Despite the ongoing labor shortage, a single sentence on a job posting stands between millions of workers and a career they are qualified for. According to a study led by Harvard Business School, Accenture and Grads of Life, 50% of all jobs are considered “middle skill,” requiring more than a high school education but less than a college degree. Career opportunities that were once open to high school graduates are increasingly closed to those without a college diploma, a process referred to as degree inflation. Every year, new students pursue a college degree that will leave them 10s of thousands of dollars in debt, only to graduate and land a job that did not need their level of education. Meanwhile, those without a degree are locked out of the job market and left in the cold.
Middle skill jobs include, but are not limited to, secretaries, product managers, sales representatives, data analysts and middle management positions. According to the aforementioned study, 67% of these middle skill job postings require applicants to have a bachelor’s degree. However, only 16% of workers in such positions currently have a college degree. This widening degree gap demonstrates that the majority of these middle skill jobs can be done without a college degree. While employers are willing to retain high performing high school graduates, they are less willing to take the chance on new hires. This is evidence of what young people already know to be true — high school graduates are no longer competitive in the job market.
Employers hire college educated applicants to externalize the cost of training future employees. They also argue college educated individuals are more skilled, have better focus and are more qualified than those who are not college educated. However, when it comes to middle skill jobs, there is no noticeable difference between the productivity of those who graduated college and those who did not. In fact, those without a college degree on average have longer retention and are more focused than those with a bachelor’s. Employers may think they are saving time and money when they hire college educated applicants in order to avoid training employees. In reality, the same time and money is spent down the line when these employees don’t stick around.
For an employer, the choice between someone with a high school diploma and a bachelor’s degree may seem like a no brainer. But really, prioritizing college graduates hurts both the employer and society at large. Today’s Americans are more educated than ever. Still, it seems our nation’s leaders never learned how to tackle one of America’s most pressing issues: the student debt crisis. Americans carry the weight of $1.8 trillion in student loan debt. Over 43 million Americans struggle to pay off their student loans, with an average of $39,351 to repay. Politicians dangle the promise of mass debt forgiveness, but despite overwhelming national support for such a measure, I am skeptical as to whether they will ever follow through. Degree inflation is not the cause of the student debt crisis. However, the demand for unnecessary degrees pushes millions of Americans to get a degree they did not need in the first place.
Degree inflation has led to a less satisfied workforce saddled with debt, as well as employers who pass up qualified applicants and struggle to fill positions. It’s cruel to force a generation of workers to spend thousands of dollars and multiple years jumping through hoops only to prove they can. High school graduates struggle to find work despite a plethora of middle skill jobs that should be up for grabs. While it only takes a moment to add “bachelor’s degree required” to a middle skilled job posting, it takes years and up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire one. Employers need to stop demanding workers acquire unnecessary degrees and open their minds to the millions of equally qualified high school graduates.