College degrees, in theory, are supposed to create smarter, more competent workers. But a new survey by Manta finds that more than 60 percent of small-business owners find no correlation between employee performance and education levels.

"I've learned that you can't teach someone how to work hard," Gary Wheeler, owner of The Virtual HR Director, says in a news release about the survey.

Despite this apparent disconnect between education and performance, Manta found that about half of small-business owners require their employees to have college degrees. This begs the question: Are business owners too picky when it comes to the education of their prospective workers?

Sometimes, a college education gets in the way. Paul Downs of Bridgeport, Pa.-based Paul Downs Cabinetmakers wrote in a New York Times blog post that he and his engineer fret that recent engineering graduates have no experience using their hands to make things.

Downs was instead considering training an existing worker on his shop floor to become an engineer, though he calculated that it would be costly. Still, it seemed better than hiring on an engineering program graduate who would do more harm than good.

However, Manta found there was one group among which a college education was valued, and that was the business owners themselves. The survey found that 70 percent of those polled had a bachelor’s degree, and more than 60 percent thought their college degree was important to their business success.

It remains to be seen whether college degrees will be as valued as much in the future, especially in an economy when things are changing so quickly that workers consistently need to be trained and retrained with new skills.

On top of that, the 20-something generation is saddled with student loan debt, even as it enters a jobs market that is still tough. Student loan debt continues to grow with 65 percent of bachelor’s degrees recipients in 2011 holding it, up from 46 percent in 1993, according to U.S. Census Bureau data cited in USAToday.

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