Posted on 09/09/2014 8:51:56 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
You’ve heard of grade inflation? Welcome to the world of degree inflation.
A new report finds that employers are increasingly requiring a bachelor’s degree for positions that didn’t used to require baccalaureate education. A college degree, in other words, is becoming the new high school diploma: the minimum credential required to get even the most basic, entry-level job.
The report is from Burning Glass, a labor market analytics company that mines millions of online job postings. The company found that a wide range of jobs — in management, administration, sales and other fields — are undergoing “upcredentialing,” or degree inflation. As examples, just 25 percent of people employed as insurance clerks have a BA, but twice that percentage of insurance-clerk job ads require one. Among executive secretaries and executive assistants, 19 percent of job-holders have degrees, but 65 percent of job postings mandate them.
What’s going on?
The most benevolent explanation is that technology has changed the nature and responsibilities of many jobs....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I never bothered to go to college although I obtained my advanced education in the Computer Science field from the U.S. Army and then from On the Job Training once I left the military.
I've had to work with college graduates who supposedly learned much more than I ever did with their degree, and not one of them has been useful until I taught them what they really needed to know to excel in this field.
Those who went to a technical school were much more useful from the start, but even they needed guidance to become useful.
A. : "Because so many that have them are unemployed."
(Sort of like Mt. Everest -- because it's there.)
Before WW2 a fourth grade education was the equivalent of a high school diploma, at least for the military. By the end of the was things were so sophisticated that a higher level was needed.
“It used to be that a HS graduate could read, write effectively and think at least somewhat critically.”
I will gladly put my mom who by today’s standards grew up in “extreme extreme poverty”, who only went to high school, against 90% of today’s college graduates for reading, writing, and critical thinking abilities. Heck, she got bored one day 15 years ago, and not only taught herself how to use computers from absolute scratch having never touched one, but also became a pretty damn good web site developer.
“Those who went to a technical school were much more useful from the start, but even they needed guidance to become useful.”
Everybody needs real world experience to become useful. Nothing worse than engineers right out of college (and yes I once was one). University is great to learn theory, but it takes experience to learn the difference between theory and reality. Trade schools do not have as much problem with this because their education is based more in practical applications, so their graduates at least have a greater sense of the difference between theory and reality. You want to see the worst of this, give old scientists who have worked in research their entire lives authority over the construction of a manufacturing facility based on one of their pet projects. They cannot comprehend the fact that large scale manufacturing facilities, no matter how awesome, and clever, the automation, cannot reproduce lab conditions to 5 orders of precision like they can in controlled lab conditions, and the equipment purchased to measure such things, cannot give 5 decimal places of precision either. Lot’s of amusing arm flailing...but what always happens once the plant gets running, is the operators, and the foremen (the uneducated), eventually figure out how to massage the large systems to run, and coerce the big machines to produce the good quality product.
Which makes 22 the new 18. Educationally speaking, of course.
I was talking to some college science faculty, including some physics people. They had no concept of geometry. They had no concept of systems of equations. They didn’t even seem to have the concept of there being a correct answer. I think they were afraid that any difficult ideas might discriminate the more capable students from the less capable students. That could lose them their jobs.
Absolutely, and there is a reason for that. Starting in the early 70s all the conservative Professors from the WW2 era started retiring and were replaced by the radicals from the 60s, basically hippies. I remember it clear-as-day. I went to college in the 70s and one thing that really stands out in my mind is we had this WW2 era Professor retire, he came to work everyday in a suit and tie and who replaced him? This kid wearing a tie-dye shirt. with a beard and sandals and one of the first classes he held right away he started bashing Nixon. When class was over, I went down to administration and transferred out. That’s exactly why a college education isn’t worth dick today, this crap has been going on since the early 70s. Far left radicals took over - they indoctrinated the kids, those kids went on to become Professors and indoctrinate their students so what you got today is all these leftists in Politics, positions of authority, who have absolutely no idea about anything other than absolute leftist nonsense, and then we wonder why things are going to hell in a handbasket. Look at Obama - Primo example. This is a guy who is a Professor of constitutional law who doesn’t know the first thing about the constitution, taught in Harvard- one the colleges worst hit by the leftist education holocaust and look at the result: The country is completely screwed up because all he does is promote leftist ideology.
Company hr first knows nothing about most of the positions they need.to fill .. really the just know a few buzz words to look for on the resume.
Then the want to play safe .. it safe to hire the person with the degree because if that person does not work out they can say.."well they looked qualified on paper".. it low risk name brand buying
Then the fact the HR person will most likely have a garbage degree of some kind. the expect you to have one too..
The problem I have with college degrees is the entrance standard. It used to be that you made good grades, that was the criteria. Now my kids have to also accrue all this worthless community service, well rounded bullcrap. One has nothing to do with the other. You are academically college material or you are not. Being an average student or a moron put loads of working at a soup kitchen should not get you into college.
“The college degree has become the new high school degree”
can I change the headline Vet?
“The college degree has become the way to ensure all of our kids accept social justice and understand white privilege along with a healthy does of embracing LGBT choice.”
ALL except a tiny percent of Colleges/Universities worship the above New Standards.
Many here on FR talk about how dangerous it is sending our kids to Govt Schools. And the difference in “Higher” Education is????????
“That’s exactly why a college education isn’t worth dick today”
technically (and morally) you are right.
But if you want a job in Corp America today, you have to go through the University’s indoctrination and/or reeducation. And you know what that means.
I tell you, our local paper had this story, plus an editorial about ‘climate change’ and national security, plus a story about climate change.
It was all propaganda, all the time this AM.
Not a SHRED of science in it in any of the pieces, and moreover, provably false information they are trying to pass off as fact.
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