“… In other words, the bachelor’s degree is becoming the new high-school diploma. Rather than a ticket to a high-paying, managerial job, the four-year degree is now the minimum ticket to get in the door to any job. Valletta wrote that his findings ‘suggest rising competition between education groups for increasingly scarce well-paid jobs.’” …
“Here’s why your degree’s worth is stagnant.” is part of the title to the article. The article is correctly located in the newspaper’s opinion category.
As usual when sweeping generalizations are made they can be misleading. A degree’s worth depends to some extent on the major, on the student’s interview skills and motivation, and the direction the economy takes.
I agree with the general comments in the article. Here in MA it is very common for ALL entry level positions at large/medium companies to require a college degree. I have many neighbors whose careers started in the Insurance industry by working claims on the phones. They were hired with only a high school diploma and trained by the company. No longer. They will not let anybody answer a phone without a college degree. It has definitely become a new HS diploma. It could be that MA has a high concentration of college grads since we have a college every 10 miles or so.
CPA’s used to only need a degree to become a CPA. That is no longer the case. One now needs the equivalent of a masters degree. they too recognize the need to up the ante and separate themselves from the new HS diploma.
Times are changing and we need to change with it.
I.e. credential creep, where jobs which do not specifically require either the specific knowledge or general skills that one learns in college require a college degree just because they can, or because it is an easy way to reduce the overflow of applicants.
The main statement in the Post article is not precise. The research paper is more about the recent flattening of wage premium between HS graduates and those “with a college or GRAGUATE degree.” This flattening is actually driven by those with a graduate degree after 2000. Just take a look at Figure 1. This is the paper: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13705.pdf
In other words, the wage premium is still growing (maybe at a slightly lower pace now) for those with a college degree. In contrast, the wage premium is not growing (and maybe kind of shrinking, perhaps temporarily) for those with a graduate degree.
Figure 5 of http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13705.pdf is not an encouraging sign. In contrast to previous time periods, the most recent time period showed slower job growth across the various categories (nonroutine cognitive, routine cognitive, nonroutine manual, routine manual), and that job growth in two of them (routine cognitive and nonroutine manual) was negative. These declining categories are those where high school graduates who did not go on to college may have sought jobs in the past, but now there are fewer jobs and more educational requirements to enter them.