Colleges (even the poor ones) employ selection processes to ensure that only the best and most willing students be able to achieve completion at all. What the parent is suggesting is that those who are selected via those processes might also just happen to be the best suited for the business world, irrespective of their education.<p>For example, someone who has innate determination to receive a degree might also be determined to finish projects in the workplace, leading to better job opportunities over someone who is less innately determined. While someone with high determination and no degree may do just as well as any college graduate, since they are lumped into the group of people with low determination, we pass them off as outliers instead of looking at the most important features.<p>The correlation is clear, but that does not mean there is causation.