According to the Wall Street Journal: The Value of a College Degree is Declining

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal's on-line Career Journal, "a four-year college degree, seen for generations as a ticket to a better life, is no longer enough to guarantee a steadily rising paycheck."

While the typical college graduate's salary rose at a rate much higher than that of inflation for decades, this trend seems to have come to an end. Since 2001, the inflation-adjusted wages of the majority of U.S. workers didn't grow, even among those who went to college (bachelor's degree).

Given that there are now more college-educated workers per capita, they have become commoditized and more subject to the downsizings that used to be primarily the lot of blue-collar workers alone.

A variety of economic forces are at work here. Globalization and technology have altered the types of skills that earn workers a premium wage - enabling employers to "offshore" many of the middle management and certain professional jobs previously filled by lower-end college graduates. Compared with previous generations, today's college graduates are far more likely to be competing against educated immigrants and workers employed overseas.

The issue isn't a lack of economic growth, which was solid for most of the 2000s. Rather, it's that the fruits of growth are flowing largely to "a relatively small group of people who have a particular set of skills and assets that lots of other people don't. In short, a college degree is often a necessary, but not sufficient condition to get a paycheck that beats inflation.

Employers now seem to be putting the highest value on abstract skills possessed by a relatively small group. These days, a college degree must be complemented with a certain degree of initiative to garner practical experience and skills in order for one to be competitive on the job market.