Pushing everyone to get a business management degree starting in the 90's was a way for colleges and universities to make money from student loans along with demand from the business world. A perfect storm. Graduating with degrees in "English lit" and "Medieval History" was becoming the easy way to get a degree without learning anything valuable to employers. But, coming out of the 70's, employers required more than a High School diploma and a strong work ethic. While manufacturing jobs were just beginning to leave the US, and government spending in the private sector for the Cold War was going to end. That caused a big high tech industrial bust just before the PC tech bubble of the 90's.
The US became primarily a service economy. Pushing for getting masters degrees was another growth industry in public education to get at the guaranteed student loan money from the government. It was another way to eliminate competition for jobs from all the Eng lit, Mid Hist and BA Bus graduates. And woman's, gender, race and confused species orientation studies graduates. Unlike factory work that once needed many hands, well paying service industry jobs just like the hierarchy tree of many workers to fewer managers. Fewer middles class jobs to too many people with degrees. And blaming baby boomers for not retiring fast enough. Many companies don't back fill those positions. Outsourcing, downsizing, automation and virtualization is much cheaper than kids with degrees.
The 90's tech bubble was a short delay to this reality because it had never existed before, and businesses were afraid to not throw money at it for fear of being left behind. When that bubble burst, automation and virtualization was the path to get rid of needing people and their fat fingers. The single greatest cost to a company is it's employees and all the problems that go with them.
My wife works for a private university as a corporate and business outreach coordinator. College in the US except for the hard sciences and engineering has become a student loan scam. That is why todays Masters Degree is about equal to a Pre 60's BA\BS degree when you were expected to work for it. And why many High School graduates today have to take remedial reading and math classes in their first year of college. And companies have been behind the initiative to test for work and life experience as part of the qualification process to earning degrees to promote from within.
In some localities, your High School diploma is the worst case of "Participation Trophyism" you can get.
Didn't the Japanese come up with a strawberry picking machine recently? Technology was supposed to free us from many of the evils of the industrial revolution when it came to the work place. Seems to me technology is too good of a good thing. It has completely eliminated the need for a whole class of people who will always exist, and need some way to feed themselves other than the government or charity. If you don't want misery defining your society's greatest economic achievement, after the "Service Economy" eliminated the need for fat fingered humans and the self affirming dignity of work.
