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Not everyone can be a white collar worker, someone has got to do the manual labor.

And not every white collar job actually requires a college degree to do it well, although obviously a lot of companies will continue to require it for a while until the number of college grads declines from current levels.

exactly.

Here's the deal. It's scarcity that lends value to something. And as always ... when you dig deep enough you discover that ... government is the source of the problem.

There was a time when a high school diploma was the ticket to the good life. Then government stepped in and basically forced everyone to go to high school. Thus making a high school diploma far more common... and thus worthless.

After that the ticket to the good life was achieved by getting a 4 year bachelors degree... but the government decided to get involved again... and started giving out loans and grants to anyone and everyone... which resulted in the cost of college skyrocketing AND making a bachelors degree worthless because again like before they were way to common.

So ... now we are at the point that you are basically forced to pay a fortune to get an undergraduate AND graduate degree and spend an additional 6-10 years doing it to get the same results you would have historically gotten for free with only a high school diploma.

Thanks big government!

*sigh*

The purpose of a college degree these days is to indicate to the employer that you can read and write tolerably well. Employers are otherwise forbidden by Equal Opportunity legislation from administering tests that would result in more blacks failing than whites.

Eliminate that one key provision, ie allow employment tests without regard to "disparate impact" among minorities, and most of the rationale for a college degree goes away. Companies could once again hire people out of high school, and employees could continue their educations via distance learning.

And so many majors don’t train students for white-collar jobs, or any jobs — or even if they do, in theory, the way it works in practice is that they think that their lives are not worth anything unless they are working for a non-governmental organization rather than creating value in private enterprise.