A study by the Department of Education in 2008 found that 5% of recent ‘college graduates’ are illiterate, and another 20% read at the 5th-grade level.
So the minimum-wage workers with bachelor’s degrees may just be doing the best they can with the skills they’ve got...
Another very interesting study found that the literacy (including quantitative literacy) of students with Associates’ degrees was far higher than the literacy of students with only a high-school diploma, and much less different from the literacy of those with Bachelor’s degrees. And yet I’ve seen income reports showing that those with Associates’ degrees hardly should have bothered getting an associate’s degree.
How to make meaning from these studies? HR departments are treating AS/AA holders as if they barely graduated high school, but SHOULD be tapping them for fairly high-functioning work. Why the discrimination? There’s been a GLUT of BS/BA workers, not a shortage. When you have a BS/BA student and an AS/AA student both applying for the same job, why take the AS/AA student? And of course, 4-year colleges are much more geared towards political indoctrination than 2-year colleges which really aim to provide the most skills in the least amount courses possible.