It seems that it is getting easier to be “smart” these days. But what difference does it make?

We live in a world where eight wrong on an SAT is a perfect paper, where high school students with a 4.0 GPA can graduate fifth or sixth in a class below people who got a 4.5, and where “F” and “D” have disappeared from the grading scale.

In many ways, this is good. With higher education expenses rising every year, students are paying more attention to their studies. No one can afford to mess up college. And high schoolers who take academic classes should not lose their academic award to a vocational-track student.

However, in the long run, this policy is making it difficult for students to sell themselves. Everyone has a bachelor’s degree. Everyone was at the top of their class.

It’s the kind of competition that is making more and more people feel that they “need” a master’s degree in order to separate themselves from the pack.

Granted, there are some highly technical fields without much competition. My MIS friends have had a hard time finishing college before being bought by eager companies. Still, such examples are rare.

Fifty years ago, many of my grandparents’ high school buddies quit early to do other things, such as farming and raising a family. Now, there are few if any socially acceptable reasons to not have a diploma.

The bachelor’s degree is getting to be that way as well. Now that the business sector has laid off so many college-educated workers, bachelor’s degrees are a commodity that people can’t survive without.

The next challenge for the American education system is figuring out how to utilize the college graduates our system creates.

Right now, there are too many college graduates flipping burgers and laying sod. It is a waste.

It is a quick analogy to make using income as a reflection of the relative benefit society gets from a person (for example, assuming that someone making $30,000 a year is twice as productive as someone making $15,000.)

Using this skewed measure, society loses $20,000 a year when someone does nothing except collect $10,000 in welfare when they could work at a $10,000 a year job. Everyone agrees on that one.

People aren’t as quick to point out that society also “loses” $20,000 a year when a college-educated worker pushes a mop for $10,000 a year instead of managing a company, designing a computer or doing whatever $30,000 a year task he or she was trained to do.

I concede the necessity for low-paying, entry-level positions. Job experience is infinitely valuable and indispensable. What I have a problem with are the dead-end jobs that people often work at for years in search of an entry-level position.

People might say that students today are “too proud,” and that cocky young college graduates are not in any position to call any job “beneath them.” Unfortunately, we’re not just talking about 23-year-olds here.

The chain reaction is getting higher and higher. The trend is being set, and there is no way to stop it unless society finds a way to apply itself better.

If not, in 50 years, it may not be uncommon to get your Big Mac from “Dr. Marty.”

Marty Helle is a senior in English and journalism from Lyle, Minnesota.