Job seekers seem to be voicing more complaints about employers who require education out of proportion to jobs. Blogs and forums are carrying more stories about secretarial and clerk jobs that require associates and even bachelor’s degrees. Many of the people posting argue that these requirements are not relevant to the duties of these jobs, and see them as little more than a way to screen out people who fully capable of doing the job.
This is true to some extent, I think. The main complaint of the employers I talk with is that huge numbers of people apply, but many of them are barely literate in the traditional sense, and fewer still are technologically literate. Increasing educational requirements is one way to reduce the number of applicants while increasing the portion of applicants who are literate, technologically savvy and have basic office skills. A high school diploma is not enough for an entry level job, and most people realize this – about half of the workforce has at least a year of education beyond high school, and about a third have earned a bachelors degree.
I think this is part of a larger trend that is going mostly unnoticed. Economists like to call recessions “corrections” because they are often the result of economies that are out of balance. In the current recession the things that are out of balance are fundamental structures of the economy. The two previous recessions were also structural realignments, once in the 1980’s and again in the early 1990’s. The move to container shipping, (among other things), dramatically decreased shipping costs and sparked the emergence of a global economy in the 1980’s. Suddenly many familiar US manufacturers found themselves unable to compete with companies in Asia. This is when US Steel was replaced by Nucor, and RCA became the last domestic electroic manufacturer. The rise of computers in the 1990’s did the same for companies that could not hold their own in an age of computerized competition.
I think the one of the major structural changes contributing to the recession we are now experiencing is a shift from a strictly service economy to a service economy focused on knowledge related services. We have gone overboard on education – 12% of the US population has a Masters degree – and the unintended consequence is that employers can demand very specific knowledge skills and abilities. A highly educated workface has resulted in a labor market that is increasingly segmented. This is why it is so hard ro chage careers. Having attained the skills and abilites for one segment of the labor market it is very hard to move to another. It may not be enough to to know how to use word processing software, for example. One has to know word processing software of a specific release running on a particular operating system. The candidate who is well versed in Office 2003 will likely be passed over in favor of a candidate who knows Office 2007. Not because there is a huge difference, but because whoever needs the least training or orientation is the more productive worker. And in an economy as competitive as the one we are in productivity is everything.
As work becomes increasingly intertwined with machines, and those machines put even entry level workers in contact with workers in different cultures, a need for a more sophisticated workers increases. File clerks still need to be able to do all the things file clerks have always done, but now they need to understand how to write a macro and communicate clearly enough that a counterpart whose English is a second or third language can understand them. Does this level of sophsitcation require a four year degree? I do not know, but clearly a high school diploma is not enough.
Right now about 30% of the workforce has at least a bachelor’s degree – about the same portion who had a high school degree in 1940. That year marked the forth decade since the introduction of the high school. High schools were introduced around the turn of the century to train people to administer large factories and the bureaucratic apparatus needed to run the industrial economy that was growing to maturity. Prior to this time an eighth grade education was considered enough. That was all that was needed because until the 1920’s most people in the United States made their living on farms or small stores. The manufacturing boom from about 1890 through the beginning of the Depression in 1928 created a demand for workers with higher skills. An extra four years of high school filled the bill. This was an era that saw the introduction of office machines, automobiles and electricity into daily life, and that change required both more raw knowledge and intellectual skills. Secretaries needed to know proper English and spelling, and factory workers and merchants had to understand how to calculate taxes and solve simple algebra problems.
Maybe the need for more education is a historical trend, and thre is no stopping it, but I wonder whether we can afford it. Will entry level wages be enough to provide a living salary as well as student loan payments? Does an investment of $40,000 -- for a bachelors degree needed to qualify for an entry level position -- guarantee a return of $40,000, plus a decent standard of living, or are we headed for a nation of highly educated paupers? If promotion within an organization requires even more education will the economy support mid level managers who require saleries big enough to repay $100,000 loans for a PhD and post doc study? Do such extremes of education really return enough value to companies – and eventually consumers – that the extra cost is justified?
One way or another we all have to pay for this education, either in higher prices for goods and services or in higher taxes for colleges and universities. Whether we will be able to do that, and pay for the bank bailout, universal health care, mideast wars, two years of unemployment for displaced workers, and interest on our growing mountain of debt remains to be seen.
Vic Napier