> However, I find that statistic of yours unsettling. I always thought of higher education as something you worked for, something granted to those striving for more than a high school education. I don't know, now it seems that everybody expects to go to college of some sort, now college is filling the role that high school used to fill.

I don't think that your is a mistaken impression. It's really more and more expected of kids that they will go to college. There don't seem to be many "good" jobs that one can get without a college degree anymore. There are some success stories of people who didn't go to college yet have great careers, but they seem to be few and far between. College used to be a luxury; now it's almost a given.

As a result, more and more employers are looking for applicants who have their Masters degree. If college is filling the role that high school used to fill, then graduate school is starting to become what college used to be. I was warned about this trend as I neared college graduation. Mainly it was just because my college had just started a new graduate program in my major and were plugging it to try to generate students. Fortunately, in my field, employers are still looking more at experience and ability than for pieces of paper...but this will probably change. In many fields it already has changed.

I think that the whole trend is a finger pointing towards the degeneration of the quality of American education. Kids are learning in high school what they should have learned in elementary school, and in college what they should have learned in high school. But we've dragged that dead horse through the mud already; let's not go there again (unless you really want to!).

Gri"why do they call it a 'bachelor's' degree anyway?"shny