This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 23rd, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

If it doesn't deliver skills that employers want, what good is a college degree?

And if you can produce millions of degrees

that don't feed the goals of employers can you really call it developing human

capital Neil McCluskey Associate Director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute,

wonders why China would want to adopt the US error of producing high numbers of college degrees that deliver relatively little human capital.

One of the biggest concerns, perhaps the biggest concern, driving government, driving politicians to pile money into American higher education

is that the Chinese as well as India but in particular the Chinese are putting out more and more and more students with

college degrees and that as a result of this, they are going to clean America's clock economically. Well there is lots of data in a pretty new report that

suggests all those new degree holders in China are desperate to find jobs because guess what? You could put

out as many degrees as you want, but if people don't have the skills that employers want, it's not going to do them any good. If there's no demand

for what those degrees signify, it's not going to do them any good. And China is

in desperate straits as a result of putting out so many degree holders who can't get a job.

Hasn't that been like a serious problem in the United States for many many years

that is the degrees that students walk out of higher education with do not

plug in neatly to the needs of employers.

Hasn't that been a consistent problem here?

Yeah, well, this is, you know, the whole fear of China

is sort of compounding our problems.

So we say, well, we've got to produce more degree holders here because China's doing it.

And we just ignore the huge problems that's caused China, this glut of degree holders.

...