College Degrees Became Mandatory Right Before They Stopped Working

One of the strangest economic developments of the last several decades is that college degrees became socially mandatory at practically the exact moment their financial utility broke down.

For most of the late twentieth century, higher education played a straightforward role in American life. Degrees were expensive, but manageable. They distinguished applicants in the labor market, so for many people, college did provide a path to the middle class.

Then the second-order effects set in.

Instead of providing competitive advantages, a college degree mutated into a baseline credential. Jobs that once took basic competence began requiring degrees. Universities expanded aggressively, driven by administrative bloat fed in turn by free government money. And tuition rose year after year; far beyond inflation.

Worse, those federally backed loans insulated the system from the normal economic pressures that would otherwise have reined in costs.

But perhaps the most important change was cultural …

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