More Employers are Requiring College Degrees

CBS/Moneywatch is reporting that, according to CareerBuilder.com, almost a third of the companies they surveyed say they have increased the educational requirements of prospective employees over the past five years. Specifically, they are requiring four-year college degrees for positions that used to only require a high school diploma, or had no educational requirement whatsoever. Also, the employers are requiring master’s degrees for jobs that used to require a bachelor’s degree.

The employers say they are doing this because they have seen that they get a better return on investment with the college graduates. I don’t doubt their numbers, which say that hiring college graduates results in higher quality work, improved communication, and even more revenue, but I look around at my field and I don’t see the same correlation. Three of the biggest names in talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck have zero bachelor’s degrees among them; Howard Stern, on the other hand does have a bachelor’s degree. What conclusions can you draw from this? None that I can see. If a company is receiving too many applicants for their available positions, I don’t have a problem with them putting filters in place to get the best candidates, but I found that I learned more about the radio business in the first couple years of working at a small-market station than I did getting my degree.