Deinonychus antirrhopus

Arguably, as is my recent job-seeking experience, college degrees mean less than they ever have before. Almost everyone in the market has one, and the value has thusly been debased. It doesn't matter that my degree is in economics as opposed to, say, English literature, those kids all want entry-level jobs too. Gee...higher supply lowers the value, whoda thunkit!

ISTR that in Friday, Heinlein mentioned a future in which the Beautiful People's Republic of California (or whatever he called it) had passed a law that every citizen de jure had a baccalaureate degree.

Perhaps Congress could do the same. It would certainly be cheaper.

Broad based IQ testing is forbidden, so degrees are signals. If everyone had a degree, what would be their use? While I certainly support the concept of an informed electorate, someone's going to have to convince me that unleasing millions of graduates from women's studies, ethnic studies, and Star Trek analysis classes will actually increase the number of informed electorate. The scheme is simply a waste of human capital.

I'm not sure what all the belly aching is about. Why I should care that college degrees are declining in value? Why should we artificially restrict the supply? There's a lot of jobs where a college degree isn't useful (or perhaps no more than an abbreviated two year degree). And using a college degree solely as a four year signalling event is grossly wasteful.

Instead, college should be considered primarily a human capital building effort with some utility as a signal of employment fitness. Just as would any other significant effort by a potential employee to increase their value to the employer.

Further, we should keep in mind that even very incompetent people can improve with a relatively minor application of education or training. For example, one or two community college courses on writing and communication can help that coworker who writes illegible email messages and can't communicate coherently.

Karl--

The objection, largely, that I have is a more general one where college degrees become mandatory through there ubiquity, even for jobs where they are of no practical use. It's all well and good to say that it's about personal growth, but for the person who would be very capable at a job but isn't oriented towards formal education it's a real minus.

Unsurprising that those who are good at formal education want to increase its importance and impose it on all.

Everyone with a college degree? Give me a break. The vast majority of people in Democrat controlled urban schools CAN'T EVEN READ. Maybe we should start there, fixing these schools and making sure that everyone can read?

No, couldn't so that. That would involve targeting Democrat controlled teacher unions like they were the Baathist party. Of course, with all that the teachers unions do to keep the underclass the underclass, we SHOULD send in the Marines to frag their asses.

Who is more evil, Sadaam Hussein or the NEA?

I think it'd be swell if everyone earned a college degree, but I'm not sure what the end result of that might be. For sure, college overcrowding would become a problem very quickly.

I say give 'em free college--hell, pay 'em to go--but require that they study math, hard science, or engineering.

No takers? Oh, well...

Why bother with giving everyone degrees? Just let everyone in the corporation, from janitor to CEO, rotate positions, pay, and perqs every couple of weeks or so.

Slart nailed it. It would be swell if everyone earned a college degree. For that matter, it would be swell if everyone was born looking like Harrison Ford, except of course those born looking like Deborah Winger.

Given the wealth of college opportunity in this country, the only reason anyone does not get a degree is either because they just aren't up to college (not necessarily their own fault; they might be stuck in a sorry inner-city excuse for a high school) or because they make the choice that college isn't worth it to them. That choice might even be a rational one.

I don't want to see standards dumbed down to where anyone can carry a sheepskin. It deflates the value of mine. Even more serious is the fact that dumb colleges admit students from rotten high schools, which removes the incentives to actually teach something to students in high school.

Truth is, to be sure, an absolute notion, in the following sense: 'true for me but not for you' and 'true in my culture but not in yours' are weird, pointless locutions. So is 'true then but not now.' by online poker