Adapted from “A Matter of Degrees”By Thomas Frank in Harper’s, August 2012“The world is awash with fake [college] degrees,” says Les Rosen of Employment Screening Resources, a leading background-check outfit. In several [instances], the fakers a

College degrees have always been an attraction point for students and organizations equally at the worldwide recognition as a mark of one's intelligence but lately, there are lots of conversations and debates happening around the legibility on the ways college degrees are earned these days. People are faking college degrees to get into professional Industries and this makes the author - Thomas Frank in the above article from ' A Matter of Degrees' believe that these days college degrees are becoming a 'Million dollar coin made from a pot-coin'. I do not completely agree with this statement looking at the top CEOs and successful entrepreneurs from the industry, however, given the education industry changing dynamically and means of education are changing from the traditional means of learning, it is somewhat true that college degrees are losing their potential in mass.

To start with, if we look at the skills sets required to get into the highly changing technology industry, most of the hard skills are not taught in college degrees/ diplomas. There are few modules which will teach the basics and then most of these skills students learn as they go into the professional world. Technological advancements and readily available resources have equipped students with the means to stay ahead of the curve and start learning these skills in the early stages of their education. With the rise of open school and online courses, obtaining and learning hard skills do not require a physical presence in colleges. This has shaped the way professionals and students are preparing for real life work differently. Whereas, Most of the organizations still have their placement and interview processes based on college degrees and the marks obtained during the courses, which is good and bad thing both. This filter out the non-qualifying job applicants at the first stage itself but this also leads students without formal degrees to look at other ways of getting into the process and then try to clear interviews with the domain knowledge. These entry gates mostly results in fake diplomas or degrees showing the eligibility is met. However, just hard skills are not enough for the actual growth in the professional world, most of these fakers either get the reality check within first few months of their work or unfortunate enough to go back to ground zero when they are not able to prove their skills.

To add further to this point, with changing paradigm some companies have recognized this change in education and are in a constant discussion of whether keeping college degree as the basic requirement of most of the job descriptions makes sense anymore or not. Especially in the technology industry, this impact is bigger as much as companies like Facebook and Google have removed college degrees from a few of their job descriptions already and welcome talent based on knowledge and skills primarily. This will allow students to apply for job vacancies even without college degrees, hence reduction in the fake degree holders' population. This is not true for other industries like medical, chemical and radiology industries as the hard skills needed here requires practice and right education which is hard to obtain without a formal education.

But does this mean college degrees are useless in today's era and one should not look at attending college for education? I do not agree with this. As I mentioned earlier, to be successful in the professional world, just learning hard skills are not enough. College educations gives you a chance of overall development which includes learning skills needed for a particular domain, learning soft skills through group discussions, working peer groups and organized assessment system. Students who go to college and sincerely complete their education with dedication do not only strive for getting an entry into the job market but also to thrive and be on the top of their game. Most corporations and enterpreneurs are great example of this which demonstrates that most of the new age innovators are college degree holders. As we see colleges are also reforming the system in accordance with the new challenges the job markets throw at students, hence they prepare a student for lifetime education and learning ability. I believe for sincere students, college degrees still provide a lot more than a few hard skills needed for the job market and they can gain a lot more by attending colleges.

I can conclude by saying that college degrees maybe becoming a 'million dollar coin from pot metal' in case of the high tech industry and as an entry gate for the companies but college degree aids to the overall development of a student to succeed in the longer run. Organizations need to reform their hiring strategies and perhaps look at ways they can attract more genuine talent in the first place.