Degree inflation

You know how sixty is the new forty? How red is the new black? And, I suppose, how sick is the new healthy?

It’s getting to be official:

The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one, for getting even the lowest-level job. (Source: NY Times.)

I actually don’t think that this is all that new. As far as I can tell, it’s been a long time coming.

Still, it’s kind of shocking to read that a law firm in Atlanta will only hire college grads, and, thus, employs a $10 an hour courier who “schleps documents back and forth between the courthouse and the office” while in possession of a college degree.

There was a time when a college grad would take a crappy “entry level” position in a company to get their foot in the door in hopes of doing such a good job that they’d get promoted into something more professional.

Does this happen any more?

And how could it occur in a law firm? You get to move from ten-buck an hour courier to eleven-buck an hour receptionist? [Actually, as I saw later in the article, that job is taken. And it pays a lot better than eleven bucks an hour. The current incumbent makes $37K a year. Not bad for a receptionist, until you consider that she’s got $100K worth of college debt.]

The all college, all the time, law firm is Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh, and here’s their rationale:

“College graduates are just more career-oriented,” said Adam Slipakoff, the firm’s managing partner. “Going to college means they are making a real commitment to their futures. They’re not just looking for a paycheck.”

Well, yes and no.

A commitment to their future is at least part of the reason that kids go to college, but there are those equal parts of parental determination and the fact that going to college is just What. You Do.

As for that “not just looking for a  paycheck.”

That really sounds to me like code for “we’ll pay you crap while flattering you that ‘you’re not just looking for a paycheck.’”

There are many downsides to this “degree inflation”.

One is that so many kids are coming out of college carrying super-sized debt. Sure, they’re “not just looking for a paycheck,” but they sure do need that paycheck to try to work that debt down. And if someone borrowed a lot of money to get a basket-weave degree from a lousy college that is only going to translate into a $10 an hour job, well… Maybe they would have been better off going into the trades.

Not that there’s anything wrong with education for the sake of education.

I’m all for book learnin’.

But to incur debt so that you can live the life of an indentured servant is just plain awful.

Meanwhile,

This up-credentialing is pushing the less educated even further down the food chain, and it helps explain why the unemployment rate for workers with no more than a high school diploma is more than twice that for workers with a bachelor’s degree: 8.1 percent versus 3.7 percent.

No word on how many among the 3.7 percent are miserably and perhaps permanently under-employed.

But, as The Times points out, “it’s a buyer’s market for employers.”

Thus, you get the law firm courier who is happier to be running around Atlanta delivering briefs an contracts to his previous post-graduate job: washing cars for a car rental firm.

In truth, all the young folk interviewed from Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh seem both happy and appreciative. Many – including the schlepper, who’s now applying to law school (good luck, kid) – have, surprisingly (at least to me) gotten promotions. One jumped from file clerk to paralegal.

Still, if more and more companies start requiring higher degrees for jobs that really don’t need them, and if those higher degrees mean higher and higher debt – while at the same time shorting opportunities for high school grads – we are on one big collision course with reality.

Of course, collision course is pretty much the new reality, all the way around.