WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yes, a College Degree Is Still Worth It

College graduates continue to command higher wages, but to combat falling enrollment, schools need to emphasize skills over credentials

May 20, 2023

By Jeffrey Selingo and Matt Sigelman

This month, even as some two million bachelor’s degrees are awarded at college commencements in the U.S., the credential itself faces an identity crisis.

In the last year and a half, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Utah have stopped requiring a four-year degree for most jobs in their state governments. The private sector has also moved toward skill-based hiring, with Google, Apple, IBM, Delta and General Motors, among others, dropping the four-year degree as a prerequisite for many positions. Even the federal government is urging its agencies to fill vacancies based on job-seekers’ skills rather than on their college credentials.

Some of these moves are the result of a tight labor market after the pandemic, but the push to lower the degree barrier long predates Covid. Its advocates see it as a way to remedy structural inequities in the job market and to combat the “degree inflation”—requiring a bachelor’s degree for jobs that historically haven’t—that accelerated after the recession of 2007-09. According to a report published last year by the Burning Glass Institute, degree requirements became significantly less common in 46% of middle-skill jobs and 31% of high-skill jobs between 2017 and 2019—a major reset in employers’ assumptions about the necessity of a diploma.… 

https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/05/12/college-going-changing-we-need-better-data