At a time when the slumping U.S. economy has many worried about job security and advancement, it’s not unexpected that Americans would consider upgrading their skills through formal academic programs, completing degree programs they previously started but left unfinished, or seeking advanced degrees.
One recent study, highlighting the role that many believe formal education plays in the workplace, reports that almost one in five (19 percent) Americans — which amounts to roughly 40 million adults in the United States — say they know someone at their current or past job who has been passed over for a job because they didn’t have the right academic degree. One in 10 (10 percent) respondents say they themselves have been denied a job during their careers for not having a degree.
Released this month, the survey was commissioned for eLearners.com, a Web site published by EducationDynamics, a higher education recruitment, enrollment and retention services company based in Hoboken, N.J. Kelton Research, a Culver City, Calif.-based research firm, conducted the eLearners.com survey between July 17 and July 21, 2008 using an e-mail invitation and an online survey of 1,000 nationally representative respondents.
“The statistics from this study confirm what has widely been known. Not only is a degree critical to getting a job, but it is also key to advancing in one’s career. And given the current economic climate, a degree might be needed just to keep your job,” says Terrence Thomas, the executive vice president for marketing operations at EducationDynamics.
Other significant findings from the survey found that:
“The message is loud and clear, that in today’s competitive job market, if you don’t have the right education others will pass you by,” Thomas says.
Although workers have been widely encouraged to seek college and advanced degrees as a means to secure their standing and possible advancement in the workplace, increasingly some scholars and advocates have questioned the extent to which degree attainment represents skills acquisition versus credentialing merely as a sorting mechanism. The perception that college degree attainment is largely a sorting mechanism for employers has led some to argue that colleges and universities are oversold as institutions to equip people with practical job skills.
