Jan moved to my area about 15 years ago to be closer to family but couldn’t find a job as an office manager, though she’d been one for years. She was a bright, articulate, middle-aged woman with glowing references. But times had changed in the decade since she’d last looked for a job. She wasn’t even getting a chance to interview, as one potential employer after another told her: No bachelor’s degree, no interest.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The same has been happening to people across the country seeking middle-management jobs, or those in sales, customer service, and support—jobs that had never required a four-year education before. The work demands hadn’t changed appreciably, but the educational minimums had. Instead of looking for the most skilled and enthusiastic applicants, employers were looking for “pieces of paper”—college degrees. It’s been bad for the economy, bad for diversity in the workplace, and bad for uplifting low-income families and populations. But only now are employers and the public at large realizing that not everyone wants or should need a four-year college education to lead a good life.
What this so-called “degree inflation” means is that smart, skilled, personable people who haven’t followed the conventional college route after high school have been shut out of jobs they could have performed well—which often means that people of color, who are less likely to attend college, are denied an opportunity for social mobility. Meanwhile, people with college degrees are often underemployed, taking on jobs that didn’t make use of their education. A full decade after receiving their bachelor’s degree, 45% of bachelor’s holders are working jobs that don’t require a college grad’s skills.
For decades, teenagers and families heard this refrain: If you want to be someone, you have to get a bachelor’s degree. It’s the only way to make good money. Without it, you’ll be left out of the 21st century global economy. High schools were rated by how many of their graduates went on to four-year schools, and many still are. But for too many college-goers, the results haven’t been great. A third leave college without a degree—but often with plenty of student debt.
Read More: Too Many High School Seniors Are Turning Away from College Altogether
Antonio Santos is one of the more than 100 people I interviewed for my book, Rethinking College: A Guide to Thriving Without a Degree. He attended college to become a video editor but left when he found the instruction too rigid. “I felt like my teachers kept stifling any creative ideas I had,” he told me. When he dropped out, he took with him $70,000 in student debt. Ultimately, he taught himself video editing with the help of mentors he cultivated and now makes six figures doing what he loves.
Meanwhile, a shocking 45% of people with college degrees are underemployed, taking on jobs that don’t need a bachelor’s. The bottom fourth of college grads actually make less money, when adjusted for inflation, than they did two decades ago.
During the Great Recession, employers searching for higher-quality employees turned to college grads, which were in plentiful supply. In essence, they were using a degree as a proxy for smarts—which wasn’t very smart of them. Degree inflation is bad for business, according to a 2017 report by Harvard Business Review. Managers pay more for college grads yet they ultimately find that experienced employees without degrees perform just as well. Meanwhile, college grads, seeing these jobs as beneath them, leave sooner. Rapid staff turnover is expensive and time-consuming.
That doesn’t make a college degree worthless. On average, bachelor’s holders still earn more money than the average high school or community college grad and the number of good new jobs for them is predicted to grow. Usually at least some post-high-school training is needed to earn a good living—with growth in good jobs predicted for this sector as well.
But nearly 30% of people with a two-year associate’s degree actually earn more than the average four-year grad, according to a 2021 Georgetown University report. Just imagine how much income gaps might close if employers opened more good jobs to people with less than a bachelor’s in cases where it really isn’t needed.
That’s how things work in Switzerland. University there is for students who succeed at a very rigorous high-school curriculum and are moving into professions such as doctor, teacher, or engineer. But those interested in the hospitality industry, tech, manufacturing, and other fields typically attend high school half time for the last two years, and work at a paid, part-time apprenticeship in their field of choice. They then might train for an extra year or so before starting careers that in this country would require a bachelor’s or even a master’s degree. One expat in Switzerland told me that her husband, a longtime bank executive, decided to go to university only at the point where he started working with American bankers, because he knew they wouldn’t respect him without a college degree. Hotel managers here generally need a bachelor’s degree; in Switzerland, apprenticeship and some extra training suffices.
The pendulum is starting to swing in the United States, though too slowly. The pandemic created a labor shortage; at the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement made employers get more serious about hiring a diverse workforce.
Prodded by such nonprofits as Opportunity@Work, which lobbies employers to hire based on skills rather than pedigree, more companies are opening previously college-grads-only jobs to people who have built their resumes through other kinds of training. Tech companies have been among the first to drop requirements; in my book there are several programmers who learned via short-term programs or, in one case, a man who self-taught and is now making close to $200,000 a year. The federal government and more than 20 states have removed bachelor’s requirements from public jobs that really don’t need a degree.
In Denver, philanthropist Noel Ginsburg started a white-collar apprenticeship program in tandem with some of the local high schools and businesses. One of the young women in that program had grown up in a household so financially strapped that she relied on free meals at school to eat well; by age 20, she was making six figures and the only debt she had was the mortgage on her new house.
Major companies, especially in the insurance and corporate-support sectors, have started their own apprenticeship programs through community colleges.
There’s legitimate fear that in a skills-over-degrees world, schools will channel Black and Latino students toward non-college careers. Our nation must keep working at making college more affordable and accessible for all students who crave a college education. Forget the “College is a scam” movement. Higher education is worthwhile for many students and should not be reduced in our minds to mere job training. Intellectual pursuit enriches minds and society.
At the same time, college isn’t for everyone, just as it wasn’t for Santos. We can build more financially stable families if states create robust white-collar apprenticeship programs in public high schools and require school counselors to learn about and honor the many paths—not just skilled labor and the military, but the creative fields, entrepreneurialism, tech, management, sales, aviation and even some forms of volunteerism—to a rewarding career and life.
