In this day and age, an increasing amount of employers are requiring a higher level of education in order to hire people. Having a degree allows adults to have multiple choices of when, where, and how they work. Because of this, college graduates have new and improved employment opportunities. In a recent study of young americans, 58% of college graduates and people with some college or associate's degree expressed being "very satisfied" with their jobs, compared to only 50% of high school graduates and a drastic 40% of people without a high school diploma. For many people, working at a job you are fond of is crucial for living a quality life. Having a degree aids in increasing the amount of choices when selecting a career path you will enjoy. Because of this, college graduates have lower poverty rates than ever before. The 2008 poverty rate for bachelor's degree holders was 4%,
Many young people think that obtaining a college degree is the best way—perhaps the only way—to get a good job anymore. So is it still possible to get a good job without one? According to Professor Blanche D. Blank, attaining a college degree doesn’t always guarantee success. In his published article “Degrees: Who Needs Them?”, he argues that American college is not teaching young adults the actual skills they need for the workforce, instead the education system is becoming a jumble of generalized credits that amount to a degree. College is becoming a mold for one to fit in the technological culture, rather than to release one to actively engage in the pursuit of knowledge. Blank begins building his credibility with personal experiences and
A college degree is a valuable asset that could ultimately lead to a productive life in society due to the received education, but people without a college degree do turn out more than adequate in regards to societal success. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the forecasted 30 fastest growing jobs between 2010 and 2020, five do not require a high school diploma, nine require a high school diploma, four require an associate 's degree, six require a bachelor 's degree, and six require graduate degrees to get the jobs (College). In an article called “College Education” by ProCon.org,
Even with the fact stated earlier that about how many college graduates work in fields that don’t require a degree, more and more jobs are requiring a college degree even to the associates degree level. Though they can argue how the number of jobs requiring a college degree fell by 1.75 million, the number of jobs that require a high school diploma fell 5.56 million. Thus proving that having a college degree could provide more job security compared to their counterparts who don’t. Along with that is how many
Colleges are struggling to adapt to society’s changing requirements for adults entering the work force. John Fawell laments this change and states that humans intrinsically desire to learn more for the purpose of knowing more. However, the focus has shifted away from this and has become more career-oriented. This shift is not well supported in the current college system. The education system is aware of this change and some have modified their programs, but they are too narrow and a broad college education is lost. Even though it has become almost mandatory in society, a college degree does not prepare students for a real-world work environment and is not necessary for most occupations. Many, such as lawyers or doctors, do require further education and a system that instructs them while also training the majority of the workforce would be an improvement.
the real world. Finding a career after earning a college degree is challenging, and “it’s true that 2017 graduates are having a hard time finding jobs.”.(Callahan, paragraph 9) This came to light during a presidential debate, when a college student asked “How can you make it possible for me to be absolutely sure I can get a job with my degree?”, this kind of instability shows that college isn’t necessary for any kind of success.
Because having a degree has become so common, employers now use it as a way to eliminate people who would not make good candidates for employment—even if a degree isn’t a totally accurate determinant of one’s talent or work skills. The mass availability of college education may actually “debase its intrinsic value” (Bankston, p. 338).
The degree is seen as a free (to the employer) screening tool to filter through the applicants. The employer sees the degree as a representation of the individual’s ability to learn as well as a level of perseverance desired in employees. Considering the social and economic pressures in today’s world, all individuals with the ability to attend college and achieve a degree should do so in order to better prepare themselves for a competitive job market.
One thing a college degree provides is a valuable job, right? Or maybe not. Due to the introduction of people analytics— a method of hiring which replaces human intuition and bias with computerized tests and database searches— employers are now able to look past someones origin of education. Employers are now realizing that a college degree is just a piece of paper and does not fully represent a persons intelligence or capabilities. If this is not convincing enough, take a look at some of the most successful people in the world; for example, Bill Gates, one of the wealthiest people in the world and a college dropout. The new people analytics method being applied in the workforce is happening thanks to programs like Knack, which give statistical analysis based off of several factors including, how a person solves problems and the sequence of their actions. In Don Peck’s article, “They’re Watching You at Work,” Peck argues, without
To start his argument, Murray points out that the work force is encouraging people to go to college. He even goes so far as to say “employers do not even interview applicants who do not hold a BA” (Murray 345). Some even say that a bachelor’s degree is “the credential for success in the world of work” (Wonacott n.p.). Murray believes that as a result of employers requiring a BA, students think of the degree as an “admission ticket” to a good job (Murray 346). Because of the increase in college graduates and the lack of growth in jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree “the job market will be less favorable to college
It seems in the society we live in today, having a college degree is a necessity. Years ago it was the norm for people to just go right into a full time job after high school, if they even finished high school; they did this to support their families. In today’s society a person has a difficult time getting a decent job without a college degree. During an adults working life, bachelor degree graduates will earn about $2.1 million and a high school graduate can expect to earn an average of $1.2 million (Day and Newburger, 2002). This is quite a difference and it puts a college education in
Supporters of getting a college degree often point to the statistics that college graduates earn more than their high school educated peers over a lifetime. Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau reports that since 1977, “Adults with bachelor's degrees in the late 1970s earned 55 percent more than adults who had not advanced beyond high school. That gap grew to 75 percent by 1990 -- and is now at 85 percent.” A gap of an 85% pay difference is a huge figure and a clear reason why college is a great option for some people. But there are problems with that figure because when the number of college graduates who are either unemployed or underemployed is taken into account it changes the value of the statistic. In an article by Businessweek’s Richard Vedder we get statistics to counter that argument. He tells of how the number of new college graduates far exceeds job growth in technical, managerial, and professional jobs where graduates traditionally have searched for employment. As a consequence, we have underemployed college graduates doing jobs historically performed by those with just a highschool education. He says we have “more than 100,000 janitors with
In an article titled “Employers Say College Graduates Lack Job Skills,” author Lacey Johnson makes it clear that many colleges are not going to adequately prepare me for a career. In America, it seems as if the only way to be successful is to go to college and get a degree, but this article showed me that even that may not be enough. If a college is not going to prepare me with the necessary job skills, and provide me a good foundation to be hired on, it seems as if there is no point in going at all. On the other hand, if I opt out of college, it will make it difficult to get a well-paying and professional job.
The main issue in this article is that the education system is failing to deliver valuable education while promoting inequality among the student who can and can’t afford an education. One of the reasons for the poor quality of education is that students are not recognizing the importance of knowledge. According to the article “time-use studies show that the time students spend in class or studying has dropped from 40 hours a week in the 1920s to the 1960s to 27 hours a week now.” (source) This means that students are taking it easier in their educational system. Many employers tend to not be interested in grades. They’re main concern is if you have a degree to back up a pretentious education. With this easy access to jobs, graduates are
We once again questioned if this could be contradicted, and found that one could point out that, just because you have a college degree it doesn’t mean you are qualified and automatically get the job. Sometimes they don’t assist you but make it more challenging. Leading to the newly formulated statement, “Degrees may assist you in getting a higher paying job.” Unfortunately, this lead to another contradiction, in which, some companies specifically don’t higher college graduates because they are too qualified for the job. Finally, we can to a conclusion, with an irrefutable statement, “In applying for a specific job, a college degree could be an advantage.” We were not able to refute this statement, because it is true that college degrees can significantly help one who is apply for specific jobs, but can hurt with other jobs, that might deem a person over