More on college-educated secretaries (more or less)

So reader “wm13” commented, in response to my post on college-educated folk working non-college-education-requiring jobs, that

It depends what people mean by “require.” We hire a lot of paralegals, who do general clerical work (until they quit to go to law school, usually). Nothing they do requires anything more than reasonable literacy and organizational skills, and I’m sure that, say, Laura Ingalls Wilder (or I) could have performed the job on the day we graduated from high school. But we only hire college graduates, because it’s the only way to ensure quality. (Indeed, we have found that the best procedure is to offer a salary that attracts middle-of-the-class Ivies and/or top-of-the-class others. It’s worth the extra $5,000 to have an Ivy grad versus a community college grad.) So the job “requires” a college degree in order to be hired, although none of the job tasks “requires” anything you learned in college.

Of course, I’m curious about the statement than an extra $5K per year attracts the Ivy grad vs. a “community college grad” so maybe the commenter considers a two-year degree as sufficient but four years as preferable, or maybe he meant non-selective state college?

And it would seem to me that Ivy grads would be undesirable if there’s such turnover due to departures for law school, and you really need someone with substantial experience, rather than constantly training new hires.

But he says that hiring only college grads is the “only way to ensure quality” — and I think we’ve got a chicken-and-egg situation here.

In a situation in which there aren’t many established paths outside a four-year degree, it’s a very rare qualified high school student who doesn’t choose that path.  In principle, it should be possible to, say, earn a two-year degree and prove oneself through employment and a mix of other activities (demonstrating organizational skills through community involvement, writing skills by authoring local news pieces, etc.), but it’s a fairly risky endeavor outside of unique situations (maybe such as a “gap year” abroad?) that means a young person is unlikely to pursue this route.

And as long as there aren’t many people with “reasonable literacy and organizational skills” and who are able to demonstrate to a prospective employer that they’re well-qualified despite the lack of a degree, employers themselves won’t be able to break out of the “college grad = quality” trap.

What to do?  Ideally, we could in the long-term, transition to a model where students, for example, pursuing a paralegal or other white-collar job that’s reliant on communication skills and general intelligence but not specialized STEM knowledge, study for two years, solidify their writing skills in particular, and then undertake an “apprentice” type program — that is, an internship, but without the requirement to pay college tuition, and with a modest stipend. 

But how we get from here to there is a huge unknown.