In the 80s college degrees meant a lot. Now everyone wants to dismiss your degree and they attempt to tell you how it doesn’t mean much. Everyone has a story about some dumbass at their company who has a Masters degree who can’t do the job they can while they only have a high school diploma or GED.

Frequently, you can’t get through the job hiring process without doing some assessment test.

For example:

Your co-worker Martin notices his paycheck is short so he steals some product to compensate for the shortage. He thinks his actions are justified.

Do you:

  1. Strongly Disagree
  2. Disagree
  3. Have no opinion
  4. Agree
  5. Strongly Agree

Those tests are worth more than four years of college? Try to refuse to do one and see if you can get the job. Write an email to HR and point out the degree on your resume and see how far you get.

I believe the degradation of the college degree is a conspiracy that corporations have used to pay lower wages. And just like with taxes and politics they get the average worker to repeat their talking points so that now if you try to tell someone you have a degree you are immediately hit with all those “I know a guy with a Masters who is a dumbass…” anecdotes.

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  • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
    0·
    8 months ago

    Im not sure it really has to be a whole conspiracy; companies won’t pay someone a lot just because people think that that person ought to be paid a lot, they’ll pay someone as little as they can while still getting the people they need to fill the role. Having more people with a given degree can even drive the wage down for that position by itself if the number is above the number of available jobs in that field, so having people value those degrees less and become less likely to get them would ultimately serve to make them rarer and therefore drive required wages up. I think a simpler explanation for people being dismissive of college degrees is a combination of them being more common, and that those without one have a desire to not feel like someone that does have one is smarter than them in some way, and an easy way to avoid such feelings is to convince oneself that the degree is meaningless.