“Four in Ten College Grads Don’t Need a Degree for Their Work”

Last updated on: September 11, 2013 at 12:29 pm by Jane the Actuary

“Four in Ten College Grads Don’t Need a Degree for Their Work” 2013-09-11T12:29:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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That’s the headline on a Via Meadia post about a Gallup survey (unlinked in the article) in which “four in ten college grads agreed that they don’t need a college degree for the work they do.”

The author (is it always WR Mead, or does he have minions to write? — this blog is awfully prolific) suggests that the solution lies in increasing “vocational” type training programs, so that not every career path requires a degree as preparation. But let’s step back and think about the types of college grads doing non-college-requiring work:

1) individuals who studied, intending to work in a field requiring a college degree, but ended up following a different career path. This group includes everyone from the former liberal arts major who discovered he likes working with his hands, to woman who stayed at home with the kids and takes a low-wage flexible-hour job upon returning to the workforce. (That’s my friend Cheryl, who works as a quilter-by-commission and a quilting instructor, even though her degree is in German Literature.)

To a certain degree, this is a fairly loose category. What of an entrepreneur who leaves his job to start a food truck business? Does this work “require a college degree” insofar as various intangible skills may help with running the business, or not?

2) Individuals who, due to the poor jobs market, can’t get work in their chosen field. What of the Starbucks barista or waitress or any number of “would you like fries with that?” jobs? Not sure what the right answer is with respect to people in this category but this is a broader issue, perhaps, of mismatch and people preparing for, and aiming at careers with few job openings rather than looking at high-demand fields.

3) Individuals working in jobs which, objectively, based on the work required, don’t actually require a college degree, but, again, due to the tight labor market, employers have begun raising their expectations. This encompasses everything from secretaries/administrative assistants to store managers. Again, this isn’t rectified by fixing the higher education system (there are plenty of secretarial schools, and I imagine community colleges offer relevant courses of study for a restaurant manager position), but it’s due to the nature of the job market. If employers had a hard time finding employees, rather than the other way around, they’d consider candidates without degrees — and I don’t think the Duke Power anti-aptitude ruling is an insurmountable barrier.

Actually, I take that back — there are jobs for which there ought to be a middle ground; something more than community college but less than a traditional four-year degree. And there are probably other lines of work in which there isn’t a 2-year program available. Reader(s), any thoughts?

4) Individuals working at jobs where a college degree or other certification has been made a formal requirement by a government entity. This ought to be an easy fix — but entrenched interests have established these requirements and have a vested interest in keeping them.

So there’s a lot more going on than “too many people are going to college” and we should slip into facile answers to a complex issue.

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