The ever-increasing demand for college degrees led the Oregon State Board of Higher Education officials to raise the University’s “automatic admissions” standard from a high school GPA of 3.25 to 3.4. And while current students can take some solace in the fact that this increase may improve the prestige of their degree, the time has come to ask whether the state legislature and employers fully realize the crunch in which they’re putting the higher education system.
As the job market becomes more competitive, more and more employers demand of their prospects a college education, even if the position they’re hiring for hardly requires it. A great number of jobs require a specific, technically trained skill set – the kind most typically taught at a technical college or trade school. Even though a complete education in the necessary skills to fill some of these jobs can be found at these cheaper two-year programs, employers are often weeding out prospects based on whether they have a four-year degree. As a result, applicants are being asked to get a college education, even though their job by all realistic standards will not require it. Subsequently, college graduates are being asked to enter into trade programs at technical schools to obtain the skills they actually need to be hired.
It seems as if, under this more competitive regime, college is increasingly becoming a minimum prerequisite to being a member of the family-wage workforce, as was once the case with just a high school diploma. This is despite the fact that many of the jobs offered do not ask for the skills held by a college graduate, and many of the skills for which they ask aren’t offered at four-year university programs. It’s a kind of job-education mismatch that does little more than slow down the entry of qualified applicants into the workforce while they head off to get a college degree and saddle them with student loan debts to pay for an education they don’t realistically need.
This problem suggests only two economically viable options for the society facing it. Either we must admit to ourselves that a college education is something every citizen should have to navigate the modern world, and thus provide the necessary funding to supply one to everyone, or employers should dial down their expectations to the levels actually required by their job descriptions.
It’s understandable that many employers, when looking at two otherwise-equal applicants, might logically choose the bachelor’s degree-holding applicant over one with a technical degree from a two-year program. But this happens more and more, even when the job doesn’t require a four-year degree, and so begins a workforce “race to the top,” forcing applicants to get college degrees they may not need just to get hired. Further, the increased demand for college degrees creates a social environment that might discourage entry into two-year technical programs, even if they are better at actually preparing students for the jobs later demanded of them. It’s no help to an employer if an applicant has mastered the liberal arts and sciences but needs two more years of schooling to learn how to install plumbing or operate a combine.
As a society, perhaps there is another route to take. Perhaps everyone, craftsman to architect, lab technician to neurosurgeon, should be taught to debate the concept of externalities and solve organic chemistry problems. A college education might be a worthwhile thing to have, even if it won’t necessarily come up in our day jobs.
If this is the case, we should strive for lower tuition and improved college capacities, rather than ratcheting up the debt burden for an entire generation of the workforce. Ideally, having a college-educated population would pay off in increased productivity and innovation in the overall economy, justifying or at least cancelling out the increased tax cost of realizing it.
If we’re going to solve the problem of increasing student debts and demands on already-cash-strapped higher education, we must either commit to equipping more than one-third of the population with degrees, or start hiring the other two-third.
[email protected]