All Must Have Degrees
In a classroom in Seoul a group of teenagers sit over their desks in total silence. Study begins at eight in the morning and ends at half past four in the afternoon. And some even go back home at midnight. Like thousands of South Koreans, they are preparing for the important exam, which will largely determine whether they go to a good university or not. Degrees have become useful. Seventy percent of students who graduate from the country's secondary schools now go straight to universities.
Many more countries have seen a big rise in the share of young people with degrees, but South Korea is an extreme case. As technological reforms require workers to do many difficult and demanding jobs that they would not have done before, there seems to be reasonable to insist that more workers receive a good education than before. And a degree is an obvious way for bright youngsters From poor families to prove their abilities. People tend to earn more if they have degrees.
Employers do not have to pay for higher education and they are increasingly able to demand degrees to screen out the least motivated or capable. A recent study by Joseph Fuller and Manjari Romaan of Harvard Business School shows that companies routinely require applicants to have degrees, even though only a minority of those already working in the role have them.
The Economist's analysis found that between 1970 and 2015, the proportion of 256 workers aged 25-64 with at least a bachelor's degree increased. Some of them are highly intellectually demanding jobs, such as aviation engineers. Others are non-graduate jobs such as waiting tables. Sixteen percent of waiters now have degrees, because probably in most cases they could not find jobs and live poorly. Today, having a degree is usually an entry requirement.
