2 ms·

It's a race to the bottom. Give almost everyone a college degree, and employers will require a college degree for extremely basic jobs. Give nearly almost eve

It's a race to the bottom. Give almost everyone a college degree, and employers will require a college degree for extremely basic jobs. Give nearly almost everyone a graduate degree, and employers will require a graduate degree for basic jobs. The upper-class don't care about this; they can afford to keep their kids in post-secondary for 10 years both economically and socially. Even if you waved a magic wand and made college "free" for everyone, this constant credential race would hurt the lower class the most.

specialist 13y ago
Sounds reasonable. But I see things slightly differently. I see three (major) factors. #1 Supply and demand. Manufacturing and agricultural jobs have declined, the population increases, there haven't been enough knowledge and service jobs to take up the slack. So employers can keep raising standards. I recall how hard recruiting / hiring was during the dot com boom, when my region had near full employment. We were hiring anyone who could spell "HTML". Now the situation has reversed. #2 Anti-competitive impulses. Nearly every single person who successfully climbs the ladder immediately turns around and pulls the ladder up behind them. To limit the competition. I saw this with the ridiculous continuing education requirements for teachers. I saw this when I served on the hiring board, where the members wrote prerequisites & requirements they themselves couldn't meet. I see this in politics where most every incumbent makes challenges ever more difficult. Etc, etc. #3 Using high requirements as a filter (firewall) in a very high noise to signal environment. The part of hiring I hate most is chewing thru the deluge of resumes that any job posting now gets. I think the buzzword bingo filtering is unfair and doesn't work. Which is why so many people hire thru their social network, routing around the broken HR processes.

specialist 13y ago

Sounds reasonable. But I see things slightly differently. I see three (major) factors. #1 Supply and demand. Manufacturing and agricultural jobs have declined, the population increases, there haven't been enough knowledge and service jobs to take up the slack. So employers can keep raising standards. I recall how hard recruiting / hiring was during the dot com boom, when my region had near full employment. We were hiring anyone who could spell "HTML". Now the situation has reversed. #2 Anti-competitive impulses. Nearly every single person who successfully climbs the ladder immediately turns around and pulls the ladder up behind them. To limit the competition. I saw this with the ridiculous continuing education requirements for teachers. I saw this when I served on the hiring board, where the members wrote prerequisites & requirements they themselves couldn't meet. I see this in politics where most every incumbent makes challenges ever more difficult. Etc, etc. #3 Using high requirements as a filter (firewall) in a very high noise to signal environment. The part of hiring I hate most is chewing thru the deluge of resumes that any job posting now gets. I think the buzzword bingo filtering is unfair and doesn't work. Which is why so many people hire thru their social network, routing around the broken HR processes.