Why College Degrees Supplanted High School Diplomas

Not too long ago, a high school diploma was a ticket to all sorts of decent occupations. Farmers, mechanics, factory workers, graphic artists and secretaries were among the many workers who did not need to go to college, and most of them did not.Nowadays a diploma serves mainly as a ticket to further study, usually involving a side trip to the financial aid office. At many workplaces, you can’t even get an interview for a permanent full-time job without higher education.Some people call it degree inflation. I think it is just a fact of life in the information age.If I were running a car wash, or a housecleaning service, or a restaurant, I would not insist that all my employees have an advanced degree. Those businesses incorporate many jobs that do not require 16 years or more of education. Moreover, those are businesses that generally do not expect their employees to stay for many years or, in most cases, to advance into management. They just need good, diligent workers, and there are many less-educated candidates who fit the bill.But I run a financial and tax planning firm. Nobody would argue that the personnel who advise clients on investment or tax matters involving millions of dollars need only a high school education. Someone might, however, ask why I require a college degree from someone who answers our telephone or sends out our mail.The answer is that we are in the business of growing our business, which is very much the business of growing our people. Just like a farmer who wants to plant her seeds in the most fertile soil possible, we want to start with the best people we can get. The skills someone brings when he or she come to us are not the only skills that person will ever have. The tasks we ask them to do at the beginning of their employment are not the only tasks they will ever perform. We want people who are ready and eager to grow.A college degree is no guarantee of this, of course, nor is the absence of a college degree a sure sign that someone lacks aptitude or ambition. But the search for the most versatile and trainable talent has to start somewhere. In a knowledge-based business, we find that it works best to start with people who have had more education, and who have taken good advantage of it.We are far from alone in this approach. Consider the Atlanta-based law firm of Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh, which was profiled in a recent, much-discussed New York Times article due to its practice of only hiring college graduates. (1) The law firm seems to be a relatively young, still-growing firm that wants to go as far as it can. The law firm also seems to move its people into positions of greater responsibility once they show they can handle it. A clerk at the law firm, for example, became a paralegal.People are more than just the job title they happen to have at the moment. They are whatever their capabilities and opportunities allow them to become.Our work does not require great physical strength or athletic skill or artistic talent. If it did, I would not require college degrees, which do not correlate with those attributes. But we require mental agility, and the best – albeit not the only – place to find that is among people who have used college to train their minds.As Megan McArdle, a columnist for The Daily Beast, wrote in her response to the Times article, “if lots of people have a college degree, it’s easier for employers to require one as a way to winnow down the resume pile – and the signalling effect of not having one is stronger.” (2)I wish our society had more jobs to offer people with less education; unfortunately, our drive to raise the minimum legal wage is likely to have the opposite effect. I wish everyone had access to an affordable, accredited form of higher education, and I hope we will evolve something like this – perhaps combining current high school and college in a six- or seven-year, locally delivered curriculum – as the 21st century moves along.But in today’s economy and today’s society, employers want the best-trained and most readily trainable minds. You should not fault us for seeking them on the college campuses where they tend to congregate.Sources:1) The New York Times, “It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job as a File Clerk”2) The Daily Beast, “Sorry, Kids, No High School Diplomas Need Apply”