Bachelor’s: Increasing in price but falling in value

Nowadays one of the most striking and discouraging lessons an undergraduate student is forced to learn is how difficult it is to land a job – at least one in your area of expertise. It seems that throughout our lives we grow up to believe that after leaving university the world is at our feet and we are free to become whatever we want to be.

In reality, it seems that we are willing to become whatever any employer is willing to offer. The way the labour market has changed in the last few years has brought an end to the pre-conceived idea of job security right after graduation. In light of this change, we need to take serious consideration of this issue, regardless of the economic environment.

The rising proportion of people who pursue higher education has led to an excess of college-educated individuals running after too few jobs that require those degrees.

That is, it is not that the general amount of jobs is low; it means that the amount of jobs which actually need college-level skills are severely outnumbered by the amount of people who meet those requirements. That makes a university degree no longer an adequate screening measure for firms to assess the capacities of an individual and leads to other further credentials needed to compensate for this.

Using a bit of jargon, we might say that the signalling power of a bachelor’s degree has been severely reduced in the last years. Call it credential or academic inflation, a simple example of this is the fact that thirty years ago, a B.A. was enough to get a managerial position in a company whereas now it normally takes an MBA or an impeccable record and a lifetime of experience in the field to get that position.

Because of the need of individuals to demonstrate to potential employers their competence through a piece of paper that has suffered a severe devaluation, there has been a tendency for graduates to pursue further levels of education and other means of adding credential value.

An example of this is the fierce increase in internship demand and the desperate need to get work experience before graduation day. Firms and businesses tend to hire graduates with some degree of work experience than graduates without any because this has become one of the straightforward ways to substitute for the lack of the B.A.’s aptitude as a measure of achievement.

This is also the main reason for the increasing proportion of students pursuing postgraduate degrees. Indeed, demand for master’s degrees has increased considerably in recent years.

And while a lot of jobs may not actually require a master’s, the degree is nevertheless used as a sorting mechanism, although it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that someone will be much more successful. In essence, it all boils down to the different ways in which an employer can sort out candidates from the vast pool of qualified graduates.

Even the humanities departments, which were once allergic to the idea of an applied degree, have come to recognise that there is a need for practical credentials. This has led to some needing a master’s in Public History to work at a historical museum or society, in Art to manage a gallery and in Music to direct a choir or manage the business and industry side of musicianship.

This gives a bit of hope if you have not secured a job by the time you graduate. Going for a master’s might be a great way to kill time while waiting out this economic downturn, and in addition, it might give you that signalling boost necessary to secure better job positions in the future. Because who knows, as the race for higher qualifications continues, maybe in 20 years we’ll all need PhDs to become janitors.