I’ve met many degreed (and even certified) engineers who are clueless about how things work. But they can still be trained to be useful in a specialty. I also know un-degreed individuals who can design circles around some engineers, even if they only have an intuitive understanding of the principles so rigidly described in advanced math classes.

Writing to spec is an acquired skill. College is more about learning to learn than about the particular material being presented. English is just a subject.

As for Mark and his authorship: Many degreed authors paid for their school by writing. Crichton became a bestselling author to pay his way through school. Asimov is another example. These guys got advanced degrees in part because they could write, not the other way around.

It goes to what seems to be an underlying human desire to Be Accepted without having to demonstrate ability. The Old School Tie gets you through the door without need for qualifying tests or try-outs. No one seems to notice that a new job requires additional training regardless of academic background, but it seems also to be more important that everyone share a common experience (college) than that they actually be competent.

This has cost us.

And those parents who so lovingly nurtured this system into being now look at the country they helped create and scratch their heads and wonder why Americans can’t actually seem to make things anymore. (Because the “trades” were seen as lower class—”I don ‘t want my kid to have to get his fingers dirty just to make a living!”) The vocational education system was all but destroyed by the beginning of the 70s (it was seen as somehow discriminatory to “slot” kids into vocational tracks just because it appeared they couldn’t handle academics) and industry began pitching over the side its most qualified people when they did not have degrees.

I find myself in a peculiar position because of this culture. I am a writer. I’ve published ten novels, scads of short stories, and I’m now book reviewing for the Post-Dispatch. I have taught workshops. I am the president of a state-wide non-profit agency (Missouri Center for the Book). Etc etc etc. 99% of the jobs I can probably do I can’t apply for because I have no college.

The college degree has become the basis of a new kind of classism. Sorting people into groups—In or Out—seems to be human nature and now that we’ve dispensed with race, religion, or regionalism as valid markers, college/no college has emerged to take their place.

This is one we could conceivably nip in the bud—or at least the stalk—before it really does undo us.