US – College degree or vocational education ?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that only 27 percent of jobs in the U.S. economy currently require a college degree. By comparison, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 47 percent of workers today have an associate degree or higher. The BLS projects that the proportion of jobs requiring a college degree will barely change — increasing to only 27.1 percent by 2022. Even the most optimistic projection – a study from Georgetown University, projects that at most 35 percent of jobs will require a college degree by 2020.

The Skilled Worker Shortage

While we’re pushing more people to get college degrees, we’re also facing a worsening shortage of skilled workers in many categories that don’t require a college degree. In manufacturing, as many as 600,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs remained vacant across the U.S. due to shortages of skilled workers, according to the Manufacturing Institute’s most recent “skills gap” report.

via The Obsession with College Degrees: Are Too Many People Seeking a Degree for the Wrong Reasons? – ERE.net.

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