Throughout all 12 years of school, American children are constantly reminded about college and how important it is to get accepted into a good university in order to succeed in life. By the time kids graduate high school, it never crosses their mind that there are other paths. Colleges are everything in this day and age.
However, this trend is quite problematic. Young people are finding that it’s no longer enough to simply make it through school – jobs that used to only require a HS diploma now require a bachelor’s degree; jobs that once required a bachelor’s degree now require master’s, and so on. College degrees have lost a lot of their value in the job market over the last 50 years.
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Politicians and advocates have gone on and on about making colleges “more affordable” in order to alleviate the “academic inflation” plaguing young people. These schemes have usually involved student loans and/or grants to pay tuition. Yet despite all this federal money, tuition is skyrocketing, and degrees are not gaining any value in the job market – they’re only becoming less valuable. Why is that?
The unfortunate truth is that “affordable college” is the problem, not the solution. We are sending too many people to college, especially in non-STEM fields. We have so many management graduates and English graduates and economics graduates that the value of their degrees has been diluted. The main thing that gives a degree its value is scarcity. If a lot of people have a college degree, then suddenly that degree does not look nearly as shiny to an employer as it once did. Wages are depressed, and those without degrees do not have much of a chance of getting hired – even if the job does not require a college degree in any way.
The issue is one of supply and demand. When the supply for a good or service (in this case, labor with college degrees) increases faster than the demand for that good/service, or the demand remains constant, the price of that good or service (salary/wages, in this case) tends to fall. In layman’s terms: more graduates, less demand, less $$$.
It was not always this way. Before the 70s/80s, getting into college was a much bigger deal because far fewer students were accepted. At the same time, a high school diploma was usually enough for skilled and semi-skilled jobs such as construction supervisors and insurance clerks. Now, those same jobs are requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher despite having little to nothing to do with what is learned at a university.
That said, there are some solutions. First and foremost, we will have to cut back on the supply of graduates. This can be done by eliminating student loans entirely – if most potential students are priced out, they will seek substitutes such as trade schools. Universities will then have to lower tuition in order to continue receiving students. Sadly, many will have to sacrifice the “prestige” and “experience” of attending college/university. That will be the price of making degrees valuable again. However, it is important to have enough skilled workers. Therefore, the states and the federal government should continue giving grants and scholarships to students majoring in “high-tech” sectors such as Electrical Engineering or Information Systems.
At the same time, we increase funding to trade schools and create tax incentives for the creation of trade apprenticeships, and encourage high school graduates to seek such trades. There is a shortage of skilled trade workers such as welders and electricians, and those trades tend to pay very well. By shifting students toward those trades and only encouraging the best and brightest to shoot for college, we can restore the prestige that college degrees once had and gain a new supply of skilled workers.
