How is This College Racket Normal?

I spoke with a business owner today who said he has reviewed over 1,100 resumes so far this year.  He’s hiring for an entry level role.  Only six of them were good enough to schedule a call.  One of those turned out to be a disaster, and one more is still in the mix.  The other four were meh.

Nearly every one of them had a college degree.

The skills needed for this job could be learned in six months, and the basic communication, professionalism, and judgement needed for any job can be learned just by being around business and customers for a while in the real world.  Those are not difficult or costly things to obtain…unless you’re stuck in a classroom most of your life.

Over 1,100 people paid five, sometimes six figures to get a piece of paper that’s supposed to help them get a good job and just one half of one percent of them were good enough for a phone interview.  It’s a scandal.  They were swindled.

And no, they did not go to college to gain enlightenment or even for the social experience, because they could’ve moved to the same college town, attended the same parties, even attended classes and gotten all of that without registering or paying a dime in tuition.  But they didn’t.  They paid for one thing only: the magic ticket to “$1 million in additional lifetime earnings”, a stat they’ve been force-fed for a decade or so by professional educators who designed the whole system.  Few of these educators have any knowledge or experience in the real, non-subsidized market, so it’s no wonder five years and lots of debt later, just 0.5% of these 1,100 grads are worth an interview for an entry level role.

And people think payday lending is a racket.