Lootman wrote:ursaminortaur wrote:The trend for decades had been computerisation of office tasks, automation of factory floors in heavy industries and car plants, and replacement of those heavy industries by newer industries involving computers. The old manual jobs were disappearing hence there was a need for a more highly educated workforce. Unfortunately just allowing more people to go to University without also boosting their pre-university educational attainments combined with leaving which courses the Universities offered to the market led to many students applying for humanity courses rather than STEM courses as they were seen to be easier (and even to the Universities creating new doddy courses). I worked for a polytechnic which became a University which whilst it was a polytechnic had a large engineering department within a few years of its becoming a University that had gone as it was cheaper to provide other courses.
As a humanities graduate myself, I am not sure I would agree that such degrees are "easier". Nor that they are necessarily more useless.
Part of the problem is that you now need a degree for jobs that historically never needed one. For example one younger couple I know both have degrees. He is a nurse and she is a teacher. 40 years ago neither job required a degree. Now both do. But the job is the same.
And with 2 small kids they are really struggling financially. A degree used to be a passport to a well-paid job. Now it is not, although not having a degree just means you are seen as a bit of a thickie with prospects that are not good.
Yes, unfortunately that was another foreseeable consequence of expanding education. With so many people having degrees their value was diluted and employers increasingly used having a degree as a shortlisting criteria for jobs which traditionally hadn't required degrees.