An education by other means could be worth as much

Today, let us be bold and venture a question which is almost taboo to our social class: Is the college degree worthwhile?

Many more students are attending college than any time in history. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost 70 percent of recent high school graduates matriculate at some college or another. Politicians and educators hail this as an absolute success, a trend which we should devote our nation’s resources towards accelerating and increasing.

But such an endeavor lacks some basic ingredients of common sense. Believe it or not, the college degree holds little utility for most careers. It is best reserved as a special and costly option for those with particularly keen academic appetites or those in pursuit of careers requiring years of rigorous specialization, like medicine.

For the rest of us, those of average intelligence, average aspirations, and fated to toil in average careers, the college degree is a bit of a waste, to put it mildly. The majority of college graduates will tell you this without hesitation. Their degree has little to no relevance to what they spend their careers doing. Whatever particular knowledge and skills required are generally imparted by the employer himself.

So why make such extraordinary sacrifices, both in time and money, to earn a degree which has little relevance to your future?

Maybe you are an academic purist, here for enlightenment? Splendid. But I have to ask the obvious question. Why do you spend thousands on an education that could be obtained for free at the library? Perhaps you’re not the most sensible intellectual.

For the rest of you, the great majority of you, you’re here for a very simple reason: to improve your career prospects. You’ve been told that there is an unshakeable correlation between a college degree and a successful, comfortable career.

But there is little guarantee, despite all the shrill rhetoric, that a college degree will lead to a certain income bracket, and that guarantee is worth less now than ever. The supply of college graduates has grown by leaps and bounds, but one must ask, do jobs suiting and rewarding these applicants’ credentials just magically appear? Is the creation of college graduates balanced by a similar number of jobs requiring college degrees? An increase in supply does not necessitate a concomitant increase in demand.

But that can’t be true! You’ve been told that you live in a “knowledge-based economy.” We all know that this unclear phrase is meant to imply that a college degree is a good thing, even a requirement for many jobs, and, as if by some dark, secret magic, the need for college graduates is only going to grow. Superficially, this might appear so. After all, more and more jobs insist on a college credential to even be considered for employment.

But this prejudicial practice on the part of employers is not so much an endorsement of the college degree as it is a rebuke against the high school degree. The college degree serves as a screen to potential employers, a stamp or certification if you will. Formerly, high school served as a sufficient screen, and a high school degree was perfectly respectable and capable of opening many doors of opportunity.

But high school is no longer the factory it once was, putting out useful, educated young adults, ready to be incorporated into productive society. Now, it is merely an institution where decent, intelligent children are inputted at the beginning and are released four years later, astonishingly unprepared for life, unnaturally ignorant, offensively insolent and plagued with enough STDs to warrant a mass quarantine.

Employers are perfectly aware of this development, or this decline, rather, and most refuse to grant the high school degree any more respect than a piece of toilet paper. And who can blame them?

But for just about all of us, particularly liberal arts majors, a decent high school education would have been perfectly sufficient to equip us for our future career. We certainly have very little claim to a higher salary because of our college degree. The simple, sad reality is that a college degree has become a necessary credential in our age because the high school degree has lost almost all value.

I hate to bruise that expansive sense of elitism that has been so carefully cultivated along your trajectory to college, but despite what you may have been told, you’re not getting ahead in college. You’re simply making up for the backwardness of your high school education, graciously provided at no cost to you by the ever generous spirit of the taxpayer.

Jeremy Hicks is a 2008 political science graduate, the founder of the Cal Poly Libertarian Club and a Mustang Daily politcal columnist.