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The Rise and Rise of the Cognitive Elite
hessian writes "As technology advances, the rewards to cleverness increase. Computers have hugely increased the availability of information, raising the demand for those sharp enough to make sense of it. In 1991 the average wage for a male American worker with a bachelor's degree was 2.5 times that of a high-school drop-out; now the ratio is 3. Cognitive skills are at a premium, and they are unevenly distributed."
I strongly suspect that the gap is widening not because "smart" people are more in demand, but because "not so smart" people are becoming less in demand.
Take one economy. Remove the manufacturing jobs. Watch as the percentage of jobs held by people with college degrees goes up, and the wages on the rest of them go down due to the oversupply of people without.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
But the big problem with HR departments is all the unqualified people who do apply for a job.
I just filled a position for a telecom tech. Our simple requirements were that they had to have at least 5 years experience with voice, 1 year of data, and not a convicted felon.
I got > 300 resumes. I think it was closer to 400 actually. But what it all boils down to is, when you get me your resume, you have 30 seconds to impress me -- for it go to into the "I'll look at this one more closely" pile. Not having a college degree makes you much less impressive when I have a stack of 200 people who do. Unless there is something else extremely impressive about you, you won't get a second look.
For me, a person who has finished college tends to be a much more rounded individual. Sure, the guy who dropped out of high-school may be the brightest guy on the block, but I don't know that, and I don't have the time to find out. Espically in my field, education is very important (not just higher learning, but simply learning new technologies), and if you don't seem willing to even learn anything past the basics, it makes you a much less qualified applicant.