It's beyond a taxi medallion. Before uber you had to have one. With college that's never been true. The thing that propped up the whole industry was high school counselors scaring kids into thinking they'll be burger flippers and ditch diggers for the rest of their lives without it, and that's never ever been true. The number of young people I've known who had existential dread at the thought of not going, beyond reason, peoples lives were destroyed by all this.
There are a lot of companies out there that mandate a degree for roles that don't require one. That creates artificial demand for an expensive credential, and of course a loan industry happy to issue debt for said required credentials (it's a racket). I put forth that if you exposed companies to the cost of that credentialing in some way (a tax of some sort on roles that mandate higher education), those roles would suddenly not require a degree, or on the job training would replace it.
The taxing of credentials is an interesting concept I haven't heard before. What do you think some potentially unintended consequences be?
It made me think of the way some professional licenses work. The payment to keep the credential is essentially a tax. Some employers won't list the credential on a job description because then they'd be required to pay for it. But they only hire people with said credential, essentially shifting the tax on the individual and creating a kind of shadow job hiring process where the people being turned away may not be sure that getting the credential would open the door for them.
That's true, but it's largely the result of a glut of degrees in the job market, as well as high unemployment. As people start figuring this out, and as demand for work outpaces supply (both are starting to happen) you're going to see the smart employers drop these shenanigans and the dumb ones go out of business or start paying degrees what they're worth if they insist on it.
