-Mark Twain.
Blanketing the nation with government-funded higher education furthers the already notable depreciation of college degrees in the job market. Inequities in higher education are nothing to applaud, but with information increasingly becoming universally available (at least more so), what sets you apart in the job market is not your education, as these/these happy fellows will attest to. What the world needs is an increase in intelligence, not necessarily an increase in education.
1 comment:
My good sir,
You have raised what I imagine is the ultimate concern about this policy: won't it depreciate the job market? Perhaps, but that argument is steeped in the sort of elitist rhetoric that guarantees our country will be run by the notion of inheritance, and not worth.
Ask yourself: how would the job market be affected if more people had college degrees? Personally, I would imagine that perhaps companies would have to award careers based upon merit, and not (admittedly) ambiguous papers. I would also imagine that, with a myriad of qualified candidates, the job market would become more competitive, which is the antithesis of depreciation.
Consider: no jobs will disappear, so there would be the exact same opportunities for employment as there are right now. We would simply be opening the door for lower-income folks to get in on degree-dependent markets, to which they have limited access.
Lastly, while it may seem anecdotally powerful to cite the "Bill Gates" analogy for college dropouts, it is factually misleading. An overwhelming majority of company head honchos (any company, any country) have college degrees; who woulda guessed? Statistically, college dropouts make, on average, much less than college grads; another shocker. In addition, not everyone can be an overnight millionaire, so perhaps our "middle class" will have to settle for the reassurance that they can get job skills for any job, and leave it to a small number to find inspiration. Life is what you make of it. . . provided you have the same tools as everyone else.
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