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> Demand is increasing due to the college wage premium, which keeps widening with no end in sight even despite Covid and online learning.

> The college wage premium is the number one culprit for all these problems . For whatever reason, employers derive enough benefit from college grads to pay them waaaayyy more than high school grads

That may be true. But there's an easy fix: any job requirements that ask for any college degree (e.g. "a 4 year degree" not "a BS in chemical engineering") should be illegal.

Honestly, I don't really understand why they aren't already: they clearly violate the 4/5ths rule. And it's hard for me to believe that some enterprising lawyer hasn't already brought suit under this theory.

> Honestly, I don't really understand why they aren't already: they clearly violate the 4/5ths rule. And it's hard for me to believe that some enterprising lawyer hasn't already brought suit under this theory.

My guess is because 'not having a college degree' is not any kind of protected class. Not an immutable characteristic. It is a behavior choice. Do we really want to get the gov't involved in telling private companies what qualifications they can require for a particular job?

> My guess is because 'not having a college degree' is not any kind of protected class. Not an immutable characteristic. It is a behavior choice. Do we really want to get the gov't involved in telling private companies what qualifications they can require for a particular job?

That is true.

But race and sex are protected classes. And the 4/5ths rule says that if a particular requirement generates a resulting distribution that is more than 4/5ths different from the general population, then it is presumed to be a form of structural discrimination[1].

From what I understand, a requirement that is necessary for the job - for example, a particular degree like Chemical Engineering - would be exempt. But I doubt that the requirement for a college degree without regard to the subject would be similarly protected.

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1. This is not idle conjecture on my part. There were a number of pretty high profile firefighting tests that were the subject of lawsuits for this very reason. And the cities lost. Sadly, I didn't save the test at the time and I suspect that they've been lost of the mists of time, but I did read at least one of the tests in question, and it was a bunch of firefighting related questions.

Interesting question. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHR/comments/h9vavc/doesnt_griggs...

The college wage premium is either reversing or pretty much gone by now. Plumbers and landscapers out-earn English and History majors now. It's only degrees that prepare you for specialized fields that still have an edge.

It's fallacious to compare the lowest paying college degrees to the highest paying of trades work as evidence of the premium reversing. Someone could just as easily compare an engineer, lawyer, or doctor who makes $250k/year to someone who works at McDonald's and makes $25k/year. A plumber with many years of experience on average makes $50-53k/year. This is respectable, but this is after many years. College grads by comparison on average make $55k out of college, whereas an apprentice makes $30k .

You do have to consider that the apprentice is making $30k out of high school. They will have 4-5 YoE before a college grad finishes college.

If you compare them in that light, the difference reduces quite significantly.

some of this is negated by higher unemployment rate for high school grads vs college grads. High school grads earn more initially but surpassed by college grads as time goes on due to wage stagnation.

Adverse selection effect here. It's probably self sustaining at this point