Another aspect that has not been discussed is that since there are more college graduates around it is harder for the non-college people to get the same jobs. If two applicants have seemingly equal qualifications, the employer will choose the one with a college degree.

Sure. Of course. Lots of kids get a two year or a four year degree and still can’t string together a series of sentences in proper English. A lot of what is taught (or not taught) at Univerities is total crap too. Heck, look at the “scary smart – he’s giving me leg tingles” president we’ve got sitting in the White House. He spouts incredibly ignorant nonsense such as “Hirohito ‘coming down’ to surrender to MacArthur.” (this happened last week). Occidental, Columbia, Harvard!! Gosh how impressive! I guess an actual, and real, U.S. History course, as opposed to varieties of “Amerika as Imperialist Exploiter”, etc. just wasn’t on the curriculum at those fine institutions (sarcasm)).

“Is this a schooling issue, or a personal development and ability issue.”

Both. Lots of families overcome the shit on a shingle known as our “public” government school system by involving themselves in the process – in all sorts of varying ways – including participating in their kids’ homework with tutoring and studying together, proactive selection of h.s. “electives,” paying for outside help such as Sylvan Learning Centers – or abandoning the government system altogether either via the private school route or home schooling. I have personal experience in all of the above.

Low income families – especially with a single working Mom – don’t have these sorts of options. And the Democrat/Teachers Union Machine has a iron lock on the status quo – e.g., opposing a ‘voucher’ system in order to give those families some autonomy and choice. So kids in inner cities or poor rural areas are stuck with the useless shit the government educrats dole out.

So it is clearly also a schooling issue, as I thought my real life description illustrated. When those ladies (back then in their 50′s – now in their late 70′s) were in school, the quality, substance, course material, curricula, etc., were different.

The standards for passing through grades as opposed to flunking, were different too.

Here is yet another real life illustration. My grandfather (born in 1906) was a fun-loving goof-off as a teen. He chronically blew off ONE of his classes as a senior – he “skipped out” one too many times. Outcome? He had to repeat his ENTIRE senior year – all of the courses. And graduated with the next class, the following June.

Those sorts of no-nonsense, rigid standards and expectations are just a faded memory now.

As I read it, the gist of your concern is a requirement for applicants who can do the work correctly. Given the looser, more adult, and financially driven nature of a normal college experience, can’t that same underachieving student cruise through college as well?

My experience was that the ability of the young applicants was more tied to their personal intelligence, maturity, tenacity, attention to detail, and family culture than what level of education they had attained.

Is this a schooling issue, or a personal development and ability issue?

Illustration: I’ve been working with secretaries for 28 years. When I started out, all the older gals in the office (in their mid-50′s in the early 80′s –the WWII generation) …who had HIGH SCHOOL degrees only, could still recite a few lines of poetry (written by Dead European White males) they had been forced to memorize back in h.s., they could take SHORTHAND (something I’m sure none of you have never even heard of) they learned in their elective “business” classes they took in h.s., and the grammar rules they could still recite and understood and knew how to apply, they learned in H.S. They were literate, well mannered, and well spoken. They never said “ain’t,” they didn’t never use no double negatives, etc., etc. True office professionals…..without having a single college credit to their name.

Fast forward. Today, if I’m accepting resumes for a legal assistant (what a “secretary” is now called) – applicants with only a h.s. degree are invariably functional illiterates. Absolutely pathetic. Without a significant amount of post-high school education under their belts, they will not be able to distinguish when to use “it’s” versus “its” or “their” versus “there” (two examples) if you hold a gun to their head. Verbally? “Me and Trish are going to lunch now.” “Alls ya gotta do…” Etc. You get the picture.

That’s your average NON-college bound high school graduate – who knows Word and Wordperfect and so would therefore like to be something more than an $8.50/hour supermarket cashier, and can’t understand why she can’t jump right in and be a legal assistant trainee since she’s like, you know, a quick learner ‘n all.

Sorry – I’ll let the local state commuter U. do the work of polishing you up that your darn high school failed and refused to do.

One more reason why – at least in areas requiring communication skills – either written or verbal – the applicant with at least some college coursework, is going to have a better shot at the job. It should not have to be that way – but that’s the reality.

By contrast, his clerk job today would have a 4-word title and require at least 4 years of school, possibly 6. I know, because I push papers in a large bureaucratic organization, have a 3-word job title, and have 7 years of expensive, entirely useless post-high school education. I’m not throwing myself a pity party, just pointing out the utter absurdity of it. A bright high school graduate could be paid 40% of my salary and do just as good a job, perhaps with a few more weeks of training than I needed.

Don,

If the Flynn Effect is more or less right, then high schools were producing even more unqualified people 50 years ago than today, just due to baseline intelligence. Yet, my grandfather was a clerk for decades.

When I’ve hired for entry-level positions in the past, college education did indeed sometimes substitute for work experience. But I always preferred work experience where available. I agree with Don, I saw academic experience as an introduction to general concepts and possibly a demonstration of follow-through. The real value to me when I was hiring was when the applicant already had one or two positions in the field under his/her belt and knew how things were done in the inconvenient, messy world of irrational customers.

As tfr points out, when the hiring party is not the manager of the team, they can often be so distant from the actual requirements that they simply match acronyms on the job spec to acronyms on the resume (academic or not).

Frankly, for my field, I learned very little in college that had any contemporary relevance to my career’s demands.

Does this happen with every student at every college? Of course not. But I spent tens of thousands of dollars to send my kids to great colleges, and there’s no doubt in my mind it was worth every penny.

Go into the middle or high school level education, and you find the same thing happen many times with “coach” and “not coach”, especially in common subject areas like the social sciences and English. Again, a quick way to whittle down a stack of resumes.

The question is, why is it so much harder to get a decent job if you don’t have a college degree?

In the past thirty years, many jobs have remained essentially unchanged, yet now one must have a college degree before one can even be considered. This post is intended to discuss the reason why this phenomenon is occurring.

Don,

You are quite correct. I teach college freshmen at an old and prestigious private university, and have observed the phenomenon you described first-hand.

“…Colleges have gotten away with lowering educational standards because their graduates are in such high demand….”

I don’t think that this is the primary reason.

As the government high schools produce graduates with ever declining aptitudes/achievements, the colleges would risk their tuition revenues were they to maintain educational standards to the point of reducing their graduation rates. The employer typically cares little at all about what, if anything, the four year graduate learns in college. All that matters is the native aptitude that allowed for competitive admission, and the endurance needed for graduation, and maybe not that. Two year graduates of community colleges and technical institutes are different to a degree, with matching of the courses to the need of some significance, as admission means nothing.

Regards, Don