The following comments re the chart above are from Scenarios and Strategy:
Clearly, from an individual’s point-of-view, it’s still smarter to get more education than less. But the perturbations of past periods remind us that the gearing between between academic degrees and financial success isn’t always perfectly tight… Indeed, those with sharply-defined professional credentials in fields– e.g, finance– that are unlikely even in the intermediate term (if ever) to recover their bubble-fueled growth rates, may find their advanced degrees at best unhelpful; at worst, downright prejudicial...More at the link. I would add one other thought. It might not be the college degree per se that allows one to retain a job or find a new one during a downturn. It might be, rather, that people who have the motivation, intelligence, and economic resources that allow them to achieve a college degree are the ones who will adapt and succeed.
All of which underlines for your correspondent the extraordinary value of a liberal arts education. When one is faced with a “working adulthood” that is one transitional challenge after another, no skill is more valuable than the capacity to adapt. And no capability is more central to that adaptation than the ability effectively and efficiently to learn.
This is precisely what, at its core, a liberal arts education is about: learning to learn...
Another equally likely explanation is that getting a Bachelor's (if one can afford it) is simply good strategy in an era when employers screening huge numbers of job applications will happily use the simplest possible criteria to narrow the field.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me that success in the majority of jobs would probably be improved just as much by four years of real-world experience as by four years of college. But somebody reviewing three hundred resumes has just made their job a lot faster by tossing out all of them that don't list a Bachelor's degree.
"It might be, rather, that people who have the motivation, intelligence, and economic resources that allow them to achieve a college degree are the ones who will adapt and succeed."
ReplyDeleteoh, slam!
As a college drop-out, I may be overreacting to what might be a neutral statement but OW.
And it could equally well be that those who get college educations by and large have the social connections and family backing that make it easier to both get an education and get and hold down jobs.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that most "explanations" are self-congratulatory and simplistic.
Bachelor's are basically the new high school degree nowadays. Is there a further breakdown for people with just a Bachelor's and people with a second degree?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the population number of this grouping? It seems to me that less people would be able to get a higher level education so they would be more likely to get a job than a large group with lower level education.
ReplyDelete