A20 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 , 2019
philosophy or biology class you
took in college.
Far too often, we are
devaluing work experience in
favor of a degree that, for many,
doesn’t adequately prepare them
for a job anyway.
In the Pew report, 57 percent
of Americans said the higher-
education system in the United
States fails to provide students
with good value for the money
they and their families spend.
Other Pew research found
that one-third of Americans who
lack a four-year college degree
report that they didn’t apply for
a job they felt they were
qualified for because the
position required a bachelor’s
degree.
Obtaining a diploma doesn’t
alone make you more qualified.
With the cost of college
crippling so many borrowers, it’s
time to concede that, for many
jobs in America, experience
should matter just as much as a
college degree.
Readers may write to Michelle
Singletary at The Washington Post,
1301 K St. NW, Washington, D.C.
20071 or michelle.singletary@
washpost.com. To read previous
Color of Money columns, go to
wapo.st/michelle-singletary.
resource needs of the company.
This means you’re doing
everything necessary to keep
employers and employees sane.
That said, does the position
require a B.A.? Maybe. Maybe
not.”
Let’s talk about the maybe
not.
A 2017 joint report by Harvard
Business School, Accenture and
Grads of Life discussed the costs
of degree inflation for families
and businesses. Employers are
more often using automated
tools that may weed out good job
candidates simply because they
don’t have a college degree.
“The rising demand for a four-
year college degree for jobs that
previously did not require one is
a substantive and widespread
phenomenon that is making the
U.S. labor market more
inefficient,” the report said.
“Companies that insist only on a
college degree deny themselves
the untapped potential of eager
to work young adults as well as
experienced, older workers as
pools of affordable talent.”
Of course, there are jobs
where an advanced degree and
specific training are necessary.
But think about how you learned
to do your job. Experience may
have mattered more than the
only are you going to be in
charge of all of the minor clerical
duties, but you’ll be working
with higher-up executives and
taking care of the human
“A t a lot of smaller companies,
the administrative assistant job
is more like that of an office
manager or an executive
assistant,” the reader wrote. “Not
forcing people to go into debt
when perhaps they don’t need
to.
Increasingly, employers —
private and public — are
screening out experienced job
applicants just because they
don’t have a college degree.
Researchers call this “degree
inflation.”
During a recent online
discussion with readers, this
topic came up.
A leading cause of high
student loans is “requiring a
bachelor’s degree for jobs that
really don’t require one,” a
reader wrote.
“For example, almost all of the
new administrative assistants at
my job have a B.A. You really
don’t need one to answer
phones, coordinate schedules
and file papers. But because
most people now require it, the
folks who would do well with
those jobs without a degree have
to spend the money to get a
degree to get the job. It is so
maddening.”
Now, before you dash off an
email arguing that many
administrative assistants have a
great deal of responsibility that
might require a degree, read the
following from another online-
chat participant.
Whenever I talk
to students and
parents who have
taken on college
debt that will
choke their
budget for
decades, they say
this: College is an
investment.
But is it,
though?
In their defense, they’ve heard
over and over again that the debt
won’t matter because the degree
is going to pay off with a higher-
paying job.
When compared with people
who have a high school diploma,
graduates of four-year colleges
believe they earn, on average,
$20,000 more each year as a
result of their degree, according
to a 2011 report from the Pew
Research Center. Their estimate
closely matches census data, Pew
said.
Ye t a degree doesn’t always
pay off. In fact, some folks don’t
out-earn high school graduates,
and they end up dragging
staggering amounts of debt all
the way into retirement.
This is why the debate about
the $1.6 trillion in outstanding
student loans should include
discussion about a trend that is
With the high cost of college, experience should matter as much as a degree
Michelle
Singletary
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CSI 300 INDEX 3891.22 -1.
HANG SENG INDEX26790.24 -1.
NIKKEI 2252 2001.32 0.
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CAC 40INDEX5615.51 0.
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FTSE 100 INDEX 7320.40 0.
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3M Co 168.07-0.9 0.
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Apple Inc 220.7 00 .4 13.
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IBM 142.20-0.2 5.
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Increasingly, employers are screening out people without degrees.
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