawed by not adjusting for variables.
Yes, a degree may provide additional income over a lifetime. But you cannot really determine whether it does until you compare similar people who have and don't have a degree. For instance, same IQ and class background.
What I assume this study does is compare all people with a degree in a particular field with all people in the field without a degree, which violates numerous rules of statistical analysis.
Personally, I work in a technical field and have been quite successful. I never had the chance to go to college, for a variety of reasons. While I never make any attempt to hide my educational background, most of the people I work with assume I have at least a masters and probably a PhD. When they find out otherwise, it is quite amusing to watch their prejudices take a big hit. But by this point they have generally decided I'm pretty darn good at what I do and that I'm an exception to the rule that people without degrees are incompetent.
Could I have gone farther and faster with a degree? Almost certainly. But this notion that one's life is over without a degree is just silly.
Except for technical, medical, engineering, etc. type fields a bachelors degree is worthless. That said, the artificial requirement is for a bachelors degree. That said, it is best to shop around and find the cheapest educational resource to get that degree. Using community college, online universities, part time while in the military, etc. Above all, do it without ending up with student loans and ending up as a slave to debt at the get go. Additionally, you will be surprised of how much cheaper it is when you forget about the partying, live at home and actually study. It’s amazing that parents will actually pay for some idiot kid to get a 4 year degree in 6 years. Most will find they will get the same pay whether the degree is from a no-name university or from a big time party school. Work experience while going to school is a definite plus for two reasons: first, you will have work experience to put on your resume; second, you probably would fall for the liberal BS that befalls most of the lazy student body.
I strongly believe that we should have more vocational education options for children, and they should begin in high school. We are doing them a disservice by insisting that everybody needs the same education to succeed. If a person wants to go to college, that is wonderful, but a college education shouldn’t be required to become a secretary or a paralegal. Job specific training would be much for valuable in those instances.
Children who are strong academically should have the option to begin a bona fide college level education at 16 or so, and we should work to ensure that those capable of a rigorous course load are given the opportunity to do so, and those who have no interest in pursuing high education should be guided in a vocational classes in a field that interests them. Basic, fundamental subjects should be mandatory, but many of the basics should be covered in the younger years. Nobody should be leaving elementary school without the ability to read and solve basic mathematical problems.
The problem is that American colleges are indoctrination centers for communist thinking. Actual academics are downplayed or eliminated.
Many careers don’t actually need college degrees, engineering, architecture, biological sciences or physical sciences excepted.
Most students are getting business degrees with an overdose of critical theory and communist indoctrination via ‘diversity’ and ‘economics’ training.
The addition of these courses and the bureaucratic overburden to administer,and the pensions that follow are why college costs so much.
The ‘establishment’ is keen on getting all children into college because it is needed to put the finishing touch on their indoctrination. Skip college and you just might have a freedom loving individualist on your hands to muck up the transformation of America into a communist hellhole. That’s the last thing these collectivists want.
Paulson and Kyle Bass made billions shorting RMBS/CMBS/and subprime shares last decade.
IF anyone knows how to short American institutions of higher learning, it would be the trade of this decade.
Really? You mean a Doctorate in Social Justice from the University of Massachusetts Freak Show may not get you the job you want??
Critical thinking and reasoning are crucial - but they are not taught in college. They are learned in life, in the military and in the work place.
Fixed that for you.
Ramped-up education and creeping credentializing requirements are rampant. How do you land jobs when you have to have a license and certification for even blue collar work these days (think plumbing, electrics, barbering, etc.)? How do smaller towns and institutions fill slots requiring this crap when they must hire at above-average wages to fill slots with such folks to begin with?!?!
If there were one leftist juggernaut I would derail in this country--and I'd tackle it before anything else to stop the cycle of despair--it would be public funding for ALL forms of public education. Sell off all the educational properties, set up voucher systems if you must, and let the free market have at it again. Our problem isn't that people don't want to work or value it, it's that they are trapped going through the motions in systems that require them to do no more than go through the motions, in so many cases, for YEARS.
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