I really, really agree with you Val. The insistence that every one must have a degree (and now, multiple degrees because everyone's getting degrees) infuriates me.
The problem is that employers now (unnecessarily) require a degree in many instances - even for basic service roles. I used to work for an organisation that had a large call centre. When we hired for customer service roles we were told we had to preference people who had a degree. These were for roles that were basically being polite to people and reciting information from a screen. There were very limited opportunities for advancement so it wasn't even that their skill would be utilised elsewhere in the organisation(in part because there was so little skill involved very few people developed the necessary skill sets to advance to other areas). This was standard practice in the industry. So people (in Australia at least) often do have to have a degree, just to get a look in.
The other side of that is that degrees have become very easy to get. I am currently completing an undergraduate degree after hating university when I first started and finding I liked earning money more (until I realised that I was bored senseless in the industry I found myself in and would need qualifications for what I want to do). 15 years ago when I started my first degree, you did your essays & you got your marks and sucked it up if they weren't what you wanted. You got a look at a practice exam and then had to make your own way on exam day seeing 'the real thing' for the first time. Now in the subjects I take for my major stream you are given 2 chances to submit an essay. You submit it, indicating the score you would like and if you don't get that score you can TRY AGAIN! We were given the full exam - word for word - for my final year subjects two weeks before the exam took place. This is one of Australia's top universities and it has a reputation for being a 'hard' subject (well... hard for Humanities
. I couldn't believe it. How does something that is so easy to pass (so easy to excel at regardless of ability if you have the right,um... resources) have any value?
But what are people to do? When basic entry level service roles require a degree, people are going to want to get the best degree they can get. Fortunately here while we do have student loans they're not quite as problematic as you have in the States. Loans are provided by the government and a basic degree here might cost 15-20K. You have to earn over $44K a year before it's paid back via the deduction of 4% of your taxable income. PhDs are paid for by the Govt. But I guess then there is the potential for issues with the Government footing the bill for undergraduates degrees that will never be paid back because many of the people who get them are having to take poorly paid jobs.
I do believe in education for education's sake, but when grade one kids at my daughter's school are having several hours of tutoring a week in preparation for our selective high schools, which are in turn having to set up their own tutoring programs because kids are getting so much tutoring (to get into good universities) that they don't have time for their school work, something has gone wrong.
