Is it really good policy to try to push every last high school graduate into college? Experts say those who believe so apparently assume the lack of a college degree dooms workers to dead-end careers, and that all students are capable of success in college. Both assumptions, they say, are shaky at best.

• Although much has been made of the fact that high-tech companies now need 346,000 workers which they can't find, a 1997 study by the Labor Department found that the fastest growing occupation through 2006 will be that of cashier -- with 530,000 more needed.

• A total of more than 2.2 million workers will be needed in occupations such as retail sales, truck driving, home health aide, educational assistants, nursing aides and orderlies, receptionists and information clerks -- all of which require only short-term, on-the-job training..

• Since armed forces recruiters screen out the lowest 30 percent of scorers on IQ tests because they can't handle routine training tasks, the idea of higher education for everyone suggests hundreds of thousands of teenagers not smart enough to get into the military should go to college.

• A study published in the Monthly Labor Review last year concluded the U.S. now has a surplus of university graduates -- many of whom wind up taking high-school level jobs.

Some 34 percent of prime-age college graduates are now in jobs demanding only a high school education, experts estimate -- up from only 22 percent in the early 1970s.