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Even more so than free healthcare, the one thing that separates the US from the "rest of the world" is the availability of free higher education. Of course, the

Even more so than free healthcare, the one thing that separates the US from the "rest of the world" is the availability of free higher education. Of course, the caveat is that most of the rest of the world is far more restrictive of who may attend university. In the past, this was always touted as an advantage of the US system. Sure, you have to pay for college, but you don't have to stress over a placement exam that will determine your fate at an early age. Anyone with the motivation can get a higher education. Except, that's not how things have turned out. It seems that attaining a college degree has become an obligation in the US, for no good reason. People like to talk about the ever increasing proportion of the population that hold college degrees, but does anyone ever ask if the fraction of students with college degrees matches the fraction of available jobs that require college degrees? Instead, the US seems to have a death-grip on the notion that "more college graduates = more better jobs". So, instead of scaling back college acceptance rates and spending limited funds to provide an excellent education to a few, the US will water down college education until its as filling as the beer its college students will spend most of their 4 years drinking, only to emerge with a degree in underwater basket weaving.

_delirium 15y ago
> but does anyone ever ask if the fraction of students with college degrees matches the fraction of available jobs that require college degrees? I think the imbalance is actually in the other direction, if you ask it that way: the fraction of the population with college degrees is considerably lower than the fraction of available jobs that require college degrees. Unemployment among people who don't have college degrees is very high, suggesting that there aren't enough no-degree-required jobs. And when no-degree-required jobs do come on the market, they get massively over-applied for, like when McDonald's announced 50,000 job openings and received a million applicants. Now whether those jobs should require college degrees is another story. For better or worse, employers demand degrees for a wide range of jobs, and you often won't even get past an automated HR screen if you don't have one. Until employers start offering more jobs to people without degrees, people will continue to feel that they need one, so they can qualify for those openings.
- jballanc 15y ago
  Well, are you assuming that no one applying for the McDonald's job has a degree? I think the situation has probably gotten to the point that there are so many "useless" degrees on the market, that it no longer even makes sense to talk about "fraction with degrees". So, let's try rewording it: > but does anyone ever ask if the fraction of students with a particular type of college degree matches the fraction of available jobs requiring that type of college degree? As an interesting aside, one advantage of providing a free university education is that you only need to provide it for as many students as you need to attain a certain degree. Need more doctors? Then provide more free slots for premed students. Need fewer lawyers? Then this year there aren't as many prelaw slots available. Such a system may seem rather sanguine, but it's also worth noting that the rest of the world does not seem to equate career success with a happy life in the same way the US does.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    It's hard to reliably infer causation from the correlation, but from the statistics I can find, even holders of "useless" degrees have significantly lower unemployment rates and higher wages than people who hold no degree at all. In fact from what I can find the employment/wage gap between degreed and non-degreed people is actually larger in non-STEM fields. You can get work as a no-degree-having programmer or statistics guru, but if you're not technical, having no degree is a much bigger problem. Among miscellaneous jobs that often advertise that you need a degree: store manager, social worker, high-school teacher, most white-collar clerical positions in large companies, etc. Sometimes any degree will do. It's not like IBM hiring an office assistant with "B.A./B.S. strongly preferred" is deeply interested in the content of a university literature curriculum, but they use it as a generic screen for some minimum threshold of literacy and maybe diligence. Companies seem to have no way of doing that screening themselves, so they outsource the job to universities, hoping that universities screen out the worst candidates.
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      True, but this is wasteful signalling and should be discouraged. The degree advantages you describe are merely a way of redistributing jobs from those without the signal to those with it. No value is created, and some is lost due to the cost of giving people useless educations. The world would be a better place if no one had these useless educations, since employers would no longer be able to discriminate against those lacking the signal.
enjo 15y ago
Are all college educations equal? I suspect not. I attended a lower tier institution, and I'm pretty sure that someone graduating from MIT or Stanford probably had a more rigorous education than I did (if for no other reason than the quality of the peers was so much higher). So I'd argue that we haven't watered down the collegiate experience, particularly on the high end. We've simply opened the doors to higher education on the lower end and made that attainable to a lot more students. I can't imagine that more education for a greater number people is a bad thing. I think it's a very good thing. If I have to choose between a secretary with a degree and one without, give me the one who has the degree. I know that they probably have the capacity to learn quickly at the very least. That's what a bachelors degree really is in my view, a certification that you know how to learn more than anything else.

_delirium 15y ago

> but does anyone ever ask if the fraction of students with college degrees matches the fraction of available jobs that require college degrees? I think the imbalance is actually in the other direction, if you ask it that way: the fraction of the population with college degrees is considerably lower than the fraction of available jobs that require college degrees. Unemployment among people who don't have college degrees is very high, suggesting that there aren't enough no-degree-required jobs. And when no-degree-required jobs do come on the market, they get massively over-applied for, like when McDonald's announced 50,000 job openings and received a million applicants. Now whether those jobs should require college degrees is another story. For better or worse, employers demand degrees for a wide range of jobs, and you often won't even get past an automated HR screen if you don't have one. Until employers start offering more jobs to people without degrees, people will continue to feel that they need one, so they can qualify for those openings.

jballanc 15y ago
Well, are you assuming that no one applying for the McDonald's job has a degree? I think the situation has probably gotten to the point that there are so many "useless" degrees on the market, that it no longer even makes sense to talk about "fraction with degrees". So, let's try rewording it: > but does anyone ever ask if the fraction of students with a particular type of college degree matches the fraction of available jobs requiring that type of college degree? As an interesting aside, one advantage of providing a free university education is that you only need to provide it for as many students as you need to attain a certain degree. Need more doctors? Then provide more free slots for premed students. Need fewer lawyers? Then this year there aren't as many prelaw slots available. Such a system may seem rather sanguine, but it's also worth noting that the rest of the world does not seem to equate career success with a happy life in the same way the US does.
- _delirium 15y ago
  It's hard to reliably infer causation from the correlation, but from the statistics I can find, even holders of "useless" degrees have significantly lower unemployment rates and higher wages than people who hold no degree at all. In fact from what I can find the employment/wage gap between degreed and non-degreed people is actually larger in non-STEM fields. You can get work as a no-degree-having programmer or statistics guru, but if you're not technical, having no degree is a much bigger problem. Among miscellaneous jobs that often advertise that you need a degree: store manager, social worker, high-school teacher, most white-collar clerical positions in large companies, etc. Sometimes any degree will do. It's not like IBM hiring an office assistant with "B.A./B.S. strongly preferred" is deeply interested in the content of a university literature curriculum, but they use it as a generic screen for some minimum threshold of literacy and maybe diligence. Companies seem to have no way of doing that screening themselves, so they outsource the job to universities, hoping that universities screen out the worst candidates.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    True, but this is wasteful signalling and should be discouraged. The degree advantages you describe are merely a way of redistributing jobs from those without the signal to those with it. No value is created, and some is lost due to the cost of giving people useless educations. The world would be a better place if no one had these useless educations, since employers would no longer be able to discriminate against those lacking the signal.

enjo 15y ago

Are all college educations equal? I suspect not. I attended a lower tier institution, and I'm pretty sure that someone graduating from MIT or Stanford probably had a more rigorous education than I did (if for no other reason than the quality of the peers was so much higher). So I'd argue that we haven't watered down the collegiate experience, particularly on the high end. We've simply opened the doors to higher education on the lower end and made that attainable to a lot more students. I can't imagine that more education for a greater number people is a bad thing. I think it's a very good thing. If I have to choose between a secretary with a degree and one without, give me the one who has the degree. I know that they probably have the capacity to learn quickly at the very least. That's what a bachelors degree really is in my view, a certification that you know how to learn more than anything else.