Okay, here is a simple idea that if implemented would, I think, have considerable effect on the country’s current problems. Here we go. I suggest:
Make it illegal for anyone to require job applicants to have a college degree.
Now I know some folks are going to pop up and say “we can’t have high school dropouts performing brain surgery.” Well, hang on.
For some skills, like maybe brain surgery, college is probably the optimal way to acquire that skill. But for other jobs, it would be more than possible to create “proficiency tests,” like the bar exam for lawyers. Chances are, if you can pass that, you can function as a lawyer.
(We had these proficiency tests in the music world. They were called auditions. If you played the best audition, you got the job. In that world, no one asks if you have a degree. We all knew that there were many people with music degrees who were totally unqualified. We also knew that most of your real knowledge came from on the job training, not school.)
Consider the many possible advantages of this approach:
For one thing, people who want to go into a given line of work would not have to spend 4-6 of the most physically energetic years of their lives doing classroom work. And . . . they could use the capital normally spent on tuition to start their own business. Small businesses, not college degrees, drive employment numbers. Thus, capital currently spent on taking classes would be freed up for business development.
As it stands, many people spend enormous sums on college tuition not because they really need the course work to do their jobs, but because they feel they need the “official certification” in order to advance professionally. This is very much like paying union dues or a guild membership, and is not producing real value, only the illusion of it.
Also if fewer people were cramming in to colleges to “get the degree” and instead were free to pursue alternative more efficient channels of learning professional skills, the demand for official college training, and therefore cost, would go down. As it is, colleges command a monopoly over entry into the middle class, and they charge what the market will bear.
Also, if other more efficient “non degree” training were made available, the cost we taxpayers bear for college loans might decrease. Education is a massive part of cost of government and it is time to consider changes to the system we are supporting rather than just ways to go on supporting what exists.
By the by, for some enterprising lawyer out there, one could make a convincing argument that requiring degrees for employment constitutes a form of poll tax discrimination/ violation of the 14th amendment, and if the case was made, it would be the mother of all class action suits.
© Justin Locke
