"it is universities themselves that have undermined the worth of the education..."

[sakky]

<p>

Are you suggesting that employers reimburse the newly-hired employee for whatever s/he spent of earning a college degree? Wow, if you think it’s tough for the new graduate to land that first job today, just think how much tougher it would be if hiring him/her came with an average of >$100,000 price tag for the privilege. Hiring say ten new employees would cost a company a million bucks before even one day’s work was completed. Hiring new graduates fresh out of college would become a thing of the past.

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<p>In the past, when a college education was far less prevalent and many decent jobs were open to people who didn’t have such an education, the notion that potential employees would be the ones to have to be stuck with the costs of college as a job market signalling device - with zero guarantee that they would even obtain a job at all - while employers are able to reap the benefits without paying a dime into the efforts would surely be considered not only ludicrous but even deeply politically provocative and outrageous. If such a system had been seriously proposed in the past, the nation might have turned socialist in an effort to rein in rapacious companies who would have the chutzpah of offloading a 6-figure price tag onto the backs of regular people just to be eligible to get a decent job. </p>

<p>The only reason why we are not outraged by such a system today is that we grew up in it and therefore are accustomed to its sheer inequities. People have resigned themselves to the notion that they must pay a small fortune just to be eligible for a decent job and that companies should not be asked to share any of the burden whatsoever. Companies have therefore won by ‘stealth’. </p>

<p>Now, to be clear, I am not proposing that companies pay the full price of the college degree of every degree starting from day one. I could envision a pro-rated payout policy depending on how long you employ the person, i.e. a 10% payout for each of the first 10 years that the employee is in the workforce. (Presumably after 10 years of experience, the employee no longer needs to rely on the college degree as a signal). Probably an even more workable solution is through an overall corporate excise tax, with the funds specifically earmarked to pay for student grants (i.e. Pell) and other student financing.</p>

<p>But the bottom line is, if you think my suggestions to be outrageous, just consider how outrageous the current system is now. If we were to build the system today, would anybody seriously suggest that companies should pay absolutely nothing - offloading the costs to the students - while reaping all the benefits? Yet that’s what’s happening now.</p>