Technology Makes College Degrees Mandatory, No Jobs For High School Graduates

As the world marches on towards a more technologically dependent society, a lot of things are expected to change. Among these is the deficiency in available jobs for those who only graduated from high school since a Bachelor’s Degree is expected to become more and more necessary as the years wear on. In time, only those who graduated from college are going to have a decent chance of finding a job.

One of the greatest fears that workers have when it comes to threats to their jobs is automation. However, what they should be worried about is technology in general, Futurism notes. It is simply a fact that there is a growing skill gap in the workforce where employers need people with specialized skills that only a small portion of job hunters seem to possess.

With the advancement of technology, adoption of new machines and hardware has become a necessity for companies in order to remain competitive. Along with the addition of more sophisticated computers and tools is the need for people who can operate, maintain, and fix them. This is where the skill gap comes in.

Gone are the days when the majority of workers are those on the factory floor, assembling pieces of machinery before loading them onto boxes. These days, giant robots can do the job of dozens, which is obviously going to be a preference by business owners.

In a recent article by The New York Times, for example, German firm Siemens Energy opened a plant in Charlotte, N.C., where over 10,000 job applicants attended. There was a vacancy of over 800 positions which needed to be filled. Unfortunately, of the thousands that applied, only 15 percent managed to even pass the screening tests.

Worst of all, the tests involved ninth-grade reading and writing skills, as well as problem-solving in math. Former Siemens executive Eric Spiegel explains the reason for why this is a problem.

“In our factories, there’s a computer about every 20 or 30 feet,” Spiegel said. “People on the plant floor need to be much more skilled than they were in the past. There are no jobs for high school graduates at Siemens today.”