Sheepskin scam

Democracy and education are always good. That is perhaps the most fundamental core belief of the vast majority of American parents; certainly more of them hold to it than believe in God, the sanctity of marriage or the tuck rule. But just as American faith in democracy has been shaken by the election of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority and by what appears to be the looming failure of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the belief in higher education as a universal panacea will be severely tested in the coming decades.

The belief in a near-sacrosanct prime directive to pursue education is primarily rooted in the ability of the more highly educated to command higher wages from their employers. This has long been true, but the advantage was significantly compounded during the last four decades, when machine automation, computers and outsourcing enabled U.S. employers to replace skilled, highly paid but less-educated American workers with machines and inexpensive foreign workers. This resulted in the current situation where a college-educated worker can expect to earn twice the income of a worker who possesses only a high school degree over an average lifespan.

Vox Day