There was some discussion passed around about four years or so ago about making minimum hiring standards to include, at the very least, a Bachelor's degree from an accredited college. Didn't have to be in anything specifically at all, just had to have the degree in something.
With all due respect, I think this is the wrong approach, and not just because it would cost me my job! (Nope, I never managed to finish college, although I managed to edit four newspapers over the course of my career.)
TSA, at least at the screener level, simply isn't an intellectually stimulating job. I suspect intelligent people are going to be less content doing repetitive work, compared to duller sorts. In my experience, well-educated TSOs generally move on quickly, or they're miserable in the job.
Simply paying screeners more, or hiring ones with more education, isn't going to produce the desired result. Even highly-paid and highly-trained people are capable of behaving boorishly unless they're given, ummm, INCENTIVE to do otherwise!
For optimal performance, I'd think you'd want to hire people for whom the TSA is the best-paying job they've ever had. Skim the cream of the folks from the fast-food or retail sectors -- they'll be thrilled to double their pay overnight and have decent benefits! Then (and this is crucial) MANAGE THEM APPROPRIATELY! The standard needs to be set by the people at the top, and they need to make it clear that rudeness and retaliatory behavior are NOT acceptable! And they need to enforce the standard by ruthlessly weeding out the bad apples as necessary. People who like their jobs and want to keep them generally will do what it takes, even if it means being nicer than they would otherwise.
The first airport at which I worked actually was this way. The culture of courtesy was such that, given peer pressure and management oversight, even the more uncouth screeners were motivated to toe the line, at least where the passengers were concerned.
Sad to say, this is not true at the airport at which I work now, where a "home court advantage" mentality prevails and the leads often are the first to behave in a retaliatory manner toward passengers.
And as today's leads move up to become tomorrow's supervisors, I foresee things getting worse, not better, unless the American taxpayer and his/her representatives in Washington, D.C., step up and yank the TSA's chain a little!
