Tag Archives: Employment

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The Jobs of Tomorrow Require a College Degree – Or Do They?

Making sense of conflicting reports on education level and employment

I have been sorely troubled in recent months by conflicting – even diametrically opposed – reports that claim either that most jobs in the future will require a college degree, or, alternatively, that most jobs will not require a college degree.

Here are two quick examples. A report from October 23 from TheBlaze TV quoted Mike Rowe (of “Dirty Jobs” and many TV commercials for Ford Motor Company) in an interview with Glenn Beck. In the interview, Mr. Rowe belittled the notion of taking on debt to obtain a college degree when there are so many jobs available in the skilled trades. (Just for the record, Mr. Rowe earned a B.A. in communication studies from Towson University.) Summarizing the interview, TheBlaze TV noted, “Of the roughly three million jobs that companies are struggling to fill, Rowe said only 8 to 12 percent require a college degree.”

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The Beginning of the End for the Humanities?

Perhaps not, when the jobs of the future depend on skills that have been the hallmark of the liberal arts.

In an article on Oct. 30, The New York Times reported that in Stanford University’s undergraduate division, 45 percent of the faculty are in the humanities, but only 15 percent of the students are humanities majors. Harvard University has seen a 20 percent drop in humanities majors in the last decade, and nationally only 7 percent of students are majoring in the humanities, half the percentage seen in 1970. Elizabeth City State University, a historically black university in North Carolina, may eliminate degree programs in seven programs, including history, in part because of declining student interest in these majors.

Do the humanities still have a place in American higher education? Or are colleges and universities destined to become a collection of training programs for the professions? Is there no middle ground?