What for a college education?

At first glance, the earnings uplift looks worthwhile. ... But cracks are appearing in the “graduate premium”. For one thing, it varies immensely by field of study ... men with arts degrees can expect to earn less than if they had skipped university entirely.
Robin Naylor, at Warwick University, has found that the average return to a degree has held up well over the past 20 years, but it has become more variable: the university now matters greatly, as does the degree class. “The penalty for not having a degree is high, but the penalty for getting the wrong one can be even higher,” he says. And Francis Green, of Kent University, has discovered that in 2006 a third of graduates were working in jobs that did not require a degree, up from a quarter in 2001; they earned a third less than those who were using their degrees.

That was from the Economist. I wrote about this in the Register Guard just over a year ago(August 27, 2007), and attracted some nasty attention for writing the following :

Does U.S. oversell college?
A new school year begins soon. I look forward excitedly to meeting new students and re-establishing connections with those who return. But once again, I start the year with the nagging question: Are we overselling higher education?

Growing up in India, it was quite common to run into people with advanced degrees working in unrelated jobs essentially because, well, there were very few positions to match their educational qualifications. Most of the bank clerks I have met in India have degrees in literature or the sciences. During our trip last December, the telephone salesman my father was talking to was happy that he was able to get that job soon after graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Selling phones or working as a bank teller do not require four years of college. So, why the degree?

Two reasons stand out.

First, there's the faith that college is the path toward prosperity, and that therefore everyone needs to go to college. Thus, parents do all they can to ensure that their children attend college. Second, college education serves as a filter for employers who are faced with the daunting task of selecting from among the many, many applicants for jobs. This further reinforces the notion that college degree is important.

Against such a background, I can't help but wonder whether our drive to get more high school students to college is a variation of the Indian blind faith that college degree will lead to economic prosperity. Déjà vu all over again!

Ironically, while we "elders" are focused on getting more high school graduates to college, it appears that practically every student I meet in my university is familiar with the joke about college degrees and jobs - you know, with the punch line, "Would you like fries with that?"

Students are aware that a college degree might not get them a job after all. This reality that students see is a total contrast to, and disconnected from, our focus on college.

Perhaps employers here in the United States use the college degree as a sorting tool just as employers in India do. By demonstrating that they successfully negotiated hazards like me, students implicitly tell prospective employers that they have the requisite skills to do the job. But then all we have done is unnecessarily raise the entry-level educational requirement, when in reality a degree is not really required and a high school diploma would have sufficed.

Studies show that the average life-time earnings of college graduates are significantly higher than those of high school graduates. But the studies do not seem to account for the possibility of inflated requirements of educational qualifications.

Further, if the recent preoccupation with outsourcing is what is driving us to focus on college, that is all the more the reason why we ought to focus on jobs that cannot be outsourced, many of which do not require a degree. Plumbing, auto repair and caring for the elderly cannot be outsourced to India. Here again, we are all too familiar with the complaints about how expensive plumbers are, or how difficult it is to find people who can help with the rapidly growing elderly population. Yet we choose not to steer more youngsters into such lucrative careers because we are fixated on college degrees that don't always guarantee jobs.

In India, too, there are boundless opportunities for people interested in plumbing, caring for the elderly and other occupations that don't require college diplomas. Urban India is increasingly short of such help. Samad, the plumber on whose services my parents rely, has become so successful that he has made a career change and is now a real estate agent. Samad did not even complete the eighth grade, a total contrast to the newly graduated mechanical engineer selling telephones.

Of course, university education is not merely about economic productivity. It is also to develop a culture of learning and an appreciation of various aspects of life. Personally, I am immensely thankful for the opportunity that I have to pursue learning as my vocation. But at a huge cost to the youth, are we incorrectly advocating that college education is the only avenue for individuals to be economically productive?