This past summer, I had to fly back into the US and ended up at a car rental shop at a small airport in the south. It was late at night, and only one person at the counter....the manager. Things went quick and a light chat occurred. She was early twenties and quick to punch in all the data. The conversation drifted around to the local university, and she admitted she was a recent graduate. I didn’t say much over this....but it’s odd to me....a college graduate now to manage some car rental shop at the airport?
Back in the early 90’s...it would have been a fifty-year old person, with a high school diploma....maybe one year of some business college or community college.
We’ve now elevated marginal jobs with no real requirements to the point of requiring a four-year degree person to manage. I’m not really buying into this....I think it’s a major waste of education. The problem is...we are merely pumping these people out and not asking ourselves what exactly they will do later in life.
It’s like the environmental science idiots. We probably maxed out in the mid-80’s with enough graduates to what real jobs existed, so we invented more fake environmental jobs for them.
The IT crowd? Same thing....we now have four-year IT graduates doing work that a guy with one year of community college/certificate ought to be doing.
We have PhD folks who are hired to fill a roll with gov’t contract, but honestly....they mostly sit there and make one remarkable comment per week to really fill their job/position.
Yeah, something is broke. But at least we haven’t gotten around to making the burger-kid’s job at Burger King a job that requires two years of college. At least, not yet.
“The problem is...we are merely pumping these people out and not asking ourselves what exactly they will do later in life.”
Absolutely true, and if the hierarchy of our major universities truly cared about this they would change a lot of things. Unfortunately, they don’t, and they won’t.