Job U

A college education is not the best path into the future world of work.

Have you got kids? If you do, it’s a fair bet that once they’ve finished high school, you’d like them to go to college. A college degree will give them the best chance of a good job with a high salary, and that’s a fact. Or is it?

You might be surprised to hear that every day, jobs are created that do not require a college education. In fact, according to a forecast by the Labour Department of the United States, a mere 27 percent of new jobs that will be generated from 2014 to 2024 require college education. Moreover, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that of the 20 occupations expected to create the most new jobs from 2012 to 2022, only one of these – general and operations management – requires a bachelor’s degree.

So if we continue to force the norm of college education upon our children, they may later find themselves fighting for jobs where their degree is no longer relevant. And it’s not just graduates in a decade’s time who’ll find themselves unemployed – the problems have already begun. The jobless rate for college graduates under the age of 25 was 8.2 percent  in 2013 compared to 5.4 percent in 2007.

So if a college education can no longer secure a job, what can?

There are two keys to finding a job today: technical skills and work experience. Rapidly growing industries, such as the tech world, require you to have both the technical know-how and, where possible, real world experience. Most college degrees can give you neither.

In this way, workers who did not go to traditional colleges to study are increasingly better off than those that did. For example, in Florida and Virginia, graduates with technical or occupational associate degrees currently outearn the state’s bachelor’s degree recipients by almost $2,500 per year.

So statistics show loud and clear that a college degree may not benefit you as an individual. But did you know that they are harming society too? Read on to the next blink to find out why.