"Is a GED More Valuable Than a PhD?"

with an M.S. And he doesn't have any student loans or employment gaps.

and always made the same salary

This is just weird to the point of implausibility. Especially in NY where I know at least 20 of the best computer scientists in the country that haven't been able to fins any work in the field for years. IBM has been laying us off for well over a decade.

who didn't really have web experience (hard-core programmers, we needed more web stuff). That they would even apply for the job we had gave me a clue last year how bad things were. One of them had worked for one of the big defense companies in the Southern Tier (I forget which one).

As I said in the post below, it was a part-time job - who knows how many applications we would have gotten for full-time.

The fact that "over qualification" is considered to be a valid justification is just obscene. Programming is programming. There is no difference, except in how efficiently a function is written. Languages are a matter of syntax and tools are irrelevant.

This 20-something got the job because they knew he could do the job cheap and be easily let go once it is done, period. This is where business has gone, experience, knowledge, innovation are all irrelevant now. Are you dumb enough to do the job for less than it's worth and are you easily disposed of once you have.

Being good and getting better at what you do is a detriment, it merely indicates that you might be problem once they're through with you. Where do you think this will lead?

I don't mean this to be an attack on you, but I'm one of the earlier victims of this Clinton initiated travesty. I've watched the destruction of millions of families and the constant devolution of programming skills for a decade, and it is not only cruel, but monumentally stupid as well.

multi-player game company, (best job I ever had... ). Years passed, I had to turn down a promotion because my father was dying and I couldn't relocate - long story short, I was not keeping up with the "kids" who could work 80 hours a day and were learning programs I had no clue about.

I don't know if my experiences are similar everywhere, but I did get the sense that the field found the younger, unencumbered (no kids, etc) employees more attractive to hire. Maybe? I don't know. It's been a long time since I was working for them.

I recall during my divorce applying (and being offered) a job at another game company, but as a single mom with 2 small kids - one in diapers, I couldn't commit to 60 hrs a week and 5 days off a year. They loved my gameboy art, too... I worked there for a weekend - just for fun. I loved doing that stuff - now it's obsolete...: ). So frustrating.

I don't have a college degree (but I have almost 4 years of college - 2 schools, related studies - no diploma) and even the most entry level jobs these days require a degree... actually, I don't think there are any entry level jobs anymore. Not like there used to be.

I'd be frustrated if I were you, too. You sure he doesn't have some specialized training - if not a degree?

Do you both have health care benefits?

I dunno - just brainstorming... doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

as long as you know the current stuff. He's in his mid-20s, a few college classes but no degree. Self-taught web stuff, though now he can get paid training via work. There are times when his overconfidence and lack of tact in saying he knows more than others have shown, and may come back to bite him. The older I get, the more I appreciate my elders!

Part of the issue was that it's a part-time job, so that may have scared people off, BUT we got a decent number of applications for it, maybe because it gets good benefits, and job competition is fierce. The other finalist for it probably wouldn't have taken the job because he was used to making much more than we could pay.

My degree is in the science/content, though I'm mostly working on administrative stuff related to it - and planning, making recommendations for technology changes we need. On paper I'm way overqualified (though I hate that word) for my job. I can do relatively basic web and database stuff (self-taught myself), but he can do more so he's taking over those parts of my work. IT people just get paid more than environmental science folks do. It's a little weird to delegate to someone making more per hour than I do. I don't know his actual salary, but the range for his title is above what I make.

Do you do the same jobs at the same level of proficiency?

My hat is off to him, getting in the door without that checkbox on the resume is no mean feat.

and experience and I make the same as my coworkers, most of whom have a Bachelors and no experience. And I make more where I am than in almost any private sector job reqiring a Masters job I would get. But, thanks to my education, I KNOW how screwed up the damn place is while my coworkers either don't know or don't care.

K & R

Scored in the top 1 percentile of my state.The GED was easy for me..I saw the questions and was shocked.People made it out like it was a really hard test. I couldn't help but think to myself during the test.. Damn I wish I could have taken the GED test in the 3rd grade.(I was doing geometry in 3rd grade) All those hellish tormenting years of bullying making my life misery I would have spared myself if I only could have taken the damn test back THAN..
Oh and when I got the diploma,it looked nice,almost like a HS diploma.. BUT had the dot matrix printer strips left on it.So when I framed it(my mom wanted me to) I left room for the printer strips.I thought it was funny.

Sometime you gotta know people, and if they have a good paying decent job they can possibly hook you up with getting one pretty easy;) I do pool and hot tub cleaning at the Outerbanks NC. It was mainly my summer job at first, but now I'v also found that I can still make due with it just cleaning hot tubs durring the winter while given that opportunity. Pay's areound half as much durring winter, but in the vacation/summer season I can easily make around a grand per week. The bad thing about my job with that theirs no benifits what so ever so I don't know what to do their as far as careers go cause this is the only good paying job I can get.

Someone with a PhD invested a lot of time and money into that degree and expects to be paid for it handsomely. We just recently let a couple of people go with masters degrees that were highly paid to do what someone else in the office that can think on the run (HS, no college) for less than half the cost.

My employer is a family. All six family members in the business have worked with no income for a full year now. The couple that owns the business were actually physically ill for months at the thought of having to let go someone they've invited into their family. It was that and many other cutbacks or have 22 years of work go down the tubes. We still don't know if they will survive.

I am at the bottom third of incomes and I have people knocking at my door wanting to hire me - for at or slightly less than I currently make. I have 20 years of experience and can do anything a CPA can do accurately and efficiently. I don't have the certification because I don't have the degree. But I have the knowledge and make less than half what a CPA makes.

i regularly deal with people who are what i would call over educated, they spend all the years in school, get the debts but have real world skills and end up unemployable except in academia, and theres only so many teaching jobs available. Prime example is my wife, educated up the ying yang but having to work in a field totally outside her education.

the nonprofits were requiring fundraisers (Development officers) to have at least a Bachelor's degree, which wasn't the case when I started out. So I eventually had to go back and finish my last year of college, which I did at a small local college that offered an Accelerated Degree Program, ideal for people in my situation. At the time I worked for a nonprofit that gave up to $500 a semester in tuition benefits. I was able to go on and get a Master's degree with that help.

for liveably, but I only have a Masters, so I can't aspire to "handsomely." I only applied for jobs requiring a Masters but could barely find anything that was much better than unemployment. So I got myself a job requiring a Bachelors for hire but a Masters to move up. Now I am paid...well, not much, but at least I have benefits.

It's not really about computer programmers. It's about how people who believed in the shiny American dream, followed their hearts, and went into debt to finance a higher degree in the humanities, believing that it could lead to a better, more fulfilling job, are finding that they were misled. There ARE no jobs. And the few openings that crop up are so fiercely sought after that it's impossible for all but a few to succeed. Very sad, IMO. We need the arts, too. Art, philosophy, literature, history... are all falling by the wayside. It was bad before, but in this economy, it's downright brutal.

Art, philosophy, literature, history... are all falling by the wayside. It was bad before, but in this economy, it's downright brutal.

Part of the problem is of course going to come down to perception. What is literature? I majored in English Lit but, I write in a genre that most DU'ers have nothing but scorn for. However, I publish and I get paid for it. And actually, 2008 has been my best year yet, and late 08 much better than anything before it. In books at least, I think we're going to see some growth in some genre fiction pretty fast. It's all about the escape. And right now? A lot of us want some escape. It will be very interesting to see what the publishing industry looks like in 2 years. My brother is a musician (and also a mechanic who got laid off in Dec). I'll have to ask him what his take is. If he's seen his band's bookings go up, etc.

My definition of literature is pretty broad. ;) If you don't mind to answer, in what genre do you write? I'd like to hear more about what you've hinted at regarding the publishing industry, genre fiction, and what the public may be looking for. Your comments are, generally, hopeful to me. I think you're on to something here.

erotica or some would say erotic romance. I have a lot of friends in romance and sf/f. A couple in women's fiction. After watching the trends (and royalty statements lol!) the last year, we tend to as a group generally be of the opinion that escapism is in. Vampires, shapeshifters, alt history/steampunk, cyberpunk, etc.

Also, YA is HUGE. My girls (12 and 13) are voracious readers. Between the two of them they got 16 books for Cmas, read them all in a week, went back to school and started trading among their friends. This generation really is reading despite the cell phones and play stations, etc. YA is a market with amazing growth potential. The interesting thing is what my girls (and their friends)are reading. Mostly it's vampires and high fantasy. But my girls are also reading Jane Austen and Edgar A. Poe. Odd combo, but as long as they are reading I don't care lol! I might introduce them to A Clockwork Orange and Lord of the Flies next. They are definitely not getting fun reading material assigned in school and when it comes down to it, this is the generation that will ultimately keep mine in print lol.

Good for you! :-)

trashy romance.

This from a guy who used to sell books. Some of it is good, but Sturgeon's Law probably applies ("90% of everything is trash").

Your perspective is very interesting. And for writers, especially those outside the mainstream, quite hopeful. Thanks. :)

School, combined with my ADD getting worse, is kicking my ass right now.

I've got six separate ideas for novels (four fantasy, one steampunk/fantasy, one Victorian-era vampire piece that's not anywhere near being a romance), one of which I'm 17,000 words into, and a bunch of in-progress short stories. But I haven't had time in weeks to really sit down and make a lot of progress (progress being defined as several hours just purely writing), and the ADD means I keep bouncing around between pieces and slowing the process down further.

So here I am working as a temp at this factory. People always ask me things like "why are you working here?" And I reply "uh, because I need a job and I haven't been able to get a better one." This teacher who was also working a summer job even showed me this "help wanted" ad where they advertised wanting math skills, and he seemed to feel that was gonna help me. They wanted pretty basic math skills not anything my degree gave me an edge with. I applied for the job anyway and didn't even get an interview. Same with the $12/hour math tutoring job at the local community college (that was fun because I later took a free class there and one of the other students was talking about how she had been offered a math tutoring position there that she might take. As in, they would offer her the job and then advertise that the job was available, take applications and then hire the person they had already pre-selected.)

I also applied at the factory where I was working as a temp. So did other temps. One kid from another shift got hired, supposedly because he kissed the right a$$, but then later got fired when his background check discovered that he really did not have his GED like he claimed. Funny thing is, he probably could have still gotten hired if he had just told the truth and said he was working on getting his GED.

Meanwhile I was working, as a temp, on a million dollar bosch line and had skills that were kinda useful, as I never tire of telling the story of when the line was down for an hour (and would have been down for two if not for my actions, which I deliberately delayed) until I fixed the computer problem. I had skills and demonstrated that I could save $25,000 in lost production, but they still had no interest in hiring me. I pretty much had to leave the state to find a job with benefits.

she stays home with kids, i work as i make more than she did, go figure.

"value" in our current system has little to do with the ability to navigate the landmines of the educational system.

yay! to those with advanced degrees. you test well. good for you and god bless.

i'm not voting either way on this issue. its an argument about capitalism i suppose. college dropouts can get to be the richest people on earth. phd's can drive taxi cabs.

or vice versa.

do you see?

n/t

and oh by the way... a phd is no measure of any sort of ability past being a student with some cash that tests well.

check out the dude they refer to as "einstein"...

Many in the Piledhigh.&Deep. crowd are also some of the most fragile and insecure people that have ever walked the Earth.

didn't finish high school but started popping out babies at 15 that they couldn't take care of. Works both ways, my dear.

the educated are.

Works both ways--there are some real dumbshits out there with degrees, but there are also plenty who love to brag about how they don't got no need for no fancy booklernin.

QC, PhD

He may have worked as a clerk in a patent office, but he did have a University degree in physics. Not a PhD, but I don't think they were using the same system, and it is quite possible to take graduate level courses as an undergraduate. I did it both ways, took graduate courses as an undergrad and in half the courses I took in graduate school, 3/4 of my fellow students were undergraduates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

The people with the degrees are making $20+ an hour and I make about $13. Don't get me wrong, I am really happy with my job and it sure beats min wage or thereabouts (my last job paid $8 an hour) but I am busting my behind to put my daughter through college because it has always been hard for my husband and I to survive, being that neither of us went to college. Perhaps she will hit a brick wall at some point, and hopefully we will be there to help her out, but I am still a believer in a good education.

They make less than the majority of the sworn officers, but still a good living.

I have a BS in biochemistry and during my last year of school while looking at grad schools I kept coming across the fact that a PhD could be a barrier to employment as the market is glutted and there aren't enough openings in industry or academia. It became far harder to get a job at that level and I kept hearing to just stop at the BS or MS level. So here I am.

I think getting an MS in an area with good, practical applications (i.e. running specialized instrumentation/analyses, managing a group) is still a good idea. but further is overkill in today's economy and job environment.

in a field with a similar situation. I got my MS and wanted to go on to the doctorate because I am interested in the subject. But I was already noticing that I was headed towards being underpaid with significant school loans and if I got the additional education I'd be underpaid with huge school loans, so I stopped.

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but im pretty sure my wife would kick your arse for it.

You know, when societies finally gave women the vote.

... that people feel the need to earn more money after they've "invested" all that money. The greatest rewards higher education offers to people are not, and have never been financial.

I have a muchly enriched life as a result.

getting a job teaching was never possible, so if somebody asked me today... should I go into a humanities (insert degree here) advanced anything? I'd say not in our life

Partly we don't appreciate that as a country. And you put that in a resume and interviewers look at you weird... and they'd rather hire the GED kid, than the Masters in History person...

It used to be common for people with just a high school diploma to get ahead, but then you began to see fewer ads that said "Bachelors degree or equivalent experience required" and more that said "Bachelor's degree required."

And you NEED a college degree to teach

We don't pay our teachers well either

So the mindset is... we do not appreciate culture, and we hate educated people

Damn it, the Murican people ARE ignorant and damn proud of it

And you know what? This is one reason why the sheeple are so easy to control

Damn my poli sci prof was right twenty years ago

what happened was that the Bachelor's degree became the High School Diploma of the past. It doesn't necessarily mean that stupid people filled jobs in the past. In fact, I am constantly amazed at the low level of literacy of some people with Bachelor's Degrees. But that says more about the quality of the degree-giving institution.

You make a good point about ignorant people becoming the sheeple, tho, especially when it comes to what used to be called Civics. When did it happen that we no longer taught Civics in high school? That we graduate people from high school who do not know we have 3 branches of government and what they are and what each branch does? Who came up with the dumb idea to NOT teach Civics anymore?

2003 - High School Graduate = $36,835
2003 - Doctorate Degree = $96,830



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Education_and_Gender

The salary of someone with a PhD varies widely depending on the field the PhD was granted in and the time since receipt of the PhD. If that average is "the average 2003 salary of everyone who held a PhD in 2003" then sure, it's going to be high because you're factoring in tenured faculty and college administrators across the country.

The article is more about how people who recently received humanities PhDs are facing a nonexistent market for their credentials. These people are at the bottom of the range of salaries that was likely considered for the statistic you post.

It also doesn't account for the fact that someone with a recent doctoral degree is likely losing a substantial chunk of his or her salary to student loan payments.

All this isn't to say that the answer to the OP's question is "yes"; I'm just pointing out that if you conclude from your numbers that PhD holders are 2.6 times better off than high school graduates, you're overlooking a lot.

and anybody else in the mental health field -

2009 - Masters = $38,000

and that's with a GOOD job

Clearly, there are fields in which a college bachelors, masters or doctorate matters little in the job market. There are also universities of such poor reputation and quality that their degrees have little market value.

A doctorate in law, economics, accounting, medicine, or engineering, for example, from a quality university, will almost always produce decent job offers. In a bad economy, where the job market is shrinking, even those folks may have trouble landing a job, however.

A doctorate in philosophy from Western State A&M will seldom find job offers, of course.

PhDs in the sciences don't grant you a cakewalk, but the situation seems to be somewhat better than in the humanities.

I got my PhD in astronomy about six months ago, and while I'm not making much money now, I have decent benefits and above-average job security.

regardless of some good points in the article, the answer to the title is still "no."

If one uses student loans to get a humanities PhD, he or she is in for a world of financial hurt unless they are seriously hot chit.

"College isn't just job training! It's enrichment! My Phd in english literature made me an intelligent and well-rounded individual!"

"Why can't I make enough money to pay my student loans? I had no idea that the country only hires about ten english professors each year! It's not fair!"

Postgraduate studies for anything other than medicine is a fucking scam.

This article really bugs me, how could anyone think of a masters degree in the humanities as a good career move?

The value of college is a populated checkbox in the resume scanner software. Get it checked as cheaply as possible.

I know people who want to have it both ways as you describe.

But I also know a lot of postdocs who are content to take an earnings hit in order to spend most of their time doing what they enjoy.

I don't know how much fafsa aid goes to humanities postgrads, but I don't really feel that it's a good expenditure if it doesn't result in improving the economic lives of the recipients. Better to give the aid to two nursing undergrads than one english lit Phd.

Jeopardy only has so many contestants and thus limited opportunities to apply that esoteric education.

"Spend most of their time doing what they enjoy?" I enjoy watching star trek and chopping firewood. I don't expect anyone to finance that choice, despite the fact that the firewood is put to a more productive use than the humanities Phd.

Worse, if the woman in the article who was disappointed to not get her NYC museum curatorship job had instead taken up welding, she could have supported a portion of the economy instead of having all of her nonexistent resources confiscated to pay for college debt. The local grocery store benefits from the GED holder's choice, but not from the "overqualified" professional student.

on whether I want my sidewalk fixed or a better understanding of macro economics.

who spent tens of thousands of dollars and studied many years so they can give you an in-depth dissertation on the writings of economist Irving Fisher, there's only one poor sap who give a fuck about hearing it... but everybody has a sidewalk that needs to be fixed sooner or later, and anyone can learn how to fix them.

You just have better bragging rights.

The difference between a PhD in a specialized field and a beautician's certificate is no one's figured out how to automate a hair-dresser's tasks yet.

Generally, a PhD is a degree for scholars.

I didn't get my PhD to get rich (I was well aware of the limtied opportunities and low pay scale). I got my PhD because I love to read good books and talk about 'em.

I'm a Government Contractor and PhDs are well worth it.

I taught for ten years on a high school education. I had a clear Full-Time Designated Subjects credential in CA. We were a Vocational Ed institution with 16 instructors, offering classes in computer applications, operations, and office studies.

About 10 of the instructors had degrees. FIVE of those degrees were English Lit, one was History, and the rest I don't know. What I do remember most vividly though was negotiation time when contracts were due to expire. The degreed instructors lobbied in favor of separate wage scales for degreed and non-degreed instructors. The funniest thing about the whole situation was that they were for the most part CRAPPY teachers. They were such crappy teachers that the school district had to stop putting instructor names on the course catalog, or risk having empty classrooms with tenured instructors at the podiums while other classrooms were overcrowded.

They weren't asking for higher pay due to their performance on the job, but for what they had accomplished in school. I thought that was bullshit, and told them so at every opportunity. When the district finally relented in contract negotiations, and gave them more money for having degrees rather than reward them for performance, I moved on. Smartest move I ever made. There are PLENTY of well-paying careers that do not depend on how many years one avoided actual work by staying in school. Real estate was the one I picked. It turned out to be the smartest decision I ever made.

This semi-retired high school grad (less than fifty years old) now lives in a resort community high in the mountains outside of Los Angeles. The degreed instructors at my old school are at this very moment struggling to adapt to a student body that is rapidly becoming first generation Asian immigrants who speak little or no English. They're actually on the verge of losing their tenured positions because none of them speak Chinese, Vietnamese, or Korean. I guess they could go back to school and learn new languages... As for me, no worries.

So you want more money for doing the same job as me, and your qualification for that demand is that you can name the signatories to the Magna Carta? I'll buy THAT for a dollar...

If you want to learn something Get a Library card. If you want to Buy your way into a social class......go to the Ivy League.

You really 'one upped' the man. By the way, most creative writing professors don't have Ph.D.s. Book publications are all that's required for the job.

I dropped out of a different college to grab an opportunity that was given to me because I knew more about the subject than anyone my age and the field has only been taught at the University level for 10 years at the time i was hired. So there was a factor that very few people had a degree in this field also.

I was lucky to have a mentor that was forward thinking enough that he hired the person most qualified and not the best connected.

I am aware of what the system is like but thank you for feeling the need to educate me about a place i already was while poking fun at my social class.

You might get the same chances if you checked your snark at the door. I have gotten many job connections on DU.

I know there are a lot of young people who come out of college and think they are going to land some amazing job at the top of the ladder not realizing that there is already someone there who has more experience.

I also echo the sentiment mentioned above that a PhD isn't for making money, it's for scholars. You shouldn't do it chasing after money.

If she finished high school at 18, spent four years as an undergrad, and six years in grad school, that puts her at 28. Situations vary, of course.

Now if she had worked in Museums for 5 or 6 years and went back to school to get her PHD to become a Curator I could understand her disappointment but if she had been in the field she would have known how incredibly hard it is to land one of those jobs. I have a friend who went to school to become a Librarian and only after receiving her Masters in Library Science she realized how fricking hard it is to become a Librarian since all the jobs are filled and their is practically a waiting list to get into a Library and it's only getting worse with Libraries losing their funding.

Nobody cares about your MFA and it can actually work against you in some job interviews. I'm of course talking about humanities degrees, not actual doctors and lawyers and such.

I quit my Ph.D. program about a year ago. I have an MA in English Lit. Had a 3.9 GPA. When I moved back home, tried to get a job as an Assistant/Associate Producer in the games industry... now I'm working as game tester making 12/hour with no benefits. Even worse, I'm on a contract extension, meaning I get canned in a couple months.

I really don't know what to do... :(

as some would have you believe. There are plenty of people who get advanced humanities degrees and do just fine for themselves, either in academia (there are a lot of colleges outside of the Research 1 schools, after all) or outside of academia.

It's true that the job market looks a bit bleak right now, but that's true across the economy. And even with the market looking as bad as it is, there are still people getting jobs. Next year, unfortunately, I suspect the situation might get worse, as schools cut hiring even further to compensate for shrinking endowments; if the economy recovers in the coming years, though, things will look better.

museum curators as an example of how difficult the PhD job market is, you are desperate to sell a story.

Getting a PhD in a Humanities field usually is a bad move. Even worse is how many people doing that take 10 years to get the degree as was mentioned in the article.

If you aren't in engineering or some hard sciences, it isn't worth your time or money. I have a PhD in an engineering field and even though times are tough, there are still opportunities here...and you generally will make WAAAY more than a GED will.

It won't make you rich - if you want to make the most money, focus on that. But you have to be pretty smart and tenacious to finish, if nothing else. What screwed up the woman in this story is that she is thinking she has to get a job that uses all of her Ph.D. knowledge or it's no good. She has more general knowledge of how to research, how to write, how to think. etc. Maybe she should go into advertising or something.

my best friend.

he is now a partner in a d.c. firm that has nothing to do with music. he is not evil, nor is his firm.

i always wrote it off to music being so much like mathematics and the fact that he just got along with everybody so well. and he has this strange presence about him. when he walks into a room, everyone looks to him as if he knows the answer. it freaks him out too, but it is what it is.


an education is a wonderful thing. degrees are great. and it can lead to some very odd career directions that have nothing to do with the original intention.

life is funny that way...

Didn't matter what the degree was--just that you had one.

Three years later a nineteen year old woman was hired fresh out of high school. Her starting salary was more than I was making after three years.

mental health, the degree reqirements have also gone down in the past not-so-many years. I'm convinced it's because they want to hire people who expect less money. The hell with the people who actually need the help. Education is for weenies.

I'm guessing there were more reasons for her being hired than the quality of her mind.

I know this because she later underwent gastric bypass surgery, and she was very open about the details. She was also about six feet tall.


Honestly, I'm not sure why she was hired. She was a pleasant, but she was a very young 19, so to speak.

How many time have you heard that in your life? How many times today? Did you see Hillary gushing over Bill Gates in the Senate hearings last year as he whined about how there are no qualified people for M$ to hire?

Meanwhile, M$ won't even interview anyone with a degree and years of experience because it lowers their chance at hitting the H-1(b) lotto. Is it any wonder that every year software sucks more than last, that the largest software company on the planet can't produce a fucking OS that is worth a shit?

We are so fucked.

He's making $98K starting salary. He is 27, and this is his first job. His fiance has a PhD as well, and is making a good amount herself.

It probably depends a lot which field you are talking about. My friend's degree is in EE, and his fiance's is in Biomedical Engineering. I'm doing fine with my MS, but in my field, it would benefit me greatly to have a PhD. Personally, though, I'm glad I don't have that extra debt, as I may not stay in my field. If I do go back to school, it will be to a Tier 1 law school. Even graduates from law schools from Tiers 2-4 seem to be having trouble finding decent work right now unless they graduated in the top 10-25% of their class.

GED matters more in that you wont be considered for almost any jobs without it.

but people who go for higher degrees often do so for personal interest in the subject rather than just because they will make more money.

The university as an institution emerged in the Middle Ages and hasn't done a good job of keeping up with the times. Before the Internet, universities were the only places you could if you wanted really in-depth information on a particular topic, because all information was stored either in physical documents or in people's heads, and gathering lots of documents and knowledgeable people in one place took serious time and money.

Now you can access electronic documents and communicate with people online from anywhere in the world. So what's left is a fantastically inefficient system where kids out of high school pay huge sums of money to sit in rooms with their peers and listen to lectures that could be podcasted for a thousandth of the cost. They pay hundreds of dollars each semester for fancy textbooks that come out in new editions every year with just enough changes to make the old ones incompatible for testing purposes. And after graduating they enter a job market where connections and experience are much more important than a diploma.

Most of the services a university performs could be rendered online for a fraction of the cost. Lectures, group discussions, quizzes, tests and essays could all be done electronically, and a central accreditation system could be established for online schools. I've taught myself to do many things and gained all kinds of in-depth knowledge using the Internet. Textbooks for basic subjects like calculus, writing, biology and so forth could be released online under the Creative Commons license; there are tons of educated people who'd be willing to write such books as a public service.

The only fields this doesn't apply to are things like botany and electrical engineering, where students can't gain competence without access to expensive lab equipment. But there's no reason to maintain big campuses and put people in debt for decades so they can learn about Renaissance paintings and organic chemistry.

No night manager at Subway wants to hire someone better educated than him or her, which is just about everyone.