Wanted: Factory Workers, Degree Required
This doesn&#x27;t sound like a higher education problem - it sounds like an education problem. If adults can&#x27;t pass a &quot;screening test geared toward a ninth-grade education&quot;, we&#x27;re either teaching the wrong things (useless subjects with no practical applications) or we&#x27;re teaching it the wrong way. Higher education is too late to solve this.<p>Requiring degrees, I agree that&#x27;s a problem. People should do degrees for academic purposes. And while there&#x27;s undeniably an association between &quot;smart&quot;&#x2F;&quot;clever&quot; and &quot;degree&quot;, the real issue is the feature creep. Put simply, because of lack of other standards, either from education or industry, a degree is now the easiest way to determine if someone is, well, reliable&#x2F;hard-working without taking a gamble. While I&#x27;m sure it isn&#x27;t perfect, licensing like lawyers (the bar in the US) or electricians (at least in the UK) have is a potential work-around for this.<p>As an aside, I strongly believe a gap year between school and college&#x2F;university is underrated. Everybody I&#x27;ve met who worked for a year or more beforehand had a different approach to college, and got more out of it. It also gives you the chance of discovering non-academic pursuits you enjoy, and maybe deciding college isn&#x27;t such a big deal along the way. Gap years are a huge missed opportunity for both individuals and industry.