Degree Inflation: College Degrees are Losing Value

It’s not just your imagination: the standards in the job market are getting higher and higher. But why?

Well, first off, the world is a volatile place. Technology is advancing at an alarming rate, enough that it has begun to surpass human skills. And, of course, robots don’t have to be paid, giving them a significant advantage over sentient lifeforms searching through the job market.

But what does this mean? Aside from the slowly creeping realization that humanity is losing jobs to mechanical counterparts, this also means the number of people looking for jobs is now larger than the number of jobs available. In this case, companies want the best they can get of their many applicants. Therefore, bachelor degrees are, as quoted here, the “minimum ticket to get into the door of any job.” Bare minimum they may be, they do not actually guarantee a job or a higher pay.

This has three effects:

1. The value of a high school degree drops significantly.
2. The value of a four-year degree drops notably.
3. The master's degree is now the expected value of education a company wants.

This also means that workers who attend and pay for an additional two years of college would still get the same job a bachelor’s degree used to satisfy.

So what does this mean for the future of colleges, and its theoretical freshman classes?

COLLEGE:

At this rate, students can make one of two decisions: one, pay up for a masters degree, spend two more years at college, and hope to obtain a fine-paying job. This seems to be the common answer since college admission rates have increased over 200% since 1965.

Alternatively, students can claim college is overrated, overpriced, and underwhelming in what it returns vs. what it costs, and can elect not to attend. There are multitudes of jobs that do not require a degree, in fact, if this is the route the person chooses to take.

The latter option is giving up, true, but the first option is a gamble with heavy consequences if fortune doesn’t happen to favor you. It’s important to mention that graduates in the USA owe a collective $1.4 trillion in student loan debt. To say college requires funding is a severe understatement. For many, it can be a lose-lose situation, a choice between two evils (or, two economically grim futures.)

But beyond this, its anyone’s guess. How much further will technology creep into human jobs, not as a tool but as a replacement? How low or high will college applications go, now that a 6-year master’s degree has become a highly pricey necessity (with no guaranteed win?) Statistics are rising and sinking, and its anyone’s move as to the next step. Only time will tell where it leads us.