Is 14 (or 16) the new 12?

A lot of people have defended the push for everyone to go to college by insisting that either 14 or 16 is the new 12. Even though people frequently tout this is a flawless explanation, it's actually a horrible argument to make. Oddly enough, some of the people who push this argument seem to get cocky about how brilliant they are for mindlessly joining in on the flawed cliche.

What does it mean when someone insists that 14 is the new 12? In short, it's the idea that we need to treat a college degree the same way that we used to treat a high school diploma. This is because opportunities today for high school graduates have seriously declined. You now need a college degree for the same kinds of jobs.

All of this is a nice way of saying that because of how worthless a high school diploma has become, we need to treat college degrees in the same manner. If graduating from grade 12 has become worthless, we insist that we need to treat grade 14 (or 16) the same way. The hope is that treating college more like high school will provide the exact opposite results.

The people making this argument are making a very common mistake. They want more people to obtain a college degree because of the current value of a degree. If more people obtained degrees, the value of degrees would decline. We have seen this with the high school diploma.

If we treat 14 as the new 12, the value of a two-year degree will gradually move closer to the current value of a high school diploma. This will lead us back to the same reasoning. If we treat 14 as the new 12, 16 will be the new 12. Rather than trying the same failed policies in hopes of seeing the opposite results, we need to find a new way. We need to restore opportunity being taken from highly capable individuals who do not acquire a piece of paper.