Professional Resume Design

This article in Time Magazine seems to think that, yes, college degrees are overrated. I’m not sure what I think about their arguments – they seem to think some people are simply ‘unqualified’ for the skills and tasks in college. Without getting into to a lengthy discussion of the American education system, I would say it’s hard to make the argument that some people are intrinsically less qualified to do college work, given the widely varying quality of high school education in this country.

There’s no question about two assumptions, in my mind:

1) A college degree means more money, much more over an entire lifetime, and that gap is widening, not shrinking.

2) 50% of college is a total waste of time (the first two years, the general/core part of the education). I realize that college is supposed to produce well-rounded citizens, but why doesn’t high school do that? Being a well-rounded citizen shouldn’t cost $20,000-$30,000. It delays learning a trade (such as journalism, teaching etc) while adding greatly to college debt. The problem, colleges would tell you, is that they have no idea what skills students are entering with. Some can read and write at grade level, and some cannot.

Perhaps in an ideal world, a college degree is ‘overrated.’ It is costly, inefficient and over-complex, just like American society itself. But we live in that costly, inefficient and over-complicated society. And in that society, a degree from an American institution will make you more money, hundreds of thousands more over an entire lifetime than someone without a college degree.

The system needs to change, just like everything else. But at the moment, just as in Ameican politics, it is burdened with an excessive drive to maintain the status quo – too many powerful people get rich off the inefficiency that the scales haven’t tipped yet. Give it a couple of years and perhaps things will be different.