The value of a diploma from a selective college was that it told the prospective employer that the person had to have been smart to be admitted.
Now, with Affirmative Action, its value is lessened.
You could do better by hiring straight out of high school, if you could have access to the kid’s grades and SAT scores, and if using that info wouldn’t earn you a discrimination lawsuit.
Companies used to do that, before a Supreme Court decision in the 1970s declared that any employment test which had fewer blacks passing was illegal discrimination (Griggs v Duke Power)
Now, with Affirmative Action, its value is lessened.
You could do better by hiring straight out of high school, if you could have access to the kid’s grades and SAT scores, and if using that info wouldn’t earn you a discrimination lawsuit.
Companies used to do that, before a Supreme Court decision in the 1970s declared that any employment test which had fewer blacks passing was illegal discrimination (Griggs v Duke Power)
You had so many great points in your response, I copied the entire thing above. One more I would add is that when we started telling every kid that they had to get a college degree, the law of supply and demand took over and the value of a “mere” undergraduate degree plummeted. It just became the assumed price of admission to most decent jobs. And just like showering trillions of dollars of printed fed dollars on everyone, it created inflation, both in the price of “higher education” and in the new threshold to be seen as a more desirable candidate.
The cost of tuition went sky high (also driven by access to third party money in the form of grants and loans), and the new requirement to get noticed by employers became a graduate degree. For most kids who go to college now, aiming for an undergraduate degree, it’s a perfect storm of disappointment. They have to shackle themselves to years of student loan debt for a degree that will do nothing to help them stand out from the crowd, and may not get them a job at all. And to top it off, the quality of the “education” product they will receive is worse than zero. The lucky ones will spend yet more time and lost opportunities trying to restore their minds from the Leftist programming they paid so dearly for.