Hell has officially frozen over, and Gavin Newsom has actually done something right for once—he’s eliminating college degree requirements for a number of state jobs.
There is a great reason to do so: Most jobs don’t need one year of college to competently do them, let alone four.
Mike Miller at Redstate argues this is a bad move, but I disagree. Miller starts on a false premise, and acts like the college degree actually makes people smarter or more capable, but we’ve seen a mass trend of dumbing down students at all levels of education. They are taught not to ask questions or do research. How else do they believe the government can control the climate?
By requiring college degrees to simply enter the professional world, it has intentionally filled the seats of universities. Then these schools, with help from a very generous government and government-backed student loans, have enriched themselves by jacking up costs much faster than inflation. They have never had incentives to manage their costs, just like the rest of the government. I call Obama’s Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act the Welfare for Colleges Act.
My degree is an example. I am a CPA, and when I passed the exam in 1977, I was only required to have 120 hours of college.
In the 1990s, the CPA profession decided it should be more elite, and it began requiring CPAs to have 150 hours of college, so most students just went and got a Master’s degree with 160 hours. They made people spend a heck of a lot more money when outside experience would have had much greater value.
I am not a rocket scientist, a career field that legitimately demands advanced higher education. I do debits and credits, and simple algebraic equations, and know how to read. More kids should attend vocational schools, because all jobs are good jobs. Many people who have worked for me (or with me) over the years have had no college, and several have been much smarter than people with the four-year piece of paper.
Now, Newsom’s plan to open state jobs to people without college degrees isn’t a guaranteed winner—he needs to ensure that merit is the basis for any hires, which is where I suspect he’ll fall short.
Gage Skidmore via Flickr cc2″ src=”https://images.americanthinker.com/60/60sa1liul7b6pxwj7occ_640.JPG” />
Image: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr, unaltered.
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