Maggie's Farm

I've often wondered how many of the great technical advances and discoveries in the Peoples Republic of China, India, and even the Republic of Korea and the Republic of China are made by their citizens trained in our schools.

When I got out of the Army in '71 (later to re-join), I found that many of the jobs required a four-year college degree. Even general office work, or sales, or semi-technical jobs, or oh-so-many others that really didn't seem to need a college degree.
I figured even then that the four-year college degree had become the high school diploma of just a few years before when I had joined the Army.
Of course, a lot of folks were going to/staying in college to keep from being drafted, so I've wondered about the resulting cause and effect -- More people with four-year degrees, easier to make the degree a "requirement." The oversupply drove the increased demand. (Draft dodgers, I mean avoiders, also seemed to try to stay in school longer, resulting in more law degrees and MBAs, creating even MORE problems for the nation).