Higher Education does not Create Jobs

Often times you will here politicians complain about the startling lack of access to education and how it is having a detrimental effect on the competitive nature of the United States. This however is not true, jobs over the last couple of decades have not been lost due to education but rather a difference between wages of workers in the United States and the rest of the world. Additionally as increases in the number of applicants that have a piece of paper claiming they are educated occur the actual value of that piece of paper falls. Hence it is not the education that matters but how that education allows someone to differentiate themselves from every other applicant. As ever growing numbers of people graduate with a bachelors degrees the value of that degree becomes ever smaller in an economic scale as increased competition of necessity creates a devaluation. The effects of Supply and Demand will therefore come into play showing that it is not the education that creates a job but the ability to fill a demand for that education without saturation of demand for said position. What does this mean? It means contrary to popular opinion education is not a job creator and that through the institution of programs to 'educate' the population you only ensure that to be a cut above the rest you must obtain more education. Rather than education being the great equalizer claimed it simply creates a self fulfilling cycle of competition where employers seek the most educated for the lowest price. Ergo the premium paid for education is further discounted. This can easily be seen in the number of college graduates who now have difficulty in finding a job and the vast number of people who graduated in the past who simply have a bachelors degree coming into fierce competition with a larger than ever population that has obtained degrees since they had left school believing that they had adequately differentiated themselves from their generation. This equates to education not Creating Jobs but rather differentiating people into separate pools of 'sort-ability' for businesses. A Business will not even hire a 'sales manager' if the sales manager today does not have a degree, whereas the ability to perform the tasks has little to do with the degree and more an HR sorting mechanism. It is my postulation that if EVERYONE had a bachelors degree then the value of this degree would be meaningless as everyone had one and would no longer be used as a metric in distinguishing individuals. Thereby elevating a Graduates Degree to the same level a Bachelors Degree is currently. This thereby exemplifies that education is not used as a basis of 'Job Creation' and more of an example of job classification and mechanical sorting. This does not mean Education is not vital to any number of factors and that the betterment of the self is not constantly needed, only that there is a belief that a better education leads to Job Creation. Job Creation on the other hand DOES need adequately taught applicants for it. The point here is that it is not cause and effect that better education equates to MORE jobs. Additionally an education typically only gains ENTRY to a field or a position, thereby rendering the question of how important is the classical education system in comparison to trade school or on the job training? Just fun points that may be interesting to consider in this debate.