From Labor Shortages to Credential Deflation
Letter from an anonymous reader, reprinted with his permission.
Hi Dr. Caplan,
For context, I dropped out of university my first year in after graduating high school due to medical/social reasons. Subsequent years were followed up with two more failed attempts at restarting postsecondary education for an immediate job opportunity in one instance, and again, medical in another. I trudged along in the labor market through the rest of my twenties trying to sneak in new skills and jumping ship when I could for something potentially better.
Two years ago, with age thirty a month out, I came across your book, The Case Against Education, while again deliberating whether or not to reattend university having already a full-time national median income job as a Machinist in North Carolina. Your book helped me to put in focus what it was I was actually trying to get from a degree, and so I gave up on postsecondary in favor of intense self-learning. I built up new skill sets, expanded my face-to-face social network, and started applying around to positions outside of my pedigree to get a feel for what I was lacking.
Time lapse, and just this past January I happened to catch ep.137 of the Elucidations podcast with you discussing your book, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. At some point in the episode, I believe you mentioned that you were advising students that this is the best time in the labor market to skip over a lot of credentialism in job hunts. That statement, and your book against education, helped amp up my desires to improve myself outside a degree so much so that I moved to Florida, same company as a friend I had made while expanding the social capital, to apply for a Product Engineer position.
For fun I applied to five other similar jobs across the southeast. Four almost certainly screened me out off the bat, and only one reached out to say I was not of pedigree. Well, I landed that job in Florida making 2x what I was making before in salary alone.
All that to say, thank you so much for your work. It helped to chart the course I took, saved me tens of thousands of dollars along the way, and I actually feel better about my position within the company knowing that I could not, and did not, benefit from some papered signaling.
Cheers,
[redacted]
And, now that you have that Product Engineer position on your resume, getting another, more senior, engineering job will be a cinch - since once you're in your 30s employers mostly look at your past employment history and don't pay much attention to education.
Plus, once you have a network of colleagues and co-workers who respect your abilities, most if not all of your future jobs will come through them; with a personal recommendation hardly anybody will give more than a glance at your CV.
Source: Personal experience - I had PhD-level jobs for decades as a college dropout. I never lied but allowed people to assume I had a PhD. (On my resume I listed the university I attended, the dates [18 months], and the major. Never mentioned a degree.)
wagmi