Is A Bachelor's Degree An Appropriate Measure Of Job Readyness?

Charles Murray a scholar at the Enterprise Institute argues in the essay below that "It's what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned it." Murray argues that having to spend a small fortune for a Bachelor's degree is financially out of reach for many people, intellectually out of reach for many people and simply not necessary for many jobs. Murray believes that Certification tests that measure knowledge and ability can and should serve as a substitute for a Bachelor's degree in many instances.

As a person interested in life long learning, I have obtained a certification as a Senior Human Resource Professional (SPHR). Next to the Bar Exam the SPHR certification was the hardest test I have ever taken. I am also in the process of being certified as a Yellow Belt in Six Sigma. I see the value in providing education through a certification process.

What do you think about Murray's point? Richard Florida's web site has some good comments on Murray's article at http://www.creativeclass.com/creative_class/2009/01/05/the-value-of-college-for-most-students/.

December 28, 2008

Op-Ed Contributors | Transitions

Should the Obama Generation Drop Out?

By CHARLES MURRAY

Washington

BARACK OBAMA has two attractive ideas for improving post-secondary education — expanding the use of community colleges and tuition tax credits — but he needs to hitch them to a broader platform. As president, Mr. Obama should use his bully pulpit to undermine the bachelor’s degree as a job qualification. Here’s a suggested battle cry, to be repeated in every speech on the subject: “It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it.”

The residential college leading to a bachelor’s degree at the end of four years works fine for the children of parents who have plenty of money. It works fine for top students from all backgrounds who are drawn toward academics. But most 18-year-olds are not from families with plenty of money, not top students, and not drawn toward academics. They want to learn how to get a satisfying job that also pays well. That almost always means education beyond high school, but it need not mean four years on a campus, nor cost a small fortune. It need not mean getting a bachelor’s degree.

I am not discounting the merits of a liberal education. Students at every level should be encouraged to explore subjects that will not be part of their vocation. It would be even better if more colleges required a rigorous core curriculum for students who seek a traditional bachelor’s degree. My beef is not with liberal education, but with the use of the degree as a job qualification.

For most of the nation’s youths, making the bachelor’s degree a job qualification means demanding a credential that is beyond their reach. It is a truth that politicians and educators cannot bring themselves to say out loud: A large majority of young people do not have the intellectual ability to do genuine college-level work.

If you doubt it, go back and look through your old college textbooks, and then do a little homework on the reading ability of high school seniors. About 10 percent to 20 percent of all 18-year-olds can absorb the material in your old liberal arts textbooks. For engineering and the hard sciences, the percentage is probably not as high as 10.

No improvements in primary and secondary education will do more than tweak those percentages. The core disciplines taught at a true college level are tough, requiring high levels of linguistic and logical-mathematical ability. Those abilities are no more malleable than athletic or musical talent.

You think I’m too pessimistic? Too elitist? Readers who graduated with honors in English literature or Renaissance history should ask themselves if they could have gotten a B.S. in physics, no matter how hard they tried. (I wouldn’t have survived freshman year.) Except for the freakishly gifted, all of us are too dumb to get through college in many majors.

But I’m not thinking just about students who are not smart enough to deal with college-level material. Many young people who have the intellectual ability to succeed in rigorous liberal arts courses don’t want to. For these students, the distribution requirements of the college degree do not open up new horizons. They are bothersome time-wasters.

A century ago, these students would happily have gone to work after high school. Now they know they need to acquire additional skills, but they want to treat college as vocational training, not as a leisurely journey to well-roundedness.

As more and more students who cannot get or don’t want a liberal education have appeared on campuses, colleges have adapted by expanding the range of courses and adding vocationally oriented majors. That’s appropriate. What’s not appropriate is keeping the bachelor’s degree as the measure of job preparedness, as the minimal requirement to get your foot in the door for vast numbers of jobs that don’t really require a B.A. or B.S.

Discarding the bachelor’s degree as a job qualification would not be difficult. The solution is to substitute certification tests, which would provide evidence that the applicant has acquired the skills the employer needs.

Certification tests can take many forms. For some jobs, a multiple-choice test might be appropriate. But there’s no reason to limit certifications to academic tests. For centuries, the crafts have used work samples to certify journeymen and master craftsmen. Today, many computer programmers without college degrees get jobs by presenting examples of their work. With a little imagination, almost any corporation can come up with analogous work samples.

The benefits of discarding the bachelor’s degree as a job qualification would be huge for both employers and job applicants. Certifications would tell employers far more about their applicants’ qualifications than a B.A. does, and hundreds of thousands of young people would be able to get what they want from post-secondary education without having to twist themselves into knots to comply with the rituals of getting a bachelor’s degree.

Certification tests would not eliminate the role of innate ability — the most gifted applicants would still have an edge — but they would strip away much of the unwarranted halo effect that goes with a degree from a prestigious university. They would put everyone under the same spotlight.

Discrediting the bachelor’s degree is within reach because so many employers already sense that it has become education’s Wizard of Oz. All we need is someone willing to yank the curtain aside. Barack Obama is ideally positioned to do it. He just needs to say it over and over: “It’s what you can do that should count when you apply for a job, not where you learned to do it.”

Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author, most recently, of “Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality.”

Comments

[pauldub]

The Bachelor's, once a sign of accomplishment has pretty much become trivial. In today's market four years and a small fortune in student loan debt qualify you for little more than a low paying entry level job. Job, not career. With the exception of what some call professional careers, the BA and BS do little to prepare someone for a career. As an example, take the auto mechanic. Employers take note when you have your certifications. These require 2 years experience, not a degree. I know in federal service, a Bachelor's will qualify you for a GS-5. So will two years experience. As one who once was involved in the hiring process, I would always take experience or certifications showing a background in the skills required over someone with a piece of paper showing they were able to simply pass exams, most of which were not related to the job.

[Jim T]

What would DaVinci have done?

[an educated person]

The bachelors degree still is a mile stone of accomplishment today. College is hard work, and anyone who goes through the gantlet should deserve higher paying jobs simply because those are the individuals who take time out of their career to educate themselves to learn who to write and communicate better.

The person with a college degree learns their discipline and all the theory and history as well as hands-on experience so that they can apply there focus area to more career fields. A college degree program is designed to be less specific so students can take their education and apply in more diverse working environments. The problem with certifications is they are too specific. For example, if a person becomes Microsoft certified then Microsoft is ALL they will know. With the certification, you pay a fee, take a test and with far less effort your "certified."

In this blog post, I don't know where your got your statics, but it sounds like you used what seems reasonable. A college graduate would know better to research their claims before proclaiming dogmatic statements.