I've heard it said that a master's degree is the new standard degree.  In other words, while it used to be the norm to go to college and get a degree, now it's the norm to get a master's degree.  I see it at my job all the time.  My boss encourages everyone to take graduate classes and to eventually get a higher degree.  There must be some sort of deal where the more master's degrees his people have, the more bananas he gets (I think that's an insult.  I'm not really sure.  If it was, I didn't mean it.  I like my boss.).  So my question is this:  What's the next step?  What's gonna become the new standard?  A doctorate?  A patent?  A successful invention that's currently making boatloads of money?  The problem with all this is that it's cheapening the workforce.  Several years ago (I'm guessing here), there used to be 1 master's degree for every 10 people.  These days, it's more like 9 out of 10.  And that tenth guy is a big loser.  Actually, that tenth guy can't get a normal college degree job, so he had to settle for being a monkey cage cleaner.  My point is that there are so many overqualified people in the workforce that normal everyday people can't get good jobs.  Plus, if everybody's overqualified, the big dumb bosses (again, I like my boss) have to use some other metric to separate the sheep from the goats.  Eventually, job applicants will be lined up in height or age order and the last few on either end will get the boot.  Or, prospective employees will need to complete a series of arbitrary challenges (kinda like my idea for elections) to weed out the physically weak, untalented, and ugly. 

I say we go back to the way it used to be:  You go to college, you get a single degree, and you compete for jobs with other people who went to college and got a single degree.  Then everything will be based on a real metric:  GPA.  What better way to choose between job candidates than with a single-digit number proving how good each person is at taking tests?  None that I can think of. #education