No. of Recommendations: 6
The answer seems clear to me: make college more affordable, and get more STEM grads out there.The other alternative - make the economy more accessible to people who don't have college degrees. Many jobs that are filtered based on whether the applicant holds a college degree simply don't require a college degree:
"One of the researchers' most revealing findings was that millions of job postings listed college degree requirements for positions that were currently held by workers without them. For example, in 2015, 67 percent of production supervisor job postings asked for a four-year college degree, even though just 16 percent of employed production supervisors had graduated from college. Many of these so-called 'middle-skill' jobs, like sales representatives, inspectors, truckers, administrative assistants, and plumbers, were facing unprecedented 'degree inflation.'"
https://www.vox.com/policy/23628627/degree-inflati...The reason people without a degree are "screwed" in today's economy is largely because people who have degrees have decided to screw them. It's a symptom of opportunity hoarding. The social cohort that has four-year degrees is more comfortable being with other people that have four-year degrees, is far more likely to over-value having a four-year degree even for jobs that don't actually require them, and is more likely to believe that vast segments of the economy should be gated only for people who have those degrees. There's also (sadly) a pretty high likelihood that the folks who are setting hiring requirements for certain jobs are going to be of a different racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic background many of the folks who lack four-year degrees but who could do that job - while the people who have four-year degrees are far more likely to share the same demographic characteristics that they do.
