I have been doing more research on how there are just 2 engineering or science Masters degrees offered in the Spokane market - and what that means not only for Spokane but for many communities across the country. As noted below, and in another post I’ll put up later, communities that lack advanced college education in engineering and science will be on the trailing edge, may be even the fading edge, of 21st century economic growth. With out the support for innovation, their economies will gradually wither.
The Center for Labor Market Studies says that less than half of 4-year college graduates 25 and younger are employed in jobs requiring a college degree. While some politicians and academics say we need more people to graduate from college, the reality on the ground is quite different where we now have a surprisingly overqualified work force. The problem is that our education policy (more college graduates) is not synchronized with a coherent industrial policy - and we end up with a big supply versus demand mismatch.
Because so many now have a college degree (about a third of adults), employers have taken to using a college degree as a proxy for “must be a hard worker” and using that as a way to select between job candidates. You’ll need the degree to get the job but you won’t need the degree to actually do the job.
In fact, it has reached a point that: “A proliferation of bachelor’s degree holders will force employers to look for Master’s degrees as signals.” This has occurred in tech - getting a job at most well known high tech firms now requires a Masters degree. The “No Child Left Behind Act” requires that all teachers eventually earn a Masters degree in order to be “highly qualified”.
In fact, “Over one-third (38 percent) of all employed college graduates in the United States have attained degrees higher than a bachelor’s degree” (Source: National Science Foundation).
In the early 1970s, just over 10% of adults had a 4-year college degree or higher. Today, about 30% of adults have a 4-year degree or greater, and 38% of those have a post-graduate degree. Doing the simple math, that means the same percentage of adults today has a Masters degree as had a Bachelor’s degree in the mid 1970s. And the Masters is today’s Bachelor’s degree.
I did not look it up but I suspect there is a relationship between today’s community college degree being somewhat similar to the high school graduate diploma of the 1970s.
The number of persons earning a Bachelor’s degree has risen sharply and steadily since the 1940s. Here is a partial historical record:
(Note there was a spike in bachelor’s degrees in the early 1970s for two reasons. One was the delayed effect of the “Baby Boom” graduating from college and the other was the eligibility for an education deferment from the draft. You can also run the trend further back in time as its been a nearly straight line for some time.)
Do we have too many college educated workers relative to market demand? Apparently yes - with more than 40% of college educated workers in jobs that do not require a 4-year college degree:
(Source: U.S. Department of Education)
Income according to degree type - the top line is Bachelors, then some college, high school and non-high school graduate. This chart shows that income for 4 year degree holders peaked in 1973, declined, then rose again in about 1990, and fell after that. For non-college degree holders, incomes have gone down hill. To move past the stagnate Bachelor’s degree wage level, job seekers are returning to school to complete a Masters degree.
(Source: U.S. Department of Education)
Is a Masters required?
It depends on your field of study and what you wish to do, of course. But in some fields, like education, the “No Child Left Behind Act” basically mandates that teachers eventually earn a Masters degree. Some states have also legislatively mandated a Masters degree for all teachers. Further, union contracts generally base pay on a combination of maximum education and years of experience so teachers also have a financial incentive. Not surprisingly, it turns out that 33% of all Bachelor’s degree holders work in education or government - and many governments also have pay incentives for workers to earn graduate degrees.
Some are also advocating advanced training for nurses. Depending on your state, you may earn what is typically a 3-year community college R.N. degree or a B.S. in Nursing degree. Some in the field are advocating that community college programs be replaced with 4-year degree B.S.N. programs, and some suggest that not far in the future the M.S.N. degree may become the standard requirement. In my state, physical therapists are now earning the Doctor of Physical Therapy degree and the M.S. program has been eliminated entirely. By 2020, it is envisioned that all PT’s will be required to have the D.P.T. degree. A former neighbor was an audiologist, but had to return to school to earn the Doctor of Audiology degree, which is now considered the standard requirement for work as an audiologist.
Clearly, there are many pressures towards the inflation of degree requirements.
I sampled job openings in engineering or program management at Microsoft, Boeing and Amazon - because its relevant to my examination of the lack of engineering and science graduate programs in my community, and because my own undergraduate degree is in computer science.
All of the job postings I read at Microsoft stated that an M.S. in a technical subject was required (except one which required an M.B.A.) or that an “M.S. is preferred with X years experience”.
At Boeing, all of the job postings said either a B.S. with 9 years experience, an M.S. with 7 years experience, or a Ph.D. with 4 years experience was required. Of interest, all of the Boeing job listings said that whether your degree came from an ABET accredited program or not would be taken into consideration in the hiring process. For those not familiar with ABET, ABET once stood for “Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology” and is the standard for accreditation of engineering and computer science programs.
In about 2000, ABET acquired the accreditation program of the Computer Science Accreditation Commission (CSAC) of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB) which was formed in 1985. Thus in recent years, computer science programs are also accredited through the ABET program. Some employers choose to only hire graduates of ABET accredited programs and the lack of ABET accreditation can create extra hurdles for students wishing to pursue graduate studies. Amazon also mostly sought B.S./M.S. degree holders or the “M.S. preferred”, with a small number of jobs seeking just the B.S. degree plus 3 to 5 years of experience.
From the above, accreditation of the undergraduate program is important, and the Masters degree has become the standard for employment at the top technology firms.
Unemployment in the 1990s
Since the 1990s, I have argued that the primary reason for low unemployment was a dearth of young people entering the work force. According to US Census data, there were, for example, about six million fewer people aged 20 to 29 in the mid 1990s than during the during the 1980s, when unemployment was high. Young people are more likely to be unemployed than older workers for many reasons, but one is simple that an older worker with a family and mortgage payments will take the first available job as soon as possible, out of necessity, while younger workers may have options to spend more time looking for a better job.
This chart, also from the U.S. Department of Education, charts the dramatic fall off in younger people during the 1990s. This occurred as a result of the original post-World War II “baby boom”.
Not surprisingly, unemployment was high as the number of young people entering the work force climbed, but then fell as the population of young people also declined.
Summary
Our nation’s policy to push more students into 4-year degree programs does not appear to be well synchronized with an industrial policy creating more demand for such graduates.
About the same percent of the population today has a Masters degree as held a Bachelor’s degree in the mid-1970s.
We are apparently over educating our work force - or under utilizing our work force. Either way, there is a mismatch in government policies.
Regardless, when your competitor for a job has a Bachelor’s - or Master’s - degree and you do not, who do think is going to get the job? The defacto situation is that all of us must continuously advance our skills, our educational qualifications, and if in health care, the initial’s after your name.
And if you want to work at the top employers, a Masters degree is likely in your future.
Elsewhere:
I understand the media completely missed this story but I heard a rumor that Michael Jackson died this past week. Shame that the media missed that story … they could have done saturation coverage on that, don’t you think? 
