But does handing out degrees in BS really do anything to help women? It's not like a college degree really means anything once you enter the workforce - it's far less valuable than an equivalent amount of work experience.
I agree with you. While my college studies helped ME, it was the "do the job and do it well" that got brought the money in and enhanced my skills. No one has ever asked for my college records....They looked at my work and talent.
Working with engineers I have found that big name schools give free tuition to women to try to make more women engineers. A female co-worker of mine went to MIT full time free to get her masters when my male coworkers and I had to do it at night (after work) part time so our company would pay for it. Another coworker is leaving to go back and get her PHD for free. Any chance I can get a free degree in public health?? No way. Giving out these free degrees drives the tuition up so there is no way to pay for it ourselves.
Perhaps in your field it is like that, but in some fields, even in some techical fields, not having that "BS" degree hinders your promotion to higher levels, and certainly to many management positions. (I am using "BS" here in the sense you meant it (Barbra Streisand), not to refer to undergraduate degrees in science). You may wish it were not so, but that is the way it is.
The idea that college students simply drink and party and learn how to BS the whole time that they in college is a gross exaggeration for most, and completely untrue for a substantial number. (You didn't say anything about this, but this stereotype is pretty widely entertained, so it is worth mentioning.) While college is pretty relaxed for some people, the world of work is pretty relaxed for some people, too. Should we say that working people without college degrees laze around waiting for a few customers to come in for service, just because a few people have jobs where little or nothing happens for long stretches of the day? No. It is unfair to the people who don't have these kinds of jobs, and perhaps even to the people with these jobs, because they may have bursts of intense demands being made on them. (An example is car salesmen who work long hours, but can have long lulls in business.)
Furthermore, there are real skills that people learn in college, even in liberals arts programs. We like to make fun of the idea of writing essays that sometimes reach BS conclusions, but many liberal arts majors learn analytical skills and writing skills that come in very handy in the "real world."
If education were simply BS, then the armed forces would not push their people to get more education. Officers would come exclusively from the ranks of experienced non-commissioned officers, and there would be no requirement for any education beyond high school. Only specialized training would be needed.
No. Even the very practical military chooses to have as officers many people who have attended college, including quite a lot who only studied enough "hard sciences" to stay in the ROTC program. The military has found college education useful and valuable. They even push their people with college educations to get graduate degrees, and many of these degrees are not in hard sciences, but rather in liberal arts subjects with lots of subjectivity and potential for BS.
Perhaps they are simply foolish, and there is no value in anything other than experience and specialized training. All of these requirements for college degrees could simply be jobs programs for useless eaters, but I don't think so.