Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Degrees stopped guaranteeing jobs
More Graduates
In the next 30 years, more people worldwide will graduate through education than in the whole of history before. Two forces drive it: technology and its transformational effect on work, and a huge explosion in population.
Degrees Lose Value
There was a time when having a degree meant having a job. Now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other.
That ratchet is academic inflation, and it means the credential everyone was steered toward is worth less each year.
How did a bachelor's degree become a baseline?
The US Census Bureau reports that about 5 percent of American adults aged 25 and older held a bachelor's degree in 1940. By the 2020s, that share had grown to more than a third. The GI Bill, signed in 1944, paid college costs for millions of returning veterans and opened universities to far more students. As degrees became common, employers began to use them as a basic filter for hiring.
Where does the idea of credential inflation come from?
The sociologist Randall Collins described the process in his 1979 book The Credential Society. He argued that as more people earn a given degree, it carries less weight with employers, and the requirement for the same job moves up to the next level. Employers then ask for a master's degree where a bachelor's once sufficed. Studies of job postings in the United States have documented the same pattern in specific occupations, including some office and technical roles.
What drives the growth in graduates worldwide?
UNESCO's data show that the number of students enrolled in higher education worldwide rose from roughly 100 million in 2000 to more than 200 million by the 2020s. Much of the growth came from Asia, where countries such as China and India expanded their university systems rapidly. Rising populations and rising secondary school completion rates both feed the numbers. China alone added millions of university places after a major expansion policy began in 1999.
More from TED
