Are college degrees necessary for employment?

Back in the economic boom times of August 2007, I wrote in an opinion column that:

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.

Well, thanks to this tweet from an author whose book was much talked about the past summer, I read an op-ed published in a different part of the country--Kentucky--where the authors (one is a grad student) write that "demand for college degrees increases joblessness":

... it's time to hold businesses accountable for their role in this mess.

The point is, businesses aren't innocent bystanders or even unwitting accomplices; they share in the guilt of the current system. In fixating on four-year degrees, businesses are also hurting themselves.

One of us works at Atkins & Pearce Inc., a Covington manufacturer that's been family-owned for seven generations and that, last year, won Kentucky's Mid-Sized Manufacturer of the Year. Some of the company's best employees — in accounting, in purchasing, in sales, even on the executive committee — do not have college degrees.

It's proof to us that, just because you can hire nothing but degree-holders, it doesn't mean you should.

The day that businesses decide that they don't need to hire college graduates for many of the jobs, well, the revolution will begin.  Until then, ...