Why are college degrees less valuable?

The more people you let through any conduit to success, the less each will be worth.

When women started working, doubling the work force, salaries effectively declined with the value of currency.

Now that we're handing just about anyone a college degree, having a college degree isn't a big deal anymore -- and so it doesn't translate to salary.


There is no magic point at which a genuine college-level education becomes an option, but anything below an IQ of 110 is problematic. If you want to do well, you should have an IQ of 115 or higher. Put another way, it makes sense for only about 15% of the population, 25% if one stretches it, to get a college education. And yet more than 45% of recent high school graduates enroll in four-year colleges. Adjust that percentage to account for high-school dropouts, and more than 40% of all persons in their late teens are trying to go to a four-year college--enough people to absorb everyone down through an IQ of 104.

WSJ


There's no point going to a college that someone with an IQ of 104 can pass -- it's high school II (if even that; more like High School 1.5).

Now that 40% of the population goes to college, instead of 15%, a college degree is that much less valuable, and employers are noting this.

But we all had to be egalitarian and cram everybody through college that we could, because it's the "right thing to do," even though it meant dumbing college work down and devaluing the college degree.

Good thinking.

Comments

  1. Very true. It's absurd...it not only started w/ the women's movement, but federal student lending programs. It allowed people to go into massive amounts of debt ("but at a great, low interest rate!") and pay off the loan over time, vs. people who could afford to and work for school going, and paying as they went. Smart people would be able to make their way at the school of their choice, and if they simply couldn't afford a private school, they could go to a state school, and try to get some type of scholarship for a masters program, etc. Now, with it being more about money than about WHO is going to school, the funding just keeps flowing in, and whoever can win the lottery to get the funding (read: everybody) gets to go to school. This drags down the quality of education, it raised prices and made people go into absurd amounts of debt, and it just trivialized every educational institution we had.

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