HUMAN AFTER ALL —

No, seriously, this has got to be the best of the year.

The infrequent posting can be blamed on my recent focus on a couple new blog projects. More to come soon.

Kim recently blogged about the rising costs of higher education and the workplace’s rising standard for education. I was preparing a response, but this is something of a hot button issue for me, and it’s going to spill over enough that I feel it deserves its own entry.

I’m very obviously biased, having never finished an undergraduate degree, but the ever-increasing educational requirements in the U.S. are ridiculous. For the vast majority of jobs (and the overwhelming majority at entry level), the skills required to do the job could be obtained in six weeks or less, no college (or high school, even!) degree necessary. It boggles my mind to see job ads that look like this:

Office Assistant

One of Seattle’s Manufacturing Companies is seeking a proficient office administrator to join their team!

Duties Include:
Answering Phones
Shipping packages and invoices
Providing great customer service
Other Administrative Operations

Requirements:
Non-Smoking
Detail Oriented
Great Math Skills
Small Office Background Preferred
Excellent Data Entry Skills (testing required)
Type 50+wpm (testing required)
Pleasant
BA required

Compensation: $12-15/hr

I mean, is this for real? The job is the rough equivalent of working a call center. Why in the world does this position require a bachelor’s degree? More importantly, if it requires some sort of skill set that only experiencing four years of college will provide, why does this job only pay $12-15/hour?

My day job consists of the following duties: processing orders, helping man an 8 line phone system, AP/AR, inter-office and warehouse logistics, web & database maintenance, marketing prep work, product research & acquisition, routine correspondence with customers, periodically helping pack and ship orders, etc. etc. It’s a pretty diverse job that matches my skill set pretty well, and it certainly requires certain things of me: patience, friendliness, attention to detail, diligence, a moderate amount of experience with common office software & equipment, experience with design work, an instinct for marketing, and numerous other innate characteristics.  It also pays better than the job described above.

Know what it doesn’t require? A freaking bachelor’s degree.

There are situations where I feel a bachelor’s degree requirement is relevant and appropriate. An engineer, for example, would likely need the skills obtained in an undergrad program in order to succeed, and the standardized learning of those skills in a degree program is valuable. A curator would likely benefit from having studied art history. A teacher should have some formalized education in their subject for a number of reasons. But someone really needs to sit me down and point to what, exactly, it is that an employer expects their applicant to have when they say “bachelor’s degree required,” especially when they don’t specify an area of study. I’m sorry, but the “ability to stick to something for 4 years” or “able to finish” reasons won’t wash; either could just as easily be demonstrated by a person working for the same company for four years with reasonable advancement, or studying for and completing certificate programs outside of a university setting, or by raising a child, etc.

I’m happy to see that a lot of companies are beginning to recognize this, with job ads & applications specifying “bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience) required,” which makes much more sense to me. Continuing to roll back the idiotic idea that our office works need bachelor’s degrees to do their jobs is something I wholeheartedly approve of.

But whose fault is it that we’re this deep in, and sinking rapidly?

As long as we’re students, we’re primarily consumers: the majority of full-time students don’t have full-time jobs. We depend on loans, help from parents and supplementary part-time income to survive not only for the entire time we’re in school, but for the years immediately afterward, when our brand new degrees and lack of experience tend to limit our job choices. We’re pumping money into the economy without earning much, if anything. We’re piling on debt, ensuring we’ll be working and spending for years to come.

It used to be that a high school degree was enough to get you the vast majority of entry level positions; ten years ago, a college degree was starting to become a necessity. Now, many entry level positions in decent fields require bachelor’s degrees and prefer post-graduate degrees. These are jobs offering salaries of 30-45k a year - often less than a year of college costs!

Give it a couple more decades: 2-4 years of post-graduate study will be a necessity, keeping all of us, not just doctor and lawyer hopefuls, in school until our late 20’s. When we’re done, we’ll have accumulated a beautiful heap of debt. Once we’re done paying that off, we’ll begin worrying about saving it for our children.

tl;dr - Get used to working, because you’ll be doing it until you die.

I recently re-arranged my workspace to be one long, contiguous desk rather than an L-shaped one or two separate desks, as I’ve had previously. I like the effect: instead of two distinct workstations, I feel like I can let my crap spill over the entire space.

I never paid much attention to the effect a decent workspace has on my productivity until I had the luxury of an entire room to use as I wanted that didn’t need to contain a bed.  Having an enormous desk, two comfy chairs, excellent lighting and space to work at is way more important than I’d realized in the past, when I was adapting to a space rather than adapting the space.  I’m kind of intrigued by the idea of building myself swinging-arm swivel displays for monitors, whiteboards (both the digital and plain jane variety) and other such necessary tools.

More importantly, those with a discerning eye will notice that I have a lot of artsy crap for making POSTCARDS.

I’m on a postcard-making and receiving spree. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do with the ones I end up getting, but it will be something extraordinary.

If anyone’s interested in swapping postcards (preferably ones that are not storebought tourist highlights), you know what to do: eeeeeeee-mail.

Photos of postcards sent/received to come at some point in the not-too-distant future.

So, I finally got unlazy and, for the first time in the history of doing design work professionally, actually finished my site.  It’s a quick throw-together that’s basically acting as a business card for now, but it’s better than the nothing that was there before.

Comments are welcome.  Yes, I know the div displays wrong in IE.