Comment by kelnos

Comment by kelnos 9 days ago

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I don't think you're necessarily drawing the right conclusion from what the GP said. It seems more likely to me that non-degree-holders aren't resentful about not having a degree, but are resentful that white collar work more or less requires a degree these days. It wasn't always that way; degree holders used to be a minority in white collar work.

Why has that shifted? Can we blame the university system and their "marketing" that has pushed a degree as the One True Way of leaving the working class? If so, that's an understandable reason to be anti-university.

p_j_w 8 days ago

> Can we blame the university system and their "marketing" that has pushed a degree as the One True Way of leaving the working class?

I’m not sure Universities are to blame for this so much as lazy ass HR departments looking for an easy filter.

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9rx 9 days ago

> degree holders used to be a minority in white collar work.

That's still nearly true, if not true. 60% of jobs are white collar. 40% of the workforce has a degree. Data quality starts to decline somewhat here, but it is expected that 20% of degree holders work in trades or manual labour jobs. So, degree holders only just barely make up a majority on that basis. And maybe not even that as blue collar is usually considered to be more than just trades and manual labour, not to mention that we haven't even delved into other collars (e.g. pink collar) that further take from the degree holding population.

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