Work experience. Even the federal government mostly recognizes enough years of work experience as equivalent to an undergraduate degree, although the paygrade specs tend to want a 2-1 ratio (i.e. 8 years of work experience is considered equivalent to an undergraduate degree). It's hard to articulate many position-relevant benefits of an undergraduate education that people won't also gain from sufficient years working in the field.

It is rare to gain relevant work experience without having a basic framework for the said work, and consistency to measure that basic framework from a pool of candidates, both which come from college/university education.

Equivalency can be established for senior positions, not entry level ones. I assume the staffers do have entry level positions. Can a plumber or an electrician claim to possess experience to become a staffer? I doubt it.

What is going to happen is most staffing positions will be filled by senior work equivalency, while entry level positions will be eliminated. Fast forward a few decades, and there will be no eligible candidates for staffer positions.

Honestly, tradework like plumbing or electrical might be a surprisingly good qualification for entry-level congressional staff positions. Project management, scheduling, finance, and perhaps most importantly dealing with (sometimes pissed off) customers/constituents and the tradeoffs of what is possible, versus feasible, versus affordable.

Realistically a lot of the function of undergraduate degrees (in fields without specific technical education expectations) is to filter for people who have a basic ability to plan and complete work, meet requirements, etc. A huge range of entry-level jobs require these same skills. Many high-school educated office assistants have delivered larger projects under more pressure than a typical college graduate, and usually gained more applied knowledge in business/public administration while doing so.

The main function that degrees tend to offer here is just easy comparability, but I think practical experience hiring in many fields shows that college degrees do not actually reflect the level of consistency in outcomes that hiring managers wish they did. College degrees do have some advantage, and not requiring them will probably mean that you interview more candidates to find a fit, but I don't think either of those effects are as big as you might think.

For any hiring, there is required to be a minimum baseline. That has been college education so far, since it yields consistent and repeatable results (less work for hiring managers when they know someone has a 4 year engineering degree, as opposed to someone who has been educated in the school of life, don't you think?)

However way you look at it, hiring managers are going to require some baseline. What that baseline should be is debatable, and you can actually expand it to include trades like plumbing and electrical (many requirements do that).

But removing the college education requirement entirely is basically (a) increasing the burden on hiring manager, and (b) solving the wrong problem.

The real problem highlighted by the article is cost of college education, which needs to be addressed. Instead the proposal is let's hire highschool dropouts.

Let me ask this -- if college education is made affordable, will your position still be the same?

I'm not talking about positions that require a 4-year education in a technical field like engineering, they're a fairly different situation. What you see in areas like government roles are positions that require any 4-year degree, but most applicants will probably have a liberal arts degree. It's not that these degrees offer nothing of value, but the hiring manager isn't expecting any particular baseline education beyond reading and writing anyway.

I tend to think that more of the problem here is romanticization of congressional staffers. While there are positions that rely on more background knowledge like policy analysis, a lot of congressional staff members are essentially just customer service representatives and learn most of what they need to know on the job. Anyone who can keep track of a few different things and deal with customers should be a good fit.

I disagree, it is the baffling romantization of plumbers and tradesmen as some kind of a social panacea that is the problem. Here you have already predefined for yourself what plumbers are and how they should function, and so you employ this biased construction of plumbers for your post, where it is nothing but fantasy.

Don't be too hard on yourself though, you are only subject to the current shibboleths of pining for these fantastical tradesmen (possibly a result of some kind of desire for a safe simplicity), and so you only regurgitate these popular sentiments (that feel so good!) without being able to consciously check your delusions.

A University education is not the only valid signal, but it is one of the best signals that is widely accessible. Going through public K-12 and then a State University is a very paved path.

There's a lot of ways to begin lowering the cost of University education. Some of it relays on students being able to make good decisions. Students in general have been preferring schools with lots of expensive services and facilities, and schools have been increasing their tuition to pay for it. Other aspects would be to fight administrative overhead creep that is well documented.

There's more radical ways of handling it. Price limits tied to state/federal funding. Restructuring student loans so that the Federal Government is the buyer instead of the student, and using larger buyer status to negotiation with schools.

I think the free market will force schools to lower prices, and the number of students fall. This fall of students has been expected for awhile, and covid seems to have accelerated it.

College education implies and signals anything people want it to. As the value of a college education has approached zero, its proponents impose on it unquantifiable and unfalsifiable qualities as justifications.

>college = maturity

>college = growth

>college = intelligence

>college = responsbility

>college = you can see a task through

>college = diligence

>college = social skills

>college = well-rounded, interesting

>college = ...

Professors and administrators do it to justify their salaries and sell it to prospective customers. Alumni to justify the expense. Elites to justify their status, their agendas.

Can you substantiate your "value of a college education has approached zero" statement with data please?

Add to that, let's assume college education is made affordable, will your position still remain the same?

> If education is expensive, then making it less expensive seems to be the natural solution than eliminating its requirement.

One of the reasons college is expensive is that a degree is required for most jobs. This creates artificial demand, which drives up prices.

Eliminating these requirements where they're not necessary is, in fact, a way to make college less expensive.

And I'd argue that any time you see a requirement for a college degree that doesn't specify what field the degree is in, it's a pretty good sign the degree is unnecessary.

Most college degrees are awarded by state universities. The price of typical college education is set by political process, not by the market. If college is expensive, it's expensive because making it affordable is not a priority for those who vote.

Agreed.

> If education is expensive, then making it less expensive seems to be the natural solution than eliminating its requirement.

Most of the arguments I see saying that college is too expensive are kind of like people using Lamborghinis to say that cars are too expensive. The fact that you can spend $500k on a car does not mean that cars are expensive. The fact that you can go $400k into debt for college doesn't mean that college is expensive. It just means that you can spend a lot on an expensive college if you choose to do so.

If someone takes dual credit courses in high-school, then gets a 2 year degree at a local community college, then transfers to a state school that offers a good return on investment, and does all that while working a part time job, college isn't that expensive.

And the more people try to take that path, the more college will respond to increasing those types of options.

If you aren't targeting a field that requires a college education, even a cheap one is still pretty expensive in terms of time and money, and some subjects at some schools can be really weak. I can see why some people would opt for trade school or just learning on the job.

What annoys me a little is when highly paid software engineers around me say college is pointless, when every single one of them went to a good college thanks to their parents.

Chiming in for context (representation?):

I grew up thinking college was a must for making big bucks but still didn't think it was worth it. After going to a trade school and doing jobs related and unrelated to my trade, I ended up needing big bucks and time. So I went to a boot camp and am now one of those software engineers. I don't think college is pointless, but I am so glad I didn't go.

My point being, bringing the hype/price/time down on college will likely do good for many smart industrious lower-mid class kids.

For software engineering, that makes sense. I think it's only worthwhile if some conditions are right (good school and covered costs). Which it was for those guys.

There are plenty of other things that could indicate broadened horizons - having lived or worked abroad, for instance. And as someone that went to university, working for a living and responsibilities matures you far faster than uni ever did.

Cheaper education would be great, but we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I like this, and I think you hit the nail on the head with the price of education.

An expert curation of thought techniques and their traditions that aims to develop a critical insight into a discipline (and into reality in general) in a crucial social setting is not really attainable anywhere else. Noam Chomsky noticed this in his famous essay "The Function of a University..." Obviously critical thinking is not a requirement for a government job, and maybe even a detriment?

I kind of doubt employers have that much faith in the value of university degrees. Mostly, they're asking for a degree because they can. They get enough applicants with university degrees that they feel they can impose the extra requirement.

Actually testing applicant skills can be extremely expensive. Employers will always prefer filtering methods that are cheap.