State of US Household Wealth...

[Mulligan]

I see two problems with the "get more education" prescription.

1) Jobs that really use the extra education also require above average native talent. More education is fine for the 20% or so of the population with the brains to become engineers, accountants, IT gurus, RNs, etc. It may work for another 20% who can figure out some other job that will use their education. I don't know why we would want to send the rest to college.

2) I see some raising-the-bar without raising the reward going on. My former employer has lots of customer service reps working the phones. At one time, they were all HS grads. Over the years, more of them became college grads. Given a choice, my employer will hire a college grad over a HS grad. BUT, wages haven't increased as the number of college grads in the job category went up. It's just a matter of needing more education to get the same job.

I have no doubt this is occurring, especially when any job is scarce during a down economy. But I think the term college and more education are used interchangeably when they really aren't. Two year certification training, vocational 2 year programs all can be used for better paying jobs. Maybe even a better job than a 4 year general studies, or liberal arts, or low demand degree. Public education sometimes pushes the 4 year college track on kids when they might have been better suited for a trades or technicians career.

 

[traineeinvestor]

Unfortunately, a lot of jobs really don't require the educational level they expect their applicants to have, but hey - if you can hire a $10/hr. clerk that has a degree over somebody who doesn’t, that's just the way it is in today's labor market.

As someone who occasionally has to make hiring decisions, I tend to think twice about hiring people who are clearly over qualified for the job - experience has shown that such people get bored more easily, tend to move on sooner (usually to a better job) and are less motivated. Of course, this is a generalisation and generalising about people is not easy but I've seen it enough.