Credentialism is a scourge, and it's not only been happening for decades, it is continuing to get worse.

Massive numbers of jobs in all kinds of professions such as nursing, secretarial work, IT, software engineering, etc now require significant amounts of higher education even when both the job itself has not changed significantly and most people working those jobs agree that the knowledge from their degree is virtually never used in their day to day work!

The problem is too much access to education. You don't see this issue as much in European countries which have strict limits on the number of people that can enter college programs. You don't get to go to college in most countries unless you're good enough to justify the investment by society. But in the US, easy access to student loans and no restrictions on the # of university programs has resulted in an over-educated population.