What's the Value in the Bachelors Degree?
This is a very interesting article and a topic I've been talking about for the last ten years. I'm always looking at employment opportunities to see what the trends are and to stay on my game. back in year 2000/2001, I noticed every time I ran across a "receptionist" job listing, they were asking for the candidate to hold a bachelors degrees. I remember thinking to myself, how odd that you would need a bachelors to be able to answer the phone, transfer phone calls and send a few faxes throughout the day. Right then, I knew that eventually the bachelor degree would soon be the new high school diploma. I'm no different than the people they speak about in this article. I'm currently working on my 2nd master's degree now. Granted, it's actually a requirement for this career change I'm embarking on, but nonetheless, it'll be master's degree no. 2 for me when it's all said and done. I find it sad that we encourage our children to go to college to get a bachelors just to have them graduate with a degree that doesn't hold much more value than a high school diploma. I may be making it sound much more drastic than it is right now, but look at this trend----is this where it's eventually going? How can put some value back into the bachelors degree?
From the article
"Not only are we developing “the overeducated American,” he says, but the cost is borne by the students getting those degrees. “The beneficiaries are the colleges and the employers,” he says. Employers get employees with more training (that they don’t pay for), and universities fill seats. In his own department, he says, a master’s in financial economics can be a “cash cow” because it draws on existing faculty (“we give them a little extra money to do an overload”) and they charge higher tuition than for undergraduate work. “We have incentives to want to do this,” he says. He calls the proliferation of master’s degrees evidence of “credentialing gone amok.” He says, “In 20 years, you’ll need a Ph.D. to be a janitor.”
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Article Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/education/edlife/edl-24masters-t.html?_r=3&ref=edlife
