The College Scam

[Antrume]

I think 5% is probably a bit low, but most people probably don’t need to attend college, at least not the way it typically happens in the US—graduate high school and immediate attend a college for a number of years, where studies are your main focus. BUT, we have a system that demands that.

The problem is that companies have discovered that they do not have to train people to do jobs. Why should a company hire someone with a high school diploma and train them as a bookkeeper when for the same wage or perhaps 50c to $1 more per hour they can hire someone with an associate’s degree in accounting?  Training people internally takes time and money. Some people will also get trained by company X and then quickly leave for more money at company Y. It is easy to see why an employer wouldn’t want to take on the training burden.

For a while, the system probably worked. In the 1960s and 1970s a young person could work part time and afford to pay tuition to a state college or university and exit college with little or no debt. Essentially, the state shifted the burden of training from the employer’s expense to the state/taxpayers. Companies, happy to get rid of training costs, shut down training programs and improved their bottom line.

But then the country’s attitudes toward funding higher education shifted. We collectively decided that the cost of public education had become too great and started to shift more and more of the cost back to the consumers, the students. Companies had become accustomed to hiring workers with more than basic skills (the 3 R’s) and felt no particular need to restart training programs.

At the same time, beginning in the late 1960s, the nation started de-industrializing. It became much hard for a high school graduate (or drop out) to go work in a factory and earn a middle-class wage. What to do with those people?  The rallying cry became getting them a college education. So, colleges expanded and turned out more and more workers. Sometimes these degrees, and the thousands of dollars worth of debt that often went along with them, met market demands but sometimes they did not.

So, we find ourselves with really too many college graduates with the wrong skill sets for the marketplace. But companies have come to view the college degree as the new ticket to entry.  

So, what is a person to do?  I will use myself as an example. I have had a number of jobs—archaeologist (shovel bum), museum tour guide/educator/manager, financial advisor, teacher, and now accountant. A bachelor’s degree is required for all of the jobs that I have had. In other countries, that isn’t always the case. In England, one can leave school and go to work as a field archaeologist or an entry-level bookkeeper (not sure about the other jobs) and learn on the job, complete courses and certifications, and progress in your career into a professional role. Degree completion, top-up programs, and direct entry into master’s degree programs for skilled workers all offer real, viable ways to “move up”.

But, for the vast majority of people and employers in the US, we are locked into a single way of viewing things. I grant that there are fields (such as IT/CS) where knowledge is as important or more important than a degree, but those fields are the exception rather than the rule.

Employers paying part/all of educational expenses for their workers is a fantastic development and I hope it becomes more commonplace. BUT, it really is a bandaid at best. It doesn’t solve the problem that the conventional college degree, a piece of paper, is more essential than relevant knowledge and skill.

So, while only a small percentage of workers actually need a college degree, the reality is that far more have to have one. Maybe that will change. Maybe companies that have been struggling to hire will realize that it is in their best interest to hire really smart people, regardless of their education, and actually train them to do the job. But, I will believe it when I see it.

I completely agree with you and I also think that the problem with college is that you get a piece of paper without which you can't work, but even with it you have to get additional knowledge because even in one profession the tools and processes can be different. That's the beauty of the vast IT field that you get the same piece of paper but with real knowledge that gives you a job right away. Although I understand that not everything can be brought to this, but this method is the best for both companies and students. And about time costs systemic education is not ideal and cases that you work full-time parallel learning and still remain a lot of free time for self-development, I personally have not seen.