College helps you get a job

The argument

The argument is that a degree improves employment prospects, and that this holds even where the work itself has not changed. The comparison offered is between unemployment rates: 3.5% for non-college educated workers against 2.2% among those with at least an undergraduate degree. The gap is presented as the basic fact to be explained, and the explanation proponents give is about the labour market rather than about what graduates learn. As more people attend university, the educational bar rises. A glut of university graduates in the workforce hands employers a way of reducing an applicant pool at no cost to themselves: requiring a degree eliminates a large share of candidates without the employer having to assess any of them individually. Employers have accordingly come to prioritise those with a university degree even for jobs that have traditionally not required any form of higher education, and the requirement spreads because it is convenient to the people setting it rather than because the role has become more demanding. The scale of that shift is what gives the argument its practical weight. In 1970, 28% of jobs required a college degree; now 66% of jobs ask that candidates have received some form of higher education, and 99% of new jobs created require a candidate with a university degree. Whatever one makes of whether those roles genuinely need graduates, the requirement is real for anyone applying. That is the point on which the conclusion rests. The question facing an individual is not whether credential inflation is a desirable development, but what happens to a candidate without the credential in a market that has already inflated. On this account the effect of the trend is to convert a degree from an advantage into a precondition, and a person is simply more likely to find a job with one than without.

Context

Unemployment among university-educated workers is far lower than among those without a degree. College is, therefore, highly beneficial for securing employment.

Premises

Counter-arguments

These statistics hide the fact that many college-educated workers are working in a job that has no need for a college degree. Around 20% of college graduates are working jobs that have no need for a college education, handing them all of the debt, without any of the economic benefits. Also, the unemployment rate among recent graduates is actually higher than the unemployment rate among non-college educated workers. In the US, 4% of recent graduates are unemployed and 41% are underemployed—far higher than the national average of 3.6% and 34%.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Correlation doesn't mean causality. Many college graduates would be employed anyway as they work jobs that don't require a college degree.