I agree with you that there are a lot of people who are extremely valuable to an economy despite not having a degree. However I would suggest that a degree is s

I agree with you that there are a lot of people who are extremely valuable to an economy despite not having a degree. However I would suggest that a degree is still a good bar to have in place. Why is a degree any less of an arbitrary requirement than requiring extensive real-world experience (thus restricting opportunities available to many recent graduates)? I think it's simply naive and foolish to exclude candidates based entirely on secondary indicators of their skills. First-pass filtering is easy enough based on primary indicators. Moreover, due to the rapid increase of college attendance post WWII (starting with the introduction of the GI bill), college degrees are no longer a rarity -- without further context, they are not really a suitable secondary indicator of much of anything. Now you have to get a phd to stand out from the crowd.