Starting off bragging about that Starbucks story was comedy gold.
There's a decent chance someone who wanted to convince the guy that his son's degree wasn't as valuable as he thought could make the case. The author had no intention of doing that.
It's not just how she makes the case either. A complete stranger is happy his son finished college, and she pops out of nowhere to rain on his parade? And then she tells the internet the story without a hint of embarassment?
This article does make her sound like* a jerk. I don't mean to suggest Lauren Holliday is* a jerk or an asshole; she might be a perfectible reasonable and respectful person. But her writing here takes reputable evidence and skews it with misinterpretation and appeals to emotion. For example, the NOLO link she uses to support her claim "Filtering candidates by degree is the epitome of wrong and legally, it’s actually discriminatory" merely says that whether it's discriminatory "...depends on its into and its effect." And of course, the NOLO link has nothing to say about the morality of filtering by degree. Similarly, she asserts that "A LOT of rich kids" pay people to take classes/do assignments, which I suppose is true depending on one's definition of "a lot." The implication is that rich people regularly cheat in college.
Her goal seems to be persuading employers to drop their degree requirements. Instead of writing a convincing article, she got distracted by frustration and a dislike of the rich. If she writes a follow-up, a better case would be simply support the point: "Employers are likely missing out on superior job candidates because of degree requirements." I think that, along with the bare minimum of outrage, would get closer to achieving the goal and further from encouraging the mob to grab pitchforks.
There's a decent chance someone who wanted to convince the guy that his son's degree wasn't as valuable as he thought could make the case. The author had no intention of doing that.