American employers are more and more seeking to hire employees with bachelor’s degrees. This is true even for jobs where, strictly speaking, those degrees aren’t necessary to do the job properly.
According to a piece by Shereen Marisol Meraji at Marketplace:
"In the past five years, there’s been a 175 percent jump in the number of online job ads looking for dental lab technicians with a bachelor’s degree. You want to buy and sell farm equipment? More ads want college grads for those jobs, too. How about cargo and freight agents? Yep, same thing there."
What does this mean? Well, it’s hard to say.
If employers are looking for people with bachelor’s degrees, well, that’s what they want to hire and we need simply to acknowledge that reality. Back in July, 2009 President Barack Obama set a goal that the United States be the country with the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.
What he means by college graduates is actually here rather vague, perhaps deliberately so, but the goal is set. The need for this increase in the number of college graduates is based on several reports about the number of new jobs in America that will require college degrees.
If we’re going to create public policy based on this, and spend extensive federal (and personal) money to make this happen, it’s worth considering what this is really about. Does someone need a bachelor’s degree to be a better dental hygienist? Does it make America’s teeth healthier if people have bachelor’s degrees? Does it save lives? Is it worth $10,000 worth of student loans?
Read the rest of the article from Washington Monthly here.
