Is college the new Company Store?

[cthulu2016]

The job market uses a college degree as the new GED... some indication that you may be able to read and write.

So without college many jobs are foreclosed, even though they typically require nothing that anyone actually learned in college. They require what a high school diploma is supposed to represent.

For no particularly good reason, the system is set up more and more as a two-tiered system where a degree is a prerequisite for running the copy machine. But since employers get tons of applications for any position they can require a degree. Hey, why not?

So it is go to college or flip burgers for life. But even with that inducement, very few people would or could go to college (at today's prices) without the offer of E-Z credit terms.

And amortizing the cost of college means that the graduate must always be working. Forever.

If the overall system was a single enterprise it would be easy to see it for what it is...

Employer: We will give you a job paying $22,000/year, but first you have to buy an employability certificate from us for $70,000.

Applicant: That's nuts... why would I pay you $70,000 to make $22,000/year?

Employer: Because we finance the cost of the certificate and it is taken out of your paycheck over 20, 30, 40 years in E-Z payments.

It's the old company store in a shiny next box.

[Marrah_G]

1. Even state schools are unaffordable now with the fees

and living in the dorm? 11k a year at state college here in MA.

I just moved to where my son goes to school this week, an hour commute from my job so he and his girlfriend can live with me and save on the dorm fees.

Fortunately the Air Force guard is paying for my son's tuition and fees.

[ananda]

2. Good analogy.

nt

[truedelphi]

3. You know where the meme of "4 Yrs of College" before we hire comes from?

When the Civil Rights Act ensured that both blacks and whites should have an equal shot at a job, the Top Employers realized the only way they could protect themselves from the "rabble" was to make sure that more whites that blacks were "qualified." After all, at the time of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the average black family had far less resources with which to help their children get through college than white people.

And also, since kids are viewed as not learning much in high school, it now is viewed as a necessity that the job applicant have a college degree. For whatever reason, employees are very reluctant to hire anyone without that four years under their belt. My son was offered a job at a firm, where he was interning, as they thought he was a college graduate. He still had one more year of college, which he despised. And he'd saved all the easy classes for his last year, so it wasn't even like he'd be learning all that much.

When he came in for the final interview, the employer realized he had only three years under his belt and told him to come back in a year. In his case, he was on full scholarship, due to National Merit, but for many people, that last year might have been unaffordable.

[Trillo]

4. What isn't the company store these days?

If there's as little as a few dollars of profit to be made, the bankster has infiltrated the market.