Fewer people go to college than you think

Agreed. I glossed over writing the title and it's misleading. I meant to refer to the number of people who obtain bachelor's degrees.

It's possible to prove talent directly in an enormous number of occupations, it's just necessary you are let work for a probation period. Of course there are situations where everybody anyway want to avoid loosing time or where a mistake could have big consequences, but in this case i don't see how programmers would need to be recruited differently from other kind of qualified jobs either. As for online hiring, I don't see how this changes anything.

I have been told - first by the CEO of a retail chain [1] - that 'a college degree' isn't so much for talent, or fit, as a proof that the applicant can stick with something for a few years.

He proved his point by hiring me [2] for a job. At that point in my life I had no degree, but I had just spent eight years in the Marines, and had done everything from programming computers (badly) to micro PC repair and LAN administration.

[1] Who was, improbably, interviewing me for a job. Long story.

[2] Sort of. He called me back said he _would_ have hired me but the company had just gone into Chapter 11.

No, the original link is correct -- about 27% of people of 25 have a college degree of BA or higher. If you extend the age (say to 30 or 35), you don't see much difference.

"go to [some] college" (68%) and "graduate from college by age 25" (27%) are COMPLETELY different statistics. Lots and lots of working class people graduate with decent grades, go to the local state college, don't fit in (or party too much), and drop out.

And going to 3.5 years of college and dropping out versus a BA makes a HUGE difference in career outcomes later -- it is a discontinuous jump.

68% of high school graduates go to college, but nearly half (45%) fail to graduate within 6 years.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/06/03/55-percent-of-college...

So, of high school graduates, only 37% (68% x 55%) get a Bachelor's. And only 85% of young adults graduate high school!

https://depts.washington.edu/uwbhs/docs/HS_Graduation.pdf

85% x 68% x 55% = 32%

So we only expect about 32% of 30-year-olds to have a Bachelors. That means that there's only about a 5% difference (as in 32%-27%) between your data (about current yound adults) and the OP's census data (which is weighed down by old people). So I think the OP's conclusion is more or less right.

That said, my prediction before I read the article was 25%, so I wasn't too surprised. This is a classic case of what happens when you're surrounded by people who are a lot like you (i.e. educated): you assume everyone is like that. And there are a lot more educated people with blogs than uneducated.