In One Way, Education is Overvalued These Days

   Education has a little too much respect in our society. I say this as a person who believes we need more education, not less.
   Perhaps I should restate what I said. College education has a little too much respect in our society. Oh, it is important, and should be encouraged, and is wonderful . . .
   But.
   Consider what sometimes happens. An employer hires someone not so much on how good of a job the person might do, but on whether the person has a degree. Off top, that might seem to be a good idea, but is it? Now, to get that job, the person has to pass through college at an expense of, what, 40 grand or more?
   Are we a society that believes in debt? So much so, that we even make it a rite of passage in order to get a job? Remember, sometimes the person without the degree might be better equipped for the position, but the person who ran up the debt is the one who gets the job.
   We might actually be serving our economy better by putting the best qualified people in those jobs, not the ones who bring pieces of paper to the interview table.
  Back in the day when a college education was not so expensive, the get-a-degree hiring criteria made a better argument. But, times have changed. Tuitions have soared. They've reached a point where we should reconsider whether we should make getting a degree a rite of passage for jobs where the education has little impact.
   I realize there are two sides to such a change. On one side, we make it harder for the person who has built up a $50,000 debt to get it paid off if we give the job to a non-graduate instead. But, on the other side, we take away the need to run up a debt just to get a decent job.
   Life should not have to begin with so large of a debt. We should not make that a requirement.