Abolish the Degree Requirement
By: Frank Lewis
Tags: Politics, Innovation, Society, Student Loans, Racism

Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash

There is nothing more damaging to the well-being of Americans than the university system as it currently exists. An incestuous ménage à trois between academia, government, and corporate interests have created a predatory system in which income inequality has sky-rocketed and racial disparities are carefully maintained. At the root of the dysfunctional American society lies the degree requirement.

The Death of Meritocracy & The Maintenance of Racial Disparity

There exists a very clear hierarchy within academia that we as a society accept without question - the individual who gets into Harvard will be granted better opportunities than the random high-school valedictorian who attends a state school on a full scholarship. This is true even if the Harvard grad is, in reality, a mediocre student.

How many high-school valedictorians were rejected from Yale the year George W. Bush was accepted into the prestigious university? How different would the world look if the American education system wasn’t explicitly designed to fast-track children of the elite into the ruling class regardless of merit?

At this moment anyone with an internet connection can take courses from MIT. Want to become a mathematician? It can theoretically be done by anyone with talent, desire, and Wi-Fi.

However, only those who can afford $53k+ per year in tuition can officially have taken these courses.

Of course, the vast majority of students aren’t mathematicians. They are people who just want to earn a living wage. Teachers, social workers, cops, nurses - just normal individuals who (at age 18) are being forced to commit 4 years and a small fortune to institutions that are acting as little more than a middle-man between employers and labor.

These are people pursuing training for occupations. They aren’t seeking scholarship, they are seeking employment.

Through the degree requirement, employers have managed to not only avoid the cost of recruiting and developing employees but have also managed to unload the cost onto the employees themselves. This reinforces class barriers and racial disparities.

The cost of a bachelor’s degree looks like one thing to the celebrity admitted to an ivy league school and a very different thing to the Black teenager who received a low-quality public education and has no *in* with admissions.

We know for a fact the extreme cost of education has a much greater impact on Black Americans. According to a report from Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy entitled African Americans College Majors and Earnings:

…African Americans are highly concentrated in lower-paying majors. The college major, which has critical economic consequences throughout life, reflects personal choices but also reflects the fact that African-American students are concentrated in open-access four-year institutions that limited choices of majors offered.

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash

Black students, who are more likely to come from a lower-income household, are entering majors that offer much lower potential earnings.

However, these are essential jobs. Some of the more popular yet lower-paying majors that Black students gravitate towards include Early Childhood Education and Health and Medical Administration Services.

Here’s the thing… students enrolling in lower-paying fields of study are paying the same tuition rate as students enrolling in higher-paying fields of study. A cost-benefit analysis of higher education greatly favors white & upper-income students, thus reinforcing racial disparities systemically.

In other words, the American university system is systemically racist.

The Pipeline

To understand why the degree requirement must be removed from job applications one must accept that the modern university system is not a place of “higher learning” but rather an employee development pipeline for employers.

Within the current structure, students pay tremendous amounts of money for the privilege of becoming potential employees. Employers avoid having to recruit and develop talent. The universities act as middle-men.

However, these middle-men need to be paid and this is where the predatory, government-backed loans come into the picture. The federal government would never dream of backing business loans to 18-year-old entrepreneurs but it has no problem backing predatory student loans. This puts the entirety of the cost/risk of labor development onto students rather than employers.

An in-your-face example of the pipeline concept can be seen in the recent upheaval that took place at the University of Tulsa. The school’s liberal arts programs were decimated in favor of implementing a streamlined talent development pipeline for the area’s foremost businessman, George Kaiser. Jacob Howland, a former TU professor, documented what could reasonably be called a hostile takeover of the university.

Although the University of Tulsa is perhaps the most transparent embodiment of the pipeline concept, the transformation of universities from institutions of higher learning into corporate middle-men has always been inevitable due to the degree requirement remaining legal. Unless employers are forced to bear at least some responsibility in developing labor, universities will continue to be used by corporate interests and the idea of a classical liberal arts education will become a relic of the past.

Let the Corporations Pay

To be clear, the solution to the student debt crisis is not government-funded education. There is no such thing as “free tuition”. Universities will continue to require payment for their services and that money will come from tax-paying middle and lower-income Americans. Funding will not come from the wealthy, or from the defense budget, or whatever dream politicians sell us with no ability to follow through.

This must be addressed as a civil rights issue.

There is a logical legal argument to be made that employers requiring a college degree is a form of discrimination. It is without question that university admission processes are subjective. It is also without question that where an individual goes to school has an impact on their employment potential.

How can we justify job applicants being assessed based upon a subjective process that took place when they were a minor and was largely beyond their control?

If one is serious about pursuing a just society in which individuals of all economic and racial backgrounds are granted equal opportunity, there is an unavoidable confrontation that must take place with the openly predatory and outdated American university system and its collaborators.

The harsh reality is that academia, government, and corporate interests are working together to stifle competition, undercut labor, and maintain a class system that can be used to the advantage of the elite - and it all hinges upon the degree requirement.