For many students, acquiring a diploma is not only a measure of scholastic success but also an important step toward employment and economic stability. Yet, as higher education increases its pace, the expectation that achievement of a diploma will automatically lead to a job grows more and more out of touch with reality. With easier access to universities, degrees become the bare minimum as the job market becomes selective.
Therefore, the assumption that a diploma is a passport to work is an unrealistic one. Upon graduation, students face a job market that values a degree only as an initial step or a sorting device, not as evidence of the attainment of certain standards. This gap between qualifications for study and job availability causes graduates to be widely disillusioned, raising fundamental issues around the purposes and promises of higher education.
In a time of unprecedented access to information, the value of a degree is experiencing a fundamental reworking. Previously considered a scarce badge of honor that opened the gate of access, it is increasingly becoming a dubious stepping stone for a highly competitive job market. But the challenge is not just economic; it is cultural as well. Students are expected not only to graduate as competent professionals but as personal brands, ideological performers, and narrative tellers. This increased expectation—alongside declining faith in the integrity of higher education—leads many to wonder whether the educational establishment is serving their purposes, or asking for more effort for fewer benefits.
For the higher education sector to uphold its reputation, it will need to redefine its purposes. This involves imposing real expectations, emphasizing actual competence rather than signal, and redefining the difference between access and actual achievement. Students need to face the challenge of assessing value outside of usual credentialing, while higher education institutions need to ensure that a degree indicates tangible achievement. Renewal of higher education does not rest with degrees being awarded in greater numbers, but with increased realism and transparency.
This is the economic conundrum for education industry: the marginal utility of the degrees. The marginal utility of the degrees has been falling since the ‘70s because it is so easy to get the degrees. You may have noticed that some of the degrees students earn are absolutely useless and sometimes don’t even get them jobs as baristas. Some jobs, nowadays, require even a Masters degree to even be considered and justly, those MBAs are becoming more and more useless as time goes on because it is not difficult to get one.
I think that the problem will cure itself because more people are becoming aware of the bullshit the counselors are giving young people about the necessity of getting a college degree to get a job. From the evidence that I see, young men have already gotten the message loud and clear, they are attending college less and less, but the women seem to not to be able to hear the message, at all. Most of the screeching about not getting the most desirable jobs seems to be coming from them. When and how do you think that this situation will be correcting itself? Do you think the court academics will be able to advocate shrinking the colleges? Stay tuned, we are about to find out.