Welcome to the age of overeducated underachievers;
Although it’s of course true that many, perhaps most, of the winners in the modern economy are highly educated, there are still some who have succeeded without educational credentials and an even bigger share that are failing in spite of them.
The latter group—let’s call them “overeducated underachievers” — strikes me as crucial for understanding growing pessimism about the future, the rise of populism, and the anger and frustration that we’re increasingly seeing manifest itself in our politics. […]
They’re the ones who “did everything they were expected to” — including obtaining a university or college credential — and yet haven’t realized the payoff. In Canada, for instance, they’re earning on average 41 percent less than those in non-working-class jobs and, depending on where they live, struggling to afford rent and other basic costs. The promise of the so-called “democratization” of educational access has failed to fully materialize for them and their families.
There’s a strong case in fact that while there have been significant benefits to expanded access to post-secondary education, they’ve come with these underestimated costs that we’re only now starting to understand. Cultural norms and public policies in favour of what Goodhart calls “peak head” has devalued non-cognitive skills, eroded academic standards, and contributed to credential inflation in the job market. Put bluntly: there are people with advanced degrees who shouldn’t have them and the market has had to adjust to account for them.
