“But then maybe they just want to indirectly screen for family SES, since that is the biggest factor in whether someone attends or graduates college.”
It’s easy to criticize using a BA as a screening device, until YOU are the one managing a workforce. A BA is not the be-all and end-all. But given the state of secondary education in this country, it is darn hard to hire folks with a HS diploma and have any sense of “general knowledge” related to their job performance.
We all have fond memories of a grandparent, aunt, beloved neighbor, etc. who had a solid career with just a HS education. And it would be grand if we could go back to those days. But my aunt- a pharm tech- graduated from HS knowing what a decimal point was, and what the metric system was, and why doctors measure things in kilos but patients need them converted to lbs. Her SES status was low- couldn’t afford college, but she would have been every bit prepared for college if she had been able to attend.
UCB- you and I have had this argument before. It would be nice if the kids who weren’t heading off to college could read, write, and compute at an 11th grade level. And in some parts of the country- they can. And in others- not. And hiring people who are illiterate or innumerate for jobs using equipment, requiring measurement, needing to make decisions based on data- that gets people hurt or killed.
So no- many entry level jobs do not require a college degree, but employers do not want to provide remedial education (not talking about training for a job- but remedial education- reading, writing, what is a bar chart and why 10% of a million is smaller than 5% of a billion even though ten is bigger than five) if they don’t have to. And right now they don’t- they can use “BA preferred” as a quick basic screen.
When we fix public education in this country we can go back to the days of HS graduates being able to get good, career-oriented jobs without higher education. But learning how to multiply is not something that any company wants to teach an employee.