College "A Waste of Time" for Business
Most firms wouldn't think of hiring workers who don't have a college degree. But degrees say very little about the person they're hiring, argues Charles Murray, a scholar at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. The Wall Street Journal published For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time, sliced from his soon-to-be-published book "Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality."
Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance.He's even stronger in a Forbes essay, College Daze, where he says that that parents should encourage their high school graduates to volunteer, or get a real job and support themselves, and then maybe go to college.
I agree, to a point (see Is College Necessary?). In my profession, writing, college does not guarantee success. In high tech, famous college dropouts include Michael Dell, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates. Not that school doesn't matter -- venture capitalists, for instance, tend to prefer their entrepreneurs to drop out of certain schools.
Murray advocates leveling out the school factor somewhat by adopting certifications, not degrees.
In fact, there is an organization that certifies business skills, modeled after the CPA. The Association of Professionals in Business Management offers two certifications, roughly equivalent to bachelor's and an MBA. (Here's a small profile of the organization I wrote for Fast Company in 2007).The model is the CPA exam that qualifies certified public accountants. The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough -- four sections, timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are reported in addition to pass/fail, so that employers can assess where the applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your CPA score gives you a way to show employers you're a stronger applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.
What do you think, BNET? Would you rather have a certified employee, or one with a bachelor's degree?