Thursday, March 21, 2019

Take out student loans, get a college degree, and then go to work for a rental car agency: Is this the American Dream?

Enterprise Rent-A-Car is the number one employer of college graduates in the United States. According to Chronicle of Higher Education, Enterprise expects to hire 8,500 college graduates in 2019. In fact, three of the top ten companies for hiring college graduates are car rental companies: Enterprise, Hertz, and Avis.

For Enterprise, CHE reported, "a college degree matters mostly because it suggests that a candidate has acquired the right mix of skills to succeed in an entry-level job--and to move up the ladder from there." However, CHE explains, Enterprise does not care much about where its new hires went to college, what they studied, or their grades. Enterprise just wants people who obtained a degree.

Over the course of my working life, I've interacted with hundreds of car-rental agents. In my opinion, these agents don't need college degrees to rent cars. The idea of someone taking out student loans and spending four or five years in college just to get a trainee's position at Enterprise, Hertz, or Avis is absurd.

In my opinion, Enterprise's hiring policy is an example of credential creep. Companies don't require new hires to have college degrees because colleges teach useful job skills; for the most part they don't.

Rather a college degree is just a credentialing signal; it tells employers that an individual has the stamina to endure boredom, lackluster instructors, and mindless bureaucracy for four or five years--attributes that fit them perfectly for a trainee's job at Enterprise.

In fact, a high percentage of college graduates are now taking jobs that don't require a college degree. According to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issued less than two years ago, 43.5 percent of college graduates are in jobs that typically don't require a college education.

And yet millions of young Americans are willing to take out student loans to go to college--on average, about $37,000.

So if you are a college student, you should ask yourself this question: Are you willing to borrow $37,000 in order to get a college degree and then go to work for a company that doesn't care where you went to school, what you majored in, or what your grades were?

If you answered yes, you are qualified to be a car-rental agent.

Photo credit: Thrillist.com

1 comment:

  1. Nice to read this article will be very helpful in the future, share more info with us. Good job!
    Scott Lanzon Attorney

    ReplyDelete