Businesses have by and large perpetuated this myth by tacking "college degree required" onto almost every job listing, then shortsightedly rejecting applicants who do not have degrees.
However, is the candidate who missed graduating from Harvard by one class credit any less qualified than the candidate with the bachelor's degree from one of our local institutions? Of course not. How about the candidate who missed graduating from Harvard by three credits? By six credits? By nine credits? Where is the line, if there is one?
Viewed in this light, a college degree is a fairly arbitrary measure of whether a person is qualified for a particular position. This is not to say that a college education is undesirable or unnecessary, but the notion of "getting a degree" seems to have superseded the importance of making a free choice with regard to career.
The subject is important. Many people, perhaps feeling a bit down after losing or leaving a job, seem to conclude that the solution to their problems is to "go back to school."
This is more a tribute to the marketing job done by the education establishment than a viable solution to any problem. Education marketers have convinced us that if we do not know what we want to do, we should just go to school.
This cannot work. Education in such instances is a path of least resistance that makes it easy to put off tough choices about career. And usually when people make those tough career choices, they find that more college education isn't the answer.
Among several thousand of my clients, only two went back to school immediately after setting career goals - one because the technical nature of his choice required it and the other, simply because he had the time, the money, and the inclination to do so.
Granted, there are those people for whom the pursuit of education is a career path in itself - historians and writers for example - but for most people, college must be treated as a means to an end, with one of the ends being a career goal.
The problem here, of course, is that we expect everyone to know by the age of 18 exactly what career to pursue. We give students little help in making that decision beyond some fairly dreadful vocational preference tests.
A far better way to go about it, in many cases, is for people to work or travel for awhile after graduating from high school, then go on to college if they so decide and if they have a career goal that can be furthered by a college education. To accomplish this, high schools must do a far better job of preparing a student to cope with life.
This is (or was) a fairly common practice in Europe, and it seems to be widely acknowledged that European education systems are currently superior to America's. Americans are pushed to go to college, where they're subject to the pressure of parents, professors and counselors trying to decide for them what they should do. Then, with degree in hand, they feel compelled to pursue a career in their major (especially if the education marketers have been successful in getting them to pursue an advanced degree) since, after all, an education is a substantial investment and we Americans believe in protecting our investments.
It all comes back to the notion that you're not qualified unless you have a degree. It just is not so.
Employers want people who will solve problems and provide assistance toward greater productivity and profit, not the person who has the most impressive degree from the most impressive school. While many qualifiers must be added, life experience as a learning factor related to the world of work is far more valuable than any amount of time spent in a classroom.
