Breaking Down Our Class Divisions
Why do so many jobs require an often irrelevant university degree? Why do most employers require a high school diploma, even for the most mundane of work? These unrelated job requirements are so common that few ever stop to question them.
Having a degree may offer some evidence that a prospective employee has the ability to stick out a project for multiple years. Having a high school diploma tells the employer that they have met the basic standard of education to be a working member of society. At least that’s how it’s generally understood.
Some employers still require these educational benchmarks regardless of where a prospective employee is in their career. Whether someone who has spent 25 years working has a high school diploma is objectively irrelevant. As the requirements seem increasingly irrational, I want to explore more about why this is the case.
My instinct is that the high school diploma requirement serve two purposes: it provides a legal way for an employer to ask the age of an applicant, and it ensures that the applicant comes from a socioeconomic class that can afford to stay in school through to graduation. Neither of these points suggest any relevance to the education itself.
Our public education system, for its part, is built around preparing factory workers, not citizens. Home economics classes are largely gone. Financial literacy is rarely taught in our schools. Our civics classes do not teach critical thinking in any meaningful way. Homework teaches our children that work never ends. The school year normalises the Monday-Friday 9-5 grind. It is far more indoctrination than education.
Objectively, coming out with a high school diploma does tell an employer that you have met the requirements to be a loyal soldier, not too prone to thinking outside the box or complaining about tasks that need to be taken home, while being capable of following strict instructions. That is not anything that years of of work does not also confirm. But that you had a stable enough family that you could complete high school does offer an indication of coming from a socioeconomic class that can afford to do so. If you provide that diploma, an employer will also know when you graduated, offering up your approximate age where there is no legal way to ask.
University degree requirements seem to serve a similar purpose. While having a degree specific to the task is of fairly obvious high value, completing an undergraduate degree in an irrelevant field in 1995 has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on anyone’s ability or actual qualifications to do any job whatsoever today. To insist on that degree is more about classism and, often by correlation, racism than it is anything to do with education level.
The rise of crippling student loans and the institutional pushback on free post-secondary education has little to do with the cost of providing that education and everything to do with ensuring that university degrees are protected as a class indicator. Those from a class below which that education is designed are punished for trying to step out of their caste by being burdened with life-changing debts that often outweigh the financial benefits gained by the added education. It also makes the education itself far more expensive in raw dollars than someone who comes from a family background that can afford to pay it up front, not incurring loans or interest.
University education should be free for anyone who wants it, but university degrees as a job requirement should be treated as an alternative or equivalent to relevant work experience. For those that do not have any work experience, a degree is an appropriate demonstration of ability to work.
Like relying on unpaid internships to build experience, spending years paying to work rather than being paid to work in a university environment is exclusive and in both cases primarily benefit those who come from families that have resources.
Working your way through university to come out without debt is less and less plausible. While there is plenty of data showing a correlation between higher education and high incomes, there is less data about causation. If someone from a wealthier background can get farther in their education with less debt, their chances of maintaining that advantage are going to be high. The education itself may not be the only factor.
Several years ago, a friend’s company lost their IT guy. He sent me the resulting job posting and I immediately noticed that it required a university degree. I told him they should drop that requirement as the best IT people are those who grew up teaching themselves technology by taking apart and building computers in their parents’ basement. Some weeks later, he told me they had followed the advice and had hired a new IT guy. He was a high school dropout and “the best we’ve ever had.”
Our high school completion rates have vastly improved over recent decades, so their strength as a class indicator have dropped. Requiring a physical high school diploma to get a job someone is otherwise eminently qualified for, though, has to be reexamined. Once someone has been in the job market, it does not serve a purpose other than to provide one’s approximate age to their prospective employer, since that is not a question they may directly ask.
When we hear right wing tirades against “diversity, equity, inclusion”, they often demand, without irony, that everyone be hired on their merits. For them, this is code for ensuring that only people from their race and/or socioeconomic class can be hired. To achieve a genuine meritocracy, though, the playing field has to be level.
Job requirements should seek relevant experience and competencies with education as but one element, not use education as a subtle ways to get around laws against discrimination.
Education, from start to finish, has to be treated as a right and run as a public resource available equitably to all, not as a profitable class indicator.
I am very happy when discussions extend socio-economic issues beyond simplistic economic class. In David’s discussion he included race, the video references gender, and I can tell stories about ableism and neuronormativity.
I do worry that some Canadians looking at the video will think that the problems discussed only apply to the USA as educational institutions are provincially rather than municipally funded. While that makes the US system even more divided, that single difference isn’t the whole story.
My wife is a high school teacher, and she is of south asian descent. As the teacher at the top of the seniority list for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) as far as someone still in the classroom (there is one person who is higher, but they are at the board and not in the classroom), she has considerable experience with observing how this system works. Even during the hiring process, Eurocentric cultural traits related to individualism and required bragging filter which types of teachers will be hired. And having adults in schools that students can relate to is important, so only predominantly one demographic of teachers (especially in schools where those traits represent a minority of students) has ongoing impact.
I’m Autistic, but fortunately nobody knew that while I was still a student. I believe the opportunities I was granted (largely because teachers saw something in me, and encouraged me to do things – including going to University) wouldn’t have been available. While I successfully navigated secondary school, the structure of post-secondary during the 1980’s and early 1990’s didn’t really allow neurodivergent people to succeed. I did have what I consider a successful career in IT, and it was only because I managed to never go through a regular HR process that the lack of degree didn’t impact me.
Excellent point. Our society makes many false assumptions about education. As a retired high school teacher then at a university level ,we are turning out dunces. Using the original meaning of the word , it referred to Duns Scotus who was so filled with irrelevant biblical knowledge he could not cope with reality. Our graduates at every level of education are dunces when they leave our educational institutions. They expect work at a financial level far above their real ability level The educational level they have reached is unrelated to the ability level required in real life.