Too Many College Graduates?

The AP reports on a growing sense among policy wonks that too many Americans are going to four-year colleges, to the detriment of society as a whole: "The more money states spend on higher education, the less the economy grows." "The notion that a four-year degree is essential for real success is being challenged by a growing number of economists, policy analysts, and academics. They say more Americans should consider other options, such as technical training or two-year schools, which have been embraced in Europe for decades. As evidence, experts cite rising student debt, stagnant graduation rates, and a struggling job market flooded with overqualified degree-holders. ... The average student debt load in 2008 was $23,200 — a nearly $5,000 increase over five years. Two-thirds of students graduating from four-year schools owe money on student loans. ... [A university economist said,] 'If people want to go out and get a master's degree in history and then cut down trees for a living, that's fine. But I don't think the public should be subsidizing it.'"

Comments

Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the university economist go ahead and refund the publicly paid part of his tuition from years back, plus interest?

Re:Ok, but

[MrEricSir]

I strongly disagree with his point, but in all fairness most people graduate from public universities which are heavily subsidized by the government.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

did he say that nobody should have subsidized education? or just no subsidy for usless education for unqualified applicants that are only accepted because public colleges can suck money out of the state for each student they admit?

Re:Ok, but

[JonahsDad]

"technical training or two-year schools, which have been embraced in Europe for decades."
Telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is a lot like telling a 5-year-old not to go near the cookie jar.

Re:Ok, but

[colinnwn]

Yes but sometimes mumsies knows best, like that you'll get a sour stomach by raiding the cookie jar too many times.

Re:Ok, but

[mjwalshe]

yes and in europe there is streaming where at a fairly young age you get selected for which type of high school you get to goto technical schools are for vocational carears (ie semi skilled and technician level) so if in Germany you get streamed into the Hauptschule and Realschule your probaly not going to be going to university.

Re:Ok, but

[mjwalshe]

and a lot of european's take a lot more than 4 years to graduate 6+ is the average in Germany

Re:Ok, but

[Lunix Nutcase]

Telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is a lot like telling a 5-year-old not to go near the cookie jar.

This seems confused. Telling a kid not to go near the cookie jar usually leads them to doing so anyway. But this goes contrary to your point which is that telling Americans that Europeans are doing it will mean they won't want to do it.

Re:Ok, but

[h4rm0ny]

I also strongly disagree with his point and I'll explain why: If a society finds itself with an overabundance of qualified, educated people, the correct response is not to try and cut down on the overabundance, but to start doing more interesting things. It seems to me that after starting off with a promising few centuries, the USA has suddenly decided that the guiding principle of its society should be maintenance of the status quo, rather than progress.

Of course maintaining the status quo doesn't work when the rest of the world is forging ahead. In practice it translates into falling behind. If basic needs are being met (which they are), then surplus capacity should be directed. This guy's argument is that capacity should be reduced for the sake of preserving the existing wealth distribution as it is.

Re:Ok, but

[Jurily]

4 year colleges are not the problem, only a symptom.

Here's the problem, the way I see it:

- Schools before college only teach how to read, write, and (hopefully) basic math
- No Child Left Behind: everyone can pass anything, just by marking every answer "C".
- Fixed length school system: you can be a grand master in chess, but you're not allowed to learn cursive yet (before you point out the exceptions, the whole problem is that they're the exception)

In short: fresh out of high school, the only thing you're qualified for is asking "Do you want fries with that?". We might as well just teach 5 year olds to flip burgers and save them a decade. At least they'd have some motivation to learn, then.

Re:Ok, but

[Snowblindeye]

"technical training or two-year schools, which have been embraced in Europe for decades."

Telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is a lot like telling a 5-year-old not to go near the cookie jar.

They are also omitting the fact that Europe has meaningful alternatives to universities, with apprenticeships in the dual education system. I've often felt that that's whats lacking in the US.

Re:Ok, but

[JonahsDad]

In both cases, what you're saying will tend to cause the opposite to happen.
It isn't confused, but it is confusing. I should have picked an analogy without a negative.

Re:Ok, but

[interkin3tic]

Telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is a lot like telling a 5-year-old not to go near the cookie jar.

Especially when you're using it to tell them their dream of being a "whatever they're going to college for" is unlikely and that for the good of society, they should skip the beer, attractive members of the opposite (or same) sex, freedom, and increased chances of finding a good job that go with going to college. Man, how selfish of them!

Gee, I wonder why they wouldn't care that "Europe does it this way."

Call it the American dream, or more accurately, point out that there are other differences between Europe and America.

Re:Ok, but

[2names]

You should have picked an analogy using cars.

Re:Ok, but

[postbigbang]

They wouldn't be quite the shortage if we thought a lot more about H1B numbers. Foreign nationals, while great in many ways, also dilute the pool of available jobs-- and university subsidy of foreign students has grown into a huge business as the costs of educating foreign nationals, despite high tuition-- doesn't cover costs.

We've exported tons of labor and engineering abroad, and now complain that there aren't any jobs, and that taxpayers shouldn't subsidize education as a result. Instead, why not pressure banks to not only make money on student loans, but also on their entrepreneurial ventures as well?

There's a madman libertarian behind all of this. Sure, we need technologists, but we also need engineers, systems people, as well as those that work on civil infrastructure so that our freaking bridges don't drop into the Mississippi.

(insert car analogy here)

Re:Ok, but

[Capt_Morgan]

Um.... Apparently my high school experience was different from yours. I had mastered Advanced Calculus and physics and already had a decent grasp of programming. AP classes are awesome.

Re:Ok, but

[redtuxrising]

Not sure about Europe, but in former USSR republics a 4 year degree is considered "incomplete". That is for your higher education to be complete it has to be a Masters degree. My Soviet friends shall correct if I'm wrong here. Now my 2 cents on the whole "too many college graduates" thing: nonsense! We need more education as well as better education (better education necessarily excludes institutions like Patrick Henry College). At the very least people must learn how to learn. For some it comes naturally. Some get a fair grasp on learning in highschool. Some attain it in college along with more knowledge and some vocational training (definite pluses in my book). At every step a level of ignorance is shed and that is what is important. Increased employability is only secondary here.

Re:Ok, but

[jonbryce]

That depends entirerly on which part of Europe you live in, even down to county level. For example, there is streaming in Buckinghamshire, but not next door in Oxfordshire.

Re:Ok, but

[CapnStank]

I'm in the same boat as you fellow Captain. I find however that the issue is employers seeming to THINK that Highschool isn't enough when it really is. Browsing the job market I see 75% of jobs requesting bachelors (of anything) or greater can be accomplished by two weeks of in-house training and a grade 10 education. The problem isn't that we have too many degrees saturating the market, its that every employer feels their entitled to request only those qualifications for their position when not required.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

If those people were actually educated and qualified to do anything, they'd be doing something. Instead, they're living with their parents, collecting unemployment and bitching about the recession.

We've got a bunch of idiots with slips of paper claiming to be qualified, not an overabundance of educated and competent workers.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, but I'd rather have get sick from too many cookies than say things like "mumsies" and "sour stomach".

Re:Ok, but

[quantumplacet]

Telling an American to do something because Europe's been doing it is like telling a Toyota to stop because you hit the brake?

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Count your blessings. You are damn lucky that you had a school system that actually taught. Most school systems teach four things:

The exam (tm). Anything not on the exam isn't covered.

How to be a passive consumer, and a good prole. (Schools do not like intelligent students in general.) Buy and shut up.

Why the guys on the football team, or the girls on the cheerleading squad are better than anyone else, while anyone with a scientific bent fails at life.

How to be passive aggressive.

So guess what we get a product from the schools? People driven away from the hard sciences, and people driven to business majors, law [1], and sports.

[1]: I've heard high school counselors tell people to drop any interest in the sciences, and go law, because it is *impossible* to ever be unemployed with a valid bar association membership, and passing the bar exam means you always will make six or seven digits income for the rest of your life.

Re:Ok, but

[rutledjw]

The article is of dubious value, but you have some interesting points. I don't think we suffer from an "Overabundance of qualified, educated people". I'm risking getting blasted here, BUT, I think we have an overabundance of mediocre people with a degree. The difference is that we're producing fewer and fewer people with degrees in science and technology fields and more people with degrees which have little direct applicability in the workforce. Further, we're "forcing" people into 4 year programs who have more potential in vocational-type programs.

And I'm NOT being condescending regarding vocational programs. There's talent, skill, and dedication required for those jobs which I do NOT possess. I am a menace with any kind of carpentry tool and when doing anything an electrician probably should have touched live wires (120v, thankfully) more often than I'd like to remember.

But I absolutely agree with your point that we're falling behind in the US. We've been content to let other people do the "hard work" and encouraged many of our smartest and most talented people to pursue "quick-and-easy" money in areas like the financial industry to the ultimate detriment of other industries. This is anecdotal to a degree, but as a hiring manager, it was VERY difficult to find people of reasonable intelligence and talent. A friend who's a recruiter runs into similar problems finding programmers in SF for the rates companies are willing to pay. Yes, the bay area is expensive, but the salaries offered were reasonable for what I considered mid-tier and lower-end senior folks. The company was very flexible (including allowing varying degrees of remote work). Still he has a tremendous ongoing challenge to find, and place (before they get snatched) good people

The bottom line is that we need to encourage people to get education in areas where they can succeed AND which are in demand by the market. If someone wants to get a degree in a field not in demand, that's their business, but I don't think merely "getting a degree" should be the end goal nor encouraged.

Re:Ok, but

[blair1q]

There are thousands of technical and trade schools in the U.S. They just aren't generally government-funded.

Re:Ok, but

[blair1q]

So we should continue subsidizing meaningless attempts to educate people who are at college for the frat parties just because it's the "American Dream?"

Re:Ok, but

[TooMuchToDo]

I completely agree. If you're an employer and demanding a degree for a job, you should be required to contribute to a national education fund. Clearly, you wouldn't want to pay into this fund if you didn't need the employee to have the skill set, so you wouldn't require it if you didn't need it. This fixes the problem of the employer shoving non-essential education costs on employees (inflating the cost of education due to supply/demand, taking money that would've been spent on other things and put into an "education", and so forth).

I say this as a business owner with no education over a GED (tech solutions consulting firm). My job postings always ask for experience or demonstrated knowledge, never a degree.

Re:Ok, but

[CherniyVolk]

If you think this doesn't happen in America, you're naive.

From the start, the system guides the child down certain paths. (Disputes against IQ tests, particularly one group having better education is self-reflecting of the IQ studies as those IQ tests are given before education starts... mainly, upon entry or before enrolling into the 1st grade). I remember the testing myself, I started the first grade at around age three to four years old (I turned four during the year) and I never went to kindergarten.

As you progress in the American education system, you get encouraged to take certain classes. A child of an IQ score of 90 or below will never pass a Calculus class; probably will never pass the prerequisite classes to get to Calculus honestly; they'll probably never get out of remedial general math... adding and subtracting. *Cue the folk who for the sake of argument claim they had IQ scores of 80 yet ended up acing AP Calculus in high-school, I guess we should give the morons hope so say what you will. I know you're a liar.*

Thousands of years of education systems, this system is down to a science and highly accurate. "Look at me boy... I see it in your eyes, you go to that room there. You'll hear words like 'goods', 'merchants', 'business', 'theory and postulates' and 'degrees/diplomas'. " "Look at me boy... look at me! Nothing. You go into that room, you'll hear words like 'craftsman', 'journeyman', 'master', 'apprentice', 'vocation'." I had to fight the school to let me take a woodshop class, they were correct in assuming I was just looking for an easy 'A' but also a friend was taking the class and I just wanted to hang out with him. By that time, the deed had already been done. In my classes, eyes lit up to the sounds of Bachelors and Masters degrees... and what is needed to get them. In wood shop class eyes lit up with the prospect of success as a Master of a vocational trade. Those kids struggled just as my peers struggled in our classes... they wouldn't have a chance in hell with trigonometry.

Part of all of this, is to set each child into a relative reality proportional to their own capabilities. On the down side, this reinforces the illusion of equality, on the up side they are generally happy as their scale of success is supposedly within their grasp. A kid with an IQ of 90 will simply never become a neuro-surgeon no matter how much of his little mind he puts forth towards the effort; so don't even take him down a path where he might catch wind of such absurd goals given his limitations.

In Russia, they do the same thing--limited people get sent to PTU instead of Universities. In America, it's cleverly masked into the system from the start so it's not as obvious. Plus, in America there are opportunities all the way through that are put in place to catch all those that might slip through the cracks. (A genius might get sent down the wrong path from the start, but given cross roads throughout the system, odds are he's going to take one of them, odds are he'll get noticed... even if it's, college transfer studies at a community college after dropping out.) This might make us feel good about the American system, but there's a dark side too. It only goes to magnify the sheer fact of mental limitations for someone who misses every cross road; reasons for missing them by this time are largely irrelevant.

They do this in every education system... this "streaming" you speak of.

Re:Ok, but

[drachenstern]

Source? ... [Citation Needed]

What's the a) time spent in "primary school" compared to the US K-12 program, and b) technical competency compared to an American degree?

For instance, as I understand it the Hauptschule concept of Germany* focus more on having a technical job and the student is out of school by the age of 15 or 16. If you were in the US, you would not be allowed to leave HS at 15-16 even if all you wanted to do was be a skilled tradesman. If you did leave school that early, people would look down on you for a number of years. They also don't focus on the academic subjects, but rather on what it takes to be a good citizen.

Do you know many kids from your HS that would've been happy to stop at 10th and go get a job working on cars or something similar? I sure did (probably 20-30% of the kids in my graduating class would've been happy to be done sooner and go get a technical job).

Of the students I know who went towards Gymnaisum and Uni, they tended to come out after that 6+ with a Master's level competency.

I would say their systems are a lot better than ours.

* to pick on Germany, since I know some Germans well enough as any ignorant Amerikaner can.

Re:Ok, but

[drachenstern]

No, we had vo-tech and work-study in this country up until the late 50's, early 60's. They seemed to finally phase out in the late 70's, early 80's for pretty much everywhere. Anybody care to put a finger up and say about when things in this country started going to piss?

Anyone who cares to argue can come down to my neck of the woods and I'll show you at least three schools I know of that were built for the express intent of Vo-Tech, but were repurposed 30 or so years ago to meet general education because there were no more Vo-Tech programs. It's a shame really. The only benefit is that there were local schools that were able to use the premises as-is for teaching shop or the like.

Re:Ok, but

[mjwalshe]

not to the school type maybe streaming was the wrong term basicly if you get put into the vocational track its very hard to get out to the gymnasium.

A bit like in the old days with Secondary Moderen and Grammar but with a sub secondary moderen school to boot.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... wealth distribution, status quo... Hello!?! Barack, are you in there?

Re:Ok, but

[gorzek]

Employers don't ask for 4-year degrees because jobs require them, they do it to cut down the number of resumes they get. It's an easy "crap filter." In this economy, we have situations where a company might have 5 openings and they get 5,000 applications. If they can cut that in half by putting a 4-year degree in the requirements, it makes their work a lot easier. It also has very little impact on pay, since the economy is in such bad shape a recent college grad saddled with debt would probably settle for $10 an hour. It's a great bargain for the employer, that's for sure.

Re:Ok, but

[catmistake]

Um.... [...] I had mastered Advanced Calculus and physics [...]. AP classes are awesome.

Yeah... they are... but they're not that awesome. It wasn't Advanced Calculus and physics you mastered... it was remedial (i.e. 1st semester) calculus and physics. We tested out of the bottom classes, not the top classes. And we took twice as long to do it as the college freshman. So let's be a little more objective about what world-class scientists we were when we graduated HS. Otherwise... someone is gonna think we're compensating.

Re:Ok, but

[default luser]

I also strongly disagree with his point and I'll explain why: If a society finds itself with an overabundance of qualified, educated people, the correct response is not to try and cut down on the overabundance, but to start doing more interesting things. It seems to me that after starting off with a promising few centuries, the USA has suddenly decided that the guiding principle of its society should be maintenance of the status quo, rather than progress.

Growth is limited by the number of true genius / creative people you have in a society. That percentage doesn't increase just because you can churn-out more college graduates.

Now, it's true that the small number of true creatives need large staffs of people to help them move mountains, but there is a limit to the number of people needed to make this happen. If you exceed this limit, you're "overstaffed."

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that. If my kid ever wrote mom as mum I would kick him in the throat for being so unpatriotic. Though I would except bullocks.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that a large sector of college graduates are not, in fact, qualified or educated. Because so many people are in American universities that have no defined purpose, they take their high school-style learning values with them. They have no desire to acquire knowledge or critical thinking skills. They want to make good enough grades to get a diploma and get a job. That's very different than gettin an education.

Re:Ok, but

[billsnow]

I must be in the minority in America, because I never took an IQ test, and I only know of a few who had. My experience in American education: all students are encouraged to go to university. A majority either don't go or realize it's not for them within the first couple years. Of who's left, the majority realize it was a waste of their time. I could be off base though.

Re:Ok, but

[smidget2k4]

Except for that IQ tests are largely crap, I mostly agree with your point. They are measuring something that seems to be correlated with intelligence, but do not measure intelligence directly, thus there are going to outliers of people who just aren't good at whatever the IQ test is measuring, but excellent at other things (Savants might be an example here).

Also, throwing numbers around is largely meaningless, as the numbers are only valid when compared to others numbers in relatively small cultural groups. Things like primary language, the school's curriculum, interactions with objects, etc. will all change one's IQ score.

That being said, I think you are correct that some people just can't hack some of the higher level stuff, but I disagree with how black and white you make it seem.

Re:Ok, but

[NiteShaed]

which just leads to even more people getting 4-year degrees of dubious real-world value. If it's just an arbitrary crap filter, why not just put in a height requirement, or maybe require that all applicants be able to balance a ball on their noses for no less than five minutes.
Wait, here's an idea; just stop accepting resumes after the first 50, or 100 (or whatever) show up, and ditch the arbitrary "crap-filter" to begin with.

Re:Ok, but

[scamper_22]

You are assuming that going to university or college make one qualified and educated.

I would venture to say that is not the case, and we have instead lowered the standards of colleges and universities.
So everyone gets the piece of paper. But we're not any more qualified than other generations.

I'd venture to say, we're less qualified overall as the people who really should be entering programs are not fulfilling their full potential as they are deprived of a challenging curriculum and individual attention for projects...
It's one of the reasons why for example many countries have a more 'educated' population than the US, but the US still ends up with the best of the best and all the best companies.

It's a rare talent that actually creates great innovation. The US really focuses on these great people with its IVY league schools and massive research funding.
Many other countries like Canada focus on creating mass semi-smart worker bees.

The more I work (as a semi-smart worker bee Canadian), the more I realize the value in the US system of creating excellence and great leaders.

The other thing of course is that we really don't need that many educated people. Most of jobs people value are not jobs needing a university degree.

I value the chef that makes great food when I go out to eat.
I value the waiter that provides excellent service.
I value the janitors that keep the place clean.
I value the construction workers that build our roads and bridges.
I value the manufacturing workers who assemble all the widgets.
I value the farm workers who pick the fruits all day.

This is not to say educated job are not valued. I'm an engineer and I value skilled people.
But there is such a great demand for other jobs that they are under-appreciated.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say things like 'I have 10 years of education. I should get paid more than some high school grad auto-worker'.

And I ask why? They seem to think its a given that more education=more money. As if it is a right.
Whereas in a true free market (which we don't have), you get paid what others are willing to pay you.

I'll gladly pay the auto-worker for making a car I wouldn't make myself.
What use is some government bureaucrat meddling in my life about the effects of obesity? How much would I pay for this person to study it? My answer... nothing.

On a side note, its also the reason why most western countries are in so much debt. There is a natural limit as to the wage gap between the service/manufacturing workers and the 'educated' workers. A teacher/nurse/doctor can only earn so much more than a waiter or an auto-worker. There aren't enough rich people to fund a higher difference.

Re:Ok, but

[mjwalshe]

http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/germanschools.html Which says 6.5Y on average

I and a number of my peers (ho hum years ago) did get a technical job via the vocational route (well technically the grade above "trade" qualifications). The course I did was an ultra specialised one suited to the needs of the aero and fluids research cluster that is/was around Bedfordshire almost all of us worked in world leading RnD organisations right at the beeding edge.

But! in the UK this vocational route has been devalued to the point of non existence. The need for time served electricians (and I don’t mean some guy that wires houses) is still there, but successive governments from Thatcher onwards gutted the whole structure of technical training.

And don’t get me started on modern apprentices that companies that to quote John Cleese are pushed by “jumped up caterer’s and hoteliers” – and those ghastly little tory boys and girls on the apprentice who are all as thick as two planks and couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery!

Re:Ok, but

[Lumpy]

No it does not. Most of the college educated are t hat way because of the over-inflation of the value of a college education. sorry but as an Accounts payable clerk it's retarded to require a bachelors degree. Problem is most executives believe they are a better company to have "all highly educated staff" where in reality they exclude highly skilled workers with 20 years experience but no degree because it's pure stupidity to get a degree for many jobs that only experience makes you good at.

So now, you get people that spend tens of thousands of dollars for a degree and they wont accept $14.50 an hour. Business men whine because they cant get people for peanuts but require a degree.

Real degrees in science, studies, and math? I'm all for them. It is the bullshit degrees in business do nothing but dilute the worth of education with a bunch of worthless degree holders that want a premium for their work but are only capable of doing unskilled tasks.

Re:Ok, but

[Lumpy]

mumsies cookies much suck if you get a sour stomache from eating even everything in the cookie jar.

What is mumsie baking for cookies? Prune and sawdust with nails in them?

Re:Ok, but

[interkin3tic]

I wasn't saying "So that's good" I was saying "So that's why this won't work." You're not going to convince any individual american that they should not go to college because it would slightly help out some of the rest of us. That's just how it is.

Anyway, I reject the premise that education can be a complete waste. Horribly inefficient at doing anything beneficial to the point where it would be better not to fund it, yes, but a complete waste no. And I'd think we can all agree that there are far bigger wastes of taxpayer money.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a menace with any kind of carpentry tool and when doing anything an electrician probably should have touched live wires (120v, thankfully) more often than I'd like to remember.

So what is YOUR degree in? It obviously isn't electrical engineering. I doubt it is physics. Or mathematics. That's a lesson you learn once.

Re:Ok, but

[dkleinsc]

In the US, that same selection process happens all right, but instead of being tied to the child's ability to pass exams it's tied to the child's parent's ability to pay for the child's education.

It also starts much younger than you think, because the child of wealthy parents will be in a top-notch pre-school that provides that child with a good grounding in basic language and mathematical skills, whereas the child of poor parents will most likely be in a low-quality day care that does little more than keep the kids from dying while the parent(s) work. Even of those children end up going to exactly the same public school system (unlikely - wealthier kids live in wealthier school districts and thus get better school systems), the rich kid will be starting about 1-2 years ahead of the poor kid. His academic ability will be recognized quickly, and as a result they will be tracked into gifted-and-talented programs as quickly as possible, so that by the time he's in 6th grade he's about 3-4 years head of his typical poorer counterpart.

By the time you get into high school, poorer kids who have demonstrated real academic talent are consistently tracked lower than rich kids who are good students but not particularly outstanding. And for the other poor kids, they are either encouraged to go to vocational schools, or (much more likely) ignored until they drop out of school.

Re:Ok, but

[repka]

Interesting idea. I'm more for employers covering individual employee's student loan rather than public fund approach. Students from your local techie school should be more affordable to employer than some high flying business/law/med grads.

Some employers right now are doing it, but government can be more encouraging here. Instead of paying off interest for active students, even ones who wont get a related job.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you're familiar with British cooking.

Re:Ok, but

[gorzek]

I never claimed it was a good idea, just that that is how I've heard it justified. The people who write up job postings actually *do* put lots of other crap in them for the same reason.

If you ever wonder why a job posting seems to have insane requirements, it's just to discourage casual applicants and drive away people who even *think* they aren't qualified.

It helps to be aware of this and go ahead and apply for the job anyway, even if you don't meet their requirements to the letter. If you think you'll be a good fit based on the actual job responsibilities, that's what you should base your decision on.

For instance, I got my current job despite not having a degree or health care industry experience, both of which were supposedly "required" under the job posting. But I had a varied enough resume with sufficient experience in the right areas for the company to snap me up.

In short: ignore the qualifications section of any job posting and pay attention to the actual job responsibilities and what experience you might have that's relevant. Pay no mind to stupid hiring managers who have bullshit qualification lists. Apply anyway!

Re:Ok, but

[ffreeloader]

The article is of dubious value, but you have some interesting points. I don't think we suffer from an "Overabundance of qualified, educated people". I'm risking getting blasted here, BUT, I think we have an overabundance of mediocre people with a degree.

I think you're mostly correct. One of the reasons we have an overabundance of mediocre people with a degree is the sense of entitlement that we have engendered into our society in the last 30 years or so. That leads to an abundance of cheating and the lack of a real work ethic. Kids grow up thinking they deserve a big wage for doing nothing as they are given everything instead of their parents making them work for what they get.

The above leads directly to a lot of people with degrees being nothing more than mediocre workers, at best. This is a direct effect of the liberal philosophies of no discipline and and me, me, me, along with the idea that the government owes us a living.

Re:Ok, but

[nine-times]

If basic needs are being met (which they are), then surplus capacity should be directed

The problem is that the surplus is being directed into the pocketbooks of the wealthiest people. One of the methods for directing that surplus is to convince parents that they need to use up their entire savings by sending their offspring to very expensive 4-year-long summer camps. What's left of those savings after 4 years of an indulgent lifestyle are used to fund research which will be copyrighted and patented by private companies, fund sports teams which will further distract the populace from their bilking, etc.

We could be instead putting the money into better education earlier in life, (primary/secondary schools), infrastructure (our crumbling bridges, public transportation, improved Internet), and other needs like better healthcare. By improving the overall economic and social outlook of our country, we could actually increase the opportunities for people to educate themselves.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Growth is limited by the number of true genius / creative people you have in a society. That percentage doesn't increase just because you can churn-out more college graduates.

So you are basically saying that education has no value at all? That society is dictated by the people within it, and their education level makes no difference?

Well, interesting perspective...

For a counterexample, you can look at ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY which shows that education results in the improvement of society.

Being "overstaffed" is a good thing. 90% of people used to live on farms and be involved in agricultural production. Over the course of time, smart people invented machinery to increase efficiency. Now, 2% of people do the farming, and the other 98% are free to do "other things" because the farms are overstaffed.

Re:Ok, but

[CraftyJack]

75% of jobs requesting bachelors (of anything) or greater can be accomplished by two weeks of in-house training and a grade 10 education.

You need to see a bachelors to be sure that they can function at a 10th grade level.

Re:Ok, but

[0100010001010011]

Except in America every child is special and deserves to go to college, and no matter what system you list above, nearly everyone somehow ends up in college.

You'd have more lawsuits than you knew what to do with if you told some parent that his or her child wasn't smart enough to become an engineer. Or should become an automechanic*. Kids don't even play sports to 'win' any more. They don't keep score. Everyone gets a participation ribbon. Can't hurt anyones feelings.

Even if you showed absolutely no aptitude for anything requiring college, your counselor and parents still suggested it and you came out with some useless degree and a huge amount of debt.

The other problem with the way America does it is, just as you ran into a problem with it, 'smart' people can't take "dumb" trades. I was top of my class. I took all the AP courses I could Junior year and was off to a local community college for 1/2 of my senior, and despite all this I was never allowed to take "welding" class because it was a trade.

I like cars, I'd like to restore some old cars and the only limiting thing is I don't know how to weld. I work full time so taking courses locally would both cost money and take time I don't have.

* There is nothing wrong with being an automechanic. Some people kick ass at it and SHOULD go to a trade school straight out of high school, but for some reason this is looked down upon.

Re:Ok, but

[ubermiester]

the USA has suddenly decided that the guiding principle of its society should be maintenance of the status quo, rather than progress

And upon what evidence are you basing this assertion? It would be much more accurate to say that US progress has accelerated over the past couple of decade and that the rest of the world is struggling to keep up.

The Chinese and Indians are making great progress, but from a starting point that looks more like the early twentieth century in the US - i.e., robber-baron generals/politicians/elites in complete control of the means of production, and poorly paid, powerless manual laborers are working endless hours for little pay in the hope of pulling themselves out of agro-poverty. (There is a growing middle class as there was in the 1920's in the US, but they are still a tiny minority).

The Europeans are more "advanced" in a socio-economic sense because they were forced to adopt a more comprehensive welfare-state model after WWII (devastated economy+demand for pre-war standard of living=modern welfare state), but most of their economies are still struggling to modernize. Even Germany's modern export economy is being challenged India and China's cheaper labor costs (see US during the 1980's).

Japan had a good run during the 70's and 80's, but they were also starting from the industrial dark ages after WWII, and have since struggled to modernize (their economy, not their technology) in the face of powerful old-school gov-biz cartels who have controlled their economy since the 19th century, as well as extremely powerful labor unions that negotiated for those once vaunted "lifetime" jobs.

Meanwhile in the US, the reality of a service/internet based economic system set in a long time ago, and people are starting to figure out ways to make money without actually making anything (i.e., value-added services). It's labor market is going through the process of reestablishing a balance between security and employment (see UAW pre/post auto meltdown). It's telling it's young people (whether they're listening or not) to train their minds rather than their hands. And most importantly, there is a vast new generation (both native and immigrant) who know only the internet/service economy and are organizing their lives accordingly. Most if not all of the technical innovations the rest of the world sees as the hallmarks of a modern lifestyle (PCs, smart phones, computer/social networking, online services/shopping), were all invented and reached maturity in the US over the past couple of decades.

Essentially the main fallacy in your argument is that the rest of the world is moving forward from the same starting point as the US, when in fact most of the rest of the world is still trying to catch up. I understand when people say that the US is not changing fast enough or that it is doing things wrong, but to claim that it is only interested in the status quo is downright ludicrous.

Re:Ok, but

[0100010001010011]

MOD DOWN.

Last time I listened to Capt_Morgan, I ended up smelling like CaptnStank.

People in college do not need to be listening to either.

Re:Ok, but

[d34dluk3]

He's saying that Europeans are good kids who are exercising restraint. No, it's not a good analogy.

Re:Ok, but

[mangu]

IQ tests may not be perfect, but who is to blame for that?

If a system is imperfect the correct attitude would be to try to improve it. Unfortunately no one dares to try to improve IQ tests for the fear that there could be intrinsic limitations on some people's intelligence.

Let's face it, people do have limitations. I'm too short to play volleyball or basketball, too skinny to play football, too clumsy to play baseball. Why should we deny that some people are too stupid to go to college, even if they get sports scholarships?

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the first one to say it, but degrees do mean less nowadays. Not only are they more abundant than ever, but perhaps as a consequence of many more people seeking degrees, the curriculum itself has become less robust.

Just about every computer science grad I know who entered the workforce prior to 2000 say the same thing. They minored or co-majored in mathematics, learned dry theory, could explain Godel and Turing's input to computer science. And that was the easy stuff. Now what passes for computer science *IN SOME SCHOOLS* is the ability to create a webpage and link a few libraries. (But that's just some schools. I've been working with some recent grads who are pretty damn bright and doing some really interesting and highly complex things. They are definitely exceptions though.)

Back in college we used to gently rib our liberal arts buddies. You know the joke; all they really needed to learn was, "Would you like fries with that?" We joked about it then, but even they say that the degrees have been watered down. Gone are some statistics with calculus requirements, gone are requirements for reading dead Russian authors. My buddy, who graduated with an art degree, knew more about history and cultural conventions across the world (because of requirements in school) than a some current history majors.

The argument I hear is that students no longer desire a "well rounded" education. It's just the facts that they want, ma'am. Just enough to get them through their four years at minimal cost and just enough to put on their resumes.

It's a shame, really. Part of the fun in college was taking those easy classes. You learned interesting facts about the world, could sound interesting to MOTOS (or MOTSS if that's your deal), boosted your GPA a half point or so, and prolonged the experience.

Just my two cents.

Re:Ok, but

[operagost]

A bureaucrat gets to choose what I do for a living? Yaaaay socialism! Are there any freedoms left? The great news is that this gets done in America as well. My public school had a similar system in the 1970s-1980s. Fortunately, the administration realized it was a failure and killed it. Please, hold the rhetoric about kids with low IQs insisting on going to college-- it simply doesn't happen. As a kid, if you're having a hard time in math, do you really think you're going to go to college so you can struggle some more? My peers who weren't cut out for academics gravitated naturally to vo-tech. Just let them do it!

Re:Ok, but

[QRDeNameland]

Except in America every child is special and deserves to go to college, and no matter what system you list above, nearly everyone somehow ends up in college.

And to quote from The Incredibles:

"If everyone is special, then no one is."

Re:Ok, but

[operagost]

Patrick Henry College is an accredited institution. You may not like their religious bent, but they have a right to it. Once, all institutions of higher learning had religious affiliations. Are you just a rabid "W" hater or something? BTW, I'm not a "W" fan, nor did I got to Patrick Henry.

Re:Ok, but

[operagost]

- PUBLIC schools before college only teach how to read, write, and (hopefully) basic math
- No Child Left Behind: everyone can pass anything, just by marking every answer "C".
- Fixed length PUBLIC school system: you can be a grand master in chess, but you're not allowed to learn cursive yet (before you point out the exceptions, the whole problem is that they're the exception)

In short: fresh out of PUBLIC high school, the only thing you're qualified for is asking "Do you want fries with that?". We might as well just teach 5 year olds to flip burgers and save them a decade. At least they'd have some motivation to learn, then.

FTFY

Re:Ok, but

[DriedClexler]

we have an overabundance of mediocre people with a degree. ... we're producing fewer and fewer people with degrees in science and technology fields and more people with degrees which have little direct applicability in the workforce.

And I'm NOT being condescending regarding vocational programs. There's talent, skill, and dedication required for those jobs which I do NOT possess.

We've been content to let other people do the "hard work" and encouraged many of our smartest and most talented people to pursue "quick-and-easy" money in areas like the financial industry to the ultimate detriment of other industries

The bottom line is that we need to encourage people to get education in areas where they can succeed AND which are in demand by the market. If someone wants to get a degree in a field not in demand, that's their business, but I don't think merely "getting a degree" should be the end goal nor encouraged.

Damn. Wish I hadn't just run out of mod points. Everyone involved discussing education policy should be aware of exactly these points (okay, maybe not your personal vocational skills, but the need for more people to go into them and for society to respect them more so people don't shun these roles out of fear of low status).

I salute you.

Re:Ok, but

[Kpau]

Lets blame employERS for requiring 4 yr college degrees where a 2yr would have sufficed or none was needed. Or perhaps the collapse of what a high school diploma means in terms of skill levels. Or the eradication of high school vocational studies because taxpayers would rather build jails than fund schools.

Re:Ok, but

[Zot Quixote]

I'd pay you to shut the hell up and stop spewing anti-intellectualism bullcrap that's probably making everyone else dumber.

Naw...actually I wouldn't. I'd just kick you in the nuts.

Re:Ok, but

[default luser]

So you are basically saying that education has no value at all? That society is dictated by the people within it, and their education level makes no difference?

No, I'm saying that the capability of education to drive GDP growth is systemically limited by the number of true geniuses / creative people we have.

For a genius, education is an enabler, but not the defining characteristic: there are a limited number of people who can move a society in new directions, and education can help them rise up out of the chaff.

In addition, the geniuses need a lot of educated people to help them shape the world into their desired image. So there is a demand for people who are just *SMART* to become educated, even if they lack ambition and/or real creativity. These are the support staff the creative people need to do their work, and they are just as essential as the geniuses they empower.

If we have too many educated people, and they have nowhere else to work, then they sit around jobless.

Re:Ok, but

[Bigjeff5]

Yeah that "Advanced Calculus" you "mastered" was more like college level pre-calc. I went to a private school that regularly outperformed the public schools in pretty much every area, and I took the advanced classes as well, and college calculus kicked my ass.

You are an ignorant fool if you think getting an A in AP Calculus is the same as "mastering Advanced Calculus". Your AP physics class may be a rough equivalent of an introductory college physics class, but you sure as hell didn't "master physics". Nobody in the history of the world has ever "mastered physics", to say so is to be completely ignorant of physics.

The fact that you consider programming to be more difficult than calculus is proof that you don't know calculus. Programming is easy, it's just basic logic. This then that else this or if that enough times to produce a program. That's all computers are. There are all of six basic commands, repeated enough to create something functional. Becoming proficient is difficult, and requires a certain type of creativity and anal attention to detail, but the basics are incredibly simple. Calculus, on the other hand, is hard. It's not just logical repetition. There is an extremely strong foundation required to understand the concepts of calculus, let alone put them into practice.

Apparently your high school experience was filled with delusions of grandeur, must have been all those medals you got just for participating.

Re:Ok, but

[Kpau]

Some of us older folk remember that high schools in the US used to HAVE these vocational training programs --- underfunding by anti-tax zealots destroyed them all. Lately, community colleges are trying to take up the slack with vocational programs, but again, the anti-tax zealots are undercutting them. These people are starting to remind me of the sort that doesn't change the oil in their car because 'it saves money this month' - when the car explodes later, they blame the car or the design, not themselves.

Re:Ok, but

[Sancho]

I also strongly disagree with his point and I'll explain why: If a society finds itself with an overabundance of qualified, educated people, the correct response is not to try and cut down on the overabundance, but to start doing more interesting things.

I'm guessing you aren't in the educational sector, and haven't been for some time.

College is a joke these days. The students have serious entitlement complexes and professors have been worn down by their demands to the point where they'll give in most of the time. Or, if the professor sticks to their guns, they'll retire early (for multiple reasons--one, their classes don't fill up due to the perception of them being a bad teacher, or two, they simply can't take it anymore.) This has been an ongoing and increasing trend for at least the past 15 years at least.

I graduated with a computer science degree 10 years ago from a state school. Most of the people in my class couldn't program their way out of a paper bag, and forget about understanding classical computer science (which is mostly math, anyway.) They copied off of each other, begged the teachers for grades, made up excuses for their late and shoddy work, and ended up passing.

These days, the kids barely show up to class unless there are attendance points. When they do show up, they play on their cell phones. They demand class notes and complain to the department head when they don't get them (even if there are none available.) They also complain if you demand that they know anything that's not in the book. It's really sickening.

No, the truth is that we have too many college graduates because too many professors pass students who have no business even being there. That means that we don't have a surplus of educated people, but a bunch of people lowering the bar for everyone. But the article gets one thing right--I sure as hell don't want to be paying for these wastes of flesh to be getting degrees.

Re:Ok, but

[commrade]

I think you greatly overestimate the difficulty of Calculus.

Re:Ok, but

[NiteShaed]

In short: ignore the qualifications section of any job posting and pay attention to the actual job responsibilities and what experience you might have that's relevant. Pay no mind to stupid hiring managers who have bullshit qualification lists. Apply anyway!

Shhhhh! You're giving away all our secrets! :)

I agree with pretty much everything you say here, it even sounds like, superficially at least, our backgrounds may be pretty similar. I just HATE boneheaded HR/Hiring manager stuff. Maybe they think they're being clever with the absurd and sometimes arbitrary "requirements", but really, they're just making a nuisance of themselves....

Re:Ok, but

[jayme0227]

The reason so many employers require a bachelors degree now has little to do with what they feel is the required education so much as it is a way to limit the applicant pool. When you have thousands of applications piling in for your position, it can become extremely difficult to find the best candidates. When you only have a hundred or so applications coming in, you may miss out on the best candidate, but you can more easily pick out good ones.

Also, when it comes to two people who have very little separating them in terms of skill and ability, at least a bachelors degree shows that the applicant has put forth an effort to improve his lot in life. Yes, there are many factors that go into improving yourself and having a degree isn't the only one, but it is easily identifiable in the 8 seconds that HR people take to look at a resume.

PS. Don't be afraid to put in your resume for a position you feel that you can perform even if you don't meet the listed requirements. Better yet, go in and see if you can talk directly to a hiring manager for such positions. Because they know that the qualifications requirements are overstated, they are often willing to, at the very least, look at candidates who don't meet those requirements, so long as they show the initiative to apply.

Re:Ok, but

[BoberFett]

That's actually not a half bad idea.

Re:Ok, but

[Slugster]

I find however that the issue is employers seeming to THINK that Highschool isn't enough when it really is. Browsing the job market I see 75% of jobs requesting bachelors (of anything) or greater can be accomplished by two weeks of in-house training and a grade 10 education. The problem isn't that we have too many degrees saturating the market, its that every employer feels their entitled to request only those qualifications for their position when not required.

There is a term for this. Do you know what it is? ---> "credentials inflation":

http://www.popecenter.org/news/article.html?id=1749

-----

I do not know that this situation (of "too many college graduates") is really a problem as such or more of a symptom of a condition of "the system" not working the way we think it should.

There is a misguided notion of equality in the US that everyone should be able to achieve the same results, regardless of their (lack of) abilities. It has ultimately become destructive to achievement in academics and the business world as well.

You can't have a rainbow-assortment of people always tie for first place, unless the race was rigged from the start.
~

Re:Ok, but

[QRDeNameland]

If you ever wonder why a job posting seems to have insane requirements, it's just to discourage casual applicants and drive away people who even *think* they aren't qualified.

Actually, quite often insane requirements are designed to discourage *any* applicants other than the H1B they want to fill the position. See here.

Re:Ok, but

[Zordak]

This really isn't true. I live on a comfortable upper-middle-class income. My wife stays home with the kids, so they don't get sent to day care. Our oldest daughter went to a sort of neighborhood pre-school where the moms just took turns teaching the group. She was never in GT Kindergarten (seriously---why do we need GT Kindergarten?) But she's in third grade now, and she's one of the best students in her class. She's well ahead of some of the kids who got shoved into "top-notch" pre-schools when they should have just been playing with toys.

Our second daughter didn't go to any pre-school. She didn't want to, and we didn't see any reason to force a four-year-old to do it. But she had a lousy Kindergarten teacher who basically assumed that all the kids had gone to pre-school (which meant she didn't have to teach---just "review" what they're already supposed to know, and then shove worksheets at them). She treated our daughter like she was dumb because we had dared to let her just be a little kid, and that shot her confidence. We spent the whole year basically trying to mitigate the damage formal education was doing to both her emotional and intellectual development. That year, she learned despite her schooling, not because of it. Then this year she's had a really good first grade teacher, and like the older one, she's pretty much caught up with her friends who went to "top notch" pre schools.

This "get an early start" mentality is stupid. Kids that little don't need to be learning vector calculus. They need to be playing. Sure, teach them things while they play. Our youngest son likes to watch the Leapfrog alphabet video, and then he'll find the letters on his alphabet puzzle and tell us what sound they make. We're even thinking about letting him join a little twice-a-week pre-school this fall, but only because he seemed to really enjoy it when we checked it out. We don't stress him about academics. He's going to have plenty of academic stress the rest of his life. No point in starting it early.

Basically, this mad rush for early academic excellence is a way for people to feel a vicarious sense of achievement at their children's expense. It's stupid, and it doesn't help the kids. By the time they're in second or third grade, you'd never know which ones went to pre-school and which ones didn't. The ones who are going to excel will excel. The ones who are going to flounder will flounder. The really big difference is not what they were doing when they were three. It's what's going on at home right now.

If you really want your kids to be successful, let them be kids while they're young, fill your home with lots and lots of books, make education a priority, and spend time with them. Eat dinner together, for crying out loud and then sit down and read with them and help them with homework. Kids who associate reading with spending time with their parents will love books. Kids who do nothing but melt their brains playing video games all afternoon---while Dad surfs porn and Mom gossips on Facebook, and everyone munches on greasy delivery pizza and flat Dr. Pepper---are not going to become the next Stephen Hawking just because they had a year or two of pre-school.

Re:Ok, but

[Fareq]

I dunno. I am a pretty smart guy, and I found it pretty hard.

Though I guess my difficulty was more that I was really bad at it. I took many other "harder" classes that seemed much easier to me.

That whole idea of different kinds of intelligence or something.

Re:Ok, but

[blackraven14250]

We recently got rid of government subsidies for the banks that distributed student loans. They now only have the venture capital market to profit from.

Re:Ok, but

[cayenne8]

I value what it takes to make the most $$$ that I can make...simple and nothing else.

That's the only reason I work....if I didn't have to work for the lifestyle I want, I'd never do another day of it.

Re:Ok, but

[joebok]

I really don't see this in the current system - at least in elementary school where my friends' kids are and where my daughter will soon be. What I see is a constant dumbing down of teaching across the board. It is all about teaching to standardized tests and not discriminating (for any reason).

In the Seattle school system, every kid in the same grade gets the same math lesson on the same day. It is ridiculous - the current methodology, so far as I can tell, is teaching everybody at the level of the lowest common denominator.

When I was in school in Colorado (many years ago), we had 3 "tracks" - high, middle, and low. We were slotted into them by performance and teacher recommendations. There was never an IQ test that I can recall. I'm sure it was hard to get out of your track once you were in it, but I don't know. Luckily I was in the "high" track and so had a relatively challenging and interesting education in the public school system. Something I fear my daughter won't have.

Re:Ok, but

[commrade]

I certainly meant no disparagement. The OP implied that if you were even 10% below average intelligence, you could never pass a Calculus class. I think the deal with calc is that it's pretty hard to teach but once you understand it, it can seem fundamental and simple.

I'm not sure if there are different kinds of intelligence. I'd like to think that the human mind is at least equivalent to (and likely a super set of) a Turing machine. Then the difference would really be one of inclination. People excel at what they are actually interested in. I probably couldn't pass a Business class to save my life.

Re:Ok, but

[couchslug]

Dumping the dumbshits into the vocational school makes for some...interesting classes, but the sharp folks who want to be there can do very well in life.

A system that sufficiently exposed students to alternatives, so they could make an informed career choice would produce much better results.

An intelligent weldor, machinist, or mechanic can make a secure and comfortable living. Sad that those trades are scorned.

Re:Ok, but

[couchslug]

"I'm risking getting blasted here, BUT, I think we have an overabundance of mediocre people with a degree."

Getting a degree means showing up and passing exams. It's a nice filter for employers to use, but when everyone has one it means less.
Who here doesn't know that?

"We've been content to let other people do the "hard work" and encouraged many of our smartest and most talented people to pursue "quick-and-easy" money in areas like the financial industry to the ultimate detriment of other industries."

They went where the money was. If one wants employees, pay what the market will bear. Refusal to compete is not a strategy, and there is zero reason for smart people not to seek money. Why work hard in a society where employers and government are both your enemies and dedicated to separating you from your money?

Life is a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you'll taste.

Re:Ok, but

[dkleinsc]

I'm not suggesting that 3-year-olds should learn vector calculus. I'm suggesting that wealthier parents (which whether you know it or not, you are one) got to their first day of school knowing how to read, write a bit, count to 10 or 20, and possibly do some basic arithmetic. A lot of wealthier kids get that at preschool, but they could also get it from an attentive adult in other settings. In your case, your advantage was that you could afford to have your wife stay home and/or work with the neighborhood to start giving kids those basic skills.

By comparison, most poor kids (who didn't have access to Head Start and similar programs) start learning to read when they're 5 or 6. For instance, I was bored senseless in first grade because most of the time was spent trying to get my classmates capable of handling reading "See Spot run." Most of them couldn't do it the first day.

Oh, and what poorer parents are doing with their time at home - mostly mentally and physically resting from their jobs. If you really want to understand the life of a poor person, ideally talk to some of them and get to know them, or at the very least read about or watch smart capable and educated people try to live under the pressures that poor people do.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, can't just let this slide without a different viewpoint...

I'm junior faculty at a major state university, and I can't deny that some students have a certain sense of entitlement. No surprise, but I doubt that's changed much over time.

I will say that the majority of my students show up to class and are engaged every class period. I tell them on Day 1 that they're expected to use their laptops and technology in class to help them solve in-class problems and exercises (in communication classes). If they want to play on Facebook or screw off online, fine - but the participation component of their grade will suffer and they tend to do poorly in the class. When the students turn in peer evaluations of their teammates, they often mark down fellow students that showed up to meetings and did nothing but text or play with their latest shiny gadget (this semester it was the iPad).

I've never had students complain about a lack of notes or expecting them to know things that aren't in the book. Actually I make it clear the content of the class is a combination of the book (which I refuse to regurgitate to them, they know how to read), lectures, discussion, etc. This seems to go over quite well after they take a week or two to adjust to how I run the class.

Finally, gross over-generalizations about "college kids today" don't typically work all that well. I heard a guy giving a presentation a week ago where he said that college students today don't have great interpersonal communication skills because they spend so much time online using social media. This is in contrast to the awesome interpersonal skills of senior faculty? Come on.

Re:Ok, but

[Hobbes_2100]

This really isn't true. I live on a comfortable upper-middle-class income. My wife stays home with the kids, so they don't get sent to day care.

You should check out the number of folks that cannot survive on a single income. Thus, negating the possibility that one parent can devote their full time and attention to between say, one and three offspring. That custom attention (and the level of caring and devotion typical in a parent in an upper-middle-income household) is more educationally valuable than a "premium" day care or kindergarten and even elementary school. Also, don't underestimate the value of living "comfortably". Less stressed parents means both more patience for the children and less stress on the children. Both of which improve the living and developmental environments.

If you really want your kids to be successful, let them be kids while they're young, fill your home with lots and lots of books, make education a priority, and spend time with them. Eat dinner together, for crying out loud and then sit down and read with them and help them with homework.

Yes, yes, and yes. However, understand that if two parents are working (or, in a single parent scenario, that parent is employed), there may be severe constraints on time and energy. Certainly, those parents that understand the potential of a better life for their children will make the sacrifices necessary to raise their child well (as you discuss).

I agree that "early excellence" is a red-herring. But, I think a better description is that "early specialization" is the real killer. In the physical realm, the best nationally programmed sports (former Soviet bloc) recognized that early specialization basically killed the ability to succeed as an athlete. There just wasn't enough general balance, strength, stamina, coordination, etc.

The same thing holds in mental development. The arguments can be duct taped together from developmental and cognitive psychology.

Best,
Mark

Re:Ok, but

[spirit of reason]

These days, the kids barely show up to class unless there are attendance points.

It would help if going to class weren't a waste of time. Too many professors simply read their slides and ask only very basic questions. The net effect is students that are either distracting themselves or struggling to stay awake and pay attention. The textbook is a much better format for this type of material.

Then again, I have a feeling this lecture style is made to accommodate the lazy student. Reading the text--before an exam or homework forces it--seems rare...

Re:Ok, but

[blackraven14250]

Is Patrick Henry College accredited at the national or state level? Nation accreditation is typically considered weaker, which is why I ask.

Re:Ok, but

[blackraven14250]

Please, say it's Reagan!

Re:Ok, but

[sourcerror]

It works similarly in Hungary (not a coincidence). However legally nothing prevents someone from a vocational training to go to university.

Re:Ok, but

[TimSSG]

... overabundance of qualified, educated people...

Did the article really state that?
I thought it was an overabundance of college grads.
college grads != qualified and educated people

Tim S.

Re:Ok, but

[Zordak]

You should check out the number of folks that cannot survive on a single income. Thus, negating the possibility that one parent can devote their full time and attention to between say, one and three offspring. That custom attention (and the level of caring and devotion typical in a parent in an upper-middle-income household) is more educationally valuable than a "premium" day care or kindergarten and even elementary school. Also, don't underestimate the value of living "comfortably". Less stressed parents means both more patience for the children and less stress on the children. Both of which improve the living and developmental environments.

I realize that circumstances vary, but you can't play the "you're just privileged card" with me either. My wife has stayed home with our kids for nine years. During that time, I've been in school while working full time, been laid off, worked for about a third of what I make now, and been to law school. There have been lots of times it would have been easier if she just went back to work. It's only been in the last year's that we've had a very comfortable income.

What's more, I grew up with eight siblings (and my parents have adopted four since I got married). Seven of us were born before my dad left graduate school for a job that paid in the 30s. Even in the 80s, that wasn't a lot money, especially for that many people. So we never had cable while I was growing up. We didn't get a VCR until I was about 12. We got an 8088 about the same time, but our house was burglarized, and we didn't get another computer (another 8088, which by that time was ancient) until I was a junior in high school. Sometimes my mom had to make hamburger stretch by adding wheat gluten. Most of our clothes were second-hand or hand-me-downs. Our cars were generally large junkers, and we often only had one. In the meantime, my dad was working his tail off to get an education and still provide for us. But they did it. And in both cases---my mom, and my wife---they did it because it mattered to them, not because it was always comfortable. When most people say, "we can't afford for mom to stay home," what they really mean is, "we can't afford for mom to stay home, and still have two late-model cars, America's Favorite 500 Channels cable package, a 56-inch flatscreen television, a separate media room with surround sound, a PS3 with scores of games, and three eat-outs a week." The question is not whether mome can stay home---it's how much the family is willing to give up for mom to stay home.

Yes, I know that there are lots of single parents. There are plenty of people in such tight circumstances that they literally need two incomes just to have basic food, shelter, and clothing. In those cases, it truly isn't an option; what they would have to sacrifice is no longer acceptable. I have the highest respect for mothers who work hard to care for those they love because they literally have no other choice. But that's not true for most people I know, and probably not true for most families in America. Most families I know could find a way to do it if it was important to them. Maybe they have different priorities than I do. That's their business. But just because it's comfortable now doesn't mean it was a matter of convenience ab initia. It's a choice that we made.

Re:Ok, but

[Zordak]

s/year's/couple of years

And I even previewed.

Re:Ok, but

[Zordak]

I won't re-type this entire post, but you don't need to lecture me on the stresses of not having money. I've been there, both as a child and as an adult. And my point is, my kids did start learning to read when they were 5 or 6, and by now, they've caught up with most of the kids who could read earlier. On the other hand, I never went to pre-school, but I was reading quite comfortably by the time I started Kindergarten because I simply enjoyed it. My parents never had money for pre-school or special tutors, but (just for example), my older brother is a doctor, I'm a patent attorney, and my next younger brother is a Biochem Ph.D. who just started his own business. It wasn't money. Nobody lined our way with golden bricks. We just did it because we had parents who were emotionally engaged and taught us we could do it. It was parenting. And that's my whole point.

And, by the way, my wife taught at a low income elementary school. There were parents there who were dead broke, including single moms, who still managed to be engaged parents, and their kids did quite well. They did a lot better, in fact, than the kids whose parents came up with the money---whether they had it or not---to ensure that Little Johnny had a shiny new PlayStation to occupy him. Sure, money has some effect on a child's success, but it's not the only factor, and not even the most important one.

Re:Ok, but

[johnlcallaway]

You are absolutely correct. When I was in school, I always scored very high on all the tests so was put into the 'college prep' groups. When I got to high school, I said screw it and only took math and science college prep, because I was good at those, and took the easiest English and shop and other classes that I could get away with to accumulate enough credits to graduate. My guidance councilor wanted me to attend college, I didn't want to and didn't think my parents could afford it, but my senior year she convinced me otherwise and talked me into it. So I stopped taking shop and took a senior English class that I could barely handle. Then went to college in the fall to become a math professor, and hated it. So I only went for one semester. Got a job, bought a TRS-80 because I thought this computer stuff was neat, learned to program, and discovered that you could in fact get a job without a degree, no matter what they told you in high school. By the time my friends graduated with a BA, I was making the same as they were, didn't have any college debt, had four years of work experience, and didn't become a math professor. Today, I earn over $100K and have only taken the college courses I wanted to take to learn what I wanted to learn.

The best things I learned in high school were math and physics and shop. I learned enough English by 9th grade that the stuff in high school really wasn't needed. Today, I would have loved to have taken more history, but it was taught so poorly in high school that I was turned off until my early 40s when I learned that history wasn't just about dates and names and places. I started reading biographies about Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and learned more about the start of the USA than I ever learned in school.

College isn't for smart people. Smart people don't need college to learn. It's a great place to learn, but the truly smart don't need it. It's just more convenient.

College is for the average people who need a piece of paper to convince HR to let them interview. Ok...doctors, lawyers, and a few others need it too. But for the rest of us, trade schools are just fine. We can work AND go to school, then continue our education further at our own pace instead of what some college says we need to take so they can keep all of the professors employed and their expensive buildings paid for. And that nice football stadium which is really useless and has nothing to do with a college education.

Re:Ok, but

[An Onerous Coward]

His point was that the K-12 system doesn't always turn out functional illiterates. I think he made a strong case.

And I'm just going to go on the record and say, you know what? College calculus wasn't all that hard. I had to study a lot, of course. But it had a visiospatial component that programming doesn't. So for me, programming was harder. I'm sure others have found the opposite to be the case.

Re:Ok, but

[proverbialcow]

when doing anything an electrician probably should have touched live wires (120v, thankfully)

Further proof that an electrician should have done it: You're more concerned with voltage than amperage.

Re:Ok, but

[u38cg]

You do not have the physical attributes to play those sports to a very high level, but I doubt that if you put the effort in that you just couldn't achieve any kind of reasonable standard. Likewise, I accept that there is variation in intelligence levels, but an intelligence level is a random variable conditioned on the individual's prior experience and learning. The extent of this conditioning is huge.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

And coincidentally, Toyotas never seem to have a problem stopping when it's an European behind the wheel.

Re:Ok, but

[h4rm0ny]

You have a misunderstanding of the nature of high intelligence and creativity. I scored an I.Q. of 162 and I can say with some authority (and slight regret) that this has only partially translated into practical brilliance. Genius involves hard work. Even the magicians like Richard Feynman are the product of long study and hard work. Education provides four necessary things for "geniuses". It provides the basic material that a creative person uses as their building blocks. It provides a starting point that is further along than starting without it (avoiding re-invention of wheels and the classic "standing on the shoulders of giants"). It provides a supporting body of people to work with and manage details and explore ones hypotheses and cul de sacs. And it provides a community in which people may flourish and establish themselves and consult with peers. There is no separate category marked "true genius" except in popular perception. There is only a spectrum with hard-working and talented people reaching for the shiny end of that spectrum with differing levels of success. Contrary to your statement, greater education enables people to better reach the levels that you call "true genius".

You seem to have entirely failed to grasp my point. You say that if you have more people than you need to achieve something then you're overstaffed. My point, clearly stated, is that we should be questioning whether we can set our sights higher, rather than strive to limit ourselves.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

IQ test results only show how good you are at taking IQ tests. They're mostly bogus for measuring overall intelligence and make the assumption that you can't get better at anything. That means that kids being judged by their initial IQ are doomed when the results say they're not academic as they might just not have developed that part of their thinking yet. Many do develop areas of their thinking that IQ tests test for. IQ tests have robbed us all of many talented and smart people just because they've been abused by education systems.

Re:Ok, but

[Hobbes_2100]

We definitely agree more than we disagree. I personally grew up in better circumstances than you describe. I'm also living in (probably) worse circumstances that you are now (with a family to support).

"you're just privileged card" with me either.

I didn't play that card, nor did I imply it. You found it yourself. I was simply speaking of others. I know plenty of folks doing substantially differently than their economic upbringing.

In the meantime, my dad was working his tail off to get an education and still provide for us.

And that example (of character) is worth ... well, it can't be quantified. What if some children are raised in an economically poor environment without examples of character?

When most people say, "we can't afford for mom to stay home," what they really mean is, "we can't afford for mom to stay home, and still have two late-model cars, America's Favorite 500 Channels cable package, a 56-inch flatscreen television, a separate media room with surround sound, a PS3 with scores of games, and three eat-outs a week."

I'm disgusted by that, myself. I also think it is a caricature. In contrast to your opinions below, most of the folks I know (including faculty at small colleges) are not in the scenario you describe of deciding about luxury goods. They are driving older, second hand cars, scrounging left and right, and generally struggling to get by. I mention this group of workers because (1) their household incomes are above median and (2) they (generally) have less interest in "stuff" and more interest in substance. Generally.

But that's not true for most people I know, and probably not true for most families in America. Most families I know could find a way to do it if it was important to them.
It's a choice that we made.

If I might rephrase your claim: most families in America could afford to live on a single income (for the purpose of having one parent at home with the kids).

Hummmm. I really don't know about that. I really don't. My brother (with a family of 4) does manage it. But, many of the families I know certainly don't have much to go around (on two incomes). I'm very curious if you live in or are familiar with folks that live in an area that has very cold winters. Seriously. The cost of heating can literally put a family in debt.

Tieing this back to the existence of an (implicit) selection process in American education, I'd like to reiterate my question from above:

What if some children are raised in an economically poor environment without examples of character (and the importance of education)?

I think the answer is that they are going to be very unlikely to pursue any sort of personal advancement in terms of college or technical education.

In fact, from spending a lot of time working with first generation college students (and their peers that are not 1st generation), there is dramatic difference in perspective and, often, ability. Hard work seems more evenly distributed but I'd probably give the nod to the 1st generation students. They know what they are fighting against.

It's hard to argue against someone who is basically an example of the "American Dream". I just don't think success for folks from less than ideal circumstances is that obtainable for the majority -- and it's not from a lack of hard work and due to too many 56" TVs.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same thing in a UK high school. Unfortunately it seems that the school saw streaming as a method of figuring out which teacher the kids should have:

Low stream: Best teacher
Middle steam: Average teacher
High stream: Incompetent teacher

We were given challenging subjects but I don't even recall our teacher telling us what we were supposed to be learning. It was only years later, at university, that it finally clicked and I could get on and actually learn most of the material. Such a shame as many people in my class lost their love of maths after two years with our maths teacher.

Re:Ok, but

[Zordak]

Hummmm. I really don't know about that. I really don't. My brother (with a family of 4) does manage it. But, many of the families I know certainly don't have much to go around (on two incomes). I'm very curious if you live in or are familiar with folks that live in an area that has very cold winters. Seriously. The cost of heating can literally put a family in debt.

We moved around quite a bit when I was younger, but some of the places we lived had cold winters. I also have four married sisters who all stay home with their kids. They are married to an engineer, a prison guard, an air-force two-striper, and a dental student respectively. Three of them live in places with very cold winters. All of them live on substantially less than I do. All four have talents they could pursue for commercial gain if they wanted to. All four stay home because they choose to do so. Like I said, I know there are circumstances where it truly is not an option. And yes, I was exaggerating a little (but not that much, and not in all cases). But speaking from my own experience, most people I know personally could do it if they really wanted to.

What if some children are raised in an economically poor environment without examples of character (and the importance of education)?

All I'm saying is that, in my experience, the character is more important than the money. I grew up with very little money, but with two parents who set an excellent example of character and hard work. Their children have grown up valuing education and hard work. I've seen that pattern repeated many times. I've also seen plenty of kids who grow up with lots of money, but with lousy parents, who end up contributing very little to society. And while not everybody can just "choose" to be wealthy, you can choose to set a good example for your kids.

Re:Ok, but

[ToasterMonkey]

It seems to me that after starting off with a promising few centuries, the USA has suddenly decided that the guiding principle of its society should be maintenance of the status quo, rather than progress.

Yah, the standard of living here in the US is _reeeeeally_ behind the curve, bandits made off with my horses last week. We should be improving.. stuff, and doing interesting things. There probably isn't a point of diminishing returns, and people have infinite potential, so some day our younglings will make those Romulan kids in the latest Star Trek movie look like nimrods, and we'll all have Jedi-like abilities. We'll just slowly advance human intellectual capacity towards infinity by overextending ourselves with extremely inefficient education.

Hey, if we really want to get ahead we can also do away with the Army and Marine Corps and just send all of our troops to 10-year cyborg-ninja camps. Overeducation to the extreeeeeme, man! Nobody would fuck with us, then we can spend infinity more resources on overeducating civilians to do more better things, like building start destroyers. Our standard of living isn't good enough until I can just imagine a pop-tart and have a toasty sweet pastry appear in my hands by will alone.

So uhh.. in summary, NO, you can't just overeducate people then simply... use them more. You ever seen the Great Pyramid? Well if you can learn anything from 1000s of years old dead people it's that you need to build on a strong foundation, bottom up. Stop growing the bottom; no more up.

Of course maintaining the status quo doesn't work when the rest of the world is forging ahead. In practice it translates into falling behind. If basic needs are being met (which they are), then surplus capacity should be directed. This guy's argument is that capacity should be reduced for the sake of preserving the existing wealth distribution as it is.s.

The answer is not to pile more stuff on top, easy as it seems.

Re:Ok, but

[Anonymous Coward]

"basicly" ... run-on sentences ... "moderen"

No prizes for guessing which stream you were in.

Why not high school?

[Firemouth]

Using his example, you don't need to know anything about math, science, literature, etc, to cut down trees.

You need to know what they train you to do on the job. Therefore, an elementary student graduate could do the job, short of the physical requirements. So make him a dish washer until he's big enough to work a chain saw.

Nope, this isn't a slippery slope...

Re:Why not high school?

[NervousWreck]

In answer to your title, because for over fifty years, the high school curricula in most states has been systematically gutted of anything that could possibly be useful to a graduate looking for a job of any sort. The trend of everyone going to college started during Vietnam when people needed student exemptions from the draft. There really isn't much use for a bachelors in many fields except to please hiring managers who think you must be pig ignorant and stupid if you don't have one.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. The trend of going to college kicked into high gear with the returning soldiers of WWII.

Re:Why not high school?

[gyrogeerloose]

Yep, he's missing the point. People don't get college degrees in order to go cut down trees, they get them in hopes of making a career in their chosen field. They end up cutting down trees (or, as in my case, driving a truck) only after they've failed to accomplish that goal. Perhaps they didn't make the wisest choice about what to study but sometimes it's kind of hard to know that in advance.

In any case, an economist denigrating a history major is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black.

Re:Why not high school?

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

The trend of everyone going to college started during Vietnam when people needed student exemptions from the draft. There really isn't much use for a bachelors in many fields except to please hiring managers who think you must be pig ignorant and stupid if you don't have one.
Actually, the trend of everyone going to college started after the Second World War with the Montgomery GI bill and trying to reabsorb all those soldiers returning to a roaring economy. Also everybody and their brother has been crowing about how you need college to fill those 21 century jobs as knowledge workers.

Re:Why not high school?

[Monkeedude1212]

I think the problem lies in that more and more people are going to college, because getting a higher education usually means a better job, because people don't want to be working the minimum wage jobs, or they don't aspire to be a lumberjack, or they don't want to work on an oil rig, or they don't want to be a trucker.

It's because the society has grown to glorify jobs that require an education, that now nobody wants the jobs that don't require an education. Go figure.

It's not that there's too many college graduates, its that some college graduates won't end up in the job markets they trained for. So don't be surprised if your CS degree lands you in construction for a year till a job opens up.

Re:Why not high school?

[thepike]

There really isn't much use for a bachelors in many fields except to please hiring managers who think you must be pig ignorant and stupid if you don't have one.

I think that's half the problem. People get passed over for jobs they are qualified for just because hr departments throw out all the applicants who don't have a degree, even in an unrelated field. It makes it so that these people do essentially 'have to' go to college to get jobs, even though they'll get all the training they need on the job.

Personally (as a person working on a PhD in science) I don't think a lot of people need to be going to college. I grew up in a car town, and a lot of my friends knew they were going to be doing manufacturing, but they went to college anyway. A bunch of them (well some, manufacturing jobs aren't so plentiful these days) did just go on to work in the plants, but they racked up huge debt that is just stopping them from being able to do things like afford a nice place to live. And they didn't get much out of college except alcohol tolerance. No joke, I know one guy who took out an $8,000 student loan basically to spend at bars. Now he has a degree in something or another, but spends his days inserting tab a into slot b so that he can pay off that debt. If he had just gone to work in the first place, he'd be doing the same job and have more money. And he could still go to bars.

The whole education system upsets me. I think we're failing in so many places it's hard to figure out where to start trying to fix it. I'm not saying you can't get anything out of it, but that comes much more from personal motivation than any basic qualities of the set up.

Re:Why not high school?

[demonlapin]

FWIW, that was the original GI Bill. The Montgomery GI bill came much later.

Re:Why not high school?

[Pinky's Brain]

Income distribution is more of a poisson curve ... not as long tailed as the asset distribution curve though, fortunately income doesn't peak in the negative either.

Re:Why not high school?

[jythie]

Then why shouldn't everyone get at least 2 or 3 PhDs? Education is a continuum, and all this guy is saying is that we might have slid a little too far in one direction and would benefit from pulling back. This is not the same as going ALL the way the other direction.

Re:Why not high school?

[yttrstein]

I have a high school diploma from over 20 years ago. I have never had any other degrees, certifications, or any other form of expensive piece of paper that promises for me that I'm not incompetent.

So I've had to rely on you know... actually working in order to show my competency.

I make now a comparatively enormous amount of money doing a job that's also done by two collegues; both of whom have PhDs. The qualifications for the job are a graduate degree in the field or a closely related one, OR equivalent experience.

I've got the equivalent experience, evidently.

So yes, it is indeed possible to do pretty much what you want without any sort of degree at all (the usual academic exceptions apply here), but the caveat is that you have to actually do a lot of work. And that's the trick, see? The WORK part is the part that a lot of people tend to shy away from. That, and the patience part.

It works in my favor though, and in the favor of anyone willing to do their ten-thousand-hours-to-expert bit. Enough people are unwilling to put in any kind of meaningful work in order to get any sort of meaningful result that I seem to have become a commodity. So don't everyone suddenly get motivated, I'm not retiring for another 20 years at least.

Re:Why not high school?

[arose]

I have a high school diploma from over 20 years ago.

That voids the rest of your post. To show competency by working you have to a actually be able to get into a job that lets you do that. You could do it 20 years ago, these days its a crapshot. Few, if any, places will hire you for a job that lets you demonstrate any competence without experience or a degree and since the only way to get that experience is to get the job in the first place...

Re:Why not high school?

[MrTripps]

Sure, but you will know how to hang dry wall recursively.

Re:Why not high school?

[Mashiki]

That in itself is the problem. If I wrote down everything I did, I'd be more capable then most IT admins these days, the problem is I don't have that fancy piece of paper floating in front of my name. I do have a couple of others, but companies put far too much trust in the paper then the individual. The whole big push of 4yr uni/college/whatever for 20-80k/debt is messing up the job market when you're getting into a job that pays $38-65k/yr.

Re:Why not high school?

[Z00L00K]

One problem may not be the education - it may well be a good idea to have some math in your pocket when cutting down trees.

But the problem is that what many college educations are about is not useful information - it can even be wrong. And let colleges have some local flavor to the education - college in Oregon may have a suited course in forestry. It's more to it than is obvious at first sight since it's not only about cutting down trees, it's also about planting new trees, planning logging roads and a lot of issues that has to be taken care of.

Same goes for farming, fishing and a number of other businesses. Many of those businesses needs a basic knowledge in accounting and economy.

Going back to the forest industry - use of chain saws is today limited to hard to reach areas, and felling trees on a steep slope or other hard to reach area requires a lot of planning and feel for what's right. Wind direction and strength plays an important role, it's also extra dangerous in those areas since you need to get out of the way quickly. What is in general use is instead logging machines that grabs the tree, cuts it off at the root, and then fells it in a suitable direction, cuts it into suitable lengths while automatically stripping it of all branches and then move on to the next tree. See this video: Who needs 10000 men for tree logging when u can have this beast

And operating that machine is some skill, but it will take a lot of skill to also know how to perform maintenance and repairs on it. And for that you need education. Physical strength - yes, but not all the time as in classic logging. And an elementary student needs education in safety procedures as well - all this could be provided in a customized college education. Also - be aware that many modern machines have a lot of computer stuff in them. Even a farming tractor is computerized these days and the instrument panel is containing a lot more information than you have in your family car these days.

If someone drops out and doesn't go to college he/she will end up flipping burgers or feeding dish washer machines for the rest of his/her life. There are other types low-skill work too that they may end up with - and that's usually jobs that are a lot less interesting than the jobs you see at Dirty Jobs.

Basic education in economy, technology and other science of nature should be a requirement these days. Being able to calculate figures roughly to determine how much material is needed to build a bridge or how much space an oddly shaped oil tank has are both useful skills since a few moments of calculation may save you from destroying equipment worth a million dollar at worst or from having to bring back that extra oil drum 20 miles into the wilderness that you took with you just in case.

Re:Why not high school?

[David Chappell]

Using his example, you don't need to know anything about math, science, literature, etc, to cut down trees.

You need to know what they train you to do on the job. Therefore, an elementary student graduate could do the job, short of the physical requirements. So make him a dish washer until he's big enough to work a chain saw.

Nope, this isn't a slippery slope...

I think you misunderstood his example. Cutting down trees is not an unskilled job. Trees can be very, very heavy and hence it is dangerous to make them fall down. At least some understanding of math and physics is required to do it safely. Modern tree felling also requires the ability to use and maintain some fairly complicated equipment. But, it does not require one to be a competent historian.

If someone wants to cut trees for a living, he should learn basic physics and mathematics, electrical theory, how hydrolic (however one spells that) systems work, basic botany, and first aid.

The problem as I see it is the attitude that since education broadens the mind and teaches one how to learn, it does not much matter what one studies, so we will just put everyone through a liberal arts education. Not only is this inefficient, but education is also more effective if the student believes that he will use his new knowledge after the final exam.

So, rather than teaching people some random stuff which they may never use, let them learn how to learn by learning some skills for their first job.

Re:Why not high school?

[commodore64_love]

>>>roaring econom

In 1946 the stock market DOW Index (~150) was still lower than 1929 (~300). We were still in the middle of a ~20 year long recession which I would not describe as a "roaring" economy.

It's also a myth that war boosts an economy. It helps employ people, but it's the equivalent of building millions of cars and then blowing them up. Or taking billions of dollars and burning them. It's non-productive and drains a country of resources/materials/money.

Re:Why not high school?

[jbengt]

So yes, it is indeed possible to do pretty much what you want without any sort of degree at all (the usual academic exceptions apply here) . . .

Other notable exceptions: Engineers and Architects. Those call for a license with a four year degree (with some exceptions). You can work in many of those specialties without a license, but you'd usually need to rely on someone that does have the degree and license, so you would find a hard time rising above the rank of skilled laborer to professional.

Re:Why not high school?

[commodore64_love]

Not really. An economics degree is useful in virtually all businesses, if only to balance the sheets. Of what value is a history degree to Goldman Sachs or Microsoft or GM?

Re:Why not high school?

[GiveBenADollar]

A group of lumberjacks can go out and get degrees in history if they see better pay in that field. A person with a degree in history however is very unlikely to become a lumberjack even if the pay is better than any jobs he has available. That's the point. We are subsidizing degrees which are nearly worthless in this job market. Many high school graduates make MORE than their college graduate counterparts because they found a field that they were good at and paid well, vice a field that is flooded by poorly paid college graduates. Limits on training and experience are much more substantial than limits on education. But go on and criticize the economist that doesn't believe in the government paying for people to study underwater basket weaving.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Hackers vs Painters, only reason for school is to keep children busy doing things that may seam important so their parents can do their job.

Re:Why not high school?

[commodore64_love]

Sounds reasonable. Let's just raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour, even for McDonalds hamburger flippers, to ensure a "fair wage" for everyone.

I don't mind paying $10 or more for a happy meal. What's that? It won't work? Oh. Never mind then.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

"hr departments throw out all the applicants who don't have a degree, even in an unrelated field. It makes it so that these people do essentially 'have to' go to college to get jobs, even though they'll get all the training they need on the job."

HR departments do this consistently. Most of the time they make the assumption that a guy getting X amount of money needs a college degree. And what this does is weed out the hungry smart geniuses in the field. They guys that know their shit to the core, or the guys that will bleed to death for you. These are the people a company wants to hire. These are the people that ensure it's survival. They will crack the atom for you- and do it with a smile.

That's the issue. HR or fat lazy managers that can't remember the last time they busted their ass. Which ends up being the same thing in the end.

Re:Why not high school?

[commodore64_love]

I'd be happy to take a Walmart or similar job. Good working environment, air conditioned building, and lots of goods I can get cheap (on clearance).

But of course they won't hire me. Not even for manager training. "Overqualified."

Re:Why not high school?

[flynt]

In my experience, what you describe, accounting, is a separate discipline under the Business school, where Economics is usually its own department. An Econ major would almost never need to take a single accounting class I imagine, if they chose not to.

Re:Why not high school?

[commodore64_love]

>>>I've got the equivalent experience, evidently

I'm glad you brought this up. I'm an engineer with EE degree, but I want to be a programmer. But as soon as the HR people see the absence of a CS degree, they chuck my resume in the trash. How on earth do I gain the required skills without spending 10s of thousands of dollars getting that formal degree.

I suppose I could download a bunch of CS textbooks and speed-read, but that still doesn't provide the proof HR is looking for. Oh well.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree its crazy how many people get passed over for jobs they are completely qualified for, just because they don't have a piece of paper.

That said, everyone should go to college. It isn't about training you for the job you have, its about opening up opportunities for you to do what you want. Yes, some of the people you mention from that 'car town' went on to work in the plants, but how many of them wanted to? How many of them ended up there because it was the best opportunity that presented itself, or what they could get?

What about those you mention that now don't have manufacturing jobs, because we've shipped all those to places with 'lower labor overhead'? They go work at a fast food place now, because they don't have the education needed for something else? And if you are going to say "But they can go back to school!", that doesn't work for everyone, and they still have to have a job while they do that, and take care of their families.

What I would rather see, is colleges lower their costs. They could do that easily by doing away with multimillion dollar football stadiums and basketball complexes, by actually getting paid a fair value for research done there that is often given away to pharmaceutical companies, or even (gasp) stop giving sports heroes a free ride, when most of them have no interest in a degree anyway, they just need the college experience to go on to the professional leagues.

Re:Why not high school?

[elrous0]

Thanks professor, now get back to cutting those trees!

Re:Why not high school?

[Sir Holo]

Of what value is a history degree to Goldman Sachs or Microsoft or GM?

Actually, Goldman could have used some historians. You know, that whole "market bubble" thing likes to repeat itself every few decades?

Every company should have some historians around, so when someone starts saying, "THIS time it's different..." they can talk some sense into their heads.

History rhymes.

Re:Why not high school?

[TooMuchToDo]

A history degree doesn't provide anything past what you could get from an online, verified information source (I dare not say Wikipedia of course). If you're intelligent, you'll be able to comprehend whatever historical issue interests you, and have no need to spend 4 years on it.

Re:Why not high school?

[blair1q]

And that's a grave mistake. If you don't actually know how the money is moved, you can't know what the forces on it are, or what sort of uncertainties there are, even in something carried to exact precision.

Re:Why not high school?

[gyrogeerloose]

And who do you suppose supplies that online, verified history information source? An economist?

Re:Why not high school?

[Lershac]

I know a guy who is a P.E. in mechanical engineering without a degree. He put in the time in his job and rose up through the ranks through work, and took the test. The requirements are a degree or equivalent experience. By 38 he had a P.E. and was pulling down the dollars just like everyone else. This was in the nuclear industry.

Re:Why not high school?

[Princeofcups]

In answer to your title, because for over fifty years, the high school curricula in most states has been systematically gutted of anything that could possibly be useful to a graduate looking for a job of any sort.

But that's the definition of a trade school, not a college. In no way shape or form should a college's goal be to prepare you for a job. It should enhance your knowledge and life. If you can use things that you learned in college in your future careers, all the better.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Struct]

+1 OhYeahIGuessYerright

Re:Why not high school?

[Registered Coward v2]

And that's a grave mistake. If you don't actually know how the money is moved, you can't know what the forces on it are, or what sort of uncertainties there are, even in something carried to exact precision.

I beg to differ. One does not need to understand the other in order to be good at one's chosen filed. Economics is about understanding (or trying to understand) the why and what; accounting is about keeping score. There are no 'laws of accounting' but rather a set of rules that are arbitrary but consistently applied. Neither is more important than the other in the sense they both accomplish important things; and while understanding the other may make one more lerned it is not a prerequisite for success in either field.

Re:Why not high school?

[Lershac]

That was pretty much my take on my mechanical engineering degree... it taught me how to learn and tackle stuff I didnt know by going to the book. I am now an IT administrator, own my own business doing so, and have essentially gutted and rebuilt my home by myself... learning all the trades along the way. Learn how to learn and your prospects are WIDE OPEN.

I do crap for client that is totally unrelated to IT, because they see I learn a subject, and can manage my time and a project, and they find that valuable and so pay me oodles to be able to hand a project to me and know that I will "own" the project until its completed correctly.

Learn how to learn, and dont be afraid to say "I dont know but I can find out".

Re:Why not high school?

[Yold]

There actually isn't much engineering in architecture, in fact one of the most famous Architects ever didn't have a degree.

Not to say that there isn't a lot of valuable stuff to learn in an Architecture program (my gf is in one), but the highest level of math she had to take is Calculus I.

Re:Why not high school?

[Oyjord]

A history degree doesn't provide anything past what you could get from an online, verified information source (I dare not say Wikipedia of course). If you're intelligent, you'll be able to comprehend whatever historical issue interests you, and have no need to spend 4 years on it.

As a history professor, I can safely say it's that kind of thinking that leads students to not come to lecture and instead rely on the interwebs when it comes time to study for exams.

Of course those students fail miserably, while those who attend lecture do much, much better.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because the society has grown to glorify jobs that require an education, that now nobody wants the jobs that don't require an education. Go figure.

I mean, seriously... who wants to be an NBA All Star? That totally isn't glorified.

Re:Why not high school?

[Registered Coward v2]

Not really. An economics degree is useful in virtually all businesses, if only to balance the sheets. Of what value is a history degree to Goldman Sachs or Microsoft or GM?

A 4.0 history major would probably be of more interest to them than a 2.0 econ major; since it shows the ability to succeed by perseverance and a drive to do well.

As a side note, I know several history majors who successfully completed navy nuke power training and passed the engineers exam/

Re:Why not high school?

[Lershac]

Yes but it provides the opportunity... the opportunity I say... to get a basic foundational education that can lead to a happy productive adult life. The fact that it keeps the kids at school so we can go to work is a bonus. BTW my wife is an at home mom so she really gets a kick out of that stuff.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting Anon so as not to undo moderation.

Econ graduate here. Yes, Econ is its own department, and wouldn't be part of a typical Business School.

The difference between Econ and Biz School is a lot like Computer Science vs. Computer Programming. There's a lot of overlap, but Econ is more theoretical, and Biz School is more applied.

You wouldn't have an economist "balancing the sheets[sic]". Most economists would be shitty accountants, and vice versa. We do tend to understand money pretty well, but just don't ask us to count it. :)

A background in economics is useful to many businesses, but most econ grads don't wind up practicing economics in the log run.

Re:Why not high school?

[nine-times]

People don't get college degrees in order to go cut down trees, they get them in hopes of making a career in their chosen field.

I think you might be missing the point. People often don't go to college in the hopes of making a career in their chosen field. They go to college because everyone tells them they're supposed to go to college, and everyone warns them they'll end up working behind the counters at McDonald's if they don't have a college degree.

So just to give a hypothetical scenario: You get a degree in art history or something and then end up working in a random company's HR department. The company produces widgets of some kind, and you don't even really care what they produce because your job is pushing paperwork around. Nothing about your job has anything do art or history or art history. Your training in writing academic papers has very little relevance to your job. Maybe you picked up some work habits an people skills in college that help you in your job, but mostly you got drunk and partied and learned trivia that you thought was kind of interesting at the time.

Now that scenario doesn't cover everyone's college experience, but it's far from unusual. I wouldn't go as far as to say that college is a waste of time and money for those people, but it's hardly an efficient way of "making a career in your chosen field".

Re:Why not high school?

[Registered Coward v2]

Yep, he's missing the point. People don't get college degrees in order to go cut down trees, they get them in hopes of making a career in their chosen field. They end up cutting down trees (or, as in my case, driving a truck) only after they've failed to accomplish that goal. Perhaps they didn't make the wisest choice about what to study but sometimes it's kind of hard to know that in advance.

Some people actually study something they're interested in even though they don't plan to work in that field. I studied engineering because I like airplanes and rockets but doing "traditional" engineering work is of no interest to me. It did, however, provide me with a logical way to solve problems that is very useful in many other fields I find more interesting.

Re:Why not high school?

[TooMuchToDo]

Please explain to me what needs to be communicated via lecture that can't be communicated via written word (off or online). Ideas are ideas. While a lecture *may* be a better medium for the communication of an idea, I disagree that written word can't replace it.

Bonus: Why are students going to history lectures when they could be collaborating with fellow students in engineering. Learn some history, but build the future.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, why CS? We get $80k offers straight out of college from companies like Microsoft and over $100k out of college from proprietary trading firms. There are plenty of jobs as long as you go to a good school.

Re:Why not high school?

[demonlapin]

Funny you should say that, as I am a professor. Nice gig if you can get it.

Re:Why not high school?

[Azghoul]

No, many people get college degrees so

(a) they don't have to go get a 'real job' for a few more years.

(b) they don't have anything better to do.

(c) it's just expected.

(d) they can get cheap health insurance as long as they're a student.

Sorry, but your average liberal arts college, while admirable for those who go for the right reasons, does not generally prepare someone for a career in "sociology" or "history".

Re:Why not high school?

[damnfuct]

Except he forgot about this .

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

dvsdfvscv asdfgasfgas df sdfsdf

Re:Why not high school?

[Colonel Korn]

A history degree doesn't provide anything past what you could get from an online, verified information source (I dare not say Wikipedia of course). If you're intelligent, you'll be able to comprehend whatever historical issue interests you, and have no need to spend 4 years on it.

As a history professor, I can safely say it's that kind of thinking that leads students to not come to lecture and instead rely on the interwebs when it comes time to study for exams.

Of course those students fail miserably, while those who attend lecture do much, much better.

And beyond middle school history isn't about simply memorizing events. It's about making arguments in an interactive environment where the teacher/professor and other students can then react and make counterarguments. A history degree is about as related to getting information on historical events "from an online, verified information source" as playing professional baseball is to watching baseball on television.

Re:Why not high school?

[ericrost]

How is it hard to know that in advance, exaclty:

http://www.bls.gov/emp/

Re:Why not high school?

[Monkeedude1212]

Is that where you work, at Microsoft? Can I blame you for all my problems at work?

Re:Why not high school?

[Type44Q]

It's not that there's too many college graduates

No, it certainly aren't. :P

Re:Why not high school?

[Deosyne]

Most businesses don't need to know how Keynesian theories vary from those of Adam Smith; they just need to keep the CFO out of jail when the quarterlies go out. Therefore, the accountant gets a job.

Re:Why not high school?

[AmazinglySmooth]

The problem isn't too many college degrees, the problem is too few entrepreneurs.

Re:Why not high school?

[smidget2k4]

Contribute in large, meaningful ways to open source projects. Write your own software and release it. There are plenty of ways to show programming competence that don't require a degree.

Re:Why not high school?

[dkleinsc]

they don't aspire to be a lumberjack

I do ... leaping from tree to tree, as I float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia, ...

Re:Why not high school?

[Sosetta]

Not having a 4-year degree doesn't say anything at all about your intelligence.

It does, however, often say a great deal about your ability to see a long-term project through to completion.

A great deal of getting a 4-year degree is simply managing time effectively, especially when there are so many distractions that are far more interesting.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Therefore, an elementary student graduate could do the job"

While elementary school gives a person the basis on which to build knowledge, high school education provides life skills. An introduction to how the world works: biology, physics, literature, math. It gives a taste of what's out there. On the other hand, college, especially in the latter two years, provides professional skills. I'm not saying that one shouldn't pursue higher education for a job that a person wants (I'm also working on a PhD). I just wanted to clarify the advantages of each level.

Re:Why not high school?

[jm_sullivan]

I think you've side stepped the point they are making. People are getting 4 year degrees and then taking jobs that don't need those degrees.

Society as a whole would be better if they got degrees/training suited for those jobs. Not to mention training costs are usually lower for those jobs. We end up subsidizing via cheaper money for student loans and grants, etc. their education, and often the students end up with debt that was unnecessary.

Granted, most people don't exit high school with a complete idea of what they want to do in life... but even so, if we could cut down on the unnecessary education costs, society as a whole would be better. The current agenda pushed by many politicians is to get everyone through college. I think the article is more about expressing an issue than coming up with a policy of no one going to college.

Re:Why not high school?

[hitmark]

the 1929 was on top of a very large bubble, no?

i also wonder what effects the increased automation has on the economy, given that many of the workers replaced by machines are the very customers of the various products produced.

Re:Why not high school?

[iONiUM]

Not to say that professors aren't right, but I took my bachelors in CS a few years ago, and for the most part I did not attend class (obviously sometimes I went, but on average, I did not). This includes some history electives I took, and philosophy.

I passed everything by simply reading the supplied material, which is the same as what the professors were teaching. I found the professors job was to try and massage that information so people could understand it, and sometimes elaborate on it, but for the most part you can do quite well by just reading the material.

So, I think the whole thing is kind of stupid and a waste of money and time. I could have just read books and got the same degree. I think the education systems shouldn't concentrate so much on retention, and instead focus on comprehension.

The main thing I got out of university was growing up, which was more valuable. Maybe that was just my experience, I don't know.

Re:Why not high school?

[Barrinmw]

If you refer to the economy as the GDP then war most certainly boosts the economy as government spending goes through the roof.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't actually read the article (merely the summary), so I don't know if he is advocating some loony idea... but I only have a two year degree and I make over 100K myself not to mention my wife's income.
In my case (and literally most I've seen) a four year degree doesn't translate to the commonly held idea of a great job and higher pay.

now a doctor in most fields (not all) can certainly boast the higher pay, but often spend a lot more than 4 years.

Re:Why not high school?

[Script Cat]

Don't tell them about the degree and you can stack cans with the best of 'em.

Re:Why not high school?

[Barrinmw]

I hear that large companies are recruiting people with BS's in physics cause those people know how to crunch numbers. Just cause your degree is in something unrelated to your field doesn't mean it doesn't help you in whatever field you do go into.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Overqualified

I was thinking that mysterious concept also. How is it even possible to be overqualified? The pay should be the same for a job irrespective of the applicant's properties or background, as long as the applicant is capable. But that's just fantasy, I guess.

Re:Why not high school?

[tbannist]

It seems to me that the problem here is that colleges aren't flunking people out properly. If you learn nothing other than alcohol tolerance, your college/university career should end it's first year. Instead you seem to have many colleges that are simply milking their students for money without providing much of value in return.

If that's truly the case, then what you need is for state governments to require some standards be met for the colleges to keep their funding. Standards that can't be met simply by applying a bell curve to whatever results the students happen to turn in. If the colleges are truly providing nothing of value, then they are simply stealing taxpayer money to subsidize 4 years of drunken debauchery for the young adults of the middle class, something that taxpayers should be outraged over.

The most important question is whether this is an accurate picture of the situation or not.

Re:Why not high school?

[MartinSchou]

The minimum wage in Denmark is about 16 USD an hour. And a happy meal is probably around 9 USD. Yet somehow McDonald's manages to not only pay more than minimum wage (all employees 18+ start at 18.46 USD), but also have 84 restaurants and 4,000 employees in Denmark (5.5 million inhabitants), and had a revenue of 270 million USD in 2008.

Oh, and at minimum wage, you're looking at around 40% income tax (though you have deductibles). What was your point again? I forgot.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see some research to back up your statement.

Re:Why not high school?

[hitmark]

they are in the biz of selling others the idea, while they themselves keeping a screen of "plausible deniablity" up so that when things eventually crash they can say "oops".

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a history professor, I can safely say it's that kind of thinking that leads students to not come to lecture and instead rely on the interwebs when it comes time to study for exams. Of course those students fail miserably, while those who attend lecture do much, much better."

That is total bullshit and academic arrogance. I did exactly that for my general ed/humanities requirements. And these 'humanities' instructors that graded my papers, which were full of mindless jargon and drivel, said that my crap was fucking brilliant - to quote the great American philosopher Bugs Bunny, "what a bunch of maroons".

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

So don't tell them you have a degree. Downplay your work history.

For a job at WalMart, they're not going to look very hard.

Re:Why not high school?

[Timothy Brownawell]

It's also a myth that war boosts an economy. It helps employ people, but it's the equivalent of building millions of cars and then blowing them up. Or taking billions of dollars and burning them. It's non-productive and drains a country of resources/materials/money.

Which keeps people busy and drawing a paycheck. Which by the usual measures is I think considered to be a better economy that one where people are looking for work half the time but still have a better standard of living (even while unemployed) than in the busy-work case.

Re:Why not high school?

[xenocide2]

In part it depends on the kinds of programming you want to apply for. There are three kinds of programs:

1. Simple programs that largely revolve around "business logic" and writing and reading from a database. The most complicated stuff is either modeling the whole damn business process or maybe generating some reports. This stuff CAN become complicated, but I treat that as a design flaw. You will have a hard time getting into this without HR buzzword compliance. I think they're doing you a favor. Lots of poor CS students and business/IT majors end up in this place.
2. Simple programs that have complicated results. Lots of EE work revolves around designing simple circuits or programs and demonstrating they satisfy certain engineering properties. Control loops and whatnot. The programs are simple but the consequences may involve differential equations or recurrence relations. The programs are generally a variation of a small set of algorithms, with parameters tuned for your design's requirements. This is where EEs turned programmers generally end up.
3. Complicated programs. Wicked applications of math, like Hidden Markov modelling, or optimizing compilers, language theory and software verification. Speed reading CS won't count here, as you need to deeply understand the principles of computers and programs before you'll be productive here. If you've written a Fast Fourrier Transform implementation in school, you might have a shot. Otherwise, top CS students and grad students only.

So my advice is to find firms that do place EEs into programmer roles. Embedded systems places mainly. I have many EE friends that landed in programming roles, even though they insisted they would fight the trend. Try to position yourself in your current EE employment to work alongside programmers, learn what they do and pick up a few tasks for them. Eventually your CV will have programming related material to pull from for a targeted resume. And you'll have the friends and contacts to pass your resume directly to hiring managers for consideration.

If you're after category 3 work, consider getting graduate degree (don't waste your time on another bachelors). Plenty of EEs go back for different degrees. Look for institutions with EE and CS in one department, and I personally recommend against financing it. Spend 10s of thousands of someone else's money earning an advanced degree. There's TA positions, research positions, scholarships and employer paid options. Be prepared to sacrifice some portion of your life; be it your family, your career or your sanity.

Re:Why not high school?

[operagost]

The 1929 bubble wasn't even as big as this one. It demonstrates what happens when progressive policies are used to "fix" a market correction-- prolonged suffering. Good luck everyone, because we're doing it AGAIN.

Re:Why not high school?

[hitmark]

fix, or ease the transition?

Re:Why not high school?

[oatworm]

Wait - you mean wealth creation is more important to economic growth and well-being than just keeping people busy? Unpossible!

Re:Why not high school?

[TheNumberless]

How do you know for sure why your resumes are being chucked in the trash? My experience is not yours, but I've never had difficulty finding jobs as a programmer, even right out of college, despite the fact that my degree is in a mostly unrelated area. One way to do this is to sell your different background and perspective as a strength. It also helps if you have experience programming computers as a hobbyist, and I'm guessing that's true for you. If not, there's never a bad time to start hacking. That kind of thing can be enough to get you through the door at HR, and impress the people past them who have actual expertise.

Oh well.

Your tone here is somewhat self-defeating, and I honestly hope that doesn't come off in your resume or interviews. Honestly, most HR people I've worked with and known have been more concerned with personality and attitude rather than technical qualifications. Maybe it's not the best way to get qualified people into jobs, but the fact is that they are the gatekeepers. Presentation matters.

I have an EE degree. What's a good 2nd degree? CMP ENG or Comp Sci? I want to be eligible to apply for more jobs.

I don't think eligibility is the right concept when it comes to job applications. Apply for every job you want to do, and that you think you can do. Never let the assumption that you'll be dismissed out of hand prevent you from trying. Some (inept) HR managers will throw your resume in the trash, and what have you lost if they do? The cost of a stamp and the fifteen minutes it takes to customize a cover letter? But if you sell yourself in the right way, some (canny) HR people will at least consider you enough to give you an interview.

Re:Why not high school?

[oatworm]

The cloud. I mean, is there anything the cloud can't do?!

Re:Why not high school?

[DerekLyons]

In 1946 the stock market DOW Index (~150) was still lower than 1929 (~300).

On the other hand, the Dow is pretty much only a useful meausure of how the stock market is performing - it's only one metric. (And IMO not a very useful one as it's as much a barometer of emotion and belief as anything else.)
 
On the gripping hand, US GDP in 1929 was $103 billion dollars, and $222 billion in 1946. (And it increased by nearly 50%, to $293 billion, by 1950.)
 
Or, in other words, the economists and historians that have for years been pointing towards the postwar boom years (along with the grandparent) are correct, and you're just blowing smoke.

Re:Why not high school?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Actually, for most people (that is, those earning UNDER $125,000/year single), when you compare their year-to-year income with inflation income HAS been peaking in the negative for the last 40 years. It's largely been hidden by an increased use of credit, though, but that came to an end in September 2008.

Re:Why not high school?

[martin-boundary]

It's the difference between reading slashdot without being logged in, and logging in and commenting on the story.

In a lecture, you can interrupt the lecturer and ask for clarification, or point out mistakes etc. Online, you have no idea who even wrote the phrase you intend to quote in your homework.

Re:Why not high school?

[DerekLyons]

Yep, he's missing the point. People don't get college degrees in order to go cut down trees, they get them in hopes of making a career in their chosen field.

While no doubt that's true of some people - TFA is correct for others. They go to college because they're a huge pressure to go to college to 'get a good job'. They end up with a meaningless degree, and then end up cutting trees because they can't find a 'good job' because they have a degree rather than an education.
 

They end up cutting down trees (or, as in my case, driving a truck) only after they've failed to accomplish that goal.

Which assumes they have a goal in the first place. I know a lot of HS and college grads and students that only have a 'goal' to get their parents, spouses, and/or guidance counselors off their back.
 
As a society we put way too much pressure on teenagers and young adults to know for absolutely certain what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

Re:Why not high school?

[eth1]

Yep, he's missing the point. People don't get college degrees in order to go cut down trees, they get them in hopes of making a career in their chosen field. They end up cutting down trees (or, as in my case, driving a truck) only after they've failed to accomplish that goal. Perhaps they didn't make the wisest choice about what to study but sometimes it's kind of hard to know that in advance.

In any case, an economist denigrating a history major is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black.

Of course it's difficult to know that in advance. I've always said that university right after high school is a bad idea. In my case, I ended up going to UT right after HS, but I only stayed two years. After working for a few years, I had a *much* better idea of "what I wanted to be when I grew up," and was able to target the completion of a 4-year degree much more accurately. Plus, when you do finish the degree, you have a degree AND experience.

Re:Why not high school?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The reason it won't work is because you're addressing only HALF the equation. As long as you still have a guy earning $4000/hr at the top end, raising the minimum wage will only raise prices until they once again exceed the ability of the poor to pay at the bottom end.

The actual amounts don't matter one whit; it's the distance between the bottom and the top that counts.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to make a point, but your example is pure sample bias.

Students who don't attend to lectures are obviously the lazier, more reckless ones, while the ones who do attend are the geekier, most dedicated ones.

And that doesn't change the fact that you can self-educate about a particular history subject thought various sources (books, interwebs) in a reasonable time. What you _don't_ get from that is a wide knowledge of the whole history and ability to look at something and say 'this has already happened in 15XX, with governor A of Somenation. The solution he took was to cut B taxes and give the population C', or say 'this is happening because of historical reasons D and E'

Re:Why not high school?

[dslbrian]

People get passed over for jobs they are qualified for just because hr departments throw out all the applicants who don't have a degree, even in an unrelated field. It makes it so that these people do essentially 'have to' go to college to get jobs, even though they'll get all the training they need on the job.

Aside from a manufacturing or manual labor type of job I don't know what job you are thinking of that you would get "all the training they need on the job". I can think of a lot of fields that I wouldn't want a DIY or on-the-job trained person to be working in - structural engineer, dentist, surgeon, even lawyer.

In our field (EE chip design) we don't hire people that need on-the-job training - the people we hire will eventually end up as our coworkers, not our trainees. When we interview people we always look for degrees (generally MS or better, but occasionally BS). If someone doesn't know the field (coming from an unrelated background), and can't even show a BS degree, then they aren't going to cut it as a coworker because they won't know what the hell they are doing.

A degree is more than a rubber stamped piece of paper, it shows an ability to apply yourself to a given task for a length of time and actually accomplish that task. It's a pretty low bar really, especially for a BS degree, since the whole education is guided and taught to you by someone else (advanced degrees generally involve a thesis, which shows some ability to guide oneself and accomplish a project).

Personally (as a person working on a PhD in science) I don't think a lot of people need to be going to college. I grew up in a car town, and a lot of my friends knew they were going to be doing manufacturing, but they went to college anyway.

This I don't get, unless they got useless degrees, or are simply incapable of moving to a place with better job opportunities. The town I grew up in didn't even have a college, and I was always dismayed at the absolute apathy and disinterest in the people there to improve their lives. Finally getting to a university I found to be a refreshing experience, as most people there are motivated to do something better with their lives (as contrasted with say the aforementioned town's high school where most people couldn't wait to leave and get back to their minimum wage jobs, apparently oblivious to the fact that their career path would go absolutely nowhere).

It also occurs to me the people who wrote TFA need to hook up with business leaders who claim that they need more H1Bs because there are not enough qualified applicants from here in the US.

Re:Why not high school?

[sorak]

A history degree may be a bit much for anything other than research or teaching, but the point of learning history is to have some understanding of the world you live in. Sure, it won't build a DVD player, but understanding of how the prohibition movement lead to the rise of organized crime may lead to a better understanding of how to approach the drug war. Understanding how the Roman Empire collapsed because they spread themselves too thin may cause you to rethink whether we need military bases in every nation on earth.

Of course these are just examples, but the point is that someone with no knowledge of history can look up what you tell him to. Someone with an understanding of history knows what to look up.

Re:Why not high school?

[TooMuchToDo]

I agree with your post. I'm saying you don't need a 4-year degree in history to have the understanding you describe.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course those students fail miserably, while those who attend lecture do much, much better.

Yes, but only in your class and only because your exams are based specifically on the items you deem important. In the real world, for almost any profession which doesn't require muscle memory (surgery, concert musicianship, etc.), one can always consult the internet to find out anything they may not already know.

Re:Why not high school?

[martyros]

They end up cutting down trees (or, as in my case, driving a truck) only after they've failed to accomplish that goal.

A lot of people I know in that situation (not necessarily including you in this) didn't actually have a goal in the first place. They went to college and studied what they liked, thinking (perhaps not consciously, but evidenced by their actions) that when they graduated they would be handed a comfortable job on a silver platter. They didn't ask what kind of job they might like to get, and how they could prepare for that. They just took classes they liked: e.g., literary analysis, history, &c. and didn't bother thinking about what they were actually going to do after they graduated, and if they were prepared for it. Many of the people I'm thinking about went to private schools and are therefore under a mountain of debt to boot.

Perhaps they didn't make the wisest choice about what to study but sometimes it's kind of hard to know that in advance

I think a lot of things play into this. Culture says, "a college degree is a way to a better life". As mentioned above, HR managers will require a bachelor's, and sometimes a Master's, for jobs that don't need anywhere near that amount of schooling. Kids are more or less trained in school that if you just do what everyone tells you, check all the tick-boxes, then things will go well for you, and are thus ill-prepared for a world where that's not true. Some people want to be told what to do, and don't have the drive or confidence to to looking for themselves.

And of course, universities sometimes seem oblivious to the fact that what many people think they're buying is a ticket to a better life, not simply a liberal education to make them a more well-rounded thinking individual. Unfortunately, there's no particular incentive for universities to disabuse people of this error.

I wonder if in part our problem is that there are few programs that include elements of both vocational training and liberal education. You either study at university, where you are taught things to expand your horizons but no marketable job skills, or you go to a trade / vocational school, and are taught only job skills but not necessarily a liberal education, to help expand your mind. (Not been to a tech / vocational school, so feel free correct me if I'm wrong here.) The main exception I've seen to this is engineering.

Imagine if there were a 3- or 4-year degree for "smart tradesmen" (think roofers, carpenters, electircians, &c) that included some history, science, literature, &c, a solid foundation in running a business (since these guys are probably sharp enough to be either managers or business owners), in addition to the skills required to actually do the job.

Or, if at universities, you had two required components of your major: one was your "Liberal education focus", one was your "Vocation focus". You could major in history and accounting, or music and restaurant management.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could be that you don't ask questions that are found online or in their books but instead only mentioned in lecture.
Yeah, I've had professors like you. You're teh evil.

Re:Why not high school?

[anagama]

have a high school diploma from over 20 years ago.

I was thinking to myself, "geez, what a geezer", till I did the math on my HS Diploma (I graduated almost 23 years ago). Now I don't think you're such a geezer. ;-)

Re:Why not high school?

[BoberFett]

So it takes a McDonald's employee in Denmark about an hour of work (after taxes) to purchase a happy meal from their own employer. What exactly is that high minimum wage doing to help him again? Here in the US the employee might make $8/hr, but the Happy Meal also costs $4. All you've done is inflate values and nothing has changed.

Re:Why not high school?

[dslbrian]

Embedded systems places mainly.

This is good advice. Demonstrating competence in embedded designs is an easy way for an EE to get into CS. Microcontroller kits are abundant and cheap and can be made into demo projects for interviews. All kinds of areas too - RTOS, robotics, web-connected stand alone devices (can do things like connecting it to a cellphone app to make things even more impressive).

Re:Why not high school?

[Zordak]

You obviously never took a 1,000-student GE history course in college. Those are pretty much memorizing facts and spitting them out on a Scantron. I frequently skipped class but still had a ~98% average grade. The only thing I got from the lectures that I couldn't get from the text is the knowledge of which points were important enough to the Prof. to go on the PowerPoint slides. To be fair, I doubt the guy wanted to be at those lectures any more than we did. It was a joyless, "check the box" requirement on both sides.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding? Someone who didn't go to class couldn't pass a test given in that class?

I believe you are mistaking knowledge of history with knowledge of the aspects of history that will be on the exam. One can be gained from classes, books, the web, etc. The other can only be learned in your class or from someone who was there.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously someone who shows up to class likely has more motivation to learn the subject in the first place. More motivation to learn almost always means a better grade.

That aside... If those who do not attend your lectures but instead study the materials directly, I'm making the assumption that they are doing that since you said they did, fail then I daresay it may well be you are likely teaching something in your lectures that is absent from the core materials. Perhaps inserting your own spin on history and then docking those whom may come up with a different interpretation from the sources.

Re:Why not high school?

[bcrowell]

People get passed over for jobs they are qualified for just because hr departments throw out all the applicants who don't have a degree, even in an unrelated field. It makes it so that these people do essentially 'have to' go to college to get jobs, even though they'll get all the training they need on the job.

Employers use a college degrees as a proxy for other things, such as the ability to read at some kind of adult level, or the willingness to show up on time for work when your mommy isn't pushing you out the door every morning. I teach at a community college. We get students who have graduated from high school but who read at the sixth-grade level and can't do arithmetic. College requires a certain amount of independent thinking. Many people don't succeed in college because they can't handle any kind of work that requires thinking a thought that nobody else thought up for them. Employers want to avoid hiring these people.

Nobody has to go to college in order to get a job as a firefighter or a mail carrier or a truck driver. But if I was an employer looking to hire an administrative assistant, darn right I'd want to hire one who had a four-year degree, because I wouldn't want to hire someone who was functionally illiterate.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

The one point in the article that everyone seems to be missing is that only 57% of students starting college graduate within 6 years! A student who goes to college for 6 years, but doesn't graduate, has no more opportunities or earning potential than someone who only finished high school. But they have a LOT more debt.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

They do much better because tey provide the answer you are looking for. History is quite subjective and opinionated.

Re:Why not high school?

[luis_a_espinal]

In answer to your title, because for over fifty years, the high school curricula in most states has been systematically gutted of anything that could possibly be useful to a graduate looking for a job of any sort.

But that's the definition of a trade school, not a college. In no way shape or form should a college's goal be to prepare you for a job. It should enhance your knowledge and life. If you can use things that you learned in college in your future careers, all the better.

Uh, so what's the goal of a college's school of Engineering, or Architecture, or Nursing? Besides the poster you are replying to is referring to high school, not college. In most parts of the world, including advanced industrial nations like Japan or Germany (as well as in many developing countries), HS is intertwined with vocational training.

Even here in the US you get a chance for vocational training in HS (if you live in the right area). Last time I checked (about 15 years ago), here in South Florida we had a few high schools with vocational tracks in auto and boat mechanics, for example.

The sad thing is that those are the exception, with the rule being high schools being turned into day cares that will guarantee you to graduate even if you cannot add or subtract fractions or know the rules of punctuation, without the slightest idea of what one is supposed to do after graduation, with no qualifications other than for mopping the floor at a McDonald's.

You can thank our public education system and our stupid ethos that young people cannot make life decisions at 18 (but can only after spending 4 years and several thousand dollars in college for educational tracks for which they were never evaluated and which might not fit their local or state economies.) Yay!

Re:Why not high school?

[DrVomact]

As a history professor, I can safely say it's that kind of thinking that leads students to not come to lecture and instead rely on the interwebs when it comes time to study for exams.

Of course those students fail miserably, while those who attend lecture do much, much better.

And this proves...that people who come to your lectures can quote you more accurately? Come on, I had expected something a bit more incisive from a real academic. You know, something like "history doesn't consist of the mere accretion of memorized 'facts', but in the disciplined analysis of historical events and of their interrelationships". Not that I'd know...my Ph.D. is in Philosophy.

Re:Why not high school?

[DrVomact]

That voids the rest of your post. To show competency by working you have to a actually be able to get into a job that lets you do that. You could do it 20 years ago, these days its a crapshot. Few, if any, places will hire you for a job that lets you demonstrate any competence without experience or a degree and since the only way to get that experience is to get the job in the first place...

You know, that was, is, and will always be the first problem that must be solved by every inexperienced individual. The smart ones figure it out; the ones who don't get it...don't get anything.

Re:Why not high school?

[sourcerror]

An economics degree is useful in virtually all businesses, if only to balance the sheets.

They could do that with a one year training ...

Re:Why not high school?

[Kotoku]

Same thing can be said for many professions. Accounting / Medicine / Law / Engineering / Architecture / Finance all have licensure requirements that pretty much require a college education.

Re:Why not high school?

[ronabop]

Bullshit. I got competent in PHP not because I had a job, but because I was willing to volunteer for the project. I got competent in PostgreSQL not because I had a job, but because I was willing to volunteer for the project. I got competent in OpenLDAP not because I had a job, but because I was willing to volunteer for the project. (etc)

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

A history degree doesn't provide anything past what you could get from an online, verified information source (I dare not say Wikipedia of course). If you're intelligent, you'll be able to comprehend whatever historical issue interests you, and have no need to spend 4 years on it.

As a history professor, I can safely say it's that kind of thinking that leads students to not come to lecture and instead rely on the interwebs when it comes time to study for exams.

Of course those students fail miserably, while those who attend lecture do much, much better.

Uh.... isn't that because you or your colleagues write the tests?

Re:Why not high school?

[blackraven14250]

Well, the actual amounts don't matter - if you consider our economy to be closed off from others.

Since things are a bit international now, you have to consider how the shift upwards in USD will affect trade.

Re:Why not high school?

[femtoguy]

As a college professor, I have often wondered how we should handle education. One question that I have never felt comfortable is the: Are students better off being better educated if it doesn't improve their job chances? If a person is going to be a garbage man for the rest of his life, is he happier if he know music, literature, science and all that? I REALLY want the answer to be yes, but sometimes I wonder if showing people the great things of the world, and then denying them access to it is really the humane thing to do.

Re:Why not high school?

[gyrogeerloose]

If a person is going to be a garbage man for the rest of his life, is he happier if he know music, literature, science and all that? I REALLY want the answer to be yes [...]

Hey, it worked for this truck driver. I was an art major, graphic design and typography, but there were a lot of general art classes involved in that including art history. Which was really great the time my co-driver blew the clutch out on our tractor (a story all by itself) in Chicago, giving me a day to take in the Art Institute.

Beyond that, though, my arts education has culturally enriched my life as a blue collar worker, even if it hasn't done much in the way of enriching me economically.

Re:Why not high school?

[Gonarat]

WWII brought the U.S. out of the Great Depression not only because jobs were created making bombs, guns, planes, tanks, etc., but because by the end of 1945, most of Europe's and Japan's factories were destroyed or in bad shape due to bombing, while factories in the U.S. were untouched. This lead to the economic boom in here in the States during the 1950's and 60's. We rebuilt the destroyed factories in Europe and Japan with the Marshall plan, so by the 1970's Europe and Japan had new factories, while the U.S. was still using the same factories built in the late 19th and early 20th century. This was one (of many) reasons why so many factories and mills closed in the 1970's and beyond.

When I was growing up, a guy from my parent's generation could graduate High School and get a job with Bethlehem Steel, G.E., or any number of companies, and have a "job for life." Those jobs payed well enough to raise a family, buy a house, a car, and maybe a toy (like a boat or R.V.) on one salary. Now those jobs (and many of those companies) are gone, and everything is made in China.

Not everyone is College material, but College is required for almost any job. I'll get off my soapbox now.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a trucker I make 70,000 a year in bc Canada. My four computer science degree and 5 years as a systems analyst got me no where. That was the 80's. I'm now 48 been truckin' for 18 years. I make twice at a starting rate what I see programmers and other IT guys get. 4 years and 30,000 debt. or 3 months 5k and I'm working from day one. House paid for in 11 years. thats 5 acres people. Truck, wifes car, harley and a boat. ( ok the boat isn't mine yet) but for 30k i get a boat not a job lottery.

Re:Why not high school?

[Lord of Hyphens]

I have an EE degree. What's a good 2nd degree? CMP ENG or Comp Sci? I want to be eligible to apply for more jobs.

Stay with your interests--Comp Sci will get you more theoretics, engineering more practical. Otherwise, there's a lot of crossover. If you liked engineering, stay with engineering.

I'd say do a MS in EE or computer engineering--several universities offer a non-thesis option (thesis will introduce you to more research).

Re:Why not high school?

[Lord of Hyphens]

Sociology is a widely applicable field--understanding and research into how people (groups) think and act has applications from helping people quit smoking (tons of money in that research) to working with special-needs children to managing a workplace.

Friend of mine finished his sociology master's degree just now and has been working multiple, related, jobs as an intern.

Re:Why not high school?

[Sosetta]

I haven't done any statistical research into this. It's just my personal observation based on anecdotal evidence.

I have a couple of friends (without degrees) who've had successful careers, but haven't seen projects through to conclusion. When the going gets rough, they jump ship at the company where they're working, and move on. It limits their success, but since they're still doing well, why change?

I have other friends with degrees who've stayed with companies that were floundering when maybe they should've moved on to find something better. I also have friends with degrees who stuck with companies that were going through a rough patch, and when they came out the other side, they were much better off for it.

I know a lot of people who consider themselves smart, but never finished college. It still bothers them, and it limits what kind of success they can enjoy.

Re:Why not high school?

[Lord of Hyphens]

Agreed, although research in those fields (particularly embedded systems) also get you a lot of the experience.

The flavor of coding you want to do is a major factor here--lower-level development (particularly embedded systems work) is much easier to get into as an EE (and a heck of a lot more applicable than most CS work). If you want to be a nuts-on-bolts applications developer, then get in line behind the cheap foreign workers (if large company).

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

I turned down the job offer from Microsoft to get a Ph.D. instead.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Ask yourself this: "are my exams really a measure of knowledge?" I dare to say that any student who can find proper information sources on the "interwebs" [sic] and digest them is superior to those who sit in a class room, listen to a lecture, and passes the exam (no surprise since the exam will be tailored specifically to what is said in class). At least the Internet is interactive, sleeping in a class room is not!

Instead, you should consider how you can encourage your students go to "interwebs", find proper information sources (a core research technique), and digest them. Then, why don't you make them present their findings in the class (as projects) and guide them as you should do instead of complaining about the Internet! Even the computer games can be useful at least putting a face to some historical scenery instead of just relying on words in the class room. I may sound harsh but those students who have discovered the Internet are already one step ahead of you and value optimizing their time better (another good trait!)

Cheers,
Anon coward + Asst. Prof (in another field)

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

"There really isn't much use for a bachelors in many fields except to please hiring managers who think you must be pig ignorant and stupid if you don't have one."
I'm an IT manager and none of my guys I hire have a degree. During interviews I sit them down with a couple of use-your-brain tests, ask them a few behavioural questions and you find out pretty quick who the stars are.
The interview stage is a painful process but a little time invested here pays big dividends later.

Re:Why not high school?

[toddestan]

Which keeps people busy and drawing a paycheck. Which by the usual measures is I think considered to be a better economy that one where people are looking for work half the time but still have a better standard of living (even while unemployed) than in the busy-work case.

It's still a worse economy. You're basically wasting labor and resources on non-productive activities. Granted, our current government is a big fan of this kind of thing (see economically bad programs like "Cash for Clunkers") as it keeps people busy and employed, but you have to look at the oppertunity costs. What if those people were doing something actually productive, like building up infanstructure, or developing new technologies? What if the money spent on this stuff was invested in the future? Shouldn't the limited resources used for this kind of thing be conserved for actually useful purposes? The other problem is that no one wants to pay people for non-productive work, so usually it's the government paying people (either directly or non-directly) and often financing it with debt.

Re:Why not high school?

[Rich0]

People don't get college degrees in order to go cut down trees, they get them in hopes of making a career in their chosen field. They end up cutting down trees (or, as in my case, driving a truck) only after they've failed to accomplish that goal. Perhaps they didn't make the wisest choice about what to study but sometimes it's kind of hard to know that in advance.

Nonsense. You should only commit to spending $100k to pursue a career AFTER you've figured out that you like the career and are good at it.

The time to figure that out is when you're still in high school, or maybe after high school.

The problem is that kids go to college with no idea of what they want to do, or something that is interesting to them based on having watched TV/etc. Then they get out and find out they're only mediocre at it, and that means they'll never have a decent job, and they're always the first on the layoff list.

Why do kids do this? Simple - they have stupid parents who will pay for it. I'd never fork out that kind of cash to send my kid to school to study something when they haven't already demonstrated a high degree of proficiency in the field (within the constraints of their previous education and experience).

Too many parents send their kids to college in some kind of hope that they'll figure out what they want to do with their lives. If you really want to do that just sign them up for the Navy or whatever - they'll learn how to live on their own and they'll even be paid to do

Re:Why not high school?

[Registered Coward v2]

Most businesses don't need to know how Keynesian theories vary from those of Adam Smith; they just need to keep the CFO out of jail when the quarterlies go out. Therefore, the accountant gets a job.

Which, of course, is irrelevant to whether or not the economist needs to understand accounting. Of course, there are businesses that need economists as well to work on such things a economic models to help drive decisions. That, of course, is also irrelevant to whether one field needs to understand the other.

Re:Why not high school?

[rastos1]

I make now a comparatively enormous amount of money doing a job that's also done by two collegues; both of whom have PhDs.

So yes, it is indeed possible to do pretty much what you want without any sort of degree at all (the usual academic exceptions apply here), but the caveat is that you have to actually do a lot of work. And that's the trick, see?

Somehow I have the feeling that your colleagues are younger than you. Am I right? If yes, than in your age they will have your experience and PhD.

In my opinion the school should provide theoretical background that saves you making mistakes by taking purely empirical approach. Thus allowing to reach the same level of quality in less time.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

On a scale that's measured in percentages maybe. What I keenly remember most about college was, how much of my time and money was wasted by sitting in class watching my egotist blowhard professors spend half of the lecture gloating about how great they were. Not to say that all my professors were that way, some were truly inspiring but, for a degree that I was paying good money for, I expected more.

So, I ditched the traditional education to join a field (flight simulation) where I learned my trade on the job and after my main connection to the industry recently croaked, I'll probably either be joining the Airforce or start taking online courses; because, my skills on paper are worthless without that little piece of paper to back it up.

So, I waste more of my life in school pursuing an education that, most likely, wouldn't teach me much more than I already know or could learn on my own. Note: I'm a dedicated lifelong learner, IE. I participate in MIT opencourseware classes as a hobby (not that it has any monetary value without that little paper).

Re:Why not high school?

[drsquare]

I can think of a lot of fields that I wouldn't want a DIY or on-the-job trained person to be working in - structural engineer, dentist, surgeon, even lawyer.

Once upon a time, none of those of jobs required degrees. In fact, the degrees didn't exist at all, universities were just for studying the classics. Didn't stop buildings, aqueducts, railways, bridges and ships being built by engineers with no degrees.

Re:Why not high school?

[drsquare]

Of course, because there are no other living costs than Happy Meals.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now he has a degree in something or another, but spends his days inserting tab a into slot b so that he can pay off that debt.

How about not having to pay absurdly high tuition for school in the first place?

Greetings from Europe!

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't even graduate high school, sleep through most of it, yet I'm a software developer. I've had MBA's seek my advice over much more educated people. If the boss wants something done they'll come to me, if they need a memo then the college guy is the one they want.

With that said, I believe that O.J.T. and apprenticeships would be more valuable than college for most. Do you really need to know about Greek gods to be a carpenter or plumber? A seasoned veteran could teach the skills needed much better than school.

As far as getting a job, it's still an old boys network. Your chances of getting a particular job are much higher if you know someone there, even if it just to say that you're a hard worker. Of course you have to actually be a hard worker, your neighbors know whether you worked, helped around the house or spent your weekends partying. I've gotten jobs where the interview was just a formality because of recommendations from people I'd worked with before.

The one thing I've never understood is choosing your career while you're in high school and never really held a job. How do you know what you want to do with your life then?

Note. I'm signed Anonymous because I just registered and am still waiting for my e-mailed password.

Re:Why not high school?

[yttrstein]

What the hell are you talking about?

The last job I got with just a highschool diploma was the one that I landed about six months ago. Which is the one that I described in my original post. You've caught an implication that does not exist, I have not had the same job for 20 years. I've had about ten in the last 20 years.

Again, I actively demonstrated that everything I've said is true at an average of every two and a little years since approximately 1988. Every job I've gotten knew that I had no college degree, and every job I've gotten knew that I was competent when I got the job.

Instead of just poo pooing my entire story because you're not with it enough to consider workable alternatives to a degree, you could have asked me what the technique is to wedge yourself in the door.

It's all about the interview, my man. If I can get my grinning mug in front of someone who's doing the hiring, I've never once failed to get that job. How, you may ask, the hell do I guarantee myself the job during the physical interview?

I make myself unique among the applicant pool by jovially telling the truth about everything, including outlining my capabilities with humorous anecdotes from my career. What I have that other applicants appear to not have, apart from the ability to not lie during interviews, is a very relaxed demeanor and an air about me that says "I know exactly what I'm doing".

And that's because I do.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

All that proves is your tests are based around your lectures. Nothing surprising there, but not demonstrative of the value of a history degree in itself.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

News for you.
Size doesn't matter anymore, after they invented the chainsaw exoskeleton ( powersuit or mec or mech or mekka or ... ahh, you get it).

YIC !

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

A historian knows how to read and write well. He knows how to think, research and investigate. He has formal tools and educated personal insight into the constitution and development of groups of people in a variety of situations. He knows his way around libraries, files, and all sorts of documentaion. He ought to understand and handle cultural and human variety.

If the guy's a smooth talker, has social skills, he's great for sales, marketing, PR ceo work in general...

Historians actually have practical skills. Contrary to, say, language majors. :)

Re:Why not high school?

[BoberFett]

I'm willing to bet everything in Denmark costs more. Feel free to prove me wrong.

Re:Why not high school?

[Moofie]

Good luck if you ever try to change jobs. I hope that works out for you.

Re:Why not high school?

[arose]

You've caught an implication that does not exist, I have not had the same job for 20 years. I've had about ten in the last 20 years.

Was, or was not, the job you landed in the are you worked in for the last 20 years. Did you, or did you not, present your work experience, not your highschool diploma as a reason to hire you?

If those were 'was' and 'did' then you missed the point. You started before every half-way qualified job wanted a degree or equivalent experience. Try getting a job without your credentials.

Re:Why not high school?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Hopefully negatively?

Trade in today's world seems extremely dangerous to me from the non-economic standpoints of national security and disease control. So much so that it almost outweighs the economic benefits.

To that end, I recommend that any nation, not just the United States, ought to be able to provide basic human needs WITHIN IT'S OWN BORDERS; and only trade in luxuries that we could do without in an emergency. Because we never know when all communication is going to be cut off with the rest of the world by war or natural disaster.

Re:Why not high school?

[yttrstein]

I did get a job without my credentials-- my very first serious one in the tech field, which was doing technical support for BSDi.

I didn't know anything about unix, or really anything about computers. I'd been evicted from my apartment and things were looking grim. I lied on my resume and landed the job with my magnetic personality.

After which I had about two weeks to fake out my employers and learn enough of the subject to get a foothold--- which I did. Necessity is the mother of a bit more than invention.

After that, I had a number of diminishingly shitty positions up until about 2003, when I started getting the kind of work I think is interesting, worthwhile, and pays very well. That's THIRTEEN YEARS of paying my dues in low-salary, dead end positions. That's why you keep leaving them, see, that's the whole point.

Again, this is all about EFFORT. I made the effort for almost a decade and a half to get to where I wanted to be in computers, and I did it without a degree. And I have half a dozen colleagues who are doing exactly the same thing *right now*.

But if you'd like to sit there and validate your own shortcoming some more and coddle the masses into believing there's nothing out there for anyone without a piece of paper no matter how hard they work, feel free. Once again, it makes it much easier for people who are willing to put the effort in to get the good jobs.

Keep it up.

Re:Why not high school?

[Anonymous Coward]

A history degree doesn't provide anything past what you could get from an online, verified information source (I dare not say Wikipedia of course). If you're intelligent, you'll be able to comprehend whatever historical issue interests you, and have no need to spend 4 years on it.

As a history professor, I can safely say it's that kind of thinking that leads students to not come to lecture and instead rely on the interwebs when it comes time to study for exams.

Of course those students fail miserably, while those who attend lecture do much, much better.

Do the web educated students fail to understand history, or fail to conform to your understanding of history?

Re:Why not high school?

[haxney]

Actually, Goldman could have used some historians. You know, that whole "market bubble" thing likes to repeat itself every few decades?

Goldman's doing just fine with whatever balance of historians they have. You assume that just because the market bubble was bad for essentially everyone else in the world, that it was bad for Goldman. They're having some of their most profitable quarters ever in the past few years. A bubble is only bad for you if

1. You don't see the bubble coming or work to create it.
2. You have no regard for your fellow man.

Goldman Sachs clearly passes both of those tests, so they essentially only stood to benefit from the collapse. They could just short the world and make a fortune off of the suffering of others. Since they clearly don't care about that (as is required to work in finance these days), it would be pretty hard to sell them on changing their clearly winning (for them) strategy.

the eradication of ignorance is man's only hope

[Anonymous Coward]

as is made evident by the collective muttage that persues the "frist psot"

Democracy needs smart people

[MrEricSir]

This guy is forgetting that we live in a (sort of) democracy. How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that more than 20% of the people who finish college courses come out educated? Must be nice to be an optimist.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[ryanleary]

This guy is forgetting that we live in a (sort of) democracy. How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?

Most likely remarkably similar to how it works today with the largely (under)educated populace.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[thepike]

That's what the Electoral College is for!

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[cabjf]

If twelve years doesn't cut it, I doubt four to eight more will.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[hsmith]

Going to college doesn't make one smart.

It still drives me up the wall how much cash I blew for my undergraduate CS degree. Looking at what I "learned" from my classes and what I taught myself in that period of time, I would have been much better off to have saved the $80K I spent on schooling and self taught. Professors even mocked me for the C# books I was reading when it was still in beta, years later *THAT* pays my bills, in dividends. (We can discuss how bad of a language it is in another thread, just the fact the professors couldn't see through the trees).

While college was a great experience, it is far from something everyone should go to. The fact that many businesses require degrees anymore is just plain stupid.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[tsalmark]

The level of education needed to participate in a democracy is easily ascertainable in high school: basic reading, problem solving, critical thinking and logic skills. And yet the education needed to participate in a democracy is lacking in many people already.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[MrEricSir]

This isn't really related to the argument -- knowing how to program probably doesn't help you vote, most of the time.

College isn't a trade school, you're supposed to get a well-rounded education.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

>How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?

*cough*look around you*cough*

The final episode of James Burke's Connections is eerily prophetic; people stick their heads in the sand regarding complicated economic, political, and scientific issues and vote purely based on emotion and demagoguery. This is the emerging face of what dystopia will really look like.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[ravenspear]

Well, I can't speak for anyone else but myself, but it definitely worked for me.

My parents are hardcore religious nutcases. They believe that God created the world 6,000 years ago, that Jesus will return within their lifetimes (which fosters a lack of work ethic, since they think God is coming to take away their problems soon), and that Sarah Palin should be president. That is how I was raised.

After 6 years of college at a somewhat respected research focused school, I no longer believe any of that nonsense and I have successful employment in a good paying job.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[EggyToast]

Well, ignoring the cost of the (apparently private) school you went to, since many public universities offer CS programs, should a CS program teach you the details of a language? Or should it teach you overall concepts about computer science? I mean, truly, you went for a Computer Science degree, not a Computer Programming degree (arguably that would be a cert, not a degree, and be cheaper and shorter as well).
I think the best programmers are those who are motivated to self-teach, because it shows that they really love programming. But I also think there is important stuff taught in computer science classes. It might not be for everyone, but I think it can turn people who just write code without thinking about what actually happens with what they write into better programmers.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Opportunist]

College is supposed to teach you how to learn on your own, how to get information and how to digest it.

Everything on top of that is flavor.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[blueg3]

Going to college doesn't make one smart.

Doesn't seem relevant, particularly since parent said "How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?"

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[amRadioHed]

Well, that was what the electoral college was originally for. It's been a long time since it worked as intended.

And of course that only applies to one of the countless things we vote on anyway.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone said that people wouldn't be educated - just not in the traditional go to college for four years to become well rounded. Instead, I get the impression that he is advocating trade schools and other alternate institutions. This democracy functioned fine, maybe even better, before it became the norm for everyone to go to college.

Excessive classes in math, science or English do not necessarily make someone a better citizen. For a lot of people it is beneficial and there is a definite return on the investment. For many though, it just drives up their wage requirements even though they may enter a career that does not require a degree or that only requires specialized training. That is what I believe the article was trying to say. To be a better citizen, one only need be informed which can be done simply by reading - a skill that every American is required to go to school to learn (arguments about education quality aside).

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet nobody taught you the difference between knowledge and beliefs in those six years.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[hsmith]

Please, how many kids go to school to get a "well rounded education" - it is a nice argument but lets be honest. People go to college because it is the next step and it is required to get a "Professional" job. I can barely recount the actual classes I took that were outside my major, so very well rounded.

Going thousands of dollars into debt so you can have a "well rounded education" is a farce.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[CyprusBlue113]

Check out the Tea Party rallies and you can see for yourself.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

basic reading, problem solving, critical thinking and logic skills

You must mean that it's in the high school curriculum. I see many high school graduates who do not come out with these skills.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Marxist Hacker 42]

College isn't a trade school, you're supposed to get a well-rounded education.

In that case, I'd have to question the social utility of colleges in a capitalist economy. The number of English and Philosophy majors capitalism can profitably use is vanishingly small, where the number of Engineers and actual professionals capitalism can use is comparatively huge.
 
Still more needed, though, is UNSKILLED LABOR, apparently, given the eternal quest by our crony-corporate controlled federal government for illegal aliens and the amount of times I've heard "You're overqualified" from HR idiots.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[MrEricSir]

So you're blaming society for the fact that you didn't pay attention in school?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Democracy alone isn't profitable

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Archangel Michael]

If colleges weren't a bastion of elitism and single minded thought processes run by like minded individuals I would agree.

Of course, progressives are first in line to cry censorship when it affects them, but when it affects a conservative ... well they just deserve it.

Consider the response to the following ... Bill Ayers comes to campus and a bunch of right wing fanatics try to stop him from speaking, what would the outcry be from the left?

Now replace Bill Ayers with Ann Coulter, and ask the same question (reversing left/right). And while Bill Ayers is an admitted terrorist, and Ann is not, guess which one is more likely to be labeled a terrorist on a college campus?

Colleges aren't giving well rounded education, and haven't for 30 years. They are a bastion of leftwing ideologues indoctrinating students; where having an opposing view to the status quo is routinely quashed.

Try speaking for personal liberty and responsibility in the age of group / identity politics and see what happens. You end up with people like Obama and Holder speaking about how evil the AZ immigration law is, without ever even having read it. Its only Ten Pages, so it isn't like it is a hard read.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[dave562]

What do you think about your potential for advancement due to your degree? I'm in the unenviable position of doing what you wish you had done. Other than a couple Novell CNA classes I took in high school, and a couple of MCP/MCSE classes that I have taken since, I'm completely self taught. Despite fifteen years of experience in IT and a resume filled with major accomplishments, I've had a really hard time getting adequate compensation and advance opportunities.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[0123456]

College is supposed to teach you how to learn on your own, how to get information and how to digest it.

To me, that seems like the kind of thing you could learn on your own.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[hsmith]

Perhaps you should read the title of the post "Re:Democracy needs smart people"

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the point. Keep the plebs dumb and poor, entertain them with bread and circuses.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

While high school will give you the basics, it leaves much to be desired. Higher education will give better coverage to useful areas such as statistics.

Imagine what society could gain from a better understanding of statistics alone. You'd hear less of things this:

"I don't think smoking causes cancer. My uncle smoked all his life and never got cancer."

A sample size of one is hardly a conclusive study. So many people could greatly benefit from understanding the law of large numbers alone.

It almost makes you wish an entry level stats course was mandatory.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Ltap]

That assumes equal quality of schooling, which is ridiculous. Almost no university or college, regardless of program or teaching staff, will have a quality of education as low as that in high schools.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[h4rr4r]

One did something long ago, the other advocated killing people of different religions this decade.

As someone not of her religion you might understand why she makes me more nervous than someone who did something bad long ago.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Ltap]

This to me speaks volumes; the number of intelligent, educated people who are liberal.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[lymond01]

College, I think, is partly about learning your major and partly about learning everything else. It's the environment, the exposure to other cultures and ideas that really make college better than a trade school. When you leave college you should be more open-minded, more theoretically-minded, than when you entered. You should be an idea generator, not only an idea applier. The world needs both and you can be both. You may not be a better coder because of college, but you're probably a better designer.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[T.E.D.]

They believe that ..., and that Sarah Palin should be president. That is how I was raised.

In their defence, Sarah Palin probably would have made a much better President back then. It takes time to grow that stupid.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[cabjf]

In most cases it isn't the quality of education but the quality of student and support system. If a student isn't motivated to learn and does not have a support system (i.e. parents) to help produce the motivation to learn, it just isn't going to happen.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Ltap]

Honestly, the best programs teach something like Scheme, and rely on people to learn the languages themselves. At a trade school you'd just learn languages, but with a real CS program, you learn more important concepts like how to properly structure your code. One teaches people how to be codemonkeys and churn out crappy software, the other people are generally better coders.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Jahws]

As a twenty-five year old still in-process within the educational system, I must whole-heartedly agree with the article's sentiment. There are a lot of people in college that I truly believe would be better served by moving on with life outside of the university system. Sure, having the chance to "broaden one's horizon" and learn about various things is "nice," but is it neceesary? Is that, in particular, what our nation really needs?

I believe the undergrad system (at the very least) does a terrible job at addressing what democracy really needs - people who sit down and examine things for themselves, rather than parroting on everything that they're told. There's a proliferation of study aid sessions on college campuses, all aimed to give you the essentials that you need to memorize to get the grade that you want, rather than actually teach you the material for keeps. Whether a student actually learns it is up to them, and unfortunately, many students are here not for true education, but for a simple piece of paper that gives them their right to a job... or so they think, until they graduate. So many people go through the halls of our colleges without ever being educated by them.

I have tutored and taught students at my university - heck, I'm even instructing an undergraduate course right now as a grad student and Ph.D. candidate - and I have met students with very poor problem solving skills who have made it into one of the top 20 public universities in the US. One of these students probably had no problem solving skills whatsoever before I scrapped everything in our one-on-one tutoring sessions to teach her some!

While we in the states might like to think that a university is a great tool that prepares everyone to properly contribute to the real world, it simply fails to do so in some of the most important ways. Either universities need to step up their game to make ensure that those who go graduate are truly quality students, or we should stop subsidizing everyone who wants to delay their life for four or five years by simply going through the motions rather than learning.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoot, you could put $80K down on starting a really nice business. $80K would have almost paid my house in full. Or been a heck of a down payment on a better house. Then I wouldn't NEED to make as much money.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[T.E.D.]

Going to college doesn't make one smart.

...and being smart won't make you successful either. Some of the dumbest folks I know are some of the weathiest. So what's your point?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to college doesn't make one smart.

The fact that many businesses require degrees anymore is just plain stupid.

I am currently a college student and I couldn't agree with you more. But, it is the fact that many businesses do require degrees. So I'm getting one.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

And somehow, your parents did a decent enough job that you were able to go to a respected college and get a good job.

P.S.: Nobody's buying that the protestant work ethic is hurting the economy.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[phantomfive]

Yeah, if you think C# was better than anything you learned in college, I'm going to have to agree with you and say you didn't learn anything either. In most decent CS programs, they don't teach programming languages (except maybe in the entry level class) because they are simple to learn compared to the more complex stuff they teach in a CS degree. If you didn't learn all that stuff, you were wasting your money.

Businesses require it because it establishes a minimum level of competency. It shows that at least one time in your life you were capable of finishing something without quitting, even though it wasn't always fun. It shows you have a basic level of reading and writing capability. That is worth something.

Just a quick anecdote: we once hired a programmer who didn't have a degree, because he seemed really smart. And he was, he got a lot done. But then we had a big project (not too big, four months or so), and crunch time came along, and he couldn't handle it. He said he felt miserable, so he quit. Had he gone through college, he would have had a lot of experience dealing with crunch time, managing projects that got out of control etc. So college is definitely worth something.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very happy to hear that. Good job, must be very hard. I know it's difficult to grow out of what your parents taught you.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

All your example shows is that you're in the 20 percent who come out of college 'educated.' Trust me, there are plenty of college grads who also think the world was created by god 6,000 years ago, Jesus is returning soon (and will clean out their rain gutters) and backed Sarah Palin.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[binary paladin]

The problem isn't education though. The problem is the cost of education and the classist system it's been creating for a long time.

If you work as, say, a contractor or a fisherman and didn't go to college you're considered "uneducated" and your work is also valued less in many instances.

Our biggest educational problem right now isn't college anyway, it's the fucking internment camps at the lower level we put our children through. Instead of cultivating imagination, encouraging their interests and making the prospect of education and learning exciting, we force feed them institutions they hate that are crippled by the lowest common denominator and where curriculums are designed by bureaucrats. They're also being taught obedience rather than independence.

Someone who loves to learn and is motivated to learn, will. My father never went to college, but he's significantly more educated than most of the sheep being churned out with their 4 year degrees. He was a contractor and why? He loved the work.

What we should be doing is: instilling a LOVE of learning in our children, directing them to do what they LOVE and are INTERESTED in, not expect them to decide what they want to be at 18 and not shove college down their throats. It's okay to try starting your own business or enter trades or whatever if you WANT to. Trouble is, we have a society that views and treats those people like a lower class.

This problem is a symptom of the greater problem in America: totally broken thinking at just about every level. It's not just Americans either. I foresee a major global financial collapse causing the "enlightened industrial" nations to, perhaps, reevaluate how they've been handling things.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Ltap]

The problem with this discussion (in general, not just us two) is that it takes 3-4 separate issues and tries to deal with them simultaneously.

When only a few people were well-educated, people believed that education was all that was necessary for a democratic populace. What they didn't take into account were the people who could be well-educated, but would never apply their learning. Not because there are no applications, but because they simply don't learn well. Most people are fairly stupid, and sending them all to university just means having lots of stupid, well-educated people.

On the other hand, as more and more industries continue to mechanize, we'll need less and less dumb labour, so in the future, just about everyone will need to have a high level of specialized education to do their jobs.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I can't speak for anyone else but myself, but it definitely worked for me.

My parents are hardcore religious nutcases. They believe that God created the world 6,000 years ago, that Jesus will return within their lifetimes (which fosters a lack of work ethic, since they think God is coming to take away their problems soon), and that Sarah Palin should be president. That is how I was raised.

After 6 years of college at a somewhat respected research focused school, I no longer believe any of that nonsense and I have successful employment in a good paying job.

Congratulations on having the courage to face the world as it is and not the cowardly world of view of "believing it into reality."

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Opportunist]

Certainly. You could also learn reading on your own, but it sure as hell helps to have someone to tell you just how you'd do it.

A good college tutor will present you a problem and then offer you aid. He won't hold your hand but he will help you save time on your quest for the "correct" way of doing research.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Mr. Slippery]

In that case, I'd have to question the social utility of colleges in a capitalist economy.

It's pretty low. That demonstrates one of the problems with capitalism -- and indeed, every other form of hierarchical organization. So long as you have a class of rulers (owner, investors, whatever) and a class of workers, it will be in the interests of the rulers to have the workers educated only to the point of being trained to do their jobs, and no farther.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[COMON$]

I agree with your profs though. Right now that C# seems great. But in a CS program C# is a waste of time. C or C++ or some of the base languages are much better to learn. C# is a crutch for most individuals as it is very simple (again we can discuss the shortcomings in another thread). But perhaps they werent the ones who couldnt see through the trees. They were trying to make you a better CS student, not teach you how to be a programmer with a singular set of skills.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[silentcoder]

Well... there is your problem right there.
A civil engineer who never took a history class, a social studies class, a psych class, and most importantly at least one year of philosophy classes is nothing but a trained monkey.

A sort of educated barbarian.

I did two separate and utterly unrelated degrees - and in both cases I chose my electives as FAR as possible outside my fields of study. When I studied English Lit - I got special dispensation to allow me to get credited for doing CS as an extra even (I actually claimed I wanted to become a technical documentation writer to get the dispensation... as if :P )

Here's the funny thing. I became a programmer for the first half of my career, a sysadmin after that (in my country sysadmins get paid better). And through all this, I hardly EVER use anything I learned in C.S. classes, it was all obsolete (except for basic principles) before I finished. What I learned about philosophy and the laws of logic I used every DAY a million times over. What I learned in history class has shaped my thoughts about the world around me (and the apparently incurable stupidity of my species) and what I learned in Literature class has given me a love for Shakespeare and Pratchett and Doctorow and all them... and they taught me how to have a HEART and an imagination and how to use them both to be better at any job I could do.
Today I feel like a real renaisance man. I'm 30 years old and on my 3rd major career change - and I plan to do one every 5 years for the rest of my life. I am not just here to make money (though I make a good sum) ... I'm here to live and experience in the short bit of time I have... I'll be DAMNED if I am going to spend it doing the same thing for 30 years.

Now THAT is what a well rounded education does for you... I pity people who did what you did.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[roman_mir]

Sarah Palin as a president...

Hmmmm

Would it be possible to get a ticket off this planet in case that happens?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be worse.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[jbengt]

You seem to be confusing corporate utility with social utility. It is indeed in the interest of society to provide well-round educated to all those who can benefit intellectually. That does not usually serve the corporate interests.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[MindlessAutomata]

This is a great myth that liberal thinkers like to expound upon to justify certain policies toward education. The idea is that education is necessary for a properly running democracy, so the people can make educated decisions and keep the government in check... and they can do this, so long as they are educated... by the government.

That's silly, of course. High schools churn out patriotic, unthinking, placated Americans willing to have their rights and property taken away "for the greater good."

And even aside from the questionable premise that a government-provided education works to keep the government in-check, does a democracy really work just because the population are educated in some things? Nobody that spouts this slogan ever asks, "what is it necessary to be educated in?" Nobody, even the most educated of us, has any idea what policy X will do to the economy (apparently not even the politicians), being scientifically literate it one field doesn't mean you'll be literate in another, and how is having an education going to tell you when to go to war or not? These days all that stuff is determined by stuff secret and hidden from the citizenry, through secret intelligence. This certainly allows the government to lie to us like the cattle we are (Bush on Iraq) and there's little we can do.

Greed is the #1 factor. ALL people in a democracy, educated or not, are little piggies trying to get an ever-bigger piece of the pie, and politicians are only happy to oblige as it gets them votes and a position of power.

And no amount of education is going to fix most dyed-in-the-wool idiots. You can send a creationist through all sorts of biology classes but they'll likely still come out a creationist. There are always exceptions but the true believers will keep on believing. No, a democracy doesn't require an educated population to work, because a democracy doesn't work like it's supposed to, no more than communism does as we saw with the Soviet Union. The only difference is that democracy is OUR social myth, our ideological flag to wave, and thus we'll never admit that it's as failed a system as any other.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Androclese]

In that case, I'd have to question the social utility of colleges in a capitalist economy. The number of English and Philosophy majors capitalism can profitably use is vanishingly small, where the number of Engineers and actual professionals capitalism can use is comparatively huge.

America, currently being a Free Capitalist Market (hey, only 33% of it is Command, Give His Highness some more time to fix that) means that we can have as many English & Philosophy Majors as the market can bear. If they cannot find a job in their market, then they can go perform unskilled labor.

Still more needed, though, is UNSKILLED LABOR, apparently, given the eternal quest by our crony-controlled federal government for illegal aliens and the amount of times I've heard "You're overqualified" from HR idiots.

Fixed that for ya.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[MBGMorden]

that Jesus will return within their lifetimes (which fosters a lack of work ethic, since they think God is coming to take away their problems soon)

That certainly sounds familiar. Growing up in the Bible Belt (and before anyone accuses me of not being familiar with religion - I went to church nearly every Sunday from birth to the age of 18. In that span I may have missed a dozen services tops), I heard "I choose to store my treasures in Heaven rather than on Earth." until I was sick. It fostered an attitude that they shouldn't even bother worrying about life now because this is just a blip.

And our preacher was absolutely convinced that rather than being about research, NASA's space program was REALLY them trying to find an alternate way into Heaven so that they could avoid "serving da Lord".

Overall though, yes, my story largely mimics your own.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

College isn't a trade school, you're supposed to get a well-rounded education.

But most people expect to get a job out of their degree. What has gone wrong here is that the traditional purpose of university was to provide higher education to those who either a) did not need to get jobs (e.g. aristocrats/family businessmen) or b) who would get jobs in the civil service(about the only place where humanities degrees are useful). In both instances, you could say that a "well rounded education" was better than the alternative for these people.

However the modern world has different requirements. Young people who finish their high school degrees are all but useless to most (non manufacturing) industries nowadays. Something needs to be done to at least allow them to attempt to seek employment. Unfortunately somewhere along the line, someone decided that the old civil servant/aristocrat "well rounded education" would provide this(it never has nor will), and so universities were expected to provide something--technical training--that they never historically provided. Unfortunately, rather than pass the job down to appropriate technical and trade institutions universities actually took on this bogus task.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't really related to the argument -- knowing how to program probably doesn't help you vote, most of the time.

College isn't a trade school, you're supposed to get a well-rounded education.

You are absolutely correct! After spending four years in college many moons ago, I now am well versed in good versus bad beer.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Bobb Sledd]

Curiously, who do you think should be president?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[BZ]

> Well, ignoring the cost of the (apparently private) school you went to,

The GP said he spent $80k over 4 years, right? That sounds like a public school to me, at least nowadays. For example, the University of Maryland is about $20k/year for tuition+fees+room+board for in-state students.

For private schools, the number nowadays is closer to $50k/year.

Back in 2001 when the GP was presumably in school the numbers were somewhat lower ($35k/yr for private schools, iirc), but it's not obvious that $80k over 4 years means a private school, sadly.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[slimjim8094]

Hahaha... good one! Mod parent funny, I guess

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[maxume]

Can we call them "highly schooled", rather than "well educated"? The latter sort of implies competence.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knew Glenn Beck had a 6-digit ./ ID?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Ann Coulter advocated killing the LEADERS of Islamic countries and converting the people of those countries to Christianity. If Ann Coulter makes you nervous because of what she said on September 13, 2001 then I can guaran-fucking-tee I'd send you into a fear-induced catatonic state. Compared to what I'd have done if I had the power to do so, what she advocated was extremely restrained and saintly.

You know what I'd have done on September 13th, 2001? I'd have unloaded the big guns. Indiscriminate nuking of every single sizable population center in Islamic Middle Eastern countries. Outright genocidal extermination.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[FranTaylor]

"Considering the prevalence of Marxism in colleges"

Wow what kind of creatures live under your bed? In my experience, college is filled with young uber-capitalists who are looking for an edge to get a better job.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[COMON$]

I've been studying and teaching regarding the prevalence of Marxism in the US economy. It is a really interesting subject. People don't use the term Marxism anymore because of it's negative stigma. As an objectivity I have a strong distaste for it, but people will believe what they want. I just wish people would stop thinking it is some kind of new enlightened thing or better than being a theist.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard "I choose to store my treasures in Heaven rather than on Earth." until I was sick. It fostered an attitude that they shouldn't even bother worrying about life now because this is just a blip.

Just another example of how people misuse their religion. Storing up treasures in Heaven refers to doing things on Earth that will actually last, meaning doing good things for other people. If you spend your time making money and then blowing it on whatever will make you feel better at the moment is a failure to "store up treasures" anywhere.

that Jesus will return within their lifetimes (which fosters a lack of work ethic, since they think God is coming to take away their problems soon)

Dispensational eschatology is the biggest problem with the American church, next to the root cause of people believing it, a failure to actually read and attempt to understand the Bible for themselves.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[maximander]

If twelve years doesn't cut it, I doubt four to eight more will.

Except that those first 12 years were usually spent in local and public schools. The quality of teaching, and perhaps more importantly, what is taught, varies widely based on what community those schools are in (just look at the news about Texas or other bible states gutting science curricula of schools, with ballot measures or legislative decisions).

Higher education, by and large, enjoys the benefit of being a little less public, and can thus teach a curriculum based on science and fact if it wants to, rather than the opinions of the loudest groups in a given district.

Also, many kids travel away from home, or out-of-state to go to school, giving them exposure to a broader range of ideas and cultures.

So yeah, I'm going to say that when arguing that a solid education is important to effective participation in a democracy, it is valid to think four more years might succeed where 12 failed.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[maxume]

Please, showing up and mocking the people who think Ann Coulter has something interesting to say is not censorship.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[tmosley]

Hit a little too close to home, eh?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[NeutronCowboy]

Considering the prevalence of Marxism in colleges

[Citation needed]

How is this different than what your Right wing parents believe?

Wait, believing that the earth is 6000 years old and the Rapture is right around the corner is the same as believing that social safety nets promote a stable society? Is this what you have to resort to in order to make your point?

That right here is the problem with America. More than anything. The complete lack of critical thinking skills, desire for rational debate and the equivalence of truthyness and truth.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[COMON$]

Not referring to the students but the college faculty themselves.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[MBGMorden]

Idealistically maybe, but that's not the way it works in reality. You want a well paying job? You go to college. It's hard to really break into a certain level of job without doing that.

Case in point: my brother didn't believe he needed to go to college. He ended up going to work with my dad in the construction industry right after high school. He was tired of school, picked up a trade, and went out into the workforce. Made ok-ish money instantly. Especially for a kid just out of high school whose only previous income was a part-time job at Pizza Hut. Within a few years he was even making nearly as much as my dad, who had been working in the industry for nearly 30 years.

I instead decided to go to college. Racked up $20k in debt getting my BS. Got out of college and my first job was actually making a little less than he was. I saw a lot of ridicule for that one. Problem was though that I was on a starting salary and he was nearing the top end of what he could make doing what he was. 6 years later, my student loans are paid for, and my salary is 3x what his is, with plenty of room to increase in the years to come.

He's now looking at doing some night classes to change careers, and is firmly set on his infant daughter going to college when her time comes.

That's just the reality of modern society. Sure, there are occasional exceptions, but if you want to go with the favorable odds, a college education is typically the ticket to a higher paying job long term. Most people are way to unmotivated on the issue to whine about why that is or whether or not it should or shouldn't be the way things are. The simple fact is it IS the way things are, so they go with the flow.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[maxume]

I'm appalled that your motives for attending an institution of higher education were anything other than an egalitarian sense of self enlightenment.

How dare you introduce pragmatism and concern for your future into such a decision!

And to expect the same from the school? Scandalous.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[tsalmark]

If I'm falling, I may have concerns about the safely net below me but you can be damn sure it stands a better chance of saving my ass than Jesus coming back to life.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Locke2005]

I thought the purpose of college was to spend 4 years drinking beer and getting laid... at least that's what my fraternity brothers led me to believe!

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Rendonsmug]

I guess I missed the part where my ERA prof's lecture on uniform continuity was an allegory designed to force me into secularism. Thank's for letting me in on the Conservative Agenda.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[CyprusBlue113]

This wasn't baiting, I am completely serious. You can see the same example circa 1930s I just can't remember the guy's name. Chaplin or something maybe.

Just because you disagree with a comment, doesn't make it a troll.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it apparently private? My CS engineering degree was at a public university and cost ~$20k a semester just in tuition. In the end, I think I paid more for the corporate and academic connections rather than the education itself. I also ended up doing a computer engineering degree since I realized that the CSE degree alone didn't seem too valuable in light of all the self teaching you can do on the topic.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[COMON$]

[citation needed] http://lmgtfy.com/?q=marxism+in+universities

However, it is more difficult than just googling. It requires critical thinking as secular humanism isn't a defined group that has a central purpose. You can read things like the humanist manifesto to get an understanding. You will find it looks oddly familliar. It actually is a great read.

However, that is besides the point. Read the Communist Manifesto for some real insight into our college profs. The parent was the one who thought that there was some kind of correlation between young earth theology, rapture, and work ethic...fantastic critical thinking there.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem pretty butt-hurt about not getting any of that sweet, sweet tweenager action. :D

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Oyjord]

You think that more than 20% of the people who finish college courses come out educated? Must be nice to be an optimist.

99% of all statistics are made up.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Lershac]

Shit... they arent now! And our current government is the result.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[DreadPiratePizz]

It all depends on why you go to college. I got a BFA in film, but I did very little film studies. It was all practical work. By the time I finished I had a large body of work to show based on what I actually did and learned hands on, not what I just read about. It very much felt like a trade school, even though I took other courses like history.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Oyjord]

Garbage in, garbage out.

I'm amazed how many people think they are ENTITLED to an education and a high paying job simply because they went to college.

Did they study while there? Did they take complex, challenging classes? Did they engage the material and actually THINK about it? Or did they just coast along, getting C's and drinking at the frat house every Friday night?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[kabrakan]

This sounds like BS, but college is about "critical thinking", not learning skills. Even in CS, which is somewhat an applied degree (rather than say philosophy, which I also recommend for anyone no matter what career path you take), what you learn isn't going to apply directly to your career -- but its going to make you better at picking up skills, knowing when to use them, and to allow you to adeptly communicate your intentions. Its been a few years since college, and while I pretty much thought it was useless while I was there, I think I'm a smarter, more well-rounded person because of it (plus, I made all my connections while in school, which resulted in the beginning of my career).

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

project much?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

What an artistically and delicately crafted strawman! I bet politics was your major!

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Lershac]

Sure, your ticket is printed on this lead thing stored in the chamber of this .357... you have to suck the barrel to get it out.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the prevalence of Marxism in colleges, most (I want to say the percentage being somewhere in the 60s) that college students leave their parent's religion in pursuit of the secular humanist agenda that has been pushed on them by profs who claim it is the only "intelligent" way to think. Your religion now entails of some mysterious Gov't entity that will make your problems go away through promises of safety nets, re-distribution of wealth, and a general distaste for anyone with Ambition. How is this different than what your Right wing parents believe? Good job on switching brands of Koolaid there, you must be so proud to be enlightened now.

Yes, his post is overflowing with Marxist ideology. How insightful you are, all colleges are filled with Marxism and professors pushing their ideology, those brainwashed leftist masses.

What's your flavour of Koolaid?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I can barely recount the actual classes I took that were outside my major, so very well rounded.

Thats your problem. I graduated college in 1992 and I still remember things from the classes outside of my major and I am glad that I took them.

For example, I took a year of Spanish and have kept up with it and can fully understand Spanish when spoken to me and can speak it well enough to survive in Spanish speaking cities I've been too.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case, I'd have to question the social utility of colleges in a capitalist economy. The number of English and Philosophy majors capitalism can profitably use is vanishingly small, where the number of Engineers and actual professionals capitalism can use is comparatively huge.

I have an EE degree, and would have loved to gotten a philosophy minor. Some Latin and/or Classical Greek classes would have been cool as well (had to take some Latin in high school and enjoyed it).

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[COMON$]

I know you are just trying to be funny. Kudos. But it depends on what you are being saved from. Dying, damn straight anyone including Jesus would put a net down there. However, IF you observe pascal's wager, or believe in anything beyond this existence, then death from the lack of your net is the least of your worries.

What impresses me is people's complete disregard for even considering an afterlife or some kind of transcendence. Considering the length of eternity, you would think people would actually give it some thought.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

A percentage isn't necessarily a statistic. It's a representation of a ratio, in this case the poster's estimation of how many educated college graduates there are.

How was your graduation?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[acoustix]

We live in a republic, not a (sort of) democracy.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I can barely recount the actual classes I took that were in my major. Now I am so well-rounded I don't fit in a professional job. Life is a farce.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[nine-times]

College isn't a trade school, you're supposed to get a well-rounded education.

I agree with you that it shouldn't be a trade school, but it's often treated like a trade school. Even liberal arts degrees are (often enough) treated like you're in a trade school to become a liberal arts professor.

What's more, most people don't *want* real well-rounded educations. Most people I talk to don't even seem to understand the concept of a well-rounded education. They think a well-rounded education is where you learn to sit down, shut up, and recite the exact dates that random historical events happened, or recite word-for-word quotes from old books.

In my experience, from when I went to college and from talking to younger people today, most kids are going to college for two reasons: (a) they want to get a decent job someday; and (b) they want to get drunk and have sex for 4 years. It's not that I have a real problem with either of those goals, but there are cheaper ways to achieve them.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

... Nobody, even the most educated of us, has any idea what policy X will do to the economy (least of all the politicians)

FTFY

HTH, HAND

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[digitalmonkey2k1]

This guy is forgetting that we live in a (sort of) democracy. How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?

Im fairly certain the result would be similar to this place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[linzeal]

I've only seen radical Marxist philosophy in Women's Study Departments and a few times in Anthropology which has adopted the Three Worlds Theory which admittedly Maoist, is where we get the idea of 1st, 2nd and 3rd world countries.

The economic and historical theories espoused by Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist and Eurocommunist parties in Western Europe have fallen almost completely off the radar in actual Philosophy, History and Economic Departments where the most popular new school I can think of are the X-Phi folks. Which attempts to be borrow methodologies from social sciences to 'test' philosophical questions. I'm pretty sure that is not particularly Communist in flavor or practice, but who knows.

Most of these wingnuts have about as much an idea what Communism or Socialism is than did actual Communists have of Capitalism. When Albania was liberated from the totalitarian Marxist-Lenist-(briefly)Maoist regime of Hoxha and company the entire countries economy collapsed because of the proliferation of pyramid schemes.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is forgetting that we live in a (sort of) democracy. How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?

It's the other way around. Democracy leads to more education.

There is no fundamental problem with democracies where most people are simple farmers and workers. Uneducated does not equal stupid. You can learn a lot just by reading the newspaper everyday.

Democratic countries do however tend to increase the amount of education that the average person gets.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[roman_mir]

In that case it would make more sense to gift that ticket to the cause of the discontent.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]Considering the prevalence of Marxism in colleges, most (I want to say the percentage being [b]somewhere in the 60s[/b]) that college students leave their parent's religion in pursuit of the secular humanist agenda[/quote]

CITATION VERY MUCH NEEDED, TINFCFAMTR. (this is not fucking country fried amplitude modulation talk radio)

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't understand is why CS degrees focus on one language over another rather than focusing on the real important part of the science: Algorithm Discovery.

Language shouldn't matter. Regardless of the language, it still drops down to binary. The languages are just available to make it more readable/usable by people. If you know what you want the computer to do at the lowest levels, you will then be able to write even the most complex systems with very few problems overall. The problem is, there's an entitlement generation that thinks coding should be *SNAP*ALLDONE with very little effort, and when the libraries or drivers aren't perfect, they trash it and don't bother to try and make things better.

Which is the problem with the majority of CS students these days. Most of them ARE self-taught Visual Basic code-monkeys that have no idea why a dispose method would ever be needed, or have no idea what a stack or queue are. They know List(Of T) and that's it. They don't know or care how/why it works. They just know that it does. Unfortunately, the genuine CS students that want to know how/why "MOV B, A" works and what to do with it are the exception these days, rather than the rule. And even more unfortunately, they are held back by the lazy, or otherwise incompetant others that are oversaturating their classes with the hopes of getting an "easy" 100k a year job.

/getoffmylawn

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[kz45]

"One did something long ago, the other advocated killing people of different religions this decade."

One actually set off bombs with the intention of hurting people. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers#Radical_history. The other just has opinions you don't agree with. Which one is more dangerous?

"This to me speaks volumes; the number of intelligent, educated people who are liberal."

I've heard this same thing before. My response is that there are also serial killers that are very intelligent.

The left constantly aligns itself with terrorists, militants, and dictators. Most universities are also filled with elitists. People that think they are not only smarter, but know what's better for the unwashed masses. It's this kind of thinking that leads to a dictatorship.

In a world of leftist/liberal thinking, republicans are becoming the new counter-culture.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[MoriT]

The only professor I had during college who espoused his political beliefs in class was a conservative economist. He taught Game Theory, which is essentially pure math, but insisted on using examples about how women should behave in order to achieve their obviously-preferred outcome of a lasting marriage supported by their husband, how to use killing of civilians strategically during war and why we should all convert to Christianity by age 22 in order to maximize the probability of being saved.

Oh, and when people didn't like how he taught, it was because he was persecuted for being a conservative. Given his definition of "conservative" as "being a jackass", he was right.

The radical liberals were all students, and had long since dismissed Marx as being ignorant of "intersecting oppressions", and so perpetuating racist institutions, cultural assimilation and sexist dehumanization. Mostly they worked to get fair trade coffee on campus (which I was a big fan of, since it tasted much better than the previous swill!)

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[d34dluk3]

+1. My parents were as nutty as they come, and I'm well on my way to a normal, respectable life thanks largely to my experiences in college.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[SleazyRidr]

I remember studying engineering at uni, and every time we had a class that wasn't technical everyone would complain that it was a waste of their time. The 'well-rounded' part of my education came from getting to meet new people and get to learn a few new viewpoints, but even then we're all the type of person who'd study engineering, so there's not that much difference between us.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you teach?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[kz45]

"Check out the Tea Party rallies and you can see for yourself."

Or the anti-bush rallies during his administration.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

(We can discuss how bad of a language it is in another thread, just the fact the professors couldn't see through the trees)..

That's nothing. Where I nearly went to school, the professors couldn't even see through linked lists.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[mathmathrevolution]

I think you're missing the point. The point isn't that there's any real equivalency between embracing the hysterical superstitions of the rapture and rejecting those superstitions. The point is that saying there is an equivalency makes superstitious Evangelicals feel better about themselves. If Evangelicals had to accept that people trended towards atheism when they went to college because at college students asked hard questions and decided religious were baseless, then that would present a serious dilemma. Honest Evangelicals would be forced to concede that their answers to those questions are specious.

It's much easier to believe that students reject religion at college because their "Marxist" engineering professors are the agents of Satan and brainwashing everybody.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[LanMan04]

Yeah, I certainly know all *my* professors were Marxists.

Especially the ones I dealt with while minoring in Business Admin. Boy, those economists, accountants, business analysts, marketers, and *especially* statisticians were all red on the inside.

LOL

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Korrente]

No, we don't need rational debate. The Nazis had debates. We (real) Americans just Know. And in the unlikely event we Don't know, we can just turn on the news and be informed.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[wizardforce]

Show me a good example where school gives people any degree of a "well rounded education." A few art classes and a history class tossed in for good measure don't count.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Yold]

The GP said he spent $80k over 4 years, right? That sounds like a public school to me, at least nowadays.

Nope..

I am graduating in 2 days. 5 years of education, 2 degrees, $26k in debt, at a reputable university in a major city (population =~ 1 million). I paid for rent and food like most people I know, by working. Tuition was about $8k a year, minus what I could pay with additional summer earnings. $80k is outrageous, although I do know people with close to $50k in debt.

The biggest failing of universities is not providing students with information about the earning power of their major. Students should be required to sign a form at the time they declare their major with the following statistics:

• avg starting salary
• percent of graduates employed in field 3 years after graduation
• job growth outlook
• avg salary with 10/20 years experience.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[syousef]

You think that more than 20% of the people who finish college courses come out educated? Must be nice to be an optimist.

Thanks to my wonderful college education I can honestly tell you I think it's more like 120%. I'm 110% sure!

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[rattaroaz]

That right here is the problem with America. More than anything. The complete lack of critical thinking skills, desire for rational debate and the equivalence of truthyness and truth.

Yes, but in all fairness, that wasn't on the final exam . . .

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[neptunusmaris]

America is NOT a "Democracy" it is a "Republic" ...WHY DO SOOO MANY PEOPLE GET THE MIXED UP. Democracy, is a system where (ordinary)people choose law and edict by [popular] vote. Republic, is a system where people choose other people to vote for things for them. And lets get real the people who we currently vote into office in America don't keep their promises Republican or Democrat. So again, let me explain to you America is NOT a democracy!

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[smidget2k4]

Yeah! All of that machine learning theory and heuristic problem solving really turned me into a Marxist! Man, thanks for pointing that out. It couldn't possibly be that, when taught critical thinking skills, someone realizes that a belief in the Earth being ~6000 years old is a particularly silly one?

Nope, vast Left wing conspiracy to indoctrinate the population. Totally much more likely.

In all of my schooling through undergraduate and (currently) graduate, in both political science and computer science, I have never heard a leftist viewpoint espoused that I need not meet after class specifically to talk about. I've had both left and right wing profs, but I only found out by talking to them about current issues after class. I'd always try to guess, but I was probably within error of chance. If anything, studying in a university has made me more conservative than when I started, as now I have the critical thinking skills and background knowledge to know how naieve and foolish my old views were.

This Marxist myth is silly and makes those on the Right who espouse it look like tin foil hat nutjobs. Maybe it was true in the 60s, I don't know. But it certainly isn't now.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Xaedalus]

I am printing this out and saving it. Thank you :-)

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually went to college for 2 years before I quit going. I went for Computer Programming, had the teachers back then actually tell me I was ahead of the college in it.

I never actually graduated, you want to know why? Cause I sucked at Spanish. Yep, you heard me right, I had to learn a foreign language as part of my computer programming curriculum to get a degree and I sucked bad enough at english, let alone another language. Their desire for a "Well-Rounded" education is a farce and holds many back needlessly. Honest, why do I have to learn another language to sit down at a computer and program in english or assembler. I grew up being very good at math and science (Was in the 97% and 99% percentiles on the national exams when I was graduating highschool), but never did well in language classes.

So tell me how I wasn't listening in school when I would study as much as I could and still not be good at a subject I never actually wanted to take and had nothing to do with what I was actually good at. In high-school I went through Algebra I, Algebra II, Algebra/Trig Honors, Pre-Calculus, AP-Calculus, Discrete Math Honors, Computer Programming/Math 1 and Computer Programming/Math 2 only to get held up in college because I can't speak another language too well.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[syousef]

After 6 years of college at a somewhat respected research focused school, I no longer believe any of that nonsense and I have successful employment in a good paying job.

So you weren't an English major then.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[syousef]

. Professors even mocked me for the C# books I was reading when it was still in beta, years later *THAT* pays my bills, in dividends. (We can discuss how bad of a language it is in another thread, just the fact the professors couldn't see through the trees).

You learnt to ignore fools in authority who try to knock you down. You did this in a relatively safe environment. If you were wrong, no one's business project suffered (just your grades). Is that an overpriced lesson? Perhaps, but it's an important one.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[silentcoder]

Heh. My pleasure.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Attila Dimedici]

This isn't really related to the argument -- knowing how to program probably doesn't help you vote, most of the time.

College isn't a trade school, you're supposed to get a well-rounded education.

I thought the voting argument was the justification for the K-12 education.
The problem is that college does not provide a well-rounded education, it provides an indoctrination into the thought patterns of "respected" society. For example in the 1960's and early 1970s which group supported U.S. involvement in Vietnam to a greater extent, those with a college degree or those who never went to college?





The answer is those with a college degree supported U.S. involvement in Vietnam to a vastly greater extent than those with no college education.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to you, but all of those skills can be taught in high school.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Lershac]

Yeah, I am a conservative, but I am not such a fan of her... rather embarrassed by her. The Republicans need to voice solutions and not just picking apart what we have now or the plans of the opposition. Then the people can get behind them.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Attila Dimedici]

When you leave college you should be more open-minded, more theoretically-minded, than when you entered.

The problem is that the reverse is generally true.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[NeutronCowboy]

[citation needed] http://lmgtfy.com/?q=marxism+in+universities [lmgtfy.com]

In other words, you got nothing.

the secular humanist agenda

secular humanism isn't a defined group that has a central purpose

It seems to me you don't even know yourself what agenda, secular or humanism means.

Read the Communist Manifesto for some real insight into our college profs.

Wait, the one written by Karl Marx? The one that ends with "Working men of all countries, unite!" and proposes the overthrow of the tyranny from the educational and aristocratic elites? That Communist Manifesto?

Oh.... I get. Alright, I'll stop feeding the troll.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see how either situation is censorship.

You're not dumb. A 12 year old would know the difference between *not allowing someone to speak* and *using further speech to counter other speech* are completely different scenarios.

Are you really saying that no one is allowed to vocalize their dissent with someone? Are you really saying that a "public outcry from the left", were you to vocalize dissent with someone like Bill Ayers, is censorship?

If that is censorship, buddy, then you are a pussy and deserve to have your rights tromped all over. Man up. Stand up for your beliefs. If you want to picket a Bill Ayers speaking engagement, do it. As long as you aren't breaking many any sort of laws (and there are some, but if the Westboro Baptist Church can get away with the shit they do, surely you can figure out how to do the same thing without much trouble), you should be fine.

Or do you mean that you want to be able to disagree with someone without the confrontation of someone else disagreeing with you, potentially even more effectively?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[BZ]

> I am graduating in 2 days. 5 years of education, 2 degrees, $26k in debt, at a reputable
> university in a major city (population =~ 1 million). I paid for rent and food like most
> people I know, by working.

It's a lot harder to do that for universities in the middle of nowhere, for what it's worth.

$8k tuition sounds about right for a current in-state public school. It's way too low for out-of-state.

I looked at the numbers in your report. One thing to keep in mind is that those are averages; top-tier schools, including public ones, charge more than average.

From what I can see, today' top-tier private schools will run you $200k over 4 years, no $80k.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[hypergreatthing]

knowing how to program probably doesn't help you vote, most of the time.

Diebold would disagree with you.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Arancaytar]

How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?

It would be a political process filled with demagoguery, valuing soundbites over facts, and economic gain over scientific truth.

Hey wait a minute...

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[MartinSchou]

Colleges aren't giving well rounded education, and haven't for 30 years. They are a bastion of leftwing ideologues indoctrinating students; where having an opposing view to the status quo is routinely quashed.

30 years ago was 1980.
1980 to 1988 - Regan (Republican) was president. Republicans 8, Democrats 0
1988 to 1992 - Bush Sr. (Republican) was president. Republicans 12, Democrats 0
1992 to 2000 - Clinton (Democrat) was president. Republicans 12, Democrats 8
2000 to 2008 - Bush Jr (Republican) was president. Republicans 20, Democrats 8
2008 to 2010 - Obama (Democrat) was president. Republicans 20, Democrats 10

Considering the "lead" on the Republican side, I don't see why teaching something that goes against that stream is bad. Obviously it hasn't worked.

But lets go further back and look at it, shall we? How about the last 50 years?
1960 to 2010.
Kenedy and Johnson for 8 years of Democrats.
Nixon and Ford for 8 years of Republicans
Carter for 4 years of Democrats.
So now the score is Republicans 28, Democrats 22

1901 through to 2010. 26th to 44th president.
8 of them have been Democrats, 11 have been Republicans.
60 out of 110 years have been under a Republican president.

And the time before that (from the end of the Civil War):
1869 to 1885 (16 years) was under 4 Republican presidents.
Then 4 years Democrat
4 years Republican
4 years Democrat
4 years Republican
And then we're at 1901 (see above)

140 years, 84 years under Republicans, 56 years under Democrats.

Now obviously in these 140 years the establishment have been hounding Republicans, forcing them underground, preying upon their weaknesses and undermining them in colleges and high schools all over the country. And it's working. It's working beautifully.

Best check under your bed - I hear that's where these liberals and democrats hide, so they can slit your throat in the night, take over your body and quietly indoctrinate your children.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Archangel Michael]

uh huh.

When did shouting down a person become just "mocking". And I wonder if you'd feel the same way if a bunch of right wingers interrupted your favorite speaker to the point that they couldn't continue.

It is funny when leftwingers do stuff, it is excused various ways, but when rightwingers do the exact same thing, it is "off with their heads" (see Acorn Scandal reactions).

I can see the hypocrisy, even if you refuse to.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[unknownroad]

I'm a civil engineer you insensitive clod! I have no idea why you singled out that profession as an example, but I laughed. Fortunately, I too see myself as a renaissance man, with a wide variety of interests and a passion for learning in general. Unfortunately, this can be a hindrance because it delays my progress in developing technical skills in this field. While I "waste" countless hours delving into philosophy and history, for example, I watch as my peers advance their careers and net worth, leaving me "behind". I like to envision a future in which my hard work at becoming a generalist pays off. As others have pointed out in this thread, it can be downright difficult to get a job when employers place such emphasis on your academic credentials and years of experience doing x, where x is the specific task they want you, a specialist, for. I sacrifice the opportunity to specialize and thus make myself more attractive to these employers by being a generalist.

With only a resume/CV or even an interview it's difficult to convey that you're really worth it with your broader knowledge base. For a lot of jobs I'm probably not worth it for the employer if all they want is a specialist-drone who won't rock the status quo with any radical ideas. Right now I'm hoping some cronyism works out for me to get started and gain some relevant experience, because all that philosophy and history sure isn't helping me get a job right now.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the indeterminate skill set of the renaissance man, or the more politically correct renaissance person, makes them suited for work as administrators, managers, politicians, and military commanders. Maybe if I rack up 40 years of experience I can be an admiral, but it sure feels difficult starting as a graduate with nearly zero. Culture of entitlement taught me that Cadet Kirk gets to be Captain after saving Earth in Star Trek XI; I can't help but be a little disappointed! Sarcasm aside, I agree that being a specialist is boring for an entire career.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

We can discuss how bad of a language it is in another thread...

I'm not a C# programmer, but seeing the crackpot designs some C# programmers I've met come up with, I'm guessing that's a technique you learned from all those books! ;-)

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Archangel Michael]

Yeah? And the (D) party wouldn't vote for JFK today, he would be too right wing.

And if it wasn't for the (R) party, civil rights laws wouldn't have existed, as it was the (D) party (Robert KKK Bird) that was against them. But guess who gets credit for that.

Things have changed, and will continue to change. GWB is a liberal, and compared to Clinton they are about the same (except on few issues).

And I'm not a (R). I'm (L) and promote (L) ideals. Both the (D) and the (D)lite (aka Republicans) are wrong, for the exact same reason. Eventually with socialism, you run out of other people's money. Take a good look at Greece and the rest of Europe. America is heading in the exact same direction.

Time to grow up and realize that class warfare, identity politics and "social justice" are all covers for socialistic elitism.

If you can tell me why I should be required to buy insurance under penalty of law (without involving someone other than me), then I'll listen. Otherwise you're no better than a petty dictator deciding for me what is best for me.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

>social safety nets promote a stable society

That's not Marxism. Marxism is founded on quaint concepts like the "labor theory of value" or the inevitable dialectic materialist march of history through certain progressive stages. It's the political and economic equivalent of phlogiston chemistry or the medical theory of humors.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[pnuema]

The question is whether a bachelors from a top tier school is worth the premium you pay versus a bottom tier school. I'd wager the cost of my general studies degree from podunk midwestern commuter university that it isn't.

Within 5 years of leaving college, no one cares where you got your degree. It only matters that you have one. It really doesn't even matter what it is in.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?

Two words. Tea. Party.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'd go so far as to borrow some theology from Buddhism, and say that almost all the sorrow in the world for workers is caused by education beyond what they are allowed to do.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Under Crony Capitalism, corporations are the only citizens that count. EVERYBODY else is a slave.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Crony capitalism is the natural end result of laisez faire capitalism- it's what happens when libertarians get enough money to hire lobbyists.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[DerekLyons]

This guy is forgetting that we live in a (sort of) democracy. How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?

It worked just fine for a century and a half without a majority, or even a significant percentage having college degrees. (Note the distinction between having an education and having a degree - the two aren't the same at all.)

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Gr33nJ3ll0]

Maybe he was smarter than you thought, realized that "crunch time" was really "get more for less from the employees" time, and left.....

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[DerekLyons]

College isn't a trade school, you're supposed to get a well-rounded education.

Actually, for most of history, college *was* supposed to be a trade school. It's true that a student would pick up a well rounded education along the way, but that's because having a well rounded education was considered minimal qualification.
 
The idea that college is supposed to be purely to produce a well rounded education without commercial taint is a purely modern creation.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[ravenspear]

Considering the prevalence of Marxism in colleges

Giving up the nonsensical ideas of my parent's religion had nothing to do with the political persuasion of my college professors. In fact I only took 1 maybe 2 classes where anything political even remotely came up since I was there for CS.

What it had to do with was that I learned to think critically and objectively evaluate things, rather than simply accept dogma a priori because it was given to me by an authority figure.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[sorak]

This guy is forgetting that we live in a (sort of) democracy. How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?

Ask Sarah Palin.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Marxist Hacker 42]

But it most certainly wouldn't have been used for anything; and the extra cost of the classes would have been most unprofitable to you.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[phantomfive]

It wasn't. It wasn't even a hard crunch time, because we had scheduled enough time to finish everything. It was just the difficulty of the last 2%, which is where all the miserable stuff gets done, debugging, etc. It's not going to be fun, any way you look at it.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[BZ]

> The question is whether a bachelors from a top tier school is worth the premium you pay'
> versus a bottom tier school.

That depends on the prices you pay. Note that most people don't pay sticker price or anything close to it. I've known several people for whom a top tier school was cheaper than a bottom tier one when you count in financial aid. But that's very much family-finances dependent (and even family demographics; e.g. if there is already one child in college, adding a second one doesn't double the bill).

Also note that what you're buying is not just the degree but also the connections, exposure to things you might not have encountered before, etc. Whether those are useful depends on whether you already know what you want to do when you start college and on what it is you end up doing. While no one cares much where you got your degree 5 years on, in some fields (academia, politics, certain kinds of consulting, possibly journalism, some kinds of business) it can very much matter who you made friends with during your time in college and what they're doing 5, 10, 15, 20 years after that.

Further, in some fields (the one I have experience with hear is math) a top-tier school will in fact prepare you much better for certain career paths (e.g. graduate school and academia) than a bottom-tier one. All else being equal, of course; hard work can compensate to a large extent.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[martyros]

College isn't a trade school, you're supposed to get a well-rounded education.

This is part of the problem -- Universities are saying, "We're not helping people get jobs, we're making you a well-rounded individual", but nobody is listening. Everyone else -- from teachers, parents, hiring managers, politicians -- says going to university is a good career move. And there's no particular incentive for Universities to disabuse people of this notion before they've invested $100k to become a "more well-rounded individual".

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Lord Kano]

[Citation needed]

Not if you've been to college recently.

Wait, believing that the earth is 6000 years old and the Rapture is right around the corner is the same as believing that social safety nets promote a stable society?

No, it's certainly not the same. If you believe that providing social safety nets is really what modern leftism is about, you are considerably worse than the people who believe in the young earth, literal 6 day creation and imminent rapture.

While they put their faith in books that were written hundreds or thousands of years ago by people that they can't possibly identify, you put your faith in people who, during your lifetime, have shown themselves to be liars, hypocrites and/or murderers.

LK

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[dkleinsc]

For instance, if you think that your expository writing class in the English department didn't actually help you on the job, then you must have never written software documentation in your life. And if you think your history course wasn't useful, remember that when you're called upon to judge the accuracy of various whitepapers and other marketing schlock. And if you think your language courses weren't useful, try working with someone from another country and understanding their idioms.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's worse. Someone believing something that's unfalsifiable versus someone believing something that's already been proven wrong over and over again? I'll go with the "religious nutter", thank you.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

The well-rounded education argument was invented to ensure there were students for the professors of unpopular subjects.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, sounds to me like that degree-less programmer did the intelligent thing by quitting. Why stay in a job if it's making you miserable?. Or perhaps what really happened was that shit rolled downhill in that company and he bore the brunt of it.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

So, a college degree is worth something because one time, this one guy couldn't handle stress? Do you think graduating college automatically makes someone able to cope in a high pressure environment? Sure, it may help, but is that the only factor between dealing and not dealing? Does your company use this anecdote as an excuse for not hiring people without degrees?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[BoberFett]

Wish I had mod points for you.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[lymond01]

Yah, everyone has a different experience certainly. I came from a small town and went to a medium-sized university in a large city. I actually made the comment of someone on our hallway:

"He's Jewish? I thought he was French!"

So that got cleared up for me (cuz, you know, I thought Jewish...I thought Israel, I thought droopy eyes, big nose, etc...so I was a complete idiot because I was thinking "Jewish" was more country and racial, rather than religious.)

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

A democracy where people aren't educated works exactly like the USA currently works. That should be self-evident to all but the uneducated. A democracy of uneducated people degenerates into a mob, where folks envy what others have and conspire to steal it through government action. Fads, fashions, personality cults, etc. become more important than facts. Laws become unreadable, incomprehensible and unenforceable. Elections turn into circuses. Constitutional restraints morph into penumbras and emanations, sound money turns to unlimited debt and concentrated wealth, public service becomes a career, and everyone blames someone else for the outcome.

Somehow, it seems four years at most universities isn't going to help. Education costs soar, as societal demand is artificially created by the myth that you need to go to college to get anywhere. Perhaps if one insists on working for someone else, then a degree helps open the door, but you can always start your own business (unless the liberal, fascist, collectivist government has created too many barriers to entry.) Many business require little in the way of capital, such as landscaping and construction trades. Oh, I see, the collectivists at the local trade union, and the government minions want to license and restrict the trades. Silly me. Better go get that political science degree so you can work for the government interfering with productive people and skimming off the top. Or maybe get that criminal justice degree so you can fill out booking forms for the PD.

Given that one would expect the bunch who frequent this forum to be better educated than the average, it is clear our educational system is a complete failure. Or is it being used by the elitists to further the goal of controlling everything for their benefit? Think about it if you can ...

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Attila Dimedici]

Yah, everyone has a different experience certainly. I came from a small town and went to a medium-sized university in a large city. I actually made the comment of someone on our hallway:

"He's Jewish? I thought he was French!"

So that got cleared up for me (cuz, you know, I thought Jewish...I thought Israel, I thought droopy eyes, big nose, etc...so I was a complete idiot because I was thinking "Jewish" was more country and racial, rather than religious.)

That isn't "more open-minded", that is just exposure to the world. You would have gotten as much or more exposure just from working in a large city.
How many different ideas did you come across at that university? Did you have any professors who voted for Reagan, or against Clinton, or for Bush 43, or against Obama (depending on when you went to school)? There are other issues that could be used. My point is that the overwhelming majority of universities are ideologically monolithic.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[silentcoder]

Okay the choice of "civil engineer" was pure dumb luck. I could have said Doctor, Chemist, Physicist or Computer Programmer for the same thing - it was literally a random example. I couldn't have said "theologian" though, but I could have said accountant. It had to be a BCOM or BSC trained career - because all too often, those degrees are SO focussed on "skills" for the degree that they don't even include those basics of the BA that really EVERYBODY ought to know.
None of those people would NOT do their job better if somebody made sure they learned at least Aristotle's laws of logic before they left university.

Now as to the rest of your post. I can't advise you on how to do such a career in the USA. I can only tell you what worked for me in South Africa. I went and worked for a start-up. I had the best interview of my life which started with "I know what you guys do - and I MUST be a part of it..." and I just let that enthusiasm carry me. Answered the technical questions, showed my (then still pretty bare) C.V. but mostly - I sold them my enthusiasm - it worked.
The startup grew and I became the top developer, later the software architect ... then I left after 6 years. Started a company of my own with my savings doing consulting development freelance. Did very well in fact - till the recession hit. First thing big companies cut in a recession is project spending... suddenly after 2 years of making great money - I had no new customers.
I spent my businesses funds trying to deal with it, trying to branch out etc. but frankly it was too little too late, small business is hard in a recession - I had to go get a regular job again.
I started job hunting, got hired within a week - because NOW I had a CV that showed 6 years very high level experience as both developer and sysadmin - and I could nail any question they put to me. Hated the company... they were really REALLY bad... so I quit before I even finished my trial period while I could still do it in 24 hours and went looking again... found a new job at a Fortune 500 company - to be the unix admin for their 65-server datacenter in Cape Town (they got such centers in many offices all over the world but CT is the largest).
Found a deplorable mess and set out to improve it. Loved the company's culture (it was a startup just 15 years ago - and it retained the no-bullshit culture as it grew)... and a very nice salary. I'm really happy with it, and despite that- I'm even now training new skills. Because sooner or later, I *will* get bored. When I do - I want to be ready to do something brand new again.

Basically - I started as low as you can go, in a brand new startup with all the risks it involved who couldn't pay me much but gave me a chance to get great experience to make up for my lack of specialization while studying - and that opened doors. At age 30, I've PASSED the specialists. Most of them are earning 50% less than I am. The people who do my job in our other offices are, without exception a minimum of 10 years older than me. I could skip steps because the life skills I got at university taught me how.

In retrospect though... a 3 month course in business management as one of my many varied subjects would have come in handy back in 2008... oh well, nobody gets it ALL right :P

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[NeutronCowboy]

Not if you've been to college recently.

Unverifiable assertion, anecdote. Dismissed.

If you believe that providing social safety nets is really what modern leftism is about,

Off-topic and irrelevant. Parent was explicitly comparing the two.

you put your faith in people who, during your lifetime, have shown themselves to be liars, hypocrites and/or murderers.

Unsupported assertion, assumption of unstated activity, and, just because I've heard this little spiel before and know who you're talking about, ad-hominem and straw-man.

Man, what's with conservatives and being unable to debate a point?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

With all that education I would think you would realize that the 6,000 year belief is quite unlikely to affect the believer quality of life, work, or education level to much of any degree. Unless you are going to be a scientist working directly in evolution, astrology, geology, or somewhat indirectly with it the knowledge that the Earth is greater than 6,000 years old is quite irrelevant to your every day life.

That aside your post does an excellent job of showing just how uneducated you are. Even people who grow up not receiving a day of formal education learn respect for their parents and other people. A trait which you sorely lack.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[lcoscare]

The USSR had a great social saftey net!!! Greece, Spain, Portugal have plenty of great social safteny nets. In fact, pretty much every UNSTABLE society has fantastic social safety nets. But let's not let the truth and facts get in the way.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[maxume]

I probably don't have a favorite speaker.

I almost drove a couple of hours to hear E.O. Wilson give a talk, I suppose that counts.

Of course, he is reviled by the far left (how dare he suggest that behavior is at all innate) and disliked on the right (for the same reasons, and for not being religiously conventional enough).

I'd also probably pay some attention if Tim Harford, Stephen Pastis or Stephen Colbert were supposed to be talking in the area.

Also, I meant to imply that said mocking would happen before any talk, in the hallway or something, disrupting the actual talk would be quite rude (you are free to believe this or not, I don't care).

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Camel Pilot]

And our preacher was absolutely convinced that rather than being about research, NASA's space program was REALLY them trying to find an alternate way into Heaven so that they could avoid "serving da Lord".

Please tell me you are exaggerating here...

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Bigjeff5]

Capitalists rarely become professors, sucking off the tit of the government.

They tend to, you know, make stuff.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Bigjeff5]

It is indeed in the interest of society to provide well-round educated to all those who can benefit intellectually.

How so?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[melikamp]

Critical thinking is very important, indispensable even, but I don't think that the body of knowledge about the natural and the spiritual worlds is "flavor". It's more like the substance of science, and they should definitely continue teaching that in college. Seeing and hearing professors and peers doing science is not replaceable by reading even the best of sources, and the difference is most dramatic in natural sciences.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Coryoth]

It still drives me up the wall how much cash I blew for my undergraduate CS degree. Looking at what I "learned" from my classes and what I taught myself in that period of time, I would have been much better off to have saved the $80K I spent on schooling and self taught.

Sounds like you picked the wrong major, or the wrong school, or both. I can't imagine self instruction for all the material I learned at university -- and I've had plenty of opportunity since leaving, having to try and pick up some different fields via self instruction, to see what its like. Yes, it can be done, but its an uphill struggle, and I would really appreciate a course from a knowledgeable instructor ... but then I majored in mathematics, and wasn't looking at my education as job training.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Bigjeff5]

College is supposed to teach you how to learn on your own, how to get information and how to digest it.

Everything on top of that is flavor.

200 years ago, elementary/high school level schooling accomplished that. Just look at how accomplished George Washington was, with a little more than an elementary level education. He did feel his education was a little lacking, for unlike his brothers he did not go off to school in England. However, he was a trained surveyor at age 16 (a job which today pays about the same as an engineer), a successful general, an excellent arbiter, and eventually first president of the country. All on a substandard education for the time which, compared to what we learn today in school, would have put him half way through college.

Looks like we're making a serious improvement!

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[dbIII]

It doesn't take an entire year of philosophy, history, etc - just a taste and awareness of other fields is often enough to encourage awareness in those other areas. You really just need enough to mix with graduates of other fields and understand the basics of what they are telling you about and be humbled that there are other things going on in other fields. It is that mixing that will teach you a lot more than intermediate subjects.
This argument was probably won a century ago as most engineering degrees around the world insist that several non-engineering subjects are taken before graduation.
A decent engineering education has plenty of historical references thrown in among the standard engineering subjects anyway - for a trivial example why introduce an arch without showing an example still standing after a couple of thousand years? One of the best undergraduate materials science lectures I ever attended was about the history of metallurgy and the social implications of very early advances. Another was on the phlogiston theory and how the process of disproving that led to the steelmaking techniques we use today.
The main thing is to stir up enough interest so that the engineering student that never touched biology in high school can spend a weekend or two getting to a point beyond what a high school graduate reaches, and then reading a review paper or two on recent advances to get a rough idea of what is going on in one portion of the field. University is really about teaching you how to acquire knowledge far more effectively than a high school student.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to you, but all of those skills can be taught in high school.

Yeah, I can only imagine how the Texas School Board would shred the content of textbooks for those classes.

- T

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Bigjeff5]

Certainly. You could also learn reading on your own, but it sure as hell helps to have someone to tell you just how you'd do it.

That's one of the problems with the modern system of teaching reading in public schools today, and is the reason we have a 20% functional illiteracy rate in America. All those "see spot run" books are sabotaging kids' ability to read, at the very least setting them back years. At worst they never learn to really read at all. All new education must come from an educator, someone who is functionally illiterate cannot learn anything from books.

See, the idea is that sight reading - looking at a word as a whole and associating it with its meaning instead of breaking it down into letters first - will get kids reading fast, and they'll "figure out" the alphabet from reading the words. A lot of kids eventually get it, a lot only get it after supplementing it with heavy phonetic training. Any kids who don't get it on their own and don't get the supplemental phonetics are functionally illiterate. If you don't understand the phonetic alphabet, it is impossible to learn brand new words without someone first explaining it to you in a context you can understand. It basically dumps people back to the days of hieroglyphics.

The whole reason the alphabet was such an amazing advancement was because once you knew the letters you could read anything. But today we are working backwards like it's some sort of new thing. It's not new, it's thousands of years old, and it sucks. You might as well replace all the words with pictures, they are doing you that much good. Sight reading comes naturally as you get familiar with words. With the phonetic alphabet to fall back on, picking up new words is easy. That is absolutely impossible if you start out with sight reading and never learn the phonetic alphabet.

It's far better to teach someone how to educate themselves, than it is to simply show them everything and force them to rely upon you (or some other educator) for their next new skill.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

He realized the crap he was being asked to put up with wasn't worth it. It sounds like he was smarter than you gave him credit for.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[ravenspear]

Pascal's wager is completely illogical when you think about it closely.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[ravenspear]

A unfounded belief is something you cannot show evidence of. That is where it differs from fact based knowledge. That was my entire point.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[FrankieBaby1986]

As far as I can tell, College is about getting some piece of paper that states you paid at least $x dues to the 'cushy job club' and sat through 'professors' (read: researchers required to teach) trying to explain concepts to people with nowhere near the familiarity with the subject they have, making them terrible teachers, since they are unable to relate things in terms and at a level the students understand, since they have far surpassed that level.

Exposure to culture consists of dealing with greeks, geeks and alcohol. A trade school or apprenticeship would undoubtedly impart much more knowledge in ANY applied field than sitting through lecture at a US college.

/Rant

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Eli Gottlieb]

If you're talking about the UC system or the UMass system, you're right about the idiotic, wannabe-radical academic politics, but there are two facts you need to face: it's really only combined to a few influential college systems, and most majors a person can take in college will still result in more learning of the subject matter than learning of the professors' ideology.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

...And if America exercised critical thinking skills and the desire for a rational debate, they might come to recognize the delusion of Evolutionism. Education is good for everyone, even the ignorant.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[MBGMorden]

Not a bit. That was a true story.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why you're a psychopath and should be removed from society, and quite likely every last descendant of your line up to 7 generations across and deep. You are a disgrace upon humanity and are worse than any towel head pilot in a hijacked plane could ever be. I hope you choke on a dick like you so justly deserve.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[blueg3]

Perhaps you should read the text of the post. Or are you advocating a judge-a-book-by-its-cover approach?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Mr. Slippery]

I'd go so far as to borrow some theology from Buddhism, and say that almost all the sorrow in the world for workers is caused by education beyond what they are allowed to do.

There are least two problems with that: 1) The Buddha's teaching was not about gods, so "theology" doesn't apply. 2) The Buddha taught that the origin of suffering is desire for unattainable conditions, a problem that applies to all classes and levels of education.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Mr. Slippery]

progressives are first in line to cry censorship when it affects them, but when it affects a conservative ... well they just deserve it.

Uh, no. It's progressives who you'll find supporting the right of the KKK to march, the right of racists to publish their filth, the right of nutcases to call conservative Democrats "socialists" and "Nazis".

However, that doesn't mean that progressives give up their rights to counter-protest, to point out that racists are assholes and idiots, or to organize boycotts of sponsors of pundits who call conservative Democrats "socialists" and "Nazis" (and to point out that Nazis hated socialists, that calling some a Nazi and socialist is comparable to calling someone both a KKK member and an NAACP supporter -- i.e., the mark of a total moron.)

Consider the response to the following ... Bill Ayers comes to campus and a bunch of right wing fanatics try to stop him from speaking, what would the outcry be from the left?

You would hear folks on the left say, "He may have once been wrong about how to pursue worthy goals, but free speech applies to everyone, and is especially important on a college campus."

Now replace Bill Ayers with Ann Coulter, and ask the same question (reversing left/right).

If we reverse left/right, we won't have a bunch of "left wing fanatics" try to stop her from speaking. What you'll hear from liberals is, "She's wrong about everything, and we're going to show up to exercise our own free speech and make it clear that we know she's a moron, but free speech applies to everyone, and is especially important on a college campus."

And while Bill Ayers is an admitted terrorist

Citation needed. Ayers committed acts of vandalism, but to my knowledge has never admitted, or been convicted of, harming anyone. According to him, "We weren't terrorists. The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States."

One may legitimately dispute his claim, on the basis that his acts endangered lives, or even believe that he was involved in acts that took lives (please note that I am not advancing either of these claims, just saying they may be legitimate points of argument); but calling someone who has said "We weren't terrorists", "an admitted terrorist", is at best a distortion, at worst an outright lie. Please document your claim that he is "an admitted terrorist", or withdraw it.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[An Onerous Coward]

Do you know how much the life expectancy *dropped* in the decade after the Soviet Union fell and the country transitioned to a market economy? Look it up. Frankly, most Russians were better off under the old system.

As for "facts," please show me the numbers. The ones that show that strong social safety nets and income redistribution lead to unstable societies.

The USA has a poor social safety net and minimal redistribution. We also have among the highest crime rates, the highest obesity rates, the worst public education system, the highest teen pregnancy rates, and the lowest life expectancy of any industrialized nation. Countries like Japan, Norway, Iceland, etc., do the opposite, and score at the top of those same measurements of social well being.

So, your numbers, sir.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[tirefire]

I won't challenge you on this particular anecdote, but I will say that "crunch time" is poor planning at best and theft of employee time at worst. It is something to be avoided.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't you already looking at it (the US of A)? Your education system is already screwed.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Philosophy is definitely an important discipline. Without philosophers, we wouldn't know that the ideal government is one lead by a philosopher king!

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[sornord]

Friend of mine put it nicely a few years ago: "Once you get into your early thirties employers care more for your experience than your education."

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[mrrockford]

Going to college doesn't make one smart. While college was a great experience, it is far from something everyone should go to. The fact that many businesses require degrees anymore is just plain stupid.

I have dabbled in the art of computers since the late 70's. I helped set up office automation in the Army. I have a "bit of experience" with computers and then get told I need a degree to get a job. 20+ years of experience and a company wants a degree so I can work for them troubleshooting desktops. Also, I am one of those that is getting his IT degree paid for by the gov't/you all - and I thank you! When I graduate I will have a degree that says I "know" what I'm doing and have done for over 20 years!

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Opportunist]

Mmhmm... very true, but this was 200 years ago when having a high school education was already something. The (relative) amount of people having one can be compared to college level degrees today. You don't even have to go back that far. My great-grandfather had a "high school" equivalent education and was one of the most respected people in his home village 'cause he had such a high level of education. People came to him for documents and the like because he was one of the "learned" who actually could read or write sensibly. Soon he was mayor for the same reason. He wasn't a particularly bright or educated man, but he had education superior to his peers. Hey, he went to a school outside the village! That was something back then! He's seen the world (actually just a town about 20 miles away, but hey!).

What do you think he or Washington would be today with that kind of "sub-standard" education? Not really much. Do you think Washington would stand any chance to become any of those things, from surveyor to general to president, with just a high school education?

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Ltap]

It should imply competence. If someone can get a 4-year degree and not be at least somewhat competent, there are many, many things wrong.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[AlejoHausner]

Your preacher was right. Symbolically, NASA is indeed about an alternate way to heaven. No matter how much civilization we accumulate, we're still genetically hunter-gatherers, and we still think religiously. We can know that there is no God, but our religious instincts are still there. You can't kill an instinct.

Let's be cold-blooded an rational about it: not a lot of real science is being done up in the International Space Station. There are much cheaper ways to do research than to cram people into cylinders orbiting in hostile space. The same goes for going to moon, or, worse, Mars. So it's not really being done for science. There is a lot of mythology driving the space program: the yearning for heaven, wanting to become like gods, controlling the forces of the universe like Prometheus or Faust, exploring mysterious worlds, all of these are irrational motivations, based on religious instinct.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[maxume]

Well, I do think that many things are wrong. I'm not sure the exact conclusion of the article makes sense, but I'm pretty sure that there is a massive amount of classroom time being wasted in K-12, and a great deal of it is also being wasted in colleges and universities.

I think a big part of it is that we (as a society) tend to conflate specialization and expertise (education being a very common component of expertise, anywhere we need a specialist, we seek to install an expert, and that means they need a great deal of education, because if they have education, they must be an expert).

But going back to your first post, if someone is both stupid and highly educated, it isn't all that likely that they are a true expert, and a smart person with a little interest (but comparatively little education) may make a much better specialist.

We may be running up against connotation, I tend to use competent to mean someone who can quickly deal with something in the correct fashion, but there is room for it to mean someone who is able to eventually complete the task.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Well rounded being, the same consistent academic baseline to be had across all colleges. So people can feel smart/superior by relating common ideals that they learned in their respective universities and feel like they're more enlightened than other people.

While, at the same time, they'll never fear being expected to have an original thought on their own because college gave them 'everything they need to know.' Stating that you have an original thought (or new idea) in most colleges without x number of sources to back it up is considered blasphemy; and yet, the creators of google were college students (from a school that encourages not stifles innovation). I doubt they had to reference any sources as proofs for their special new search algorithm.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[phantomfive]

I agree, maybe crunch time is the wrong word. But in most projects people start out doing the fun stuff (design, a lot of new interesting coding), and then by the end all that is left is some glue to tie everything together and a lot of testing/debugging. It's generally not very fun.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[drsquare]

Actually for most of history, colleges were only attended by people who would never think about working, they went there to study the Classics for a few years before inheriting the estate.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[DerekLyons]

Actually, you're completely wrong on all counts. The earliest colleges were intended to produce doctors, lawyers, priests, and administrators. I.E. a trade school.
 
In the case of inheriting the estate, often the estate was held in fief in return for service to the liege - I.E. work. Even so, from fairly early on it was recognized that owning an estate and supervising the managers (if not managing directly) required no little education. (To verify that accounts were rendered properly, etc. etc..)

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Lord Kano]

Unverifiable assertion, anecdote. Dismissed.

• Inconvenient truth. Uncomfortable. Ignored.

There, fixed for you.

Parent was explicitly comparing the two.
You, clearly, didn't understand the comparison. I could explain it to you, but I doubt that it would do much good.

Unsupported assertion, assumption of unstated activity, and, just because I've heard this little spiel before and know who you're talking about, ad-hominem and straw-man.

There's no assumption involved. It's historically documented fact. Uncomfortable for you, to be sure, but perfectly accurate.

Man, what's with conservatives and being unable to debate a point?

If you can only perceive things as conservative/liberal; to you, I would seem like a conservative. When dealing with people like you, it's the term that I use as well because it's the closest thing to what I am that you can understand. That's all beside the point. There is a difference between the "Jesus camp" people and the "social justice" people, but it's not the one you think it is.

LK

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, education can help correct this.

The recent anti-education backlash has a lot more to do with class warfare than economics, as far as I can tell. An uneducated populace can more easily be led, to their own detriment. And then you get irrational truthiness as people demand that ever more of their wealth go directly to the upper classes.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Ltap]

Part of the problem in K-12 seems to be the semester system. If you're unfamiliar with it, the semester system divides up the school year into 2 semesters, with (usually) 4 classes taught each semester, for a total of 8. The result is that classes can now be twice as long. When I was in high school, classes were 70 minutes long, while my father's classes (in the 50s) were 35 minutes long.

In school, he got far more done. Teachers gave less homework and had more concentrated and fast-paced lectures than mine had in high school. Even with a 20- or 30-minute lecture and a few minutes of class discussion, the rest of the time seemed to just be wasted, either with the kids trying to focus on an enormous pile of work or just playing around. They did this more or less because they were given time to settle, rather than going from class to class at faster intervals.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I think you missed my point:
If you don't know that unattainable conditions exist, then you can't have a desire for them.

I said theology because I'm kind of mixing Buddha's teaching with Daniel Quinn's modern interpretation of Cain and Abel. Abel's perfectly happy in his little eden tending his sheep, but Cain wants more land to plant more wheat, so he burns down Abel's eden and kills him.

If Cain had never introduced Abel to agriculture- he'd have been happier. Same with any other education or technology.

Re:Democracy needs smart people

[lymond01]

I dunno...I wasn't a political science major so politics, aside from the inane discussions everyone has on major topics, didn't come up in detail much. Universities are often progressive places because, really, it's a bunch of people (students and faculty) who haven't been exposed to the real world -- they're idealists. They like to propose how things could change for the better and don't dwell on how things could stay the same for the better. Where's the fun in saying, "We should do nothing!"

There's that saying, "A young conservative and an old liberal are both fools."

Bush vs Obama vs Clinton vs Reagan. So far the only difference is how badly they screw something up. Bush's mass murdering of the middle east, Reagan's economic failures, Obama forcing people who can't afford insurance to pay for it or be fined (how does that make sense?), and Clinton -- well, he did ok, but only because he didn't make any huge moves in the wrong direction.

But I didn't have many strong opinions in college because I hadn't been exposed to much. But meeting people from every culture and belief system definitely let me figure out where I want to stand.

How about instead they say...

[Orga]

If people want to go out and cut down Taliban and then get a master's degree in history that's fine. But I don't think the public should be subsidizing it.

Re:How about instead they say...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this way:
People can go "cut down the Taliban" and the army gives them $23,200 in cash afterward.

Those people then can do whatever they want with it.

Is that better?

Some people will then go get a masters degree in history with it.

Re:How about instead they say...

[thrillseeker]

It's a shame the Americans don't have some sort of central document that specifies whether their public should be paying for the defense of the nation ...

Re:How about instead they say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or invading other nations....

Re:How about instead they say...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Preamble to the US Constitution, which a few citizens (...another concept that is questioned these days)still regard as a "central" document of sorts, includes the phrase "...,provide for the common defense,..."

Re:How about instead they say...

[Mr. Slippery]

It's a shame the Americans don't have some sort of central document that specifies whether their public should be paying for the defense of the nation ...

What does invading another country have to do with the defense of the nation?

And of course, the fact that some sort of central document might specify that the government is allowed to do a thing, does not imply that that thing is a good idea.

No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't that there are too many college graduates. The problem is that too much manufacturing that was formerly done in America is now done elsewhere, in third-world nations like China, Mexico and India.

In the past, domestic manufacturing provided the solid foundation upon which the strong American economy was built. People made good wages working in these factories, engineers made good wages designing these factories and the equipment within them, builders made good wages constructing the factories, skilled-trades made good wages making the equipment within these factories, and all of these people provided jobs to many others in the community.

Thanks mainly to Nixon in the 1970s and NAFTA in the 1990s, those jobs are gone. The foundation they provided is gone. They probably won't come back unless the federal government does the right thing and impose trade barriers against nations that have an oversupply of labor, and unsafe working conditions, and unsuitable wages.

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[Khisanth Magus]

You can also thank Wal Mart for their contributions for ruining the US economy.

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[cb88]

The problem with NAFTA is that we don't really monitor or regulate foreign working conditions... this means they can practially use slave labor (for instance sugar cane industry in brazil or sweat shops in china where the average wage is barely enough to scrap by on they literally don't have enough money to even conceive of doing something different) Proof of the lack of good jobs in Mexico is the constant influx of Mexicans! I don't mind them but I think it would be better for them and us if they could find good jobs in Mexico the only way I can see that happening is ending NAFTA and suggesting they move to an internally stable economy similar to Brazil (ecept without the giant wage gap which is due to the way wages work in Brazil)

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, nothing ruins countries faster then businesses.

We need more communism, that has never failed, right?

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can thank the people who shop at WalMart. Let's not forget that the same person crying about needing a 4 year degree to get a livable wage is the same person who is all too happy to turn away from the mom and pops that paid a mid grade wage.

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[Khisanth Magus]

A business that has built itself on the corpses of all the other companies they have driven into the ground. Wal-mart has been a big influence in the drive to move manufacturing to China in order to save costs. They constantly push companies to make things cheaper, no matter the cost to quality.

They move into a town and drive all the smaller businesses out of business(who, coincidentally, paid their employees more and treated them better), and make property values plummet. Then, half the time, they close down that Wal Mart so they can build a new one down the road a bit. Ohio has seen this repeatedly recently, and now have over a dozen empty Wal Mart buildings in small towns, further dropping property values.

Wal Mart is an evil company that has driven itself up on the corpses of smaller companies and the broken backs of their abused employees, who have to put up with abuse, unpaid work, either no insurance or extremely expensive insurance, and wages that would require you to work 3 jobs to get over the poverty line.

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[Opportunist]

Thank all the "wow, CHEAP, wanna have!" idiots, rather.

Everyone wants cheap crap. But nobody cares about the price.

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[jmikelittle]

I think it would be interesting to know what you think the NA in NAFTA stands for! America succeeded from the 1900s to the post-war era with a mix of low wages to immigrants and high levels of innovation. Not to mention a whole heck of a lot of natural resources which most countries severely lack. What other country has been able to exploit such a fertile and large landmass in such a good climate. If only Canada or Russia had that amount of sun and warmth

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[fishthegeek]

I'm sorry but the jobs moved over seas partially because of America's declining social appreciation of work. It won't take you much of an education to Google for proof. Just in case you went to USC I'll furnish the first link. Here

The short of it is that there aren't enough technically skilled people to keep those jobs here in America.

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[BoberFett]

The people in your town could have refused to shop at WalMart. Looks like the people have spoken. Talk about democracy in action!

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they don't continue shopping at WalMart, they no longer have a "livable wage." ;)

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[Bigjeff5]

Without WalMart the average person's standard of living would be much lower, because they would not be able to afford nearly as much.

You can be all high and mighty, but all you're doing is pissing on poor people.

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[FlyingGuy]

Please read my post above and a couple of other ones as well. We have LOTS of very smart people in this country. I know how to use a lathe because I took metal shop in high school. I could learn how to run a CNC lathe pretty quickly. But you know how many machining jobs are in this country, not very damn many. Why? Because I can have a factory floor full of CNC lathes cranking widgets that ONE guy sets in motion because they are doing a production run of the same things. We used to have a floor full of lathes with a guy at each lathe cranking out the same widgets.

The point is that we have created all this technology to make things easier and we have not figured out what to do with all the people that are not needed to operate those lathes to crank out widgets.

There is a machine shop that is fully automated close by and it employees about 10 machine techs that work three shifts just walking around the shop floor watching the machines make stuff. They employee 3 machinist's.

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[Opportunist]

Maybe they wouldn't be poor 'cause they would have something called a job? One that actually pays enough to pay the bills?

Why is WalMart cheap? Mostly because they sell crap made abroad and push their worker's wages down to the absolute minimum. WalMart ist not a charity organisation that made its mission to provide cheap goods to poor people. It's a for-profit organisation that made its mission to, well, make profit. Which is currently easiest achived by offering cheap crap because nobody has the money to actually buy anything but cheap crap.

Re:No, too much manufacturing shipped overseas.

[drsquare]

Since when were living standards defined by how much cheap crap you can consume? I'm not sure Walmart makes poor people better off. They steamroller local businesses, leaving them as a captive audience with fewer shopping options. They pay low wages, provide poor working conditions, and sell very low quality goods.

Follow the correct path for the career

[spribyl]

Not everything needs a 4 year degree.

If you are going into a science based field you will need a degree.
Entrepreneur business school might help but it is not necessary.
Blue Collar, tech school can give you a head start.
CS/IT I have see excellent folks with nothing and really crappy folks with a PHD.

Ultimately it is what you make of your life experience.

Re:Follow the correct path for the career

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with what you say, but there are some artificial factors that drive people into 4 year degrees even when there is no need.

Your comment about CS/IT is spot-on, but the HR gatekeepers need a simple filtering criteria, so they require a degree..."Bachelors required", masters preferred". People spend 4 years in pursuit of a degree, racking up debt, primarily for the purpose of getting past the HR gatekeeper. Then we find out that the jobs are going to offshore outsourcers because it's cheaper. The same job that "requires" a 4 year degree in the US will be given to an anonymous outsourcer of dubious credentials with 3rd grade english skills because it's cheaper.

I sometimes wonder why we don't hire high school kids into IT as soon as they are legally able to work. We could pay them minimum wage, and their skills would be no worse than what I see in the offshore world. Indeed, high school kids have better english skills, not to mention a reduced timezone shift.

With the cost of college outpacing inflation for the umpteenth year in a row, it's only a matter of time before the cost has to be thoroughly reconsidered. I find it amazing that the requirements for US-based job applicants are pretty much thrown out the window when a cheapie outsourcer can be engaged to kinda/sorta do the job.

Re:Follow the correct path for the career

[rev_sanchez]

It does help you get a job and keep it when times are hard. The unemployment rate for high school graduates is about twice the rate for college graduates in this recession.

Re:Follow the correct path for the career

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems like putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. My experience was that I graduated high school with absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for a living after I finished my education. My college experience was what helped me choose a vocation. And like most everyone else I met in college, I changed my major a couple of times too before I settled on what I wanted.

Maybe some people graduate high school with a clear idea of how they want to earn a living, and for those people, your advice makes sense. But for everyone else, college is a chance to learn about yourself outside of the context of your parents. And in that self-discovery, a lot of people figure out what direction to go.

Between those who know exactly what they want to do with their lives (which usually requires a degree...there are very few people who graduate high school with a clear vision of working in a blue collar profession when they have the grades to get into college) and those who are unsure, you're left with the situation we have now...those who can get into college go to school and those who can't figure something else out. Sure, in hindsight, a lot of people could have saved $50k-$100k in education expenses, but most couldn't have known that ahead of time.

Re:Follow the correct path for the career

[smegmatic]

And what if you correct for some obvious confounding variables, such as IQ or parents' socioeconomic status? I don't have the data, I'm honestly asking... because I would expect that to cover most of the difference.

Re:Follow the correct path for the career

[MikeTheGreat]

I'm glad to finally see a top-rated post address this issue.

There are a ton of posts about how society still needs garbage-picker-uppers, but how many Slashdot readers are actually doing that? And more to the point, as off-shoring/out-sourcing keeps blowing low-education jobs out of the country (I read an article the other day about colleges outsourcing the grading that American TA's now do), why would you want to aim for an 'uneducated' job?

If you skip college & get a job in a factory (assuming you can find one)(an American factory, that is), what will you do when the factory is closed & production moved to Mexico?

Sorry for the rant, but there's this odd anti-education bias on Slashdot, even to the point of overlooking the obvious reason why everyone goes to college - to try and avoid their careers being made obsolete.

Re:Follow the correct path for the career

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the point of the article. It shouldn't necessarily be that way. People should be employed for what they know instead of where they went to school.

Re:Follow the correct path for the career

[WastedMeat]

It might be trite, but correlation does not imply causation. You would see the same trend if you tried to plot unemployment for people of different intelligence, family wealth, ethnic backgrounds, or any of a number of traits that are also correlated with education level.

Re:Follow the correct path for the career

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about the reasons for that, is it a lack of ability of high school graduates or a bias in the human resources department that tells them that university students are more valuable ?

Yeah, thats just what we need...

[Firemouth]

... more uneducated people. Because this country is just too damn smart. We need to dumb it down a little...

Re:Yeah, thats just what we need...

[Lunoria]

Education has little to do with smartness. I've seen College graduates that were barely competent at their jobs, while High School dropouts are more than competent at the same jobs.

Re:Yeah, thats just what we need...

[guruevi]

For the uneducated part, the general US public schooling system is to blame, not the higher education institutions. There are MANY things wrong on MANY levels with the current public school system starting off with NCLB, interdistrict exchange programs (meritocratic segregation), unionizing of school staff, ease of transfers to 'special' education classes, unaccountability of school leadership, commercialization of school supplies etc. etc. which all contributes to the all-out dumbing down of high school graduates.

On the other hand there are too many children that are not properly taken care off - especially in city schools - that simply don't have the resources to get properly thought. The increasing funds that are channeled towards schooling programs should be diverted to properly (not just hand them a sum of money) support parents and children that simply don't have the necessary funds to get clothing, food and books for school. In other countries there are programs where families will get actual food and clothing items (not coupons that can be traded for cigarettes) when parents can't support their own children, books and school materials are all paid for by the government (with limited commercial printeries being used - usually only for speciality items).

When people go to 4 year colleges, they shouldn't have to spend their WHOLE first year learning algebra, integrals, basic statistics and experiment design. If you can't do those things, you shouldn't get accepted in the 4 year program - either take a lower level program, self-educate or pay someone to tutor you.

Re:Yeah, thats just what we need...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing 'not needing a college education' with 'dumbed down'. A plumber has no need for a college education and can still make $80k a year. The same for a good welder, carpenter, handy man and many other blue collar professions.

Re:Yeah, thats just what we need...

[McGruber]

... more uneducated people. Because this country is just too damn smart. We need to dumb it down a little...

High School Graduate A goes to trade school, takes a six month trade course in welding, then is immediately employed in a $60/k year blue-collar job.

High School Graduate B goes off to college, spends four years getting a BA in Philosophy, graduates with $75k in student loans to pay off. Unable to find a job, Graduate B applies to grad school.

Which one is smarter?

Re:Yeah, thats just what we need...

[Barrinmw]

Well, we can look at potential growth in their fields and linear advancement that they may receive. You can argue that the person getting the master's degree has much greater potential to get a higher paying job in the future whereas the welder has a good possibility of being a welder for the rest of his life.

Also, the welder only has a set of skills pertaining to welding whereas the person who went to college can get a job in many different fields, especially ones not related to his degree.

Lastly, Society as a whole needs both welders and people with master's degrees in whatever, if the person is capable of getting his master's degree, then he may be able to fill one of the roles society has for him.

Re:Yeah, thats just what we need...

[c0d3g33k]

What horseshit. A plumber (or other tradesperson) might not need what a person can learn in college to do the plumbing itself, but there are plenty of other things that a proper college education could be useful for. Socially, being able to interact with other members of the community with a college level education always comes in handy. How about being able to appreciate the local Shakespeare In The Park offerings, not to mention any other arts and culture offerings in the community? Being able to negotiate the byzantine details of a typical financial document? Read and understand legal documents? Make and balance a budget? What if the plumber is motivated to enter local politics to improve things in the community? Help the kids with the homework. Etc, etc.

An educated populace can only be a good thing, and education is not just about career preparation. That's what vocational schools are for. Higher education is about something else that transcends mere training for a particular career.

Re:Yeah, thats just what we need...

[lkeagle]

All that shows is that 'smartness' has little to do with competence.

The purpose of education is not to be competent at a job; it's to keep from reinventing the wheel every time a previously solved problem comes about.

Re:Yeah, thats just what we need...

[Anonymous Coward]

America still needs shit kickers to sign up and die in Iraq. Going to college/university doesn't help that.

Re:Yeah, thats just what we need...

[Blakey Rat]

I do a lot of job interviews. I see approximately zero correlation between possessing a degree and being "intelligent" (defined as: suited for the job.) There are a hell of a lot of people with CS degrees who can't write a line of code. There's also a good amount of "some college" or high school grads who can program up a storm. (They are harder to find, I think because they don't jump jobs as much because they're afraid of their lack of degree. That's my hunch.)

US colleges don't come cheap

[SoVeryTired]

Most of the issues addressed in the summary actually result from the fact that top US universities are insanely expensive. Harvard is about thirty thousand dollars for an undergraduate degree whereas Cambridge is about three thousand Stirling.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[kalirion]

Harvard is about thirty thousand dollars for an undergraduate degree

Huh? You mean per semester, right? I don't know if even community colleges are cheap enough for $30k to pay for a 4 year degree.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Gramie2]

You mean that Harvard is about $30,000 (actually $33,696) for one year. I'm not sure if Cambridge is GBP3,000 for one year or for the degree.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[SoVeryTired]

I meant per annum for both universities. Should have mentioned that.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[ohithere]

Harvard's tuition only is in the mid 30s now, though it sets the high standard for private institutions. What most people don't realize is that the tuition alone is not enough to put a student through college. Most students at Harvard will not have a job while they attend school there, and thus will be reliant upon loans to finance their living/board expenses. The tuition, plus room, board and student services fee for the current school year (2009-2010) is $48,868.

Cambridge is, in fact, a state-funded university with an extremely large endowment. From Wikipedia:

Comparisons between Cambridge's endowment and those of other top US universities are, however, inaccurate because being a state-funded public university, Cambridge receives a major portion of its income through education and research grants from the British Government. In 2006, it was reported that approximately one third of Cambridge's income comes from UK government funding for teaching and research, with another third coming from other research grants. Endowment income contributes around 6%

While Harvard is obviously an extreme example of cost, many students today are putting themselves through college by taking out loans (both government and private). They often have little financial support from their families and think that life will be all peaches and cream after they get their degree because they will obviously make enough to cover their costs.

University is not the only type of education that is taking monetary advantage of its students though. Some trade schools (notably the Culinary Institutes) are charging $30,000 for a "culinary arts" degree. I had a friend who went to one of these schools for 18 months to get his degree. However, after putting himself through school and working full-time at Trader Joes, he was shocked and amazed to find out that most jobs available to graduates of the program were less than what he was currently making as a grocery handler/stocker. How do you pay back a private $30,000 loan on $9-10/hour and have enough left over to provide for your own living expenses?

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[h4rr4r]

$30k for a 4 years?

I did not go to harvard, I paid about that per year. US university education is far more expensive than you think.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[AnonymousClown]

Harvard is about thirty thousand dollars for an undergraduate degree

try about $200,000+

The total package (tuition, plus room, board and student services fee) will be $48,868, a 3.5 percent increase over last year.

But, when you get out, you'll have a degree from Harvard. You'll have opportunities that folks from a state school will never get just because you have a Harvard degree.

Back in my Fortune 500 days, all the 20 year olds in the "fast track" management programs were from Ivy League schools. Meaning, they were the ones being groomed for CEO. They spent 2 years working in all the departments around the company - a few months here...a few months there and then they're in management at the age of 24 - 25. Directors by the time they were 30. VPs by the time they were 40.

In the meantime, us state school peons were lucky to get into management by the time were 45.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[ChefInnocent]

He probably did mean per semester.

However for the rest of your comments, a community college tends to only offer the first 2 years of education, not 4 year degrees. Also, if I took my alma-mater, Boise State University, they are currently $2650 per semester. A simple extrapolation of 10% increase per year (which is only slightly higher than the realized increase), 4 years would put a student at $24.5K for tuition. I don't think books would quite take up the whole $5.5K. So yes, $30K would pay for a college education not including room, pizza, and beer.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Rebelgecko]

A few months ago, I saw Harvard near the top on a list of "Best Value Colleges." I asked someone I know at Harvard about that, and it turns out that if your parents make less than $200,000, financial aid covers all of the costs except about 10% of their income per year. That's quite a bit more affordable than $30,000 a year for most people.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[dcollins]

"Most of the issues addressed in the summary actually result from the fact that top US universities are insanely expensive. Harvard is about thirty thousand dollars [per year] for an undergraduate degree whereas Cambridge is about three thousand Stirling."

I agree with this. Too many students with stars in their eyes, and not given the tools, information, or motivation to make an informed decision about the value of the school they're permanently indebting themselves for.

I was accepted to Harvard, but after considering the expense with my family, opted instead to attend a state school on full scholarship. Some of the Harvard grads I'd work with in the Boston area thought I was insane, but my level of freedom in life is much greater as a result.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Community colleges typically do two-year associate's degrees, not bachelor's degrees.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[mog007]

Tuition alone it probably comes out to that. My (public) university will bump up tuition in a month or so, but the current rate is about 150 bucks per credit hour. With a degree that requires 120 credits, that's 18 grand for the degree itself. This doesn't factor fees or books, just the tuition.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if even community colleges are cheap enough for $30k to pay for a 4 year degree.

You can get a great college education for under $5000 per year if you go to a public institution and you're in-state.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

For Harvard specifically, cost is not an issue. Very VERY few people who get accepted into Harvard choose not to go because of cost. Harvard will pay your full tuition if your family can't afford to pay it.

Where you see this being an issue is in mid-top tier colleges.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the tuition fee for UK/EU students studying for their first undergraduate degree is £3,290 per year for all courses..."

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[TooMuchToDo]

My wife went back to finish her associates degree at a community college. Total cost per semester was roughly $1600 (including books, fees, etc). She was taking 4 classes at a time.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[bsDaemon]

I suppose it depends a lot on what you intend to do with your life. A lot of the value in the Ivys isn't necessarily in the "education" you get in class, but in the connections you make while there. Foe people going into business, politics, etc, that's a lot more important than for people in hard sciences or computers, where the definition of "proficient" and "excellent" are much more easily measured... the value of proficient in business or politics really is measured in how many people's rich dads' business cards you have on file.

Does it make a difference whether you go to Harvard or BC to get your CS degree if you know all you want to do is be a programmer? No, not really, and a cheaper school you leave with less debt is an advantage. If you have bigger dreams beyond the cubicle, then you're missing out. A bit of extra up-front debt is negligible when you put yourself in the path for a $1,000,000+ per year job that largely involves going to cocktail parties and helping your freshman roommate's dad get more rich people to let him invest their money.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Quantumstate]

£3000 per year. This gets paid by a student loan form the government (interest matching inflation in theory) for anyone in the UK. Cambridge subsidises its teaching heavily beyond normal government funding because the University (plus individual colleges) has large investments and gets a lot of donations from alumni.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[philipmather]

£3,290 per year, the maximum and pretty much uniform amount chargeable in the UK. For comparison try this http://www.studentfinance.direct.gov.uk/portal/page?_pageid=153,4680136&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

lol silly sausage cambridge to an american is 18,000GBP a year.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[dcollins]

There's a smidgin of truth to what you say, but you could say nearly the same thing about buying lottery tickets. All I can say is that the people I personally know with a Harvard degree in things like English are now a stay-at-home housewife, a second-in-command software scripter with lots of debt, etc.

Yes, people with a specific plan are much better off (which is what I was saying to begin with). But I'd assert that the majority of people going to Ivy schools are more in the starry-eyed "me too!" camp and do not have a specific career plan that it fits into.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[bsDaemon]

I went to an expensive private school, ended up getting a degree in English, and ended up working in IT despite every fiber in my body telling me I didn't want to do it after I got out of high school. I could have saved myself a few years and my parents a lot of money if I thought I was going to end up back in a spot I was "qualified" for when I was 17 years old, but I'm pretty sure that I got a lot more out of school than just the degree. Maybe I'm just not quite as pragmatic as the average nerd... and my mom has a Princeton AB in Romance Languages and an MA in Spanish, and teaches public high school, so I know what you're talking about with the "why bother" on the Ivy degrees. She was on the swim team with Meg Whitman (the eBay chick), and they still talk from time to time, but it's really all about the paths you choose.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[TheSync]

Most of the issues addressed in the summary actually result from the fact that top US universities are insanely expensive.

Student net cost of college is much less than the "sticker price". Just like at a car dealer, price discrimination goes on in college. Those who can pay (or are unwilling to explore the aid options) pay full, those who can't pay less.

This article claims "At public four-year colleges the average net price is about $1,600 (compared with a list price of $7,020). At private four-year colleges, it's about $11,900, compared with a list tuition price of $26,273" and "The net tuition price paid by students at public two-year college has been declining steadily for at least 15 years, after adjusting for inflation. At public and private four-year colleges, the average net price is lower this year than it was five years earlier -- despite significant increases in published prices."

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd guess £3k for the year. I was paying £1k in tuition per year for my degree at a Scottish Uni that's a good deal lower in the rankings.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just tuition. You're not counting the myriad of other fees and expenses that get tacked on. Nor the living expenses of a student.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

University tuition fees in England are a tad over £3,000 per year, and they vary a bit across the rest of the UK. There have been some demands to raise that seeing as the rest is paid off by other means (an estimate is that it costs £16,000 total to teach an undergrad at Oxford, presumably per year although it doesn't specify that).

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[SunTzuWarmaster]

University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, here. It is the third largest school in the United States (by enrollment). I just got my Masters (Spring 2010) for 10K in 2 years (part time). The bachelor's cost ~10K (Spring 2008) in 4 years (full time).

So, um, yea.

Also, student loans are stupid.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[orudge]

UK tuition fees are low for Unless you're an overseas student, in which case it'll be anything between £10,000 and £26,000/year depending on what course you're taking.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[takowl]

I'm not sure if Cambridge is GBP3,000 for one year or for the degree.

Per year. Slightly over £3,000. Same for pretty much all courses at pretty much all UK universities. It's the most they're allowed to charge students, although they would love to be able to charge more. The rest is paid by the government. Foreign students pay the full rate, which is about £10k.

Thanks for the reminder, Slashdot. Whatever my country's faults, I'm really glad I grew up here.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[FlyingGuy]

Yeah but only if you have a 5.0 GPA. I have a find who works in the admissions office at UC Berkeley by the way.

The problem is collage snobbery. You can get a fine education at a lot of state schools, but when hiring times come around the two resumes are side by side and one says Harvard and the other says Whats Amada U and you guess which one gets the job.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[dkf]

Most of the issues addressed in the summary actually result from the fact that top US universities are insanely expensive. Harvard is about thirty thousand dollars for an undergraduate degree whereas Cambridge is about three thousand Stirling.

I've no idea what Harvard costs, but I can assure you that Cambridge costs more than that (per year). It's just that for domestic (and EU) students, the government hands out a massive subsidy; only foreign students pay the full rate. Of course, students think that paying £3000 per year gives them the right to dictate what they do, and wonder why it gets such a dusty answer from the academics; that subsidy which they are not generally aware of is the core of it.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

£3000 per year, we get it on loan (along with enough money to live), and it doesn't have to be paid back until we earn £15k/yr, and then it's 9% marginal tax rate. The loan is 'interest-free' (aka 0% interest or inflation on the CPI, whichever is higher). Same for all UK universities.

Of course, clearly letting people come in on merit rather than income is a terrible idea, which is why, despite having vastly less funding per student, Oxford and Cambridge are internationally ranked about the same as Harvard.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

The £3000 amount you mentioned for Cambridge is per academic year. When you add on the subsistence loan and take into account the exchange rate, it doesn't sound like the UK system is all that cheaper for the student than the American system.

NB this amount is a government cap, and almost all UK universties charge the full amount). So the best and worst universities charge the same. At least it is fair in that sense.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[toddestan]

The community college I went to about 10 years ago was trying out some four year programs (one of them which was nursing). $30k would be $3750 per semester which was about 3 times what I was paying back then. Tuition has certainly gone up since then, but I would think it would still be doable with $30k. Note that this figure would not include things like room and board, which often gets rolled into the cost of going to a traditional four year university that has on-campus housing.

Re:US colleges don't come cheap

[Grumbleduke]

When I was there (fairly recently) it was GBP3,000 per year. However, you could get a government-subsidised student loan for that (and to cover another 3,000 per year in living costs). Of course, every so often there is a call to increase the costs (last week they wanted to double it) and it is increasing year-on-year anyway, but it is still relatively low. You could also get an income-assessment done to see if some of that could be covered by a grant rather than a loan - and Cambridge (being an old and relatively rich university - in UK terms, not US ones) tries to make sure that no one is turned away due to the cost.

There is one private university in the UK that doesn't get any sort of government subsidy, so has Harvard-style costs, but I don't know much about it.

Anyway, I received a demand from the Student Loans Company for over £20,000 - fortunately as I have no income I don't have to pay it back yet - and they even stopped charging interest during the recession. That's about the cost (including living expenses) of a first degree in the UK (if you are a UK citizen) in a cheap subject (maths). If you then want to go onto a second degree, I don't think you get the government subsidy so it will be closer to that 30k per year figure.

If you are in Scotland, it costs about £1,000 a year, rather than £3,000 (Scotland in general gets more tax-money than the rest of the UK) but that's a different issue.

Yeah, sure

[identity0]

For society in general, sure, but for individuals it still pays to be more competitive.

How's the market for CS BS-holders versus community college CS grads? How about for lib arts BA holders?

I've been out of the US a couple of years and missed the big crunch recently. How healthy is the programmer/network admin market in general there now?

Re:Yeah, sure

[Nadaka]

The difference is that the first job is a lot easier to get with a BA than with an AT/AA. After that, the only thing that matters is your experience, skill and how you present yourself.

The market for programmers is there, but it is extremely frugal. I've had two companies die under me in the 2 years and now I am waiting on confirmation that my project is going to be renewed to find out if I need to find a new job. But in each case, I was able to secure a new job in two weeks or less.

public university

[Lord Ender]

Public university is flooded with students who don't care at all about the subjects they are studying; they are in school either because it is expected of them by society or because they want to socialize with people their age for years.

From an economic standpoint, it is absolutely wasteful for these kids to fudge their way through to a BA in Communication or whatever. I've known too many of them. It makes a mockery of academia.

Re:public university

[Opportunist]

And why don't they care about the subject? Because for 9 out of 10 jobs it does not matter. Read the classifieds lately? "College education required" is what they read. So you have a shitload of philosophy masters who can't write a cheque without breaking the pencil or are unable to do anything closely related to anything resembling work, but hey, they got a masters degree!

THAT is making a mockery out of the academia.

Re:public university

[Lord Ender]

I would imagine that Philosophy grads at least have reading and writing skills honed as part of their degrees. Asking for any degree does have some meaning. But a two-year community college degree should be enough to demonstrate better-than-average language/thinking/etc. skills. A four year degree for a such subjects is a complete waste and terrible debt burden for most students.

Re:public university

[Zancarius]

From an economic standpoint, it is absolutely wasteful for these kids to fudge their way through to a BA in Communication or whatever. I've known too many of them. It makes a mockery of academia.

I agree. The US should do what Europe and Australia have done for years: bring in more vocational institutions or high schools should at least encourage students to consider all options (not all do, because we don't want to "hurt" students' self esteem). There are some people who have absolutely no business setting foot in a university because, as you stated, they essentially just waste everyone else's time (sometimes even public funds). Mind you, this is the price of a free society: If someone wants to pursue a degree in mathematics and hasn't a clue what they're doing, you can't really turn them down. The best we can do is advise them as appropriate.

Having said that, I do think there is room for having a well-educated populace. It's just that the majority of people don't really care... Consider that if the structure of the solar system weren't taught endlessly in primary school, most of the population would likely still believe in a geocentric universe.

Re:public university

[Opportunist]

Believe me, there's degrees that display nothing more than a student's ability to use a Xerox machine. But if they can cook acceptable coffee, I agree, it would display their suitability for office clerk duty.

Re:public university

[godrik]

The same thing happens in France. Public university is flooded. I think the main difference is that a lot of students will fail. There is no quota but the required level is high in practice 50% of the student fail each of the first two years. If the student are bad one year, none will graduate.

I am working in a (not prestigious) US university. The grades are a joke. Some student I talk with did not get ANYTHING from some classes and still got B+. Fairly understanding is usually graded A.

Re:public university

[fermion]

That point is in some ways valid. College should be primarily an educational institution, and much of the degradation has been the result of fake degrees, basically anything that is not maths, language, or real science and engineering.

The problem I see is that it is the colleges responsibility to graduate students, and they will be held responsible for not doing so, like a high school. For college to be a successful institution, it has to take risks. It has to take very good students on scholarship. It has to allow minimally qualified students who can pay. Colleges cannot be overly agressive in admissions.

But if we are to keep academics colleges must be allowed to cut losses, which mean ejecting students that are not making any meaningful progress. Colleges cannot be responsible for failing students.

The economics is more complex. It is not useful to give huge students loans to students that are not in a real program or are not going to make it. Giving unlimited money to students at ITT is not rational. Allowing students to spend their own money, and subsidizing the education, may or may not make sense. There may still a value in keeping students out of the job market, and some training is provided.

This last bit is something that is often ignored. With a high school graduate one has a person that can get to work on time and can get work with close supervision. Such supervision can be inefficient. With a college graduate, one more than likely has a person that can do significant work without supervision and without much instruction. I am thinking of The Devil Wears Prada. The main character did not need a college degree for her gopher job, but it certainly helped her get it, as the boss would not tolerate a high school person who just sat around until someone made her work.

Re:public university

[Anonymous Coward]

You expect colleges to be filled with 18-22yo's who know exactly what they want to do with the rest of their life??

They may not have an exact plan, but they know they dont want to flip burgers...

If academia is mocked by young people trying to improve their lives then thats a problem with academia, not young people.

Re:public university

[s3ph1r0thcl0n3]

It's all about money. Education is one of the most profitable industries in the country and is still growing in this bad economy. All the Universities need to do is get some high-minded PhD eggheads who never encountered the real world to persuade policy-makers that every kid needs a liberal arts education.

Re:public university

[syousef]

philosophy masters who can't write a cheque without breaking the pencil

I think if they're writing the cheques in pencil they're doing a Bachelor of Fraud.

Re:public university

[Anonymous Coward]

So you have a shitload of philosophy masters who can't write a cheque without breaking the pencil or are unable to do anything closely related to anything resembling work, but hey, they got a masters degree!

THAT is making a mockery out of the academia.

Anyone writing a cheque with a pencil is making a mockery of cheque writing ;-)

DickMacInnis.com

Re:public university

[RAMMS EIN]

``I think if they're writing the cheques in pencil they're doing a Bachelor of Fraud.''

Actually, no. We're not doing a bachelor at all. I have a friend who will print the degree for me and we take turns answering the phone to provide references.

The massive student debts we've incurred? That's just for trips we took to the Mediterranean and the Bahamas.

You have to admit, though, it's a pretty well thought out concept. Can I get that cushy white-collar job now?

Re:public university

[SorcererX]

It's the same in Norway, during the first year we have courses with failure rates in the 40%-50%s, and I've even seen 4th year courses with 75% failure rates. Some courses have one A every 3rd year or something. No one has ever graduated from my faculty with straight A's. When I had Physics I, if you got a D you were in the top 10% (we use the ECTS system, E is lowest passing grade).

Baselines

[Looce]

Education and money are very much alike in one aspect: if everyone has at least the same amount, then that amount becomes the baseline, below which it is worthless.

College degrees being required for plumbing jobs and the like are only the symptom of this problem.

Whereas before education was made mandatory in most countries of the world, the baseline was no education at all, now the United States have college as a baseline. And it's rather difficult to get out of this, because you ask someone in college why they're in college and they'll say, "I must, because I can't afford to not keep up with my peers." So people go to college because people go to college, and it's a recursive clusterfuck.

Re:Baselines

[amRadioHed]

That maybe true so far as job-hunting goes, but a higher educational baseline has big advantages for society.

Re:Baselines

[pclminion]

College degrees being required for plumbing jobs and the like are only the symptom of this problem.

I had a plumber working on the house a year ago. He was scribbling some notes on a pad and I noticed that he was working out some math. I figured it would be some basic water pressure calculation or something. I looked closer and saw that he was writing things like exp(i*w*t+...). So I asked him "Is that i? As in, the square root of -1?" He says "Yup" and keeps on calculating.

Turns out he was working out the natural frequency of water oscillating in some particular pipe. The dude was using complex numbers.

more crap from the fresh water economists?

[Gary W. Longsine]

The more education people have, the less likely they are to "believe" in "trickle down" economics. I haven't looked into this, yet, but it's a safe bet that the same economists backing this crackpot assertion that a random correlation is causative also propagate the lie of the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

Better overeducated than not

[krakround]

All things considered, I'd rather have people overeducated than undereducated.

Re:Better overeducated than not

[chipperdog]

Going to college (or any kind of schooling) != educated. I know people who ace every test, and go to school for years after years, and still don't have basic problem solving and critical thinking abilities. I know many tradesmen who brighter than most BA grads. I think if one wants to learn they will on their own - whether in school or "self study". With the wealth of ready information available to most people very inexpensively today, motivated people can be educated without the piece of paper from an institution. I see many (especially recent high school grads) attending universities simply because it is expected of them, and are doing just that attending. It is very apparent when one reads wedding announcements in the newspaper (or checking on old friends in Facebook) and see that large number of people BA/BS and MA/MS degrees working long term in retail or food service.

Re:Better overeducated than not

[NeutronCowboy]

At what cost though? Even a piddly $10K loan, which really doesn't get you anything these days, is a minimum of $17K total cost. The cost for traditional colleges can easily be $100K. In order to make up that cost, people are going to have to be either wildly successful, or default on their loan.

Yes, all else equal, I'd prefer an education over no education. But all things aren't equal. There's a real cost associated with a college education, and if you only have a 10% chance of getting a job that will pay it off, maybe that wasn't the optimal way to go through life. Because, really, what's wrong with being a DMV clerk, a janitor or a telephone sanitation specialist? I mean, aside from not being able to buy the latest HD TV and going out for dinner every night?

the problem is psychological

[circletimessquare]

to tell someone that they don't have enough promise for college, that they don't need to fill their brain with more "stuff" that only a few people actually need to know, that maybe they haven't demonstrated that trying to fill their brains with more difficult subject matter would be worth their or anyone else's time... at the age we are talking about, when you're whole life is ahead of you and you are filled with optimism about yourself... it tends to be an emotional reaction, not a rational one

obviously, not everyone needs to go to a 4 year college. they've reached the height of the skills the need in high school for a rewarding and productive life. however, the promise of college, that it is intended only for a promising few, makes it desirable for the sake of your ego that you belong to that group of people

so as soon as you stop 18 year olds from believing in themselves and the promise of their lives to do incredible things, that's when you convince more people not to go to college. so who here wants the task of destroying millions of young people's faith in themselves?

additionally, you have the problem of a free market: there is a large demand, so the supply has grown to reach that demand for colleges. all you have to do shrink supply as demand gets more vocal. go ahead, close down a bunch of colleges and severely restrict the accreditation process, all the while millions of parents and children scream to get into college. good luck!

Re:the problem is psychological

[imgod2u]

so as soon as you stop 18 year olds from believing in themselves and the promise of their lives to do incredible things, that's when you convince more people not to go to college. so who here wants the task of destroying millions of young people's faith in themselves?

Oh! Me! Me! Having been 18 not too long ago -- or perhaps too long -- I can tell you that 18 year olds are deluded, self-centered, narcissistic, unreasonably entitled and full of themselves; I certainly was.

Complaining about immigrants "taking jobs from Americans"? It couldn't be because immigrants are willing to flip burgers, clean toilets and basically work hard at non-glamorous jobs for low pay. There will always be more ditch diggers than scientists and telling every single kid that they're special without qualifying it effectively makes everyone not special.

How about instead of "you can grow up to be anything you want to be", we tell kids "as long as you work hard and do right by others, there's no shame in not being Joe McMansion"?

Re:the problem is psychological

[Black Gold Alchemist]

When you mentioned how narcissistic people are, I felt the need to go on FaceBook and write at length about my feelings about the matter.

Students go in waves

[WillAffleckUW]

Right now, we have the baby boomlet.

After WW II we chose to educate our returning soldiers.

Now it's time to realize that the number of Americans with degrees has been artificially kept too low, due to low birth numbers, but that the baby boomlet that followed the baby boom is aging into college years.

Man up.

Investing in the future is good for America.

Not investing in America is what destroyed the economy in the first place. Houses don't invent things. Houses don't employ people. People invent things and employ people.

Technical schools?

[joeflies]

Where are these technical schools that the economists refer to?

The simple fact of the matter is that after decades of short sighted budget cuts, the US education system is geared for college prep, whether you want to go or not. The vocational classes have been slowly cut out of the system, usually perceived as expendable programs. School administrators realized long ago that they can't improve the ranking of their school by having the best automotive class - the only thing that counts is English & Math scores, so why bother fund anything else?

In other countries, you make a choice on whether you choose to learn a trade or go to college, and then spend your high school years towards that goal. The repercussion for the US system is that students who are interested in a trade aren't being educated towards their dreams, and spend their time in school either frustrated or years behind.

The whole concept of "No Child Left Behind" only works when there is an unlimited budget, and it presses everyone to a standardized education that may not actually help serve them towards what they really want to do in life. Instead of trying to get every child the same cookie cutter education, we'd be far better off giving more specialized education (whether it's vocational or college prep) by the high school level, help them take advantage of the skills they have, remove the blue collar stigma of trade work, and stop trying to make every kid be a perfect college graduate that the state wants them to be.

Re:Technical schools?

[QuantumRiff]

Where are these technical schools that the economists refer to?

They are often called Community Colleges, or Junior colleges. Most of them have Excellent programs doing just what you are lamenting is lost.

Problems is, in many states, these colleges fall under the same umbrella as Primary education, and not under higher education for funding. Also, there are perception problems. They are often in the community, so people drive to campus, take their classes (they usually also have an excellent selection of weekend and night classes to accomodate people that work) and then go home. To many high school students, they don't appear as exciting, they don't have huge dorms, lots of college night life and partying, etc. And that they are big in re-training people so the average age of the students is quite a bit higher than a 4 years school. Most of the time, they are made fun of (see the TV show "community") when really, they provide the best bang for the buck, and their graduates tend to stay in the local area, contributing more to the local area region.

Re:Technical schools?

[qoncept]

While I agree to an extent, I think you're horribly overestimating the maturity of 14 year olds (and 18 year olds). My firm opinion is that the reason there are so many kids going to 4 year colleges is because 1) they want the best for themselves, 2) believe they can succeed, 3) will get a better or higher paying job with a BS and, most importantly, 4) don't have any idea what else to do after they graduate from high school. Society has basically made the decision "do you want to be successful or just start working now?"

Since, at 18 years old and graduated from high school, people still don't know what to do, making the decision prior to high school doesn't make much sense at all.

Re:Technical schools?

[flattop100]

There are all kinds of technical and vocational schools - realize that fundementally, this is a discussion about education vs. training. I don't know about where you're located, but in the Minneapolis area, some training/vocational schools include:

Dunwoody
Minnesota State Colleges & Universities (MNSCU - NOT part of the University of Minnesota system)
Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute
MN School of Business
Normandale Community College
Anoka-Ramsey Community College
Metropolitan State University
North Hennepin Community College
Hennepin Technical College
Inver Hills Community College
Dakota County Technical College ...and I know I'm leaving several out.

If it's EDUCATION you want (to be well-rounded, in other words), there's:
Macalaster
St. Thomas
University of Minnesota
Augsberg
Bethel
Hamline ...and so on.

These schools exist. They're not hard to find.

Re:Technical schools?

[Qzukk]

serve them towards what they really want to do in life

Of course not, they're children, too stupid to be in charge of what they'll do in their life* until they turn 18** (* unless they kill someone ** 17 in some jurisdictions) Since their brains are still forming so there's no way they can decide if they want to be a plumber or a teacher or a mechanic or a programmer. Won't somebody think of the children?!

BTW, the "if your kid doesn't get a college degree he'll be a bum living out of trashcans" meme has been around for years and years now. "Jokes" about needing a degree to get a job flipping burgers predate NCLB.

Re:Technical schools?

[EggyToast]

I agree -- in high school, technical schools were for "losers" and my high school tried to get them into the technical trade schools as fast as possible, often setting up deals so that they'd earn HS credits for their senior year. It was seen more as a "You're too dumb for college so you might as well do this other thing" rather than viable job training.

And yes, "NCLB" should really be named "All Children Trained to the Same Standard," to point out that it just sets a benchmark and makes all children meet that, regardless of individual talent -- let alone available jobs. Let alone jobs that would benefit the economy.

Re:Technical schools?

[AndersOSU]

I agree with most of what you say, but I really don't like the idea of askign a 14 year old if he want's to go to college or not and then sculpting his high school career around his answer.

Ideally, I think we would want our mechanics and electricians to have a 12th grade college-prep education, since better educated people make better citizens. I think it would make sense for the college prep and trade school prep classes to only diverge at the end of high school.

America does have a good trade school program though. It's called the military. The problem is that soldiers have a hard time finding work when they don't get back because - wait for it - they don't have degrees.

Re:Technical schools?

[AusIV]

These schools exist. They're not hard to find.

This was my thought. Both in the city where I grew up and the city I came to for college there are technical/vocational schools all over the place. Also in both cities, you've been able to take classes in these technical schools in lieu of high school classes. I had friends in high school who left half-way through the day for their Junior and Senior years and graduated high school a semester away from an associates degree.

The technical schools are definitely available. I'd say they're underutilized because of the common belief that a bachelor's degree is a necessity. The fault lies partly with students who think they can't be successful without a bachelors in something, and partly with employers who require a bachelors degree to get a job that doesn't really benefit from a bachelors degree.

Re:Technical schools?

[p0on]

Budget cuts? You've gotta be kidding: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html Per pupil spending has skyrocketed in the last 40 years.

Re:Technical schools?

[thatskinnyguy]

They are called Community Colleges and Trade Schools.

Re:Technical schools?

[forkazoo]

Where are these technical schools that the economists refer to?

The simple fact of the matter is that after decades of short sighted budget cuts, the US education system is geared for college prep, whether you want to go or not. The vocational classes have been slowly cut out of the system, usually perceived as expendable programs. School administrators realized long ago that they can't improve the ranking of their school by having the best automotive class - the only thing that counts is English & Math scores, so why bother fund anything else?

To the extent that these technical schools exist, it's almost considered a terrible shame to attend them. I attended community colleges in my spare time to pick up Russian and Japanese. If it ever comes up in conversation that I studied at a community college while having the audacity to have a job so that I could eat, instead of only being a full time student at a four year school, a lot of people really look down on me. WTF?! I can muddle my way through speaking five languages. You know a half dozen words of Spanish. And, I'm the one who gets looked down on for not being academic enough?

I've long said that we should have really respected, rigorous vocational programming schools in America. A lot of people want to bastardize a Computer Science curriculum into being a vocational programming degree because they don't understand what CS actually is. But, the concept of a serious, competetive vocational school that teaches useful job skills, and isn't a shitty mill like ITT Tech, is so foreign to the American educational market that it would be really hard to get something like that off the ground. Consequently, there are CS graduates who have never heard of assembly, have no idea how Java actually works, and have respected four year degrees.

Aside from all that, I think the policy wonks who want less education are dangerously wrong. We keep getting told that America needs to be able to compete in the 21st century Knowledge Economy in order to make up for the destruction of our industrial base. (We can't get the back now without crushing our economy, no matter how badly we educate our people.) In order to do that, we as a society need... Knowledge. America is already a horribly ignorant society compared to other first world nations. We actually need massive investments in education to try and get more people to actually give a damn about learning. Investments in primary education to make teaching a job that isn't an inherent sacrifice. Investments in higher education so that more people can go without having to bury themselves in personal debt. The policy wonks are basically saying that a select group of elites (themselves) should basically be the only ones with enough education to understand history and the implications of public policy decisions, so that they can do whatever they want, and rob the country blind without getting caught because they deserve it as the ruling class.

We need to make education better, not give up on it. Vaguely related to their point: If stricter academic standards mean a lower % of people graduate, that wouldn't bother me in the slightest.

Re:Technical schools?

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you've never heard of ITT Tech, Heald business school, or Western Career College? I'd say thats exactly what is meant by technical schools.

Re:Technical schools?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more. In 1995 when I graduate high school I could weld, CNC, woodwork, and fix engines in shop (sorry Tech Ed). Today, they make paper airplanes and type proposals. Aaagh! It's scary that 90% of the kids in shop class don't have a clue how to do anything that I was required to learn.

Re:Technical schools?

[TheSync]

Where are these technical schools that the economists refer to?

Here are some Lincoln Tech, Universal Tech, Penn Foster.

Plenty of auto repairmen and HVAC experts make a reasonable amount of money!

Re:Technical schools?

[david_thornley]

In addition, at least the Minneapolis Public School System has numerous different programs in the high schools, ranging from demanding college prep to vocational, with assorted odd programs here and there.

Re:Technical schools?

[Ornlu]

So something magically happens to them when they turn 17/18? I know a few kids in high school that can actually make decisions and take care of them self. I know other kids in college that cannot.

The only was to actually educate people is to treat them like adults. Increasingly, colleges treat students like they are "too stupid to be in charge of what they'll do in their life". If high schools would go back to treating students like they ARE adults, maybe they could possibly become adults by the time they are 18.

/rant off

Re:Technical schools?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other countries, you make a choice on whether you choose to learn a trade or go to college, and then spend your high school years towards that goal.

It's more like if you know by the end of primary school what you want to do, you go to vocational school. Otherwise,like I, if you don't know what to do, you go to upper secondary school (which is basically a preparatory school for university). By the end of upper secondary school if you now know what to do, you go to a polytechnic. If you don't know what to do, like I, you go to a university. After being couple of years in university, you find out that to be in university, you have to be motivated. But as you sort of drifted there and have none of the motivation you get bitter and depressed. And in this economic climate, unemployed.

Now there is logic why to do this. Basically if you don't know what to do, it's smart to hedge your options so you try a lot of different things. This is why I did like this.

Downside is that with that strategy you are bound to know a bit of everything, but you're good at nothing. This really isn't a good thing in job market, as it seems.

In my country there is a huge call for young people to be entrepreneurs. Well, the state may get what it wishes for, because I'm thinking that there really just isn't any other out for me other than entrepreneurship.

"Over qualified"

[grasshoppa]

A 4 year degree does not make someone "over qualified".

Re:"Over qualified"

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the point of the article is that there are only X number of jobs in the country that require 4 year degrees. If there are 4X of people graduating with degrees, there just aren't enough jobs. 3X would be overqualified for other jobs.

The point is instead of shipping everyone out to 4 year schools, we get some people to go to trade schools and learn skills that are actually in demand.

Re:"Over qualified"

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but it does mean they won't work excessively for lower pay. May demand things like time off and benefits, etc. Can't have that, it costs too much.

Moody's Economists?

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

Are these the same economists that didn't see the tech or housing bubble? The same ones who thought sub-primes were contained and wouldn't spread to the rest of the economy. Perhaps they are the ones that have America's debt rated AAA.

What happened to the new deal from shit for brains?

Re:Moody's Economists?

[Pinky's Brain]

AAA might as well stand for America America America ... if America's debt isn't AAA then nothing is, when the US defaults all debtors will be defaulting. By that time you want to own arable land rather than be a creditor.

Re:Moody's Economists?

[quantaman]

I remember lots of talk about the tech bubble well before it burst.

And I read articles in 2004 (or maybe early '05, post election) saying whichever party won the US election would have trouble when the housing bubble burst. And that the resulting recession would be unusually bad since the economy was overdue.

The trick isn't knowing that the bubble will burst, its knowing when to get off. If you get off a month too early than it doesn't matter that you missed the bubble, all your investors have already jumped ship seeking higher returns with the bubble riders and you're out of a job.

And if you're good enough at economics that you see the bubble is going to burst in a week than you sell. If a few more people see the same thing than the bubble bursts a week earlier and you didn't dodge anything but that extra weeks growth.

Re:Moody's Economists?

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

That's not true. China and India should have higher rated debt than we do. They have a chance to pay it back. We have zero chance of repaying our debts.

Although I agree with you that all debtors will default, but I believe it will be through inflation.

Re:Moody's Economists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these the same economists that didn't see the tech or housing bubble? The same ones who thought sub-primes were contained and wouldn't spread to the rest of the economy. Perhaps they are the ones that have America's debt rated AAA.

This is so bonk when people say the bubbles were not predicted. Plenty of Economists predicted those bubbles. Have you been reading articles from Academic Economics journals over the past ten years? Probably not. The problem is nobody listens to them.

Re:Moody's Economists?

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

Yes, but most of that talk was not in the mainstream media. Even if it was, who cares...Greenspan did not act appropriately. He should have been raising interest rates rather than lowering them.

Even right now, Bernanke is going back to these same economists. There's a minority talking about a currency crisis, but no one is doing anything about it. Interest rates need to be a lot higher, but they can't be because then the government wouldn't be able to pay the interest on the debt.

If you're good enough to predict the waves with a week of resolution, you should be a billionaire. We have markets with stocks that are +/- 10% a day.

Re:Moody's Economists?

[Simetrical]

Are these the same economists that didn't see the tech or housing bubble? The same ones who thought sub-primes were contained and wouldn't spread to the rest of the economy.

I'm pretty sure there were some high-profile economists who foresaw all of those. Heck, those mortgages were called "subprime" for a reason. The government and businesses just refused to listen, for political or financial reasons.

Perhaps they are the ones that have America's debt rated AAA.

The federal government will only go bankrupt if people are unwilling to lend it more money. As long as that's not likely, it can always borrow from Peter to pay Paul. It doesn't look likely that people will be unwilling to lend to the Fed anytime soon – which is why it can get away with extremely low interest rates. So AAA it is.

Re:Moody's Economists?

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

Once lenders realize they're not going to get their money back, they will stop lending to the US. You can't borrow from Peter to pay Paul forever.

This Keynesian system will fall apart. It's just a matter of when. The AAA rating is purely political.

The federal government is bankrupt. That's why it has to borrow money. The currency collapse will happen very quickly. Look at how quickly tech and housing fell apart, as well as Greece. The only thing saving us is that the dollar is the reserve currency, but that won't last forever.

Re:Moody's Economists?

[dkf]

Perhaps they are the ones that have America's debt rated AAA.

Well, if you mean the Alcoholics Association of America, then yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, in Europe...

[Gothmolly]

How's that magical European lifestyle working out these days ?

Re:Yeah, in Europe...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's pretty sweet, thanks for asking.

Re:Yeah, in Europe...

[Kijori]

Well, compared to the US continental Europe continues to have longer holidays, cheaper per capita healthcare, a healthier, happier, more active and longer-lived population and a comparable (some countries higher, some lower) GDP per capita. And now they can add to that a lower rate of unemployment. So pretty well really.

Incidentally, unlike what the submitter seems to think, higher education in Western Europe is normally 4-years.

Re:Yeah, in Europe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, pretty good.

With decent health care (Y'all just have shit insurance). ...And that industrial base we didn't gut in the 1970s... ...And the whole public infrastructure thing. You know, trains, the euro inland waterways system. Hehe. The US spends 50% of the world's military expenditures. We buy infrastructure.

And yeah, the PIIGS suck sometimes, but they have infrastructure too, and will recover. Even Europe has to put up with its net losers, just like the US has to put up with Alabama and Kentucky.

Re:Yeah, in Europe...

[Anonymous Coward]

For investment bankers, not so well.

But I'd be willing to bet the average Frenchman or German is far, FAR less stressed than the average American about their personal finances, how to make rent, where their next meal is coming from, how they can afford that expensive medical treatment they need, etc.

10% unemployment scares the living shit out of Americans because we are far more likely to become homeless, go hungry, and die from a treatable illness when we don't have a job.

Yes, to capitalist true believers this is a feature, not a bug. And they'll point to the fact that American workers are more productive and the US GDP grows faster than Europe's. And, hey, that's great for the rich, but for us average folks our incomes have been stagnant for decades whether the GDP grows 2% or 5%. And more and more of us are losing our insurance. And going deeper and deeper into debt. And declaring bankruptcy.

Re:Yeah, in Europe...

[32771]

I never called it magical, more like old fashioned.

If you would like to know what some of us are doing differently you could have a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system

Personally I think there is no such thing as being overeducated. Your future boss might feel inconvenienced by your knowing too much, but who wants to work in a stagnant company like that anyway.

Cost of School the problem?

[Rivalz]

Maybe just maybe that they could cut the costs of most college classes as your paying largely for teacher interaction ( which I received little or needed little ).
Class space ( Teleconferencing is much more reliable now than when I went to school )
Lab Space / Materials ( This cannot be cut back and actually should be boosted )
The most beneficial thing I received from my degree was the connections I made with other students.
Basically what I'm saying is why does a degree in economics / business cost even close to the same as a person studying to be a molecular biologist / robotics engineer / etc that has to have some serious expenses.

Re:Cost of School the problem?

[gknoy]

Your paying largely for teacher interaction. ....
Why does a degree in economics / business cost even close to the same as a person studying to be a molecular biologist / robotics engineer / etc that has to have some serious expenses.

As a student, you see mainly teacher and TA interaction, and think, "Why am I paying this much for so little?"

You often don't see (as a student) the herds of administrative people making sure your transcripts are in order, that tuition is payed properly, that tutoring positions are filled and made available to the students. You sometimes notice janitorial staff, library staff, campus police, and guidance counselors. You nearly never see (as school employees) the people who are planning and building new facilities (such as new classrooms, computer labs, parking structures (or lots), and dorms) or the large number of people that maintain the infrastructure. Universities have in-house staff for plumbing, electrical, IT, air conditioning, and other infrastructure.

ALL of these people cost money to pay in a competitive manner, and I'd argue that there are often at least as many of them as there are teaching staff. That's a large part of where your tuition goes, not merely to the professors and TAs (who are often largely funded by grants and other research work). All students incur similar levels of infrastructure needs, with the exception of those who also need lab space. You all park in the same spaces, and sit in air conditioned lecture halls.

Re:Cost of School the problem?

[Rivalz]

Well that is largely my point. They wouldnt need all of those resources if I went to school remotely. Hell I could afford to fly in to take tests if I was for example going for a business degree.
I'm probably wrong but I think the bulk of students are paying the overhead for the minority of students seeking technical high end degrees.

A law degree for example would I assume take very little resources from a university.
In essence I think a person could earn a law degree from their home. So all of that overhead really doesn't apply to that degree.

Re:Cost of School the problem?

[gknoy]

They wouldnt need all of those resources if I went to school remotely....

A law degree for example would I assume take very little resources from a university.
In essence I think a person could earn a law degree from their home. So all of that overhead really doesn't apply to that degree.

Sitting in a classroom or at a table with other students discussing issues is, for many people, vastly more effective than doing it online. The personal interaction is important, and allows a less hindered flow of information. Online classes have their benefits (such as being able to compose your thoughts at your relative leisure, and edit them for mistakes, and reference things better), but I doubt that an online legal degree would be nearly as good as one in which you sit in a room with other lawyers and law professors (and future lawyers).

Too many college grads?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are too many college grads, and the job market is flooded with "over qualified" people, why is it that 75% of the people who call me can't find a two inch wide by two inch high icon HIGHLIGHTED in bright green located at the far top right of my website?!

The worst part is that this icon is millimeters below the much smaller phone number that they use to call me with, which they then proceed to sit on hold for 10 minutes, all so I can say:

Me: Do you see where the phone number is on our website?

Them: Yes, of course.

Me: Good, okay now look just below that...

Them: Ohhhh! There it is! It was hiding on me! I just waited on hold for 10 minutes for that!

Me: Have a good day.

Never ceases to amaze me what people will do...

Grrr....

Re:Too many college grads?!?

[3dr]

Maybe the large bright green icon is, for its size and color, perceived as more of a banner ad than a functional piece of your website.

After fielding many calls like this, maybe testing another graphic design for that element is in order?

Who determines what your job will be?

[khasim]

Exactly.

And with limits on education, you get limits on job opportunities. Fine, as long as it it the person who chooses such.

If it is someone else who is already making decent money at a decent job arguing that too many people are advancing their educations ... fuck you. With a chainsaw.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Shakrai]

And with limits on education, you get limits on job opportunities. Fine, as long as it it the person who chooses such.

He didn't say there should be limits on education. He said that there should be limits on how much education the Government will subsidize.

I have a friend who is a professional student. She has two masters degrees and is now entering law school. She's entered the "real world" a few times but can't decide what she wants to be when she grows up (she's 34....) and keeps going back for more degrees. When she finally does figure out what she wants to do she'll be buried so deeply in student loans that she'll probably never be in the black. Meanwhile her indecisiveness is being subsidized by our tax dollars.

A few economists have also made the argument that too much cheap government money leaves next to no incentive to colleges to lower their rates. In fact tuition has been climbing pretty consistently for years now. This does nobody any good -- not the student who is absorbing more debt and will have less freedom of action when he/she finally finishes school, nor the taxpayer that is subsidizing the inflated tuition bill.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[commodore64_love]

>>>He said that there should be limits on how much education the Government will subsidize.

Precisely. Nobody funded my college degree. It was funded by my dad working long hours in the factory, and then I paid him back later. We did not receive one single penny from government.

Neither should people go study History or Sports Science, only to become tree cutters or walmart employees. The government should not fund this waste, and if it does, it should be tied to the expectation of results (like the ROTC). If you don't use your Pointless degree, then you must repay the money spent.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Capt_Morgan]

The govt gave me about 20,000 in loans plus I had in state tuition at a "Public Ivy" University. With my BS in computer engineering I now pay well in excess of 20,000 in taxes every year

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

He didn't say there should be limits on education. He said that there should be limits on how much education the Government will subsidize.

Lots of people say that kind of thing. Why did this guy's statement get reported? Probably because he's a professor of economics ... at a state-supported school, and who most likely got his own education with various types of government assistance. Yeah, I'd say "fuck you with a chainsaw" is pretty much an appropriate response. People who want to pull the ladder up after themselves are scum.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[CapnStank]

Correct me if I'm wrong but you are North American correct? Doesn't the government provide all secondary education with a certain percentage of taxes every year? This money is used by the universities/colleges to keep tuition lower than if students had to take on the full costs themselves. So yes, you didn't get any money from the government directly but you still collected your pennies.

Again, please correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the assumption that is how it worked in USA as it does in Canada.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Sponge Bath]

This money is used by the universities/colleges to keep tuition lower...

For state colleges, this is correct. That is why in state tuition is lower than out of state tuition, because the state taxes cover a portion of the college costs. I don't know if private colleges get state funding.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright then, they'd better guarantee me a job too.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Shakrai]

People who want to pull the ladder up after themselves are scum.

He isn't pulling the ladder up after anyone unless you are one of those people that believes it's impossible to do anything unless Uncle Sam holds your hand every step of the way. I had to delay entering college for two years and work while I was in school to afford the tuition -- but I managed to do it without burying myself under a mountain of student loan debt. It's entirely possible to go to college without help from Uncle Sam. Of course, this guy hasn't suggested taking that help away, all he's suggested is applying some common sense to way we dole out that help.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[drachenstern]

I don't know if private colleges get state funding.

No. Not usually. There may be a few states that offer to help, but in most every state I've heard of having private schools (any private schools) there is ZERO public funding.

Funny how that works huh?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[timeOday]

He didn't say there should be limits on education. He said that there should be limits on how much education the Government will subsidize.

Ok, x% of us should stop at highschool. You first!

This story is long on how college is not paying off.. but conveniently neglects the fact that those without college are even worse off.

Ours is increasingly a winner-takes-all society. By definition, that means most people will be losers. But getting on top is still the best chance you've got.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[mcmonkey]

A few economists have also made the argument that too much cheap government money leaves next to no incentive to colleges to lower their rates. In fact tuition has been climbing pretty consistently for years now. This does nobody any good -- not the student who is absorbing more debt and will have less freedom of action when he/she finally finishes school, nor the taxpayer that is subsidizing the inflated tuition bill.

Well, let's look at the housing market as an analogous situation.

Money kept artificially cheap due to government guarantees. Next to no incentive to keep housing prices down or make accurate assessments of risk of default.

But people keep borrowing to keep buying, both in spite of and because prices keep going up. (I can always flip it for a big profit next year.)

It's the American dream. Families get a home of their own; communities get stability. It's win-win!

What could go wrong?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Lumpy]

Many college grads cant do what they went to school for. I have seen CS fresh grads not be able to do some simple programming. It was mind blowing.

lack of experience limits job opportunities. Education should not ever factor into it. sadly most HR people and managers don't want to actually do work hiring someone, so they simply sort based on the biggest looking education pile. Typically this gets you a mediocre employee and not a good one.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Critical Facilities]

And with limits on education, you get limits on job opportunities. Fine, as long as it it the person who chooses such.

That should read "with limits on experience, you get limits on job opportunities". There is an illusion that opportunity is predicated on education which I feel is largely a hold over from the baby boomer generation (at least in the US). In reality, being able to demonstrate clear, evidence-based results in a given field are worth much more. I feel that a combination of solid networking and a proven track record are the most important components of creating opportunities.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a college grad with a good paying job I heartily support this. I need some of you to stock my shelves, greet me at Wal-Mart, change my oil, etc and all for as little money as possible. You could also choose a good paying manufacturing job...oh wait...we got rid of all of those and sent them overseas. Ok, go stock shelves.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Xonstantine]

The government loaned me about $5,000 in student loans. I am a college dropout that was pre-med at a mediocre state school, but I do software development. I pay about $40,000 a year in taxes every year.

The idea that you need a college degree to be financially successful is idiotic. There are plenty of blue collar professions, for example, where you can easily make a six figure income with nothing more than a year or two in trade school and some job experience.

The real key to making good money in anything is to be an expert in your field.

College degrees are used by HR recruiters simply to screen out candidates. But they are not any sort of guarantee of financial or career success, nor are they necessarily a pre-requisite. It is more difficult to pursue a white collar profession without one, but certainly is not impossible. You just won't be working from an established template.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Xonstantine]

There's zero funding in tuition, but do you really think that large amounts of Federal money doesn't somehow find its way to Harvard, MIT, Princeton, et al?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[oatworm]

This story is long on how college is not paying off.. but conveniently neglects the fact that those without college are even worse off.

Sometimes. It depends. Here's the thing - if you're talking about whether or not college pays off when you're choices are, say, becoming a 1L lawyer or becoming a lumberjack, yes, being a 1L lawyer certainly pays better. However, not everyone is making those sorts of choices, nor are they realistically in a position to do so. Since the USA doesn't really support vocational training (nobody wants to be the one that tells a parent, "Hey, your son/daughter just isn't right for college" - it's bad politics), there are a ton of students floating into four year programs that not only have no idea what they're doing there, they don't have the skills to succeed at any major. For these students, college is just an added expense. They're not going to increase their earning potential by taking remedial math or "How to write a basic four paragraph essay" English classes that they weren't any good at during high school and certainly won't get better at now that they're older; what they will do, however, is saddle themselves with more student loans than anyone with their skill set will ever be able to pay off. What this guy is saying is that, instead of encouraging them to saddle themselves with debt that they don't have the skills to pay off, we'd be better off if we encouraged them to find something they actually are good at, even if it doesn't require formal academic training, and help them make some money at that instead.

The really fun cases, however, are the ones that do have some skills, but refuse to apply them practically. I'm talking about the "I'm going to rack up $100k+ in student loans pursuing a Women's Studies grad degree" types, or, worse yet, the "I'm going to change majors eight times, stay in college pursuing a B* in something, and rack up $100k in student loan debt" crowd (being apocryphal here, but you get the idea). With these people, we're basically paying them to avoid personal responsibility and maturity. Trouble is, though we'd love to filter them out, we're in a democracy and they vote too - if we're going to pay for Sally's Civil Engineering degree, we also have to pay for Cindy's Real Life Avoidance degree because, if we don't, neither Cindy nor her doting parents are going to vote to subsidize Sally's CE degree. This guy is saying, quite rightly, that this state of affairs is utterly ridiculous. Unfortunately, since we do live in a democracy, we're pretty much stuck with it until a majority of the people decide to apply some sense and stop supporting such shenanigans.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[PRMan]

Actually, their students can still receive grants and loans from the government, so private schools still get the majority of their money from the government, albeit indirectly.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[wjousts]

I think the point is that some people are not suited to a college education. The current system still encourages those people to go to college and pursue a degree even though the only thing they'll get from it is a mountain of debt after they eventually drop out. The real solution is to increase college admission standards so that the money can be focused on those who are most able to take advantage of a college education while those who are not suited to an academic career can be guided into vocational training that better suits their abilities.

In an ideal world, all barriers to higher education will be based solely on your ability and not on how much money you (or your family) has.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[hitmark]

thanks for that line about money being cheap. Now i am really wondering what kind of world we are living in when even money have a price...

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo! Idiocracy rules the world! Who needs people who understand political issues?! We need low cast workers, aka serfs, who will feed, dress and pamper governing cast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[hitmark]

networking and talking the lingo may well be able to mask any kind of track record issues.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[billcopc]

And the tradesman next door, who followed a one-year apprenticeship and learned on-the-job, makes more money than you do, and thus pays more taxes.

A college education does not get you good jobs. Patience, dedication (read: abuse tolerance) and dumb luck get you good jobs. As long as you pick one thing to do, and do it better than half the rest, you're set.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Critical Facilities]

Maybe for a while, but sooner or later, you'll end up in the pressure cooker where it's going to be time to deliver the goods (particularly in a leadership position). I'm not implying that one can B.S. their way into an amazing opportunity merely by being able to talk-the-talk, just that the lack of a degree need not prevent one from thinking he/she can succeed in a given field.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Timothy Brownawell]

What are you saying, that only ignorant outsiders can criticize an institution? You think his telling the government to stop funding his customers is "pulling the ladder up after himself"?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[hitmark]

and thats not so much their idea either. They talk their way in, gets a paycheck, and then talk their way into something else, somewhere else, once the cover is blown.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

There may be a few states that offer to help, but in most every state I've heard of having private schools (any private schools) there is ZERO public funding.

Really? So those institutions never apply for state or federal grants?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>He said that there should be limits on how much education the Government will subsidize.

Precisely. Nobody funded my college degree. It was funded by my dad working long hours in the factory, and then I paid him back later. We did not receive one single penny from government.

Neither should people go study History or Sports Science, only to become tree cutters or walmart employees. The government should not fund this waste, and if it does, it should be tied to the expectation of results (like the ROTC). If you don't use your Pointless degree, then you must repay the money spent.

Did you go to a public school?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Sig is amusing considering the content of your post.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[BoberFett]

I paid that much in 2009 as well and never went to college. What's your point?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[tempest69]

I totally commend the putting yourself through college thing. Now under the assumption that you went to a public university, you would have received a big chunk of change from the government, sure it never touched your pocket, but it is a big ole chunk of cash. Sure you might have decided to go to a private college, but that seems like a rough chunk of change to be doing factory labor for.

The flip side is that we aren't taking advantage of the situation. Which is the real shame of the situation. Of course having a well educated populace allows for a flexible economy, when the jobs go intellectual we can go there.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Relayman]

I have an EE degree. What's a good 2nd degree? CMP ENG or Comp Sci? I want to be eligible to apply for more jobs.

You want to get an MBA. That way, you can manager other engineers which means you have to be paid more than they are but not have to do any real work.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better - they'll argue that too many people are getting degrees, prod the government into slashing loan programs and then - presto! - 10 years down the line, they'll be "forced" to lobby for ever more H1B visas due to a "lack of sufficiently educated candidates".

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised.

I regularly have to clean up the mess from the people that "talked the talk"

Though most of them actually have advanced degrees and letters after their names...

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anon1072]

You should've gone to H & R Block

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[penguinchris]

Yes, but most people that go to college don't get BS degrees (or, they *do* get BS degrees if you use different words for the acronym) and as the parent said, they end up in low-ish paying jobs and never really get anywhere in life, and if they do, it's not because of their education.

A four-year degree is seen as essential by HR departments but outside of science, engineering, tech, and so on, no one cares what you did your degree in, and they don't care if you actually learned anything. It's not just University of Phoenix crap either - real colleges and universities are jam-packed full of people who a few decades ago would have entered the job market immediately after high school and would have ended up in the same positions that they'll end up in now, and they are not getting anything useful out of their education.

I'm reminded of Ron Howard's character in American Graffiti, set in the early 60's - at the end he decides not to leave town and go to college; instead he stays home to be with his girlfriend and he ends up becoming an insurance salesman (essentially, a randomly-chosen job that requires intelligence but not a lot of advanced education). These days, it would be hard to find an insurance salesman without a four-year degree or higher.

I'm a TA for geology 101 labs at a California state university, and most of the people who take my classes are not science majors. I'm not sure if the private university I did my BS in geology at is that much better of a school or if I just didn't know many non-science majors, but some of the students that take my class are astonishing to me, and not in a good way. They're not idiots - far from it - but higher education is really not doing them any good. Many of them work full-time at normal office jobs and need a degree to advance in the company... but the training and experience they get on the job is much more useful to them than their degree will be, and very few students at this university take classes just for fun.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[DrVomact]

And with limits on education, you get limits on job opportunities. Fine, as long as it it the person who chooses such.

If it is someone else who is already making decent money at a decent job arguing that too many people are advancing their educations ... fuck you. With a chainsaw.

It's clear from your diction and your lack of analytical ability that if you ever attended college, you derived little benefit from it. In that case, you would be evidence in favor of the position held by "some experts" in the article. If you were prevented from obtaining an education (and decent manners) by extreme poverty, or are a recent immigrant who has an incomplete acquaintance with English and civilized modes of argumentation, I do apologize.

The argument (the one you attempted to address that is contained in the article that you evidently wouldn't—or couldn't—read) isn't that we should arbitrarily limit people's freedom to pursue academic learning, but that getting a four year college degree doesn't benefit everyone, and that some people would be happier and more productive if they were allowed and encouraged to attend a more practical course of studies. For example, a young person such as the Ms. Hodges mentioned at the start of the article, who ardently desires to attend welding school faces an uphill battle against the expectations of parents and of the prejudices of our educational system. Why shouldn't she be encouraged to become a welder if that's what she wants to do?

In my experience, there is a disadvantage to not having a four year college degree. It has nothing to do with the actual capabilities of the people in question, and everything to do with the baseless but widespread prejudice that if you don't have a college degree, then you shouldn't be promoted or well-paid. I've known very capable people who didn't have that "sheepskin", and were denied promotion for that reason. Some of the most intelligent and informed people I've met had no formal education beyond high school, and some of them led very successful lives despite having to combat the stigma of not having a four year degree.

My own kids taught me a lot about the limitations of the U.S. educational system.

One of my daughters hated high school. When we spoke to her about going to college, it was clear that she regarded this about as favorably as a proposal that she should spend four years in jail. She was getting poor grades in her academic high school courses, and had a low opinion of her own abilities and worth. She did like to mess around with make-up and hair...so we (her parental units) got her into a trade school program that taught her how to do whatever it is that professional beauticians do. In six months, her attitude and self-image improved by about a thousand percent. She now works happily in a top-flight shop, and makes scads of money. I'm proud of her—not because of the money, but because of the determination and intelligence she's shown in mastering her trade.

Another daughter is (tomorrow) graduating from a good public university. She hopes to get a public school position teaching science. I think her education was suitable for her ambitions, and she'll do fine.

Yet another daughter isn't doing as well as she'd like. She got a baccalaureate in psychology, and now works for the technical support group of a major telecom—a job she hates. I'm proud of her also, but I think she would be happier if she had found a more concrete interest, and pursued that instead of the essentially worthless degree in psychology. I think she was poorly served by the notion that a college degree—any college degree—is better than not having one. If she hadn't been put on those fixed academic rails, she might have discovered her own unique path.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[DrVomact]

This money is used by the universities/colleges to keep tuition lower...

For state colleges, this is correct. That is why in state tuition is lower than out of state tuition, because the state taxes cover a portion of the college costs. I don't know if private colleges get state funding.

Don't forget that pretty much all accredited colleges and universities get not only state funds (if they are officially state-sponsored), but also Federal funds, even if it's only through Federally guaranteed loans and grants made to the students.

However, that doesn't address the real issue: tuition seems to have been rising steadily over the years. When I went to college, all I had to pay was $70 per quarter—the University of California system still prided itself on being "tuition-free", so they called that $70 a "fee". That was 1966. In 2010, they still call what the students pay "fees", but the amount has gone up:

All students enrolling at the CSU pay the systemwide State University Fee which is currently $4,026 per academic year for undergraduate students enrolling in more than 6 units per term and $2,334 for undergraduates enrolling in 6 or fewer units. ... These fees vary by campus. The fee information in this section reflects the combined total of systemwide and campus fees for undergraduates.

Students who are not classified as residents of the state of California must also pay nonresident tuition when enrolling for courses at the CSU. Nonresident tuition is currently assessed at the rate of $372 per semester unit or $248 per quarter unit with an academic year maximum of $11,160.

Source

It looks like in-state tuition is about 4 thousand dollars per year at the University of California. Hmm. That doesn't sound too bad, does it? Aren't these people overreacting just a tad? Also...I remember the chicks as being prettier.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[samriel]

Yes, and then the university raises tuition so that they can cover expenses via the gov't subsidy, and make a pretty penny on top of that. Maybe Canadian universities aren't bastards, but American universities are.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Trailwalker]

And with limits on education

There is no limit on anyone's education. Time spent in any institution does not always result in an education.

The world is full of semi-literate louts who have acquired a bachelors degree in something or other, and yet failed to gain an education.

In other news, a masters is the minimum requirement to fill the position of village idiot.....

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[ShakaUVM]

CSU != UC, dude.

UC San Diego, my alma mater, was $4k-ish a year in the mid 90s, and is now up to, I think $13k/year in tuition.

Oddly enough, while they were raising all these tuition fees, they were still building massive new buildings every year.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[cduffy]

Of course money has a price; it's called "interest".

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

This money is used by the universities/colleges to keep tuition lower than if students had to take on the full costs themselves.

Check out Chapter 4 (Academic Facts and Fallacies) of Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell. He goes into a brief explanation of why government subsidation of higher education raises the price of college and how few students see a good return on their education. The tuition costs being reduced by subsidies is exactly one of the fallacies he points out, as is people that go to college to get a pointless degree even if their field shouldn't naturally require one (who needlessly drive up demand, forcing colleges to expand and thus, increasing the overall cost of running a university).

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[eparker05]

"In an ideal world, all barriers to higher education will be based solely on your ability and not on how much money you (or your family) has."

Whose ideal world?

In my ideal world, if I earn a load of money due to my own hard work and determination, I will give my (future) children the best possible chance in life by paying for a top notch education. Should there be opportunity for the hard working children with poor parents? YES! Scholarships and federal student aid should exist as a competitive need-based service.

To take you're 'ideal world' to the extreme, should a rich person not be allowed to give his children expensive toys or clothing because it gives the child an unearned advantage over the children with poor parents?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go Tritons (and Sun God)!

That said...

Oddly enough, while they were raising all these tuition fees, they were still building massive new buildings every year.

You'd really have to look at funding sources for the buildings. I suspect some of them came from funds earmarked for specific projects... funds that couldn't have been used to lower tuition.

I'll also say that many of those investments have paid of. UCSD really is an incredible school, probably even more so now than when you attended.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[ShakaUVM]

You'd really have to look at funding sources for the buildings. I suspect some of them came from funds earmarked for specific projects... funds that couldn't have been used to lower tuition.

I'll also say that many of those investments have paid of. UCSD really is an incredible school, probably even more so now than when you attended.

Eh, the Price Center expansion is a cavernous dark building, really no taste to it at all. The mini-mart is probably needed, but damn that's an ugly building.

It's also worth noting that the students kept voting it down, and yet we got it anyway. Sort of like RIMAC (which is also funded by student fees).

Some buildings ARE paid for by private entities or earmarks (when I worked for the Bioeng department they got a nice building from a foundation ~1999), but a lot are funded, somewhat unwillingly, by the students themselves.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[MikeFM]

We should just add college to the public education system. You really need at least a Bachelors degree for most decent jobs anyway so it fills the spot that high school previously filled. No dealing with complex rules and jumping through hoops and running up debt. Just educate people at the tax payers expense so they can become tax payers too. Our system should be geared to not just educate people to a minimal level but to educate them to as high a level as they can handle and to use them well. The problem with economists in general is that most of them think in terms of dollars and completely forget that money is an imaginary system that exists only to make managing rare resources easier. There is little long term benefit to playing tricks with numbers to create more money but there are huge benefits to using money to create, and better distribute, rare resources. Highly educated and intelligent people are still, and always will be, a rare resource that when used well are what makes everything else that humanity strives for possible. Bob at Burger King with a 7th grade education is not improving much the quality of life for future generations. Dr. Bob at Bioengineering Inc on the other hand may very well be creating new medicines and various other things that will help us all. A huge difference. Sure you'll always get some people that are leeches but the majority just want to do their time in school and move out into the real world and make money. Trying to weed out every possible fail point is probably the biggest reason any project fails. Most people will do their part just for that paycheck and quite a few will go beyond because they are driven. Give these driven people the resources they need with less struggle and they'll go further and do more and in general they are the ones that are our greatest resources. I'd lean more towards investing in science, engineering, and art but of course we need doctors, teachers, and even lawyers too. Even subjects such as history have a value although some of the more liberal arts type degrees I have more doubt about. Someone like your friend probably needs direction. I'll assume that with multiple masters degrees that they are intelligent and not horribly lazy so I wonder what the problem is. Fear of the real world? Unrealistic expectations of how things should be? I think periodic 'hands on' periods should be part of education to make sure that students not only learn the facts and methods but also how to apply them in real life. On the job experience can be very useful.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[MikeFM]

I'm for barriers to higher education so long as we provide a means for people to improve themselves and try again and again until they can qualify. I think the demise of the community college is a mistake because high school often does not prepare students for full college which leaves us with the choice of excluding them, and effectively having to fund and babysit them for their entire life, or just passing them along anyway where we lower our standards, put fluff classes in, etc which lowers the quality of education for the other students. I don't think college is always the right path either. In fact I think our higher education system is a giant mess that is inadequate for almost everyone. It needs a major overhaul to better fulfill the needs of modern students and should have both more practical knowledge and more theory. My experience is that most of the classes I've been to were almost without purpose and were put there just to fill space rather than to give the student a stronger understanding of their field of study. Many of those in charge of deciding the curriculum haven't been active in the field recently if at all. I went to school in electrical engineering and computer science and my wife in science and education - maybe other programs are different. I certainly agree that how much money you have should not be a barrier. I really feel that if I had been given better financial support so that I could have finished school sooner I would have been more of a win for society. A lot of years were wasted dealing with money and red tape. The system was needlessly complex too. Back when I first went to school just registering for classes was a confusing nightmare and when there were other issues OMG what a pain. It's much better now, largely due to web based documentation and services, but still would be quite confusing to a kid I think.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Limits on job opportunities? Your thinking is already broken. College isn't a rite of passage for a job. Education expands knowledge, which expands opportunities. Four years of booze and liberal arts isn't an education.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[wjousts]

In my ideal world, if I earn a load of money due to my own hard work and determination, I will give my (future) children the best possible chance in life by paying for a top notch education.

And if your kid is actually, for want of a better word, stupid? Too stupid for higher education? Not everybody is suited for higher education and no amount of money will solve that. You could spend millions on some people and they simply won't ever achieve any more. Just like no amount of money will ever turn me into an Olympic athlete, no amount of money will turn some people into top scientists, top lawyers, top doctors or captains of industry. You have to deal with the genetic cards you were dealt.

I know it's a very unamerican sentiment, but some people aren't destined to be great and it's better if they instead work on being happy. Which is, ultimately, what you should want for your kids, no?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[wjousts]

I'm for barriers to higher education so long as we provide a means for people to improve themselves and try again and again until they can qualify.

I actually think there should be a limit on the number of times you can retry. How many times does somebody have to fail before they should give up? After all, do you want a doctor who only passed his exams on the tenth try or would you rather that the med school had taken him aside and suggested a different line of work? Maybe coroner, where the patients are already dead. A few retries, yes. Unlimited retries, no.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[eparker05]

My issue wasn't that anybody is entitled to be successful, only an individual can shape one's future. But the post I was replying to made the implication than, in an ideal world, wealthy people shouldn't be able to purchase expensive education for their children.

Many mediocre people with wealthy parent's have gone on to live much better lives then mediocre people with poor parents. It isn't fair, but a fair system isn't what works nor has it even been proven to be possible. A working system gives incentive for people to be productive, and few things are a more powerful motivational force than the desire to protect/promote one's children.

Again, competitive school grants SHOULD exist because the loss of an exceptional mind due to social factors is abhorrent and antiproducive. But, just as we should help those less fortunate, we should continue to reward those who, by the standards of capitalism, have become successful.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[wjousts]

My issue wasn't that anybody is entitled to be successful, only an individual can shape one's future. But the post I was replying to made the implication than, in an ideal world, wealthy people shouldn't be able to purchase expensive education for their children.

And my point wasn't that you couldn't spend as much money as you want on tutors or prep classes for your kids. You can, but to get into college they'll have to demonstrate some minimum ability and no amount of money can subvert that.

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[DrVomact]

CSU != UC, dude.

Well, that might account for the deterioration of chick quality that I observed in the NYT article.

It says "The California State University" at the top of the tuition info I quoted; if it's not the University of California, what the heck is it, then? Wait...memory is seeping back from the long years that have elapsed since I was a student at UC Berkeley from 1966–1970...I seem to dimly recall a cycle of re-orgs of the California college/university system; maybe this is part of the new—and infinitely more confusing—state of affairs? When I attended Berkeley, there was a college across the Bay called "San Francisco State College". They thought their demonstrations were as good as ours, but of course they were wrong—we, as a University, obviously had better (i.e., more violent and chaotic) demonstration than them. I think the same school is now a University. Are their demonstrations any good? And where is this "California State University" thing if it's not in California, and what is it, if it's not a State University? An ex-junior college?

Re:Who determines what your job will be?

[ShakaUVM]

>>It says "The California State University" at the top of the tuition info I quoted; if it's not the University of California, what the heck is it, then?

There's the state universities (SDSU, SJSU, SFSU, Fresno State, etc.), and the University of California (UCSD, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCSF, etc.), two different public education systems. The state universities are cheaper and more crowded, and the UC system is considered to have a better academic reputation. The state universities don't offer nearly as good a grad school program, if they offer it at all, but they tend to offer things like teacher credential and business programs that some UC schools ignore.

For example, if you want to be a teacher and you're at UC San Diego, you have to drive across town to SDSU to get it. Likewise, if you're in Air Force ROTC at UCSD, you have to drive to SDSU twice a week, and so forth.

The state schools tend to have better athletics programs, with the exception of UCLA and Berkeley.

The University of California has a number of top ten public school spots in the various lists, such as best Pharmacy School (UCSF), best Bioengineering Department (UCSD) and so forth, and owns half of the spots on the overall top 10 list.

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-top-public

Necessity of a 4-year degree

[Bicx]

I got a job as a software developer at a large Fortune 500 company about a year ago. It's more or less a financial institution, but the need for software developers is high. In this company, developers are treated more like business partners rather than IT grunts, and that's mostly due to the fact that we are so influential in determining how the business is run. Even though we primarily develop software, we have to know the business in and out in order to function.

With that said, I have a 4-year degree in Computer Science. Having the degree was definitely key to getting a job in my case, since I was a raw graduate when they hired me. However, I've learned that experience in the field is by far the preferred rating factor. There are guys on my team working along side me who have 4-year degrees in Business Management and even English, but they happened to gain some (5+ years) programming experience somewhere along the way. There's also a new guy who got his 2-year degree from a local community college. That's okay, but his real selling point was the amount of experience he had, which he gained while I was finishing up the other half of my education.

In a way, this annoys me, because I'd really like to think that my degree choice sets me apart from people who made different choices. I guess if I chose to work for an actual software business or found a job that utilized more advanced CS techniques, I might have the upper hand. However, in the real world where software usually plays a support role, I have to come to terms with my place in the business world. In another respect, the possibility of gaining experience in another field and being able to potentially change career paths without getting a new degree (within reason) is a rather freeing thought.

Re:Necessity of a 4-year degree

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in similar position to you. However, my ability to handle multi-threading correctly, advanced data structures like ALR trees, understand difficult to figure out problems at the OS level, have allowed me to do things those others can't. It may not come up often, but when it does you will be the only one that can understand these things correctly.

If your degree didn't give you better insight in these areas then you would have been better off skipping the CS degree.

It all comes down to, do you know things they do not, and can you apply them. It may take you a few years to realize you actually know stuff people with 15 years experience can't understand, but it will happen if you paid attention in class.

Re:Necessity of a 4-year degree

[COMON$]

You are probably at the point now where you have enough experience to stand alone. However the CS degree will give you a significant edge over other people that have similar experience.

That being said.

Dont think of your CS degree like a badge. Consider it a refinement of your skills. Now that you have plenty of experience, the CS degree you have should have helped you recognize the skills you need to do your job. Help devise what is important vs what is a passing fad. CS degrees in my opinion (BSCS here) are more of a degree that teaches you critical thinking, the ability to work with the right set of tools to get a job done, and should still be guiding you in your thinking to make you more efficient. I am on my 9th year out of my BSCS program and while I cannot remember details of my program anymore, I remember the overarching principles that to this day set me apart from others in my field. They were abilities I already had before I graduated, just honed, kind of a refiner's fire. I am a Sysadmin and my BSCS does wonderful things for me. So don't feel irritated that you dont have a Software job or something, CS is pretty universal and you do have the upper hand, if you went to a proper CS program, in pretty much any job you will take. It will show in your salary and quality of work. Not that non CS people don't do good work but I will take a graduate of a real CS program over a non CS grad pretty much any day of the week.

Re:Necessity of a 4-year degree

[Anonymous Coward]

Experience is worth way more than your degree. Period. You could have gotten a Master's degree and you'd still be passed over for a guy with 5+ years of experience.

Re:Necessity of a 4-year degree

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in a similar situation. I work for a large Fortune 500 company too. I have a 4 year CS degree, while my coworkers, who are also developers, do not. We have ex-musicians, econ majors, english majors... pretty much everything except CS majors. But, I have found that I am a much faster programmer and I can debug programs much, much faster. When my coworkers run into an unfamiliar bug, they start googling, and don't really know what to do if they cannot find the answer on the web. For me, I know more about how things work, how a database is put together, how to work with binary data, etc. I find it really does give me an edge over the others.

Re:Necessity of a 4-year degree

[ericrost]

I've found that's one of the best things about a large company (you're already in the door, so if you want to do something outside your degree field its usually relatively easy).

Re:Necessity of a 4-year degree

[LanMan04]

I have a Masters in CS and I mainly do light javscript coding, graphic design, and shittons of project management at a large financial institution.

Whatever pays the bills, brotha. :)

Re:Necessity of a 4-year degree

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, 5+ years experience *and* a degree.

I don't know what industry you're talking about, but none of the software superpowers (Apple, IBM, MS, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, ...) will even look at you if you don't have a degree. You'd be lucky to get an interview at all without one.

The amount of on the job training required to get some guy with 5 years of self taught "programming" experience into a new sector is enormous. They're just not as flexible because they don't have the understanding of why things work. Experience is almost always too focused to make you a flexible worker outside your original field.

The same is not true of a recent CS graduate. They have a HUGE knowledge toolbox and can be trained quickly to work in lots of different software sectors. If you're a recent CS grad you can pick any field you want and probably get a job there. If you have 7 years experience writing business applications and no degree, getting a job working on the Zune software or all that code we talked about recently from Toyota will be much much harder than it would for some young kid who just graduated. Period.

If you want the flexibility to hop sectors later, get a degree. That's what it's all about.

Re:Necessity of a 4-year degree

[Anonymous Coward]

That's okay, but his real selling point was the amount of experience he had, which he gained while I was finishing up the other half of my education.

In a way, this annoys me, because I'd really like to think that my degree choice sets me apart from people who made different choices

I choose to think of the payoff of a high-quality CS degree as an exponential curve. At the beginning, right after you graduate, you think "there are other programmers at my level without this degree, what was the point?" But you'll go further because you have a strong understanding of the fundamentals. In ten years, you'll be making more money and enjoying your job much better because of your degree.

Re:Necessity of a 4-year degree

[Anonymous Coward]

As an English graduate who is currently working as a code monkey, I greatly appreciated this post :)

What this is really about

[Anonymous Coward]

is all in the last comment. 'Subsidize'. It's a bunch of wealthy schmucks that want to do away with public education and the middle class.

Well duh. It is simple economics

[mini me]

The vast majority of college attending individuals are there because they have been told that the only way to successful employment is to become a college graduate. The fatal flaw in the logic is that when everyone has a degree, the degree no longer holds any prestige over any other job candidates. You are, again, competing against everyone else.

People need to stop equating education with employment. If you are honestly interested in a subject and feel academia is the only route to fulfil your desires, by all means, please do peruse further education in that area of study. If getting a great job is your goal, however, college is not the place to achieve that. The time would be better spent learning what it takes to get the job you desire.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[gurps_npc]

What we need are a bunch of succesful, reasonably well paying jobs that explicitedly state no college degree required.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[Khisanth Magus]

We moved all those to China, sorry.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[mini me]

I recently saw a job ad from Apple that did actually state that no degree is required. I will add that it actually looked like an interesting position, not some kind of menial labor job. I think many people would consider a good job at Apple to be reasonably successful. Heck, there are people who have degrees that would dream to have a job like that.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[Opportunist]

Unfortunately, a college degree is the ONLY way to get the job you desire. When was the last time you didn't read something like "master's degree in X a requirement" for a job that doesn't end in "want fries with that?"?

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[chipperdog]

Apple Genius? That requires no knowledge or experience

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[mini me]

Unless it is legally mandated by the profession that you meet certain educational requirements (i.e. lawyer, doctor, etc.), your education will not prevent you from getting jobs that you desire. The problem is that people have been conditioned to be ashamed about not having a degree and as a result do not have the confidence necessary to acquire said jobs, which then further perpetuates the idea in people's minds.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[mini me]

It was a design job. Given that Apple's primary function is design, I assume it would be a good job. As I said, the description sounded quite interesting for someone looking for a job in that field.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of college attending individuals are there because they have been told that the only way to successful employment is to become a college graduate. The fatal flaw in the logic is that when everyone has a degree, the degree no longer holds any prestige over any other job candidates. You are, again, competing against everyone else.

That's why my dad told me I need to get a PhD!

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[mini me]

That is the trend, for sure. As more people find they cannot compete with just a degree, they will seek further education to become more marketable.

But eventually everyone will feel that a PhD is the only way to get a job and everyone will get a PhD. Then what? Stay in school until you are 65 years old completing even higher levels of education so that you can, one day, finally get a job?

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[CODiNE]

Yeah but then Steve jobs will come into the interview and go.

"I bet you're a VIRGIN!"

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Competing against everyone else is still better than being trumped by everyone else, because "they" have a degree you don't have.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of a degree in and of itself doesn't prevent this.

The "Sales manager position requires a bachelor's degree or higher" does. Companies can set whatever terms of employment they wish regarding education. There's no law preventing companies from doing this in the U.S.

Want to keep the mentally handicapped from working at your place and sidestepping the ADA? Require a two year degree for all positions, since you'll be "cross-training new hires" or somesuch nonsense.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[imgod2u]

Most jobs may state minimal requirements "or equivalent experience" but for the most part, HR will not let resumes pass without qualifications.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[Opportunist]

Unless you're opening your own business, not having a degree will ensure you're not going to work in your dream job (provided your dream doesn't involve the smell of bubbling frying oil).

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[penguinchris]

How does one apply confidence towards getting hired, when their application is rejected before a real person even bothers to look at it because some software scanned their resume and determined it didn't have all the right key words? Or does confidence mean "exaggerating" in your resume, and packing it full of jargon, so that you can get through this filter?

Really, it's necessary to have a relevant degree to get an entry-level job these days. Once you have your foot in the door, sure, you can advance to better positions through hard work and "confidence". But it's a lot harder to get that foot in the door these days than it apparently was in the past.

Of my friends from high school and college - all of whom graduated with four-year degrees in 2008, many of them science BSs (including myself) - of those that aren't in grad/med school I would estimate about half have entry-level jobs (and not all in their career of choice) by now, and the rest are working shitty jobs and/or living at home until they can find something. And remember - this is *with* good, relevant degrees. If we can't get the jobs we were educated for, how will someone without those degrees? As the parent said, job listings say "degree in X or related field is required". Your resume will not be looked at if you don't have that.

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[Eli Gottlieb]

I question the notion that 25% of the country having a bachelors degree is too many college graduates...

Re:Well duh. It is simple economics

[longbot]

It's been said elsewhere in this discussion, but bears repeating: if you don't have a college degree, you're next to unemployable. I made the decision not to go, since none of the genuine interests I had were in any way applicable to the job market, and I didn't feel like wasting an enormous amount of money on a degree that wouldn't help me find a better job. I wish I had gone and gotten even a "useless" degree in a field like English or Philosophy in hindsight. Because the job market right now is absolute and utter shit if you don't have a 4yr degree, even if it's completely unrelated to the job you're applying for. It's resume padding, pure and simple... but also utterly essential with a job market so saturated with college graduates.

In a nutshell, education does equal employment. Or at least a better chance at it. If I had the time and money, I'd go now. But I work full time and I'm broke, so I have neither.

Ah ha

[Anonymous Coward]

Five years ago I was telling everyone university is a cult. Universities are businesses, and they are not run by fools. The emotional appeal of the "you must have a bachelor's" doesn't quite match up to the reality, does it?

Tell that to the employers

[spookymonster]

When every job out there has a 4-year degree as a prereq, it's kinda hard to justify getting anything less.

Re:Tell that to the employers

[dafz1]

When every job out there has a 4-year degree as a prereq

and 5 years previous experience...but that's a different topic.

Re:Tell that to the employers

[An Onerous Coward]

Thank you! Finally, somebody says it.

If only degree holders have a shot at a decent middle class life, and people are complaining about too many people getting degrees, well, it's easy to connect the dots.

It's true

[fustakrakich]

Primary education is much more important.. Get 'em while they're young, before puberty... We don't need a bunch of lawyers and MBAs

It's not too many graduates...

[Saishuuheiki]

...it could however be that there are too many Liberal Arts graduates. Seriously though, there are gluts of some degrees but shortages of others. Generally this will reflect in the salaries they receive so it will balance out eventually. It would be sensible for the government to sponsor more specific majors, while not those who have an excess of students.

Pot Meet Kettle

[itsdrewmiller]

"[A university economist said,] 'If people want to go out and get a master's degree in [anything but economics] and then [do something other than economics], that's fine. But I don't think the public should be subsidizing [things from which I don't personally benefit].'"

Re:Pot Meet Kettle

[profplump]

Or he might have been referring to the economic theory under which we subsidize higher education -- that the money we spend sending people to school will be made up in their additional tax liability and increased economic output after they graduate. That theory only holds if the people we educate actually go on to make more money and have increased economic output, which is not true if they work as a lumberjack.

But hey, if you want randomly bash people without bothering to understand what they're talking about who I am I to stop you.

On Educational Elitism

[maskwa]

Any folks out there that crap on the skilled trades should consider: you can't outsource your plumber to India.

I've been saying this since 1994

[Culture20]

College is the new high school. So much so that colleges are bending over backwards to allow entry to the dumbest among us. My University's Math department had a Math 001 course for preparation to take Algebra courses (001 taught basic math like fractions). But apparently 001 was too hard for some high school graduates; a Math010 course was developed to teach things like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In &$#%#%*ing college!

Combine that with some HR mandates that college degrees are required for anything above minimum wage, and you've got a perfect storm for devaluing a B.S. or B.A. An Associates degree is already worthless; it says "I went to college, but dropped out after it got too hard."

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god yes, What the hell is up with all these remedial courses? If you can't pass the dang entrance placement exam,then you shouldn't be admitted.PERIOD.It takes away and impacts other courses for people who can pass the placements tests for college level material.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Anonymous Coward]

An Associates degree is already worthless; it says "I went to college, but dropped out after it got too hard."

Actually, mine says, "I grew up poor and worked hard to get a state tuition incentive to pay my way through college. I'm also smart enough not to go into debt for this crap."

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Anonymous Coward]

What college is this that you speak of?

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[The GIS Guy]

Try the entire UC/CSU System along with community colleges in California for starters. Although I have read that some of the UC's are wising up and getting rid of the remedial courses.About time .

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[David Chappell]

Well put. Stretching out high school to eight years helps no one and puts a burden on our economy. Unfortunately, there seems to be no shortage of people who think that lengthening the school day, the school year, and then sending everyone to college will fix what ails our educational system.

In reality all it does is reduce the quality of education even further by destroying all sense of urgency.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Locke2005]

If you've got students taking remedial math in college, that says a lot about the failure of public schools to prepare kids for college. How about if we abandon the idea of "social promotion", and go back to the old system of not promoting a child to the next grade until they have mastered the prerequisites of the grade they are in! The problem with promoting them anyway is that once they fall behind, they don't catch up, they only fall farther and farther behind. Shouldn't a high school diploma certify that you already have a basic understand of math and algebra? Some countries even teach calculus in high school!

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[nine-times]

But apparently 001 was too hard for some high school graduates; a Math010 course was developed to teach things like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In &$#%#%*ing college!

Well why bother trying to teach those things in primary or secondary school? The purpose of primary and secondary school is merely to prepare you for college, but college is where you're supposed to learn everything, right?

*sigh*

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Culture20]

Some countries even teach calculus in high school!

I learned first year Calc in high School, but it was an advanced placement course. The regular-track kids had to at least know algebra and maybe trig. No one graduated without knowing basic arithmetic. I don't know where these kids without math skills are coming from, but your theory of social advancement makes sense.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Anonymous Coward]

>> a Math010 course was developed to teach things like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

I call bullshit...citation needed, Culture20.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[swb]

A friend who is a college professor finds that most students, even those at the junior/senior level, have an extremely poor written English skills. He's shown me papers and bluebooks (the most telling, since it requires thinking & writing on the fly and without the aid of spell/grammar check) and the quality of writing is shockingly poor. The quality of the thinking nearly so.

He's been teaching for a while and he thinks that in the last 10-15 years he's really noticed a precipitous decline in the quality of students. He attributes a lot of it to high schools but a lot of it also to the schools' need to let anyone in to keep enrollment numbers up (and thus money rolling in).

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Locke2005]

Oregon uses "social promotion" for grades K-8 (they are quite honest about this). Then in high school, they switch to a system where you actually have to earn credits by passing tests to advance. Meaning that children that have fallen behind are looking at 5 or 6 years of high school; most of them simply drop out at that point. Learning is structured as layers that build on top of other layers; unless you are really bright being pushed into higher layers without the necessary prerequisites is simply wasting your time. (There are some exceptions; I took Dynamics before I took the prerequisite Statics class, which forced me derive most of Statics on my own. But Statics consists of a single principle: The sum of the forces adds up to zero, and Dynamics is simply F = ma. The rest is really high school trigonometry; both subjects are hardly worth spending a whole college term on.)

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[rajanala83]

I'm on my way to a PhD in ecology, but would have been happy with an Associate Degree if it just could land me a job in research, I'm not brave enough to try an Ed Ricketts-like stunt on my own.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Anonymous Coward]

>My University's Math department had a Math 001 course for preparation to take Algebra courses (001 taught basic math like fractions). But apparently 001 was too hard for some high school graduates; a Math010 course was developed to teach things like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

what the hell? where on Earth did you attend college?

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[sznupi]

US already has the lowest social mobility among "developed countries" (shares that spot with the UK). If you want to go into the area of social mobility typical for developing countries...ok.

PS. You didn't have calculus in highschool? Everybody had basics here, for the "math-phys" and "math-it" this was the most major block, taking over a year...

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Locke2005]

My high school graduating class was 30 students. 5 of us were in the advanced math class. I was far more advanced than anyone else in the class, but for some reason the school didn't feel like starting a more advanced math class for just me. Go figure...

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with dropping out of college when it gets too hard?

That is, if you mean by getting too hard, you mean, hard to keep up paying the bills and living without income.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Anonymous Coward]

As a math professor in just such a college let me say, this is dead on. I shudder to think what these B-level high school graduates are doing in their secondary ed classes.

I work at a CUNY school, where we also teach *arithmetic* to huge numbers (easily the majority) of incoming students. The saddest thing is that even this is usually ineffectual. These people simply do not belong in higher education. They should be making 80 dollars an hour as plumbers, electricians, and other kinds of skilled laborer.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Anonymous Coward]

While it sounds harsh, there are so many people in college today that just truly do not deserve to be, but as you said, the administrations of these colleges are bending over backwards to let any and everyone in. What’s sad is it’s not even just happening at the undergraduate level. In the graduate program I’m currently in, there’s a student who has now been caught plagiarizing a whole paper from another student(ripped the paper exactly and just replaced the name) AND cheating on an exam. And despite all of this, the person has yet to be removed from the program.

Maybe the school is waiting to kick them out after the semester, but it’s pathetic that such activities don’t warrant an instant removal from the program. And it also raises the question of how someone like this could get a Bachelor’s degree in the first place, let alone admission into a graduate program. While I’ll admit my school isn’t the highest of ranked universities in the country, it’s also nowhere near what you’d consider bottom of the barrel. If this kind of crap happens here, what’s it like elsewhere where standards are even lower?

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[An Onerous Coward]

I don't think "a sense of urgency" promotes educational achievement at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. As I said in another post, Finland kicks our ass in public education, despite:

1) having a hefty social safety net that shields citizens from the dangers of unemployment and poverty.
2) having a relatively narrow gap between poor and rich, so the financial rewards of doing well in school are less.
3) having a substantially larger number of youth who see trade school as a viable alternative to secondary education. Why do well in subjects you don't plan on seeing again?

You would think that, if fear of poverty was a powerful motivator for educational excellence, the picture would be roughly the opposite.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[An Onerous Coward]

Um, shouldn't you fix the K-12 system *before* you axe the classes that make up for their shortfalls?

Or do you get off on the idea of people not being able to recover from the mistakes and limited opportunities of childhood?

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Genocaust]

An Associates degree is already worthless; it says "I went to college, but dropped out after it got too hard."

Mine says "I spent 6 years active duty in the military. I learned a solid trade and spent the extra time to get the paper to back it up."

My work experience helped me get my current job far more than any education; the A.A.S. was just a kicker for extra money.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[Phroggy]

...colleges are bending over backwards to allow entry to the dumbest among us. My University's Math department had a Math 001 course for preparation to take Algebra courses (001 taught basic math like fractions). But apparently 001 was too hard for some high school graduates; a Math010 course was developed to teach things like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In &$#%#%*ing college!

I applaud your university for offering these courses. If an adult doesn't know how to multiply and divide, where are they supposed to go to learn?

Obviously the fact that there are adults who don't know how to do basic arithmetic points to a huge failing in our elementary education system, but don't blame the colleges for trying to do something about it.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[David Chappell]

When I said that the sense of urgency is destroyed when too much time is spent in the classroom, I was not referring to the fear of poverty. I meant that teachers lose their sense of urgency, the feeling that they need to make each day count.

I have seen this with my own eyes. When I was in the eighth grade the teachers had 180 days per year to teach. They spent more than half of the time chatting with the students and telling war stories. When I was in the ninth grade I attended a technical high school where the teachers had 90 days per year to teach the same material. The time wasting dropped to almost zero.

I strongly suspect that if the school day or the school year were lengthened, less teaching would be done, not more. The additional time was simply be wasted.

Re:I've been saying this since 1994

[An Onerous Coward]

Sorry for the delay in replying. I see what you mean. But to say that classroom time is "wasted" is to ignore the primary purpose of public education: to warehouse kids so that adults can do economically rewarding work.

Call me cynical. I don't like it, but I think it's true, and any talk about teaching kids more efficiently does have to grapple with the knock-on effects to greater society.

huh?

[NotQuiteReal]

Telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is a lot like telling a 5-year-old not to go near the cookie jar.

I think you meant something more like:

Telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is a lot like saying "But mom! All the cool kids ARE jumping off the bridge!"

Re:huh?

[Bugamn]

Are you implying that Europeans are cool?

Re:huh?

[TheGeneration]

Actually, telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is much more like saying "Good morning special needs student Butch, see the straight A students on the otherside of the room over there? Don't you want to be like them with a prosperous future? No? You don't? What's that? ...You think being stupid and short sighted is cool. Alright then Butch."

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

NotQuiteReal probably just forgot to put a cute accent over the "jumping off the bridge" part.

Re:huh?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is a lot like saying "But mom! All the cool kids ARE jumping off the bridge!"

This is going to come off as a troll, and I don't mean to say that European societies are perfect in any way; but frankly on the whole, Europeans run their countries, societies and economies a lot better than Americans do. I realise patriotism, Ryandianism and past performance may lead many Americans to believe otherwise, but you need only look at objective metrics in any of a number of fields to see just how far modern America has fallen behind its contemporaries. All these newspapers columns about "a crumbling superpower" didn't just spring out of thin air you know.

Now, so intertwined have western societies become, it's hard to cleanly separate the problems and declines of America from those same contemporary effects in Europe. But one thing is certain; as a self governing society America is more dysfunctional than any of its peers. This didn't happen overnight, but is rather the result of decades of mismanagement, short-sighted policies and misguided ideologies which by and large (UK accepted) did not take hold in Europe.

Again, this post is going to come off as a troll, but really its a response to what is effectively a troll. Yes there are many problems across the European continent, but the notion that American society and government is superior to European version is incredibly outdated. America is a country in need of deep and comprehensive reform of almost all of its institutions, and the first step in that reform will be to realise just how badly it is needed.

Re:huh?

[FooAtWFU]

The straight A students who need a bit of a reality check because they suddenly find that they can't spend other peoples' money anymore, like the UK, and Greece? You know, I was friends with a borderline-special-needs kids in school myself, and last I heard the girl's happily married and honestly employed with a modicum of productivity, and pretty happy.... certainly better than some of the really smart straight-A private-college grads who are tens of grands in the hole already and can't figure out how to do much with themselves. (One guy I know who got a biology degree or such at a prestigious private university is now working at Starbucks; at least he gets to meet people, I suppose.)

Re:huh?

[d34dluk3]

I would mod you troll if I had points. Not because I take offense at the notion that Europeans could be better at something, but because you never actually bring up any examples/evidence. Your argument is basically "Europe is better because Europe is better and America sucks because America sucks." Examples of specific areas in which European systems are more desirable/equitable/profitable would have gone a long way toward making you less annoying.

Re:huh?

[Bigjeff5]

(One guy I know who got a biology degree or such at a prestigious private university is now working at Starbucks; at least he gets to meet people, I suppose.)

That's cool, all the biology majors I know drive trucks for a living. It's good to know a biology degree gives you options! ;)

Re:huh?

[clarkkent09]

I don't think you're a troll but you are close because your entire post amounts to a simple statement that Europe is "better" than USA in some undefined way. Can you please provide some examples? I can give you top ten reasons why USA is better than Europe:

1. USA has a constitutional system that did not produce a dictatorship in the last 234 years since it was introduced. Europe has had dozens including some of the world's worst ones since then and still has some.
2. Inherent individual liberty (not by government grant) is still heavily on the agenda in the USA even though it is being gradually eroded. In Europe it is a completely forgotten concept.
3. USA leads the world in innovation by far in virtually all technical fields. Take Nobel prize in physics: USA: 73, next highest country Germany: 21 (most of which looong time ago). Take computer technology. Take medical science, biotechnology, you name it.
4. USA leads the world by far in arts and culture. New York is the world capital of arts, not Paris or London any more. Hollywood is the world capital of popular culture. Europe for the most part copies the USA.
5. USA has a military that protects both USA and Europe and then some. Europe does not have a military that can protect itself.
6. According to the most reputable (UK based) university ranking system the USA has 13 of the world's top 20 universities: http://topuniversities.com/world-university-rankings Europe has 4 and all of them are in UK. Germany has 0. France has 0.
7. According to the most UN indices that measure human and economic development, USA is actually ahead of large European countries like UK, Germany and France. There are smaller countries like Norway or Sweden that are ahead but those can hardly be compared to the USA in size and diversity.
8. Bankrupt European welfare countries like Greece are as we speak begging the World Bank for a bailout, with the rest of the PIIGS to follow. USA has bankrupt welfare states too, like California, but it is still by far the largest contributor to the World Bank and the IMF.
9. European heads of state come to the USA to plead for special relationships and get patted on the head like pets. Not the other way around.
10. According to polls Europeans are far more eager to move to the USA than Americans are to move to Europe

Nothing is perfect and USA does need reforms but in the opposite direction of Europe i.e towards less statism, not more.

Re:huh?

[quanticle]

This is going to come off as a troll, and I don't mean to say that European societies are perfect in any way; but frankly on the whole, Europeans run their countries, societies and economies a lot better than Americans do.

So that 25% youth unemployment rate in France is just ideal? Or how about the Greek government's near bankruptcy and subsequent bailout by Germany?

But one thing is certain; as a self governing society America is more dysfunctional than any of its peers.

In my experience, all societies are dysfunctional, but in different ways. Europe is dysfunctional in that they've put so much into making the lives of the old comfortable that they've made the lives of the young hellish. America, if anything, has chosen the opposite road - youth and energy are valued here, not experience and wisdom.

Yes there are many problems across the European continent, but the notion that American society and government is superior to European version is incredibly outdated.

Europe isn't inferior to America, but neither is it superior. Europe has its own share of problems and issues. If you want to look at the next set of world superpowers, look at China and India, not Europe.

America is a country in need of deep and comprehensive reform of almost all of its institutions, and the first step in that reform will be to realise just how badly it is needed.

And Europe is no different.

Re:huh?

[BoberFett]

Like Greece, huh? They're pretty prosperous I hear.

Re:huh?

[NeutronCowboy]

Here are two I like to pull out: wage disparity and longevity. One is generally thought to indicate how egalitarian a society is, and the other how good the quality of life is. In both, the US shows some disturbing data.

For wage disparity, Wikipedia has an interesting world map from the World CIA Factbook of 2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png The US ranks above Russia in its GINI coefficient, and with China, Venezuela and Madascar. Even Greenspan thought that this level of wage disparity is disturbing.

For life expectancy, see again the CIA world factbook for 2009: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html. The US ranks 49th, below any EU country except Poland. Heck, Ireland scores higher.

Both are areas where Americans like to beat their chests, and both are areas where the US not only fails, but is on a level with countries that Americans consider ignorant and authoritarian backwaters.

Re:huh?

[clarkkent09]

Equality by itself doesn't mean anything, if it did North Korea would be the ideal society: everyone is equally hungry. US poverty line these days is $22,000/year for a family of four, with only about 17% of the population living below that line. Compare that with the average income in those countries you mention and you will see that even the small percentage of people living in "poverty" in the USA are still having a better standard of living than the "middle class" in those countries. As for the very rich, what do you think they do with their billions? Keep them under their mattress? No, they invest it in new businesses.

As for the life expectancy, you make a big deal of the fact that the US ranks 49th but actually the difference between the no. 2 and no. 49 is only 4 years. I think that can be accounted for by the lifestyle more than anything else. It's not scarcity that causes Americans to live less long but the abundance of cheap food: they are too fat.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great, lump us all in with the greasy lazy guys and the country who's only achievement in the last 20 years is being a leader in unemployment, unprovoked stabbings and bad weather...

Re:huh?

[TheGeneration]

I suppose I should be counting Mediterranean and eastern European nations as part of Europe. But really I was thinking more of the northern countries like Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, France, and the UK.

Re:huh?

[An Onerous Coward]

Read "The Spirit Level", then get back to me.

Never mind. You won't. So let me summarize: within the industrialized world, there is almost no correlation between average income and positive social goods like long life, good health, good education, low teen pregnancy rates, and social trust. But there is a strong correlation between income equality and those same goods. Societies with little income inequality (Japan, Norway, France, etc.) do very well, while countries with huge income inequality (U.S., Singapore, etc.) do very poorly. And absolute income does almost nothing to protect a country from those ill effects.

Do you think that Americans' uniquely high levels of obesity come about because none of the other countries can afford to fill their stomachs? That's absurd. In every industrialized nation, food accounts for a small fraction of the average person's budget. They could eat much, much more if they wanted. No, Americans are obese because an unequal society is a society full of stressors, and food is a natural coping mechanism. The idea of "comfort food" is a reality, proven by numerous studies. Also, stressed out people are more sedentary.

Let me pose a question, to see just how well your right-wing model of reality is calibrated:

Take two wealthy, industrialized societies. In society A, the price for not getting a good education is a life of poverty and shame. In society B, there is no reason to fear poverty because the government provides generous welfare benefits.

In society A, the wealthiest people make ten to twenty times as much as the poorest people do, so the rewards for being ambitious and doing well in school are huge. In society B, the wealthiest members of society only make a few times what the poorest do, so there is little financial incentive to do well in school.

In society A, polls of high school students show that almost all of them want to attend college. In society B, a large fraction of the students say that they'd be happy with trade school.

No surprise, society A is the U.S., society B is Finland, and despite what a social darwinist right winger would say are strong disincentives against performing well in school -- no chance at great wealth if you succeed, no risk of poverty if you fail -- Finnish kids outperform American kids by a wide margin (a gap that is even wider for the poorest kids).

It's almost as though giving kids security about their future and their place in society leads to a more conducive learning environment. But no, that's crazy.

If it were just a measure of life expectancy, then you might have made a showing with your arguments. But how do you explain why "impoverished" Europe outperforms us in:

* Life expectancy
* infant mortality
* educational outcomes
* obesity
* crime rate
* teen pregnancy
* measures of social trust
* measures of life satisfaction
* homelessness rates
* the status of women and minorities

Further, why are differences in income inequality between the fifty states also predictive of their performance on these same benchmarks?

Re:huh?

[d34dluk3]

According to that map you linked on wage disparity, Kazakhstan is one of the world's most egalitarian countries. I think we can agree that any metric that puts *stan better than the US is screwed up. Also, an argument could be made that the US is more of a meritocracy than Europe. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

On life expectancy, I can buy that, but I'm not sure it's policy related (I know your post didn't mention policy, but I was replying to a poster who did). There's a good portion of Americans who happily do things that are well known to kill (smoke, eat fatty foods, etc.). The government here has put a great deal of effort into educating people, and yet they still partake in these behaviors. At that point, it's not really a policy problem anymore.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a European, I'd like to add my thoughts since I agree with half of what you say but you seem to simplify a lot.

1. USA has a constitutional system that did not produce a dictatorship in the last 234 years since it was introduced. Europe has had dozens including some of the world's worst ones since then and still has some.

You compare a single country to a continent.

2. Inherent individual liberty (not by government grant) is still heavily on the agenda in the USA even though it is being gradually eroded. In Europe it is a completely forgotten concept.

You're not entirely wrong but you are definitely exaggerating.

3. USA leads the world in innovation by far in virtually all technical fields. Take Nobel prize in physics: USA: 73, next highest country Germany: 21 (most of which looong time ago). Take computer technology. Take medical science, biotechnology, you name it.

Once again, you're not wrong but you're leaving something out. Europe had to be rebuilt, the US was intact after the war.

4. USA leads the world by far in arts and culture. New York is the world capital of arts, not Paris or London any more. Hollywood is the world capital of popular culture. Europe for the most part copies the USA.

Arts is subjective and you won't find many Europeans that agree with your opinion :) Besides, isn't popular culture an euphemism for crappy art?

5. USA has a military that protects both USA and Europe and then some. Europe does not have a military that can protect itself.

There's no doubt about the US having the by far mightiest military in the world but what Europe needs to protect itself from determines whether it can or can't. Terrorism? Both the US and Europe have failed. The US is trying harder but is probably more threatened as well and spies more on its own citizens in trying to protect itself. Nuclear strikes? Neither can at the moment and even with the missile shield, it will still depend on whether it's a couple of missiles from a rogue state or all of Russia's that are coming. The follow-up is of course which is a more likely target - any European country or the US?

6. According to the most reputable (UK based) university ranking system the USA has 13 of the world's top 20 universities: http://topuniversities.com/world-university-rankings Europe has 4 and all of them are in UK. Germany has 0. France has 0.

Yes. But on which side of the pond is the population more educated in general? AFAIK not everyone in the US goes to a a top university and since education here is taxpayer-funded we look down on American universities in general even though we too acknowledge your top universities. Since education is free, costs do not exclude anyone from attending and thus admissions are entirely based on merit. There are a handful of institutions (such as cosmetologist, hairdresser etc.) that are open to anyone that pays for their education and since no merits are required, people usually have a certain dismissive "oh, you had to pay for your education..." attitude towards those and reason the same way about Americans that have paid for their tuition instead of having been admitted entirely on merit.

7. According to the most UN indices that measure human and economic development, USA is actually ahead of large European countries like UK, Germany and France. There are smaller countries like Norway or Sweden that are ahead but those can hardly be compared to the USA in size and diversity.

In other words, you prefer a selective comparison that makes the US look better?

8. Bankrupt European welfare countries like Greece are as we speak begging the World Bank for a bailout, with the rest of the PIIGS to follow. USA has bankrupt welfar

Re:Only Fund REAL Degrees

[santiagoanders]

Look up the The National Science & Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant

Blame the employers, not the students...

[ciggieposeur]

Employers started raising the bar on a living wage a long time ago. From "high school diploma" to "some college" and now "four year degree" are bare minimums just to get the resume past HR into the manager's hands. Hell, we just hired people with four year degrees into operator apprentice slots. I know a professional welder working on a BA on the side just so that he can't be fired for NOT having a degree.

And all that debt, gee employers really LOVE them some college debt. They know their new hires won't be striking out on their own to compete with them anytime soon. Same logic for why Silicon Valley corps love them their H1-Bs.

You want two-year schools to come back, find some freaking employers willing to hire the graduates.

Re:Blame the employers, not the students...

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame the schools more than you blame the employers. If high schools didn't "graduate" mobs of morons, who have no thinking skills, no social skills, no basic life skills, etc, then employers wouldn't have to raise the bar. For most, graduating from college today is like graduating from high school 50 years ago. Except you wasted more years in learning the same amount, have less years to be productive, and have a nice chunk of debt to repay.

Re:Blame the employers, not the students...

[MrSparkle]

Exactly! My girlfriend almost wasn't hired at Oracle for a sales position because she had a couple classes left on her 4 year degree. They wanted to hire her based on interview and previous experience but only would after she enrolled to finish the classes. I find that ridiculous considering their CEO didn't finish college!!! People in charge of hiring need to get with the times.

Re:Blame the employers, not the students...

[SixAndFiftyThree]

This tells you what "going to college" really is for: making it clear to prospective employers that you are willing to put up with an awful lot of c**p because you badly want a job, a place in The System. Someone who dropped out of a college might well drop out of a job the same way, and thoughtful employers don't want that. After all, they spend your first year training you, whether they admit it or not, so they want to get some work out of you after that year.

Getting an MBA has been this way for a long time, according to friends of mine: they spent most of their time drinking with other MBA students and interviewing with potential employers. The employers mostly cared about the fact that the candidates had got themselves admitted to a Biz School, not about what (if anything) they learned there.

Re:Blame the employers, not the students...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, I have a two-year degree and in looking at job requirements like "bachelors in related field or equivalent experience" what qualifies as equivalent experience is never mentioned. I have 10yrs in IT, Networks, servers and don't even get an interview because my associates + 10yrs is not "equivalent experience" to a bachelors. The sad thing is I looked into going back to get a bachelors and 50-60% of the course work is how to write, plan, and budget, nothing to do with the actual degree program.... Oh and they want roughly $40,000 for the last 2 years, as opposed to ~20,000 for the first 2.

No Child Left Behind...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you make some good points, but the problem existed before No Child Left Behind. It was there when I went to grade school, and Bush wasn't elected until after I graduated. I don't think it is a particular policy/administration/party problem. I think it is a cultural problem that is ours.

He's absolutely right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to a 4 year college for audio engineering. Guess what? There aren't enough jobs in that industry to support all these grads. But no one ever said that. The college was glad to take my money.

And that's the other problem. We've created a whole generation of people who are beginning their adults lives $100k in the hole. And they're probably going to end up getting a job that had nothing to do with their college education.

The real problem

[urusan]

The real problem isn't that we have too many 4 year degree holders, but rather that we have too many 4 year degree holders in majors such as English and Business. When I graduated, I was astounded when I looked at the list of names and discovered that Bachelor of Science degrees were a tiny minority. We need more people who understand math and science.

Going to a trade school is better than getting a four year degree in a subject suffering from a glut, while getting a four year degree in a subject that needs more people is better than both.

My degree in "Hotel Front Desk Admin" - no good!?

[JohnMurtari]

What! You mean all the money I spent on getting that great degree in Hotel Front Desk Administration isn't worth $80,000! But all the commercials said it was.... maybe I should have gone for that Computer Science major after all!

Seriously - nothing wrong with being a receptionist or a lot of other jobs. But college catalogs seem to be more like vocational training schools -- just a lot more expensive!

2 cents.

[Anonymous Coward]

the problem is that schools are a business.
knowledge should be free!
-
everybody should be able to get the information
they "teach" at UNI.
i personally wouldn't care if i got the education
but no degree.

You needed the ticket.

[AnonymousClown]

Let's face it, more than likely you wouldn't have gotten your first job, let alone the ones after that - if you had any, if you didn't have the degree.

When I started, most of the time, all you needed was some sort of 4 year degree. Now, you need at least a BSCS for a code monkey job.

Is a BSCS really necessary for most business applications? I don't think so, but tell that to the hiring managers. Personally, I think they're just requiring it to weed people out.

I once worked for a guy who wouldn't hire this particularly brilliant programmer. I met some very sharp people in my life but this programmer topped all of them. He had only a high school diploma - everything else he learned on his own and he learned FAST. Said manager wouldn't even look at him because "for this kind of work, I think one should have a four year degree."

Managers have a lot of hang ups about who they hire and they always rationalize for why they need certain qualifications.

Re:You needed the ticket.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately 'most' people think they can code because they can click a few buttons and besides it is only typing. I've seen a few people show up to an interview for a programming job who couldn't write a program to output the numbers from 1 to 10. So it definitely is a weed out technique. The sad part is currently, most of those who are sending in resumes are those who spray and pray without even meeting the basic requirements of the job they are applying for.

want?

[rev_sanchez]

'If people want to go out and get a master's degree in history and then cut down trees for a living, that's fine. But I don't think the public should be subsidizing it.'"

People don't generally want to do that. People generally want a decent wage so they can provide for their family, eventually buy a house, have health insurance so they lose everything they've worked for (or lose a family member) because you can't afford medical care, and they want to retire some day. Getting an education was a good way to accomplish that once upon a time but globalization and competing with emerging economies means we'll ultimately need to become accustomed to a lower standard of living.

Overqualified degree holders?

[orthancstone]

Let's be honest here, saying all degree holders are overqualified is being generous. I see plenty of students graduate with college degrees who display less sense than a well educated high school student who strives to overachieve.

Re:Overqualified degree holders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's be honest here, you only saw all of these college degreed students because your HR monkey threw every resume without a degree into the trash.

Education is a goal, not a mean

[godrik]

I always felt that education was the goal of a society, not a mean to achieve a good economy. I always felt Universities should teach you what a field is, not train you to get a job. Optimizing the economy IS NOT what a society wants. If it was the primary goal, we would never have abolish slavery.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[Locke2005]

Slavery was not an efficient method of running an economy, especially after industrialization made most tasks much more efficient. Even if the South had been allowed to secede from the union, slavery as an institution would have collapsed by now, either through economic trouble, or through a slave revolt. When you've got a system wherein a disenfranchised class is in the majority, and they are allowed to own weapons, you've got an inherently unstable system. If you tried to sell my children out from under me, I would certainly be willing to die trying to attain their freedom.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[d34dluk3]

Your view is long on optimism, but short on history.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[nine-times]

I would rather say that improving the welfare of the people is the goal of society, and both education and economic improvements are means to that goal. There are, however, many means to that goal, and focusing too much on one of those means at the exclusion of others isn't a good idea.

The further problem is that we have very little consensus on what a real education is. Many academics that I know focus a bit too much on the memorization of trivia. Most of the non-academics that I know focus too much education as vocational training. So the problem is not only that we're probably spending too much money on college educations to the exclusion of other improvements (even other improvements in education), but that the money we are spending is a big unfocused mess of funding.

As with many things, the issue is not simply about spending more money or less money, but setting clear goals and taking sensible steps toward meeting those goals. Proclaiming, "I want everyone in society to be smart, and money is no object!" will get you a bunch of educational snake-oil salesmen who will take as much money as you'll give them without necessarily achieving the goals you'd hoped for.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[TheSync]

Optimizing the economy IS NOT what a society wants. If it was the primary goal, we would never have abolish slavery.

I don't see slavery as economically optimizing, because it inherently limits the abilities of slaves to make choices to maximize their utility so they can specialize in the skills that they are best at, providing the maximal benefits of comparative advantage. This is standard neoclassical economics!

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[imgod2u]

It was optimal for its time. Industrialization largely did away with the economic benefits of slavery, but for the technology available at the time of inception and popularity, slavery was very very effective at a time when manual labor was a premium and transportation was limited.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[TheSync]

It was optimal for its time.

No, it was not optimal, because slaves did not have the freedom of choice to maximize their utility. Who knows what specializations, investments, and technological developments they could have made if they were paid?

You cannot calculate an optimal economic situation, you can only allow the market to self-organize to achieve it.

Again, this is basic neoclassical stuff. Didn't you have economics in college??? ;)

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll note there was a civil war over that. Optimizing the economy IS what a sizeable fraction of the society wants. Saying that that fraction happened to lose out a couple centuries ago says nothing about its position today.

Hell, illegal aliens are already close to slave labor.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[Anonymous Coward]

I always felt that education was the goal of a society, not a mean to achieve a good economy. I always felt Universities should teach you what a field is, not train you to get a job. Optimizing the economy IS NOT what a society wants. If it was the primary goal, we would never have abolish slavery.

I do not think it is a foregone conclusion that the existence of slavery leads to an optimized economy. Innovation would suffer, certainly.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we would. A slave not only required a big investment upfront, but you also had to maintain him and pay for all of his training and expenses. Plus they had, quite obviously, a short life expectancy when abused. It's much cheaper to hire a worker for as long as you want. It gives you more flexibility, frees you from that initial investment, comes already educated, is easier to replace and costs less. Plus they actually work quite as hard if not harder, since they actually have a worse scenario to look out for - unemployment. Slaves would mostly only be slightly physically abused for slacking. I'm not saying slavery is great and we should all revert to it, I'm saying it's economically infeasible.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[BetterSense]

Read "markets and minorities", a great book that argues that slavery in the United States was not economically necessary or even desirable, but merely enriched one class of people (rich white plantation owners). The author argues that the economy of the South would have been much better off had all the slaves been freed to tackle the free market on their own.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[Macrat]

]If it was the primary goal, we would never have abolish slavery.

Abolish?

It was just renamed to "migrant worker."

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[imgod2u]

Erm, who knows what specializations, investments and technological developments? We're talking about a time when you were lucky to halve most of your children live past 12. Figured an economist would construct a completely useless model forgetting any realistic variables and concluding the results are in any way reliable.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[An Onerous Coward]

I'm sorry, but your argument is 99.44% full of fail.

Let's build a toy economy, wherein there are two agents (you and me) and two jobs. You create 100 units of value for every day you spend making widgets, and 20 units of value for every day you spend writing. I create 20 units of value for every day spent making widgets, and 10 units of value for every day I spend writing. According to standard comparative advantage, we should both be making widgets. But you like writing, and do that instead of making widgets. So the economy hobbles along at 40 units/day.

Now let's open up a third job category: slaver. By forcing you to make widgets, I can pocket 100 units every day (minus care and feeding of you). The economy is more productive because now everyone is at maximum utility. It would be irresponsible for me not to enslave you, right?

Now replace "you" with African natives, "me" with American southerners, "writing" with tribal life in Africa, and "making widgets" with "harvesting cotton," and there you have it.

Arguments against slavery should be based entirely on the immorality of slavery. The only reason you're trying to argue any other grounds is to defend the ability of the free market to always deliver beneficial outcomes, regardless of the rhetorical contortions required. By doing so, you're arguing that most societies throughout history took part in a wildly suboptimal, self-immolating practice.

Any argument that slavery always takes the economy away from maximum utility rests on the assumption that there is only one possible maximizing function. But there are many to choose from. Maximum GDP. Maximum self-reported happiness. Minimum number of people below some absolute consumption threshold. A function that maximizes absolute GDP times some income inequality coefficient. A function that maximizes expected happiness over fifty years, or five thousand. Minimum environmental damage. Each one says something vastly different about how your economy should behave.

But unless you begin with the assumption that the happiness of participants matters (which economists generally don't do, because they wrongly assume that people know how to make themselves happy) then yes, you can "improve" the economy by forcing people into a life of slavery.

Expropriating the value of another person's work is generally always beneficial to the expropriator, regardless of whether or not the economy as a whole deviates from "maximal utility" as a result. So even if you could show that slavery is economically suboptimal (which I doubt you can), there is nothing in unfettered capitalism to prevent it from happening.

P.S.: Mises and Hayek were idiots. It's clear that the free market does a terrible job of valuing natural resources. Under the free market, oil, water, natural gas, etc., are valued not as assets but as revenue streams, with values proportional to the maximum rate of extraction. That's like treating a bank account as a revenue stream, with a value exactly proportional to the maximum daily withdrawal rate. Add some Herman Daly to your economics readings, expand your horizon beyond conspiracy theorist economics.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[toddestan]

On the other hand, I find the acceptance of illegal immigrants as a version of modern-day slavery. The whole reason that we won't either make them full citizens (bestowing them with the rights that the rest of us have) or kick them out of the country is that we would then lose access to an under-class of people that we can exploit for cheap labor.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[TheSync]

Erm, who knows what specializations, investments and technological developments? We're talking about a time when you were lucky to halve most of your children live past 12.

Are you saying that some African Americans during the time of slavery would have been unable of creating specializations, investments, and technological developments if they were freed?

What about Benjamin Banneker astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, almanac author, and clockmaker, or someone like George Carver born at the end of slavery who was a scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[TheSync]

But you like writing, and do that instead of making widgets. So the economy hobbles along at 40 units/day.

This is a misunderstanding of basic economic theory. Utility is personal, it is not communal. If I value my life of writing combined with possibly a smaller income, that is maximizing my utility. Moreover, planned economies fail because utility is personal, a government cannot dictate your utility function, you do.

According to standard comparative advantage, we should both be making widgets

This requires a priori knowledge that I am best at making widgets. Maybe I am better at something else, only your racist mind can't fathom that. Or perhaps along comes a new piece of technology (such as steam locomotives, the cotton gin, etc.) that suddenly makes me more efficient at doing something else, which I would certainly think about and perhaps change my job, but you are enslaving me, so I can't. Infact, I might want to work for a more efficient employer who can afford to pay me more, but you enslave me and keep me from making free market choices.

The key is the freedom of the slave to maximize their utility.

But perhaps you would prefer that we were all slaves under a planned economy by all-knowing leaders?

Arguments against slavery should be based entirely on the immorality of slavery.

Morality is a fine argument as well. But there are also economic consequences.

Morals don't come from God, they come from reality, there is a reason why we seek individual freedom, it must have provided an evolutionary advantage, most likely through the ability of maximizing personal utility, which maximized group output.

Ants don't have this issue, instead of forming complex thoughts and achieving individual specialization through a personal and evolving analysis of the world, they are specialized early in life by fairly specific genetic and chemical messengers.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[imgod2u]

Are you saying that some African Americans during the time of slavery would have been unable of creating specializations, investments, and technological developments if they were freed?

I'm saying that at a time when labor (males living past 12) were in such high demand, they contributed more through manual labor than any invention, specialization or technological development from the one in a million slaves (and for truly revolutionary tech, that number is high) would've contributed.

Think about it this way, you're talking about effectively ending the entire American economy as it was in the 1600's.

Re:Education is a goal, not a mean

[An Onerous Coward]

Sorry for waiting a week to reply. I'm sure you felt the lack most keenly.

Whether utility is personal or communal is arguable, but it is also irrelevant to my argument. If I can increase my own wealth (however I may define it) by enslaving you, and I have the power to do so, then there is advantage to me to enslave you. Whatever losses you -- or society as a whole -- suffer by your being enslaved, advantage accrues to me. It's called an externality, a bedrock principle of economics.

>> Morals don't come from God, they come from reality, there is a reason why we seek individual freedom, it must have provided an evolutionary advantage, most likely through the ability of maximizing personal utility, which maximized group output.

This statement shows a deep misunderstanding of history, because slavery is in fact common throughout history, and not just in crappy failures of societies. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Maya, the Aztecs, etc., were all incredibly wealthy societies, and they were all built on expropriated labor. I'm a bit annoyed that I have to explicitly state that this was a tragic, immoral thing, as though I might feel otherwise.

The statement also contradicts the claim you made earlier, where you mocked me for being so stupid as to think that there was such a thing as "group output." All utility is personal, remember?

You were wrong then, and right now. There is such a thing as collective/group utility. There are many different ways to measure it, depending on what you're trying to maximize. Average happiness? Average wealth? Likelihood of a long-lasting, resilient society? Ecosystem protection? However you try to benchmark it, there are activities that contribute more to the goal than others.

You run into the same troubles trying to measure personal utility. You can't say that people following their whims automatically create the highest personal utility for them. Even the most ardent libertarian will rant about how children need to be taught about the importance of self-discipline, respect for others, and the ability to delay gratification, which indicates that people often get themselves in trouble by following their desires. For a list of the other, well-documented deficiencies in our ability to figure out how to make ourselves happy, read "Stumbling on Happiness."

Your whole argument boils down to:

1) I think personal freedom is the highest good.
2) I am a product of evolution.
3) Therefore, evolution thinks personal freedom is the highest good.
4) Hey, take it up with science. I'm just the messenger.

Unlike you, I would never claim that evolution is the arbiter of morality. That's a dangerously stupid meme you're tossing around there.

>> This requires a priori knowledge that I am best at making widgets. Maybe I am better at something else, only your racist mind can't fathom that. Or perhaps along comes a new piece of technology (such as steam locomotives, the cotton gin, etc.) that suddenly makes me more efficient at doing something else, which I would certainly think about and perhaps change my job, but you are enslaving me, so I can't. Infact, I might want to work for a more efficient employer who can afford to pay me more, but you enslave me and keep me from making free market choices.

If you had been plucked from a society which didn't have anything resembling a free market (say, a tribe in 1800-era Africa), then your arguments are moot. You never would have had the opportunity to work for that other, more efficient employer. Were you not a slave, having your labor stolen from you by your owner, you would have been back home, living in a subsistence economy. You probably would have been happier for it, but our market was blind to your happiness, since you weren't paying it for the chance to be happy.

I'm not arguing -- nor have I ever argued -- that slavery was anything but an abomination. What you probably don't recognize is that, while you are certainly an abolitionist,

Drop need B.S / M.S for level 1 jobs as a start

[Joe The Dragon]

Drop need B.S / M.S for level 1 jobs as a start.

M.S for a level 1 helpdesk job and don't even thing about that top tear school BS as well.

and what is up with people with out of field BS and AS out ranking people with 2-4 years of real IT work?

Re:Drop need B.S / M.S for level 1 jobs as a start

[Anonymous Coward]

My take, BS = 4 years experience over high school. MS = 6 years. You can get that experience either by working or attending college, it should count the same.

To "school"? Probably none.

[khasim]

Please, how many kids go to school to get a "well rounded education" - it is a nice argument but lets be honest.

If you're just talking about "school", then almost none of them. Because "school" would include all classes at all grades.

But when you are talking about colleges, while it may be your intent to get a degree so that they can get a "professional" job the colleges can and do have additional requirements.

Which is why CS majors also need credits in the humanities and why art majors need credits in math.

Re:To "school"? Probably none.

[mog007]

Which is why CS majors also need credits in the humanities and why art majors need credits in math.

That second bit isn't really true. One of my exit courses for my CS degree was a communication class. It was taught by an English graduate student who didn't know that a nanosecond was a measure of time. I don't have a problem with technical degrees having liberal arts coursework as a requirement, but I'd like to see the liberal arts students take as many math/science classes as I had to take liberal arts classes.

A friend of mine dual majored in Philosophy and Political Science, and he never took any math classes at the university, and only one science course. And the science course was optional.

Re:To "school"? Probably none.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you study something as practical as CS at college, you're not going to be taught everything you'll need to know for a job. What you're buying with a college degree is the signal that you can have shit thrown at you and you can figure out how to deal with it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)

Re:To "school"? Probably none.

[Barrinmw]

I completely agree, either I shouldn't have to take those damn Gen Ed requirements like "Native American Studies" which I can't give a damn about, or people with Liberal Arts degrees should have to take Linear Algebra.

Re:To "school"? Probably none.

[MartinSchou]

Wait ... how can political science not have any kind of class on statistics?

Re:To "school"? Probably none.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see the liberal arts students take as many math/science classes as I had to take liberal arts classes.

that will never happen. they can barely pass the science / math intro classes (meanwhile technical majors regard their courses as 'cake' classes).

Re:To "school"? Probably none.

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't help to bite on this one, but that's a matter of will.
Electives are for rounding out your education. I'm a Poli Sci / Econ dual major, and most of my electives are in math.

Re:To "school"? Probably none.

[Anonymous Coward]

>That second bit isn't really true

im surprised leonardo da vinci hasnt yet devised a machine to punch you in the face from the grave.

Dyslexics are teople poo!

[retardpicnic]

As a canadian, I can only assure you you that if anything can help save america, its less education...

College grads earn a million dollars more

[TerryDu]

Fortunately, the article also mentions the following counter-point: "She points to research showing that college graduates will on average earn $1 million more over a lifetime than those with only high school degrees." That's all that needs to be said, really.

Absolutely!

[ErichTheRed]

I'm a big proponent of not forcing people through college. The problem is the lack of economic diversity now.

Think about this from a historical perspective:

• 100 years ago, only the wealthy and very intelligent went to college, and it was considered a life experience. The intelligent went on to become academics, and the wealthy would inherit their parents' business or land, so an immediate employment payoff wasn't really necessary. Everyone else went into a skilled or unskilled trade. Either they farmed, or started an apprenticeship as a carpenter, plumber, etc.
• 50 years ago, college was still pretty much reserved for the smartest of the bunch. Thanks to union labor, and a very large manufacturing base, there was no problem if you weren't college material. If you worked your butt off, you would get paid a living wage in a factory and have a career progression that ensured your earnings kept up with your life-stage. If you were college material, a huge number of white-collar jobs opened up in large companies, and those tended to be very stable too. So, whether you were college material or you weren't, you were still covered. Academic life, or vocational school, you still came out OK.
• 20-25 years ago, the bottom fell out of manufacturing, and with it went all the reasonably comfortable factory jobs. Suddenly, you couldn't get a decent job that paid a living wage. Because of this and an idea that "I dont' want my kid working in a factory forever," people started getting forced through college. At the same time, a lot of those white collar jobs went away too. There was a time where middle managers were required just to route reports around to people, and typing/secretarial work was way more important than it is now. With the advent of the PC and email, who needs hundreds of staff to process paper? So around the late 80s/early 90s, the downsizing began. Edna from the typing pool who worked at IBM for 20 years was suddenly out of a job. Because of both the blue and white collar job loss, people went back to school for retraining or higher degrees.
• Today, there are even fewer low-skilled jobs out there, and almost none in the private sector offer union protection. So, when a mediocre high school student gets to 12th grade, he has 2 choices:
  • Work in a very unstable service job for not much more than minimum wage. Hope that you can string enough of these jobs together to fill a 45 year career.
  • Struggle through college, have a mountain of debt, and maybe you'll find work in some company.

  And oh yeah, every job above service-level requires a bachelors' degree now. So the office receptionist needs a degree in communications, and the HVAC guy needs a degree in engineering.

This really is the dirty little secret of globalization. Some people just are NOT built for further study. There is a normal distribution of IQ. These people can often do a great job as a general contractor, skilled tradesman, etc. Instead, we force-feed everyone into the white collar world. It makes no sense. And for those who really do want the life experience, and are built for further study, they either have to deal with lower-skilled peers holding up college classes, or go to a private school and rack up mountains of debt for no guaranteed payoff.

I really think our leaders need to take a step back and see that a country that can do nothing but manage projects and do other white collar tasks isn't healthy. I'm in the IT field, and I'm decent at what I do. But I also realized as I was getting my degree that I wasn't sailing through the material like my peers. Every grade I got, I worked hard for. Maybe 50 years ago, I would have been better off taking on an electrician's apprenticeship or something similar. Bottom line is that the lopsided economy we have is not good for society, and everyone's addicted to cheap labor, so there's not much to do about it.

Re:Absolutely!

[Anonymous Coward]

The cheap labour will be gone in a couple more generations. I'm starting to see newspapers reporting that Asia has gotten too expensive and companies are starting to look to Africa for cheap production. Once Africa is exploited there's really nothing major left.

Re:Absolutely!

[bobaferret]

I have one point of contention.:
or go to a private school and rack up mountains of debt for no guaranteed payoff.

I think you'll find that most private schools can be more affordable than state schools when alumni scholarships are figured in. State school push you to get student loans and like to raise tuition when sate funding drops out. Private schools on the other hand have worked very for a long time to keep their costs down and like to have a decent percentage of the students come from lower incomes. So they tend to go out of their way to give you scholarships. The college I went to hand 80% of it's students receiving some sort of tuition reimbursement or scholarship. Mine was 80% of my tuition, I didn't even ask for it. My point being don't rule out small private colleges as being too expensive, you have to look at what they give back.

Re:Absolutely!

[value_added]

Excellent summary. What's missing from it are the consequences from the recent meltdown.

In the US, 8 million or so jobs have been lost, and most of them are not coming back. The easy and affordable credit that fueled growth in the financial services sector, for example, is gone and along with it the white collar jobs of people it employed. The real estate bubble (years in the making) provided jobs for both skilled and unskilled workers. Talk to a plumber or electrician lately? Most are having trouble finding work. Then, of course, there's the accelerated downward pressure on wages and benefits, lower levels of consumer spending, and general lack of confidence.

Take those factors into account, and the chronology you outlined looks even more depressing. Small wonder that the focus (for both individuals and government) is on education and re-training. For what jobs? I doubt anyone knows.

Re:Absolutely!

[DerekLyons]

The problem is, you're talking horseshit - because you missed one key factor: Sixty years ago vast numbers of college graduates began entering the workforce thanks to the GI bill.
 
Not to mention that this:

50 years ago, college was still pretty much reserved for the smartest of the bunch. Thanks to union labor, and a very large manufacturing base, there was no problem if you weren't college material. If you worked your butt off, you would get paid a living wage in a factory and have a career progression that ensured your earnings kept up with your life-stage.

Is laughable rose colored glasses nonsense.

And here the results of the European Jury

[Opportunist]

Having a very different school system here, but the same problem (and the same talks about 20 years ago), here's how it worked out for us.

We have a system that splits kids already at 10 years of age into schools that prepare them for a trade and schools that prepare for studying. At 14 years you split again (if you opted for studying) into "pure academics", business prep or technical prep. And with 18/19, you either go into business or you head on to university. If you opted for the trade path, you finished school with 15, then you went on to a "dual education system" where you spend half your time in a company (akin to an apprenticeship) and half the time in a trade specific school.

So far the theory.

Historically, the (age 10-15) trade schools were seen as "lower value" than the academic preparation schools. So our government launched a huge ad propaganda to up the reputation of those trade schools. And, being the good citizens that people here generally are, it worked pretty well. We have a lot more "professional" bricklayers, carpenters, mechanics and so on now. You can find them all at the local unemployment office. Why? Because the economy doesn't need them. Worse, a lot of the "academic prep" dropouts moved on into one of these trades and of course, having an (allegedly) better education, are prefered.

To make matters even worse, to actually use this system you have to find a company that would accept you as an apprentice. And there's a shortage of those now, too.

So what did the system accomplish? We have a lot of 16 year olds without a chance to an education in their chosen (or pretty much any) trade because of a surplus of people trying this path, should they find a place that wants to teach them (they get HUGE subsidies from our government just to do that), they get fired immediately once their education is done (and the subsidies cease) and we have an unemployed mechanic more, and at the same time unemployed academics are being prefered over those trained retail salesmen that actually got an education slot because, hey, you get someone with a university degree for the same price, what do you choose?

That's the reality. So please don't fall for the same bull that we fell for.

Re:And here the results of the European Jury

[NeutronCowboy]

I think the root of the problem you described is rather in the work protection that exists in Europe. To make it short, it's basically impossible to fire someone. To the point that the company would rather have that person not come to work and still draw a pay check for 1-2 years, instead of firing them.

What this means is that there's no opening for new workers - and new workers are overwhelmingly those fresh out of school.

When I last checked, youth unemployment stood at 25% in France (it was a while ago). Whether people go into a trade school or not isn't going to change this problem - the only thing that will is to change the employment laws.

Re:And here the results of the European Jury

[Opportunist]

Depends on the country, but the workers protection has been eroding recently to the point where it's not much harder to fire someone in Europe than it is in the US.

unrelated field should not pass over in field peop

[Joe The Dragon]

unrelated field should not pass over in field people who don't have one.

College degree has RELATIVE value

[Maxo-Texas]

If 1% of society has college degrees, the degrees have high value.
If 99% of society has college degrees, the degrees have little value.

The tipping point for college degrees looks a lot lower than 99%-- under 20%.

Add on top of that the fact that colleges have gotten more expensive much faster than inflation and the relative value of a degree is pretty poor vs the investment.

College is very well marketed

[Shivetya]

Like you state, too many don't care about what they are studying, they are there because that is "what" they are supposed to do.

However, far too many colleges are there to make money, and scads of it. Hence the push for new lending programs because this allows the to inflate their fees. Whether to build new facilities named after people they like or too keep themselves fat and happy in retirement. I would go so far to say that many colleges don't care what the students study either, just as long as they are there paying the fees. Hell, look at the racket that is course books.

Too many degrees cost more than they can reasonably pay off in short order, by short I mean, less than five years. Sure medical professions if take to their furthest points pay off, but its not like TV, go to school four to six years and be the hero. Marketing drives more to college than need.

Maybe, maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

As a recent graduate, I agree with the sentiments expressed in the article.

I went to a large state university (University of Texas) and, during the time that I spent there, tuition and fees were raised every year. The one exception was when the students and the student government put up a fight and got them to hold off an increase for one year. Immediately after giving in to the students, the president of the university sent an email to every university email account talking about how this would hurt the university's competitiveness in the long run and that he would aggressively push for tuition increases in the future in order to keep UT a great university.

Unfortunately, despite the increasingly expensive tuition, it has been hard to find a good job, and I've had to work at places that pay much less than college graduates are typically supposed to make. While UT is not an Ivy League school, it has good name recognition in my state and is one of the top universities in my state, and is fairly well-known nationally as well. In addition, I graduated with a 3.95/4.00 GPA, Dean's list every semester, and summa cum laude honors. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, rather, I'm trying to show how a college degree is not a ticket to instant success as it has often been portrayed as.

The vast majority of students should be learning skills that will earn them jobs in the workplace. Yes, it's important for people to be educated in a general sense, but the reality is that most college students are only concerned with getting a good job. They don't care about the pursuit of knowledge. Most of them would be better suited at trade schools, or at the very least in programs that teach valuable skills that will make them employable.

I do not regret my choice of major or school. It helped me become someone who can critically evaluate situations and find solutions to problems on my own, and, more importantly, I now have the confidence that if I put the effort in, I can teach myself almost anything I want to learn. Ideally, one should acquire these traits in high school, but high schools these days are mostly worthless.

The only point I disagree with is the point about not subsidizing history majors and the like. Sure, we don't need as many history and English majors as we have, but if we don't subsidize history majors the same as "useful" majors, then who would be a history major anymore? Are they honestly arguing that history is completely worthless? I'm sure governments around the world would be happy to have citizens ignorant of the past, but it is in the world's best interest to have historical records.

One other issue I see is that if all of the people in "useless" majors switch to more useful areas of study, then wouldn't currently profitable fields see a wage decrease? Take computer science for instance. One of the main things keeping wages high is the lack of interest in computer science by most people. Many take a class or two and decide that it's "too hard." If we encourage more people into these programs and make it easier for them to succeed, then the influx of graduates will lower wages in the long run. It is in the interest of every profitable profession to keep the influx of new workers at a low level. Since Slashdot is largely comprised of people from technical fields, I would hope most of you are arguing in favor of keeping English, history, and other majors.

Just rent a time machine.

[khasim]

No joke, I know one guy who took out an $8,000 student loan basically to spend at bars. Now he has a degree in something or another, but spends his days inserting tab a into slot b so that he can pay off that debt. If he had just gone to work in the first place, he'd be doing the same job and have more money. And he could still go to bars.

Remember kids, don't risk YOUR present. Get down to Discount Time Machine Rentals TODAY so you'll know exactly how much effort to put into planning for your FUTURE.

Discount Time Machine Rentals - where good people don't happen to bad decisions.

Re:Just rent a time machine.

[elrous0]

Okay, who's the wise-ass that just shot my grandf

"overqualified degree holders..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe overqualified on paper, but generally not in terms of actual skills acquired. The rise in advanced degrees has been concomitant with a decrease in the achievements signified.

Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock star

[spun]

We don't need any lumberjacks, sanitation workers, or construction workers. In our new post-productive society, everybody gets to be whatever they want! There are no crappy jobs that need to be done. Everyone is qualified to be a surgeon. Everyone gets to be president. We don't need our garbage picked up.

Look, we tell our children and ourselves that in America, anyone can be whatever they want to be. What did we expect would happen? Some jobs get no respect and shitty pay, despite the fact that they absolutely need to get done. Because, you know, once you've figured out that there isn't really a career in art history, you still need to pay off those college loans. Looks like the DOT is hiring road crews!

Why can't we admit that not everyone gets to be a fashion model, a football star, or a CEO? Why do we emphasize the importance of some jobs, like advertising executive or investment banker, that add nothing of real value to humanity, while denigrating those who pick up our trash? I mean, is my day going to suck if I don't get to see any catchy ads? Probably not, but I've been around a garbage workers strike, and that shit ain't pretty.

We overvalue positions of leadership and expertise, while lying that everyone could do those jobs. And tons of unqualified people rush to fill those jobs, because they were told they could, and that those jobs were more important than hauling garbage. But let's face it: most people don't have what it takes to become a surgeon or a CEO. Does that mean they are worthless? No. It takes all kinds of work to make a complex society run. We should not overvalue certain jobs and undervalue others, because that creates societal inefficiencies where we have too many people trying for the fun, high paying, well respected jobs. And meanwhile, the people actually doing the crucial dirty work get shit on by society.

No marketing drone is worth hundreds or thousands of times what a sewer worker is worth. Yet our society says they are. If we have too many people going to university, maybe the answer isn't to say, "Hey, realistically most of you are fucking plebes who will never work in whatever you majored in. You should practice your table-waiting and ditch digging instead." Maybe we should instead strive for a more egalitarian society where everyone's contribution is respected. I respect a dishwasher who works hard and does a good job more than I respect a CEO who golfs all the time and takes credit for his underlings hard work. But society says this privileged douchebag is worth thousands of times more than the guy who washes dishes. So what do we expect people to do? Everyone wants to be that pampered and privileged CEO, nobody wants to build bridges and roads. And so we have Wall Street profiting while the economy crumbles, and meanwhile, most of our infrastructure is falling apart.

Things that make your college degree less valuable

[hessian]

Things that are making college degrees less valuable, and therefore necessary for an even wider range of jobs:

1. High school degrees are now worthless. "Bill showed up for four years."
2. Affirmative action. "Even though Jake got a 950 on his SAT, he can go to Harvard."
3. Grade inflation. "We wanted Suzy to feel on par with her classmates, so the lowest anyone can get is a B."
4. Politicization. "If you want an A in English Literature with Dr. Rosenberg, you'd better write about feminist theories of hermeneutics."
5. Dumbing down. "The staff decided it's too hard to code up a parser on a 64k Apple II, so we're going to start you off on Logo for Windows 7."

Thanks to the feelgood policies of the 1970s, every precious snowflake feels entitled for just showing up. Schools have responded by making sure everyone has a place. The result: college degrees are no longer worth much, since they're easy to get.

Rarity of college degree = value of college degree

It's like having $100. If you give everyone in America an extra $100, the value of your $100 declines because there's more money floating around.

Be honest for YOU, not ME.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Please, how many kids go to school to get a "well rounded education" - it is a nice argument but lets be honest. People go to college because it is the next step and it is required to get a "Professional" job. I can barely recount the actual classes I took that were outside my major, so very well rounded.

> Going thousands of dollars into debt so you can have a "well rounded education" is a farce.

People go to college for different reasons. Most kids go to college either because it's simply expected of them or because someone tells them college graduates make more than high school graduates. That's also a different question than the question of what you learn or do while you're there.

My degree was in CS & English. I wrote in microcode and assembly and C and C++ and java, everything from TCP kernel code to photon mappers to compilers.

And I studied Shakespeare and Milton and the literature of the American Renaissance and the poetry of people from Petrarch to Poe.

And I learned to tell the difference between a harpsichord and a piano even before I'd knowingly heard any baroque music, and what the romantics liked in poetry and music, and why atonal music sounds like somebody is strangling a cat with a piano.

I did VLSI design and read Horowitz & Hill and played with electron microscopes and liquid helium. I studied the history of warfare from the first knife-fight in recorded history through the twentieth century. I learned about the history and evolution and origins of terrorism and the effectiveness of propaganda. I learned about developmental psychology and the way children grow, and I learned with wonderful, brilliant people from across dozens of disciplines.

I don't think I lost money by learning this, because I'll make more in the end, and money isn't the only way to measure utility. I care more about the world because I understand art, because I'm as much an artist as an engineer. That's something college gave to me. It's a place to learn. That's what's beautiful about it. Maybe not everyone should go. But everyone should have the chance to. And we should always be part of a community of learning. Even as we should be part of a community of doing.

I've said this for a long time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Society needs janitors, loggers, burger flippers. If everyone goes to school, the degree is worthless anyway (and it is, already, unless it's a hard science degree, in most cases).

I don't have a degree and I work as a management consultant. No, not a temp agency consultant, a management consultant. It's not in your piece of papers, it's in your drive and your thirst for knowledge. Although my situation is quite unique, since I was home schooled and never stopped learning everything I could get my hands on.

It's about WHO you know not WHAT you know

[Orga]

Sorry but my parents sent me to school with the understanding that I was there to meet people and get an "education" second. You're sent to expensive schools because wealthier people send their kids there and we all know wealth travels the generations in the majority of cases. At best College will teach you to learn better and in different ways. If you want real world skills then some night classes and technical schools would be best. 4 year institutions are about relationships not sciences based ona rational world.

This seems to lead to many managers who have no id

[Joe The Dragon]

This seems to lead to many managers who have no idea on what they are managing.

Credentials inflation can be solved differently

[melted]

Credentials inflation can be solved differently. In my college (not in the US), only about 25% of those who entered were able to complete the 6-year Masters course (the school does not offer Bachelor degrees). Of those 25%, only about 10% graduated with honors. The first two years were brutal carnage where wheat was separated from the chaff by lots and lots of exams and hands-on work.

Push all colleges to raise the bar to the point where most enrollees don't graduate, but those who do are truly the creme of the crop and world class. You need a lot of folks entering college in order to identify the top 20% who do actually want to learn and have the aptitude. Just because your parents can pay $50K a year doesn't mean that schools should be wasting time on you if you're just there to get the diploma. Instead, they could be focusing on the top 20% and really give them the best education they can. No need to drag them down.

This post should have been titled

[masterwit]

First off, this article may have instead been titled: subsidizing education, should we pay for...

Here, however is my real issue: (outside of this being an article from Yahoo Finance)

Recall a period in American history, call it the 70's and 80's where a baby-boomer population was going off to school to "figure out what to do", how some did not have plans to what they wanted to do and others seemed content on the exact educational path they chose directly following a high-school education. This (or so I hear) is how we have the Gen-ed program at many colleges today. A professor once joked to one of my classes that goes roughly like this:

You can blame us hippies and free-thinker bullshitters in the 70's and early 80's, yes the damn baby boomers that paid for your education, for what we call a 4-year degree. Really we would have been find with just a couple of years, however at the time, we had no freaking idea what we wanted or what we're going to do.

This I feel is a valid point towards how the education system has evolved from a stepping stone to a "career advising agency". What we don as success in general can be written in a multitude of opinions: is it what makes one happy, is it monetary based, does it contribute to the welfare of society, etc. The point is we cannot say this is what makes something successful, but rather acknowledge multiple viewpoints on the notion of success.

America, or at least to how we like to believe our country functions today, is that of the land of opportunity, but opportunities provided do not guarantee success. Sure a typical Bob ends up logging as a history major later, or Susie does not end up the successful Art Major she had dreamed...so what! At the same time many other students, who took the opportunity given to them to better themselves, get good grades for a job market, and get hired and end up "successful". I will not pretend to know it all or even have an idea of what the market will demand 10 years down the road, but I do not agree that an excess of college graduates will spell doom. No system is without waste, and some "unfulfilled workers" are a marginal cost from that of empowering other individuals. Just my take, nothing more or less...

college grad = increased employment probability

[kj_kabaje]

When you consistently establish policy that eliminates non-college educated jobs, what do you expect the population to do? We would not have this "problem" if Obama/the corporate kleptocracy had refocused our government-owned to car companies to actual build and employ our skilled US auto-workers to produce: trains, train rails, solar panels, wind-turbines, and nuclear power plant components as opposed to out-sourcing jobs to increase corporate profits and maximize campaign contributions.

Isn't that what student loans already are?

[khasim]

The government should not fund this waste, and if it does, it should be tied to the expectation of results (like the ROTC).

From TFA:

Spending more time in school also means greater overall student debt. The average student debt load in 2008 was $23,200 -- a nearly $5,000 increase over five years. Two-thirds of students graduating from four-year schools owe money on student loans.

Yes, I know there is free money available from the government. But that is limited.

Education is very, very important.

[Schoenlepel]

Education can't be high enough. Educate your people until they die, because uneducated people are vulnerable and easier to control.

Educated people are trained in using their brain. That is something a company doesn't want. A company wants lots and lots of zombies which do not know their rights and can't think for themselves.

Basically, what these economists are saying is good for commercial entities. But for countries or not-for-profits this mind-set is fatal. This is the way to grow a third world cheap labor country, but that's the direction the U.S. is going anyway.

Education is one of the pillars of freedom, as is privacy and the ability to speak your mind. Problem is, in the U.S. it is ok when your speech creates fear (suppresses freedom) as well as the government functioning in such a way that all three are being limited further and further.

Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[nbauman]

I think it's a great idea to take a year off after high school and work as a welder if you feel like it.

But I also think college is a great mind-expanding experience, and that everyone should have the opportunity to go to a 4-year college if (and when) they feel like it too. How good a welder can you be if you don't understand basic physics and chemistry? What happens when the welding jobs disappear (as they did in Germany)? What happens when she gets tired of welding?

And everybody should go to a 4-year college without going into debt. Talk about the road to serfdom. $20,000 in debt that you can never discharge in bankruptcy, and that will accumulate exhorbitant interest for years, sounds like serfdom to me.

Up to the 1970s, America used to be a land of opportunity. Free access to college education was a big part of that. Now America is turning into a two-class society. http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15908469 People in the middle will move up or down, and most of them will move down.

Traditionally, a college degree has been the way out of poverty, and the great equalizer. If these economists have data that it doesn't work that way any more, I'll look at it carefully. That's what I learned how to do in my 4-year college. But I wouldn't accept a major reversal of a long-established social goal based on a couple of associational studies.

We just spent $3 trillion on the war in Iraq (according to Nobel-prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz). That's about $10,000 for every American. So we can certainly afford to spend $20,000 or so for a college education for anybody who is capable of it. And the rich are doing extremely well. We can tax the rich to pay for the poor. There's more of us than there are of them. All we have to do is vote.

If you're middle-class in America today, you're taking a crap shoot, according to The Economist. You might move up. And you might move down. In the European social democracies, you don't have that risk of moving down.

In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy committed us to the goals of sending a man to the moon and eliminating poverty. We sent a man to the moon but we didn't eliminate poverty. There's no excuse for that. The Scandinavian countries have basically eliminated poverty. We have whole cities where people can't get out of poverty. If you don't want to just transfer a lot of money from the rich to the poor, the other way to eliminate poverty is to give everyone a good education, and a free college education is a centerpiece of that.

These economists are trying to talk us into giving up on the goal of eliminating poverty and educating our population the way the wealthy European nations do. I don't buy it.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[SheeEttin]

How good a welder can you be if you don't understand basic physics and chemistry?

Probably pretty damn good. I don't know a thing about welding, but I'm reminded about a story my high school geometry teacher told once.
He was working as a construction worker part-time in college. The head construction person hadn't gone to college. I don't remember, but he probably didn't even complete high school. He'd call down lengths (of wood to be cut) to my future teacher. Except he wouldn't give it in inches--he'd call down "four of the big ones and three of the little ones" (referring to lines on the measuring tape), and the wood would get cut to the correct length and handed up.
He didn't need geometry, trig, etc., he just needed experience, basic counting skills, and a good eye.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[dbIII]

I think it's a great idea to take a year off after high school and work as a welder if you feel like it.

Welding is a hell of a lot harder than you think it is even now when you can actually see what you are doing when you strike the arc. I trained as an engineer and used to test and certify pressure vessel welds for a living, but there is no way that I could weld well enough to pass my own tests with the few months of welding experience and training that I had. I did just enough to understand a few practicalities as well a pure theory but couldn't do much more than the simple stuff and not very neatly at that.
Welding is pretty well the industrial equivalent of a C coder. You may not be able to design the entire project but that doesn't mean your little bit isn't hard and can't produce a catastrophic failure if you botch it badly. That first year would mostly be spent going to classes and doing the hot dirty grunt work or sweeping the floor, and is not long enough to learn how to weld very much properly.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[nbauman]

Welding is a hell of a lot harder than you think it is even now when you can actually see what you are doing when you strike the arc.

I agree with you. There's all kinds of welding. There's easy welding that can be handy around an auto shop. Then there's aircraft welding....

When I saw welding I thought of an article I read in the Wall Street Journal comparing a laid-off worker in the U.S. and a laid-off worker in Germany.

The American worker was really suffering, unable to afford his health insurance, mortgage payments, etc.

The German worker was basically getting his full salary to go on vacation.

The German worker was a welder, and he used his vacation to go to welding school, paid by the German government, to learn advanced welding skills that would be valuable when the recession was finally over.

The German vocational education system is way better than ours.

Going back to that AP story, with the economists who advocated sending American students to vocational schools rather than 4-year colleges -- if they did it as well as the Germans did, that might be acceptable.

Unfortunately the U.S. policy -- give kids government loans and send them out to choose a school themselves in the free market -- doesn't work too well. The latest fiasco was chef schools.

If a 4-year business degree is useless, then how useless is a 2-year business degree?

Original question: Should the government pay for a free 4-year education for every American who wants it and is able to do it? (That's what the City University of New York did up to the 1970s, and they turned out a lot of Nobel laureates and founders of the computer industry.)

I say yes. I think any smart blue collar worker would learn enough valuable insight from a 4-year degree to make it worthwhile. All that math, physics, electronics, chemistry and other science helps you do your job, and it helps you get the next job after you get laid off in this ruthless free market.

And they taught me that scientists should know more than just science. We used to call it a liberal education. A scientist has to know how to write a well-argued memo. (Like those engineers who tried to delay the Challenger launch.) You have to know history, politics, humanities and literature to understand the world around you. A lot of chemists and EEs wound up running businesses. Some of them got involved in politics. There are geologists testifying before Congress right now.

I spent my Freshman year taking math, physics, English, and history. Yeah, I think any plumber or welder or electronics technician who wants that should have the same opportunity.

Yeah, I think that economist was wrong. I think welders should learn history. It makes you a better welder.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you in principle, but the Scandinavian states do not have our minority problems. I know that this is an unpopular proposition, but the inhabitants of these regions are simply more intelligent than the average American.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[khallow]

If a 4-year business degree is useless, then how useless is a 2-year business degree?

I guess it depends. My take is that a two year business degree probably doesn't cost half as much as a four year business degree. And you're out of the workforce for less than two years.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[dkf]

In the European social democracies, you don't have that risk of moving down.

That's BS.

The Scandinavian countries have basically eliminated poverty.

What they have done is eliminated absolute poverty, as in total destitution. There are plenty of poor people about – there is relative poverty – but there is a floor to how low people can go. Of course, anyone wanting to get above the bottom needs to work. That is Good And Proper, how things should be. (What I'm not sure about is the extent to which they have got rid of tax traps; ideally, you want it so that, if people work more, they have more disposable income. That's a good thing because it means that there's always an incentive to work, and if people decide that they prefer a life outside work then they know what it is costing them. And may think it is worth it; that's only fair.)

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[Galilee]

I worked as a laborer for a home construction company during my first two summers of college. One day I was told to build out the walls in a bathroom which was in the corner of the house. Basically the exterior walls would get insulated, and I had to build a second set of walls for the plumbing and interior. Instead of two walls meeting at a 90 to form the corner, the two walls joined a third wall at two 45's, and this formed a triangle where it met the ceiling. So I'm there measuring everything up, and doing trig to calculate all the angles involved before making the cuts. It was taking me a long ass time but I didn't know any other way to do it. Eventually the foreman came in to see how I was doing. He was shocked to see how little progress I made, and at the trig I had scribbled over the walls (with my carpenters pencil!). Then he held up the 2x4's, eyeball the angles, and then make the cuts. His cuts were just as accurate as mine, but he did them in a fraction of the time. It would have taken me all day to do what he did in 30 minutes.

And I lost track of the number of times that the foreman would bring the architect in to approve of changes in the design. The architect would create some overly complex solution, and the foreman would think of a more practical (easier and/or cheaper to build) solution.

Applied knowledge can trump knowledge of fundamentals.

That said, I sure looked forward to getting back to school by the end of each summer!

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[khallow]

But I also think college is a great mind-expanding experience, and that everyone should have the opportunity to go to a 4-year college if (and when) they feel like it too. How good a welder can you be if you don't understand basic physics and chemistry? What happens when the welding jobs disappear (as they did in Germany)? What happens when she gets tired of welding?

She can always go to college or a vocational school to do something else. (Or even get another "disappearing" welding job for that matter.) Choosing to be a welder doesn't preclude you from ever changing your mind. If she's prudent with her finances, she'll have the cushion needed to do so, without picking up debt.

Also, we're seeing the effects of bad K-12 public schools. Improve that and you might see better college graduation rates even with less subsidies of education (simply because you're reducing the threshold of learning, also known as time to graduation, for a person attempting to complete college).

In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy committed us to the goals of sending a man to the moon and eliminating poverty. We sent a man to the moon but we didn't eliminate poverty. There's no excuse for that. The Scandinavian countries have basically eliminated poverty. We have whole cities where people can't get out of poverty. If you don't want to just transfer a lot of money from the rich to the poor, the other way to eliminate poverty is to give everyone a good education, and a free college education is a centerpiece of that.

I disagree. The US has a vast and varied private college community precisely because a college education has never been free (except in special cases). The current sickness is due to vast sums of public money being uncritically loaned at below market rates to students. Just making such an education "free" will exaggerate the problems. And as to your "other way" to eliminate poverty, you need a job first. An education, especially in a number of nearly useless social studies and liberal arts fields (which IMHO don't give you "mind-expanding" experiences), doesn't necessarily help you get a job that will lift you out of poverty.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[nbauman]

In the European social democracies, you don't have that risk of moving down.

That's BS.

That's according to the Economist article I linked to. Take it up with them. (I've seen this argued convincingly in many places, for example by Paul Krugman.) There is a risk of downward mobility in the European welfare states, but not like here. In the U.S., the middle class is playing musical chairs. Our inequality (the Gini index) is as great as Brazil.

The Scandinavian countries have basically eliminated poverty.

What they have done is eliminated absolute poverty, as in total destitution. There are plenty of poor people about – there is relative poverty – but there is a floor to how low people can go.

That's quite an accomplishment. Every democratic society in the world has been trying to do that, and many of them did. We set that goal in the 1960s. John F. Kennedy was elected on a pledge to eliminate poverty. So was Richard Nixon. We failed. It's a serious failure.

There's a table in the Statistical Abstract of the United States that shows family income of the U.S. population, divided into highest fifth, second-highest fifth, etc. In round numbers -- the people in the highest fifth get about half the income in the country, all to themselves (with a median income of about $120,000, depending on the year). The second fifth gets half of that (i.e. $60,000), the third fifth half of that ($30,000), the fourth fifth half of that ($15,000) and the bottom fifth half of that ($7,500). The people at the bottom are doing very badly. That's like the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

I saw the corresponding income distribution for Sweden. It was just like ours -- except it didn't have the bottom two-fifths. They didn't have a significant population of people making $15,000 or $7,000 as we do.

One chance in 5 of earning $7,500 -- that's like playing Russian roulette. A rational person wouldn't want to live in a society that subjected him to risks like that.

There are plenty of people who are doing well right now, earning $50,000, $100,000 a year or more, and with that income, America is a pretty good place to live.

However, a lot of people found out over the last 50 years that the wheel of fortune turns, and it's pretty easy for even a skilled professional to see his whole occupation or industry disappear. For example: secretaries, receptionists, real estate agents, travel agents, printers, factory workers, many kinds of repairmen, many kinds of engineers and programmers.

I've seen numbers in the Wall Street Journal, and most of those people don't bounce back with resourcefulness and hard work. They lose their homes and health insurance, they move in with relatives, they "retire" at 55, they compete for entry-level jobs with high school students.

Of course, anyone wanting to get above the bottom needs to work.

That's the point of the Economist article. The data they cited says that Americans who work hard can't get ahead. Americans believe that hard work and skill produce success. But social mobility is declining, and inequality is growing. Incomes rose for the best-educated workers, but declined for everybody else. The best predictor of success is your father's income. It's harder for the poor to get ahead in the U.S. than in Europe.

You're stating the conventional wisdom, the American myth, but the data contradict it.

That is Good And Proper, how things should be.

I don't see any obvious reason why it's a priori good for some people to be born in wealth and continue in wealth, while other people are born in poverty and continue in poverty.

That's the way economists (like Samuel Bowles) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Bowles_(economist)#Inequality_vs

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[nbauman]

I disagree. The US has a vast and varied private college community precisely because a college education has never been free (except in special cases).

City College in New York City was free from its founding up to at least the 1970s. The other parts of the City College system, including Brooklyn College, were also free. They turned out at least a dozen Nobel laureates, and people who created the modern electronics industry, like Andrew Grove, the co-founder of Intel. City College paid for itself with Andrew Grove alone.

That was the model for the State University of New York, which was almost free, and also produced an enormous educated workforce. SUNY was the model of the California state university system, which also turned out graduates who do an impressive amount of scientific research.

Scientists and engineers still talk about the G.I. bill -- introduced by a Republican -- after World War II that flooded the colleges with returning veterans, as one of the most successful educational programs this country ever saw. http://www.gibill.va.gov/gi_bill_info/history.htm It gave this country a core of college-educated people.

If you believe in the free market, then you believe that the cheaper something is, the more people will buy it. The cheaper you make college education, the more people will get college degrees. Providing free or cheap education will give you a more educated workforce. And our experience with the GI bill, and the European experience today, is that a better-educated workforce is more productive.

An education, especially in a number of nearly useless social studies and liberal arts fields (which IMHO don't give you "mind-expanding" experiences), doesn't necessarily help you get a job that will lift you out of poverty.

If you have to think for yourself in a free-market economy and a democratic society, the best way to do it is with a liberal arts education. (Even if it's just 30 credits out of 120.)

Do you think you can get by in the world with just engineering courses, without ever learning how to read a novel or construct an argument, without knowing whether the Greeks or Romans came first?

Even in technology, the people who succeed are the ones who have a well-rounded education. The people who just have two years of technical courses are the ones who get replaced by outsourcing and unemployed.

People should be able to choose to put as much work into their education as they want. But we have a 2-class society. A 2-year technical education puts you at the bottom. A 4-year liberal arts education gives you a shot at the top.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[khallow]

City College in New York City was free from its founding up to at least the 1970s. The other parts of the City College system, including Brooklyn College, were also free. They turned out at least a dozen Nobel laureates, and people who created the modern electronics industry, like Andrew Grove, the co-founder of Intel. City College paid for itself with Andrew Grove alone.

A special case. And who's to say that this system wouldn't have turned out a dozen Nobel laureates and an Andrew Grove even if they did charge money?

I thought about a more detailed rebuttal of the rest of your post. I really can't do it justice. My view though is that you repeat several myths about public education, exaggerating its importance. These can be boiled down to the idea that for education, more is better. There is no diminishing return on education (you also seem to think that all education is equal).

We can see that this is false in the extreme however by noting that people have finite lives and that formal education requires a considerable input of time. So the most extreme example, where everyone is a student in some degree program for perpetuity, it simply isn't feasible to have both an industrious society and a society in which everyone is simultaneously putting in considerable effort to learn. As a culture, I say we set more store by work than knowledge, meaning that we would tend to favor less education than more.

So there's some point at which more schooling means sufficiently less work is done to be a negative gain for most of us. The question really is whether that occurs before or after a college education. My view is that for a lot of people, it occurs before. A poorly prepared, unmotivated student could spend many extra years in school (I know since I've spent roughly 12 years in graduate school). Those are years that they could spend earning money, raising a family, and having a life.

Here's a closely related question. What level of education should everyone have? In other words, why stop at a bachelor's degree? Surely, it'd be better for everyone to have a master's degree or even a PhD. Perhaps, we should set our sights even higher with a degree not yet conceived of (this degree certifies that there should be dashing theme music playing when you perform feats related to your degree). I personally favor the 60s era high school diploma as the default level of education in society. That certified that you knew basic knowledge that most people thought you ought to know and could function in society. I don't see the need for everyone to be well-rounded, when in many cases, that's not what they want.

So how do I fit these ideas into the real world? My view is that currently, we're putting too many people through college and paying too much as a result in public funds. There are way too many people who simply don't complete the effort. Further, I don't buy that a free education is better than one you paid for. My view is that a lot of people get more serious when they have to pay for their own education. We're also seeing evidence that some colleges aren't actually producing "well-rounded" graduates.

A key concern that keeps cropping up is academic cheating. Recently, Slashdot had an article about how there was a lot more cheating caught in computer science than in other majors. The reason was simply that it was a lot easier to catch cheaters. Looking into my crystal ball, I see this problem getting worse due to the presence of federal loans. It hurts the college financially to catch and expel a cheater. First, they lose the revenue of the student. Second, their credibility is damaged. Better to ignore it. This passes the problem on to employers, who have to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Another concern is that there are a number of dogmatic or duplicitous belief systems that have taken root in academia. Multi-culturalism is one such beast that some colleges take to the point of absurdity. Some seem well suited to obfuscation of research and communication such as Marxism and Post-Modernism. If nobody can understand what you're saying, then nobody can threaten your status as a scholar.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[nbauman]

City College in New York City was free from its founding up to at least the 1970s. The other parts of the City College system, including Brooklyn College, were also free. They turned out at least a dozen Nobel laureates, and people who created the modern electronics industry, like Andrew Grove, the co-founder of Intel. City College paid for itself with Andrew Grove alone.

A special case.

City College, the GI bill, and Andrew Grove were a special case? I don't think so. CCNY has a whole wall of photos of graduates who were just as accomplished as Andrew Grove.

And who's to say that this system wouldn't have turned out a dozen Nobel laureates and an Andrew Grove even if they did charge money?

Since nobody did a controlled study in which they randomized people to City College or control, we'll never know with absolute certainty.

But most people see a plausable mechanism between educating people in a profession and having them succeed in that profession. CCNY turned out a lot of scientists and engineers when it was free, and CCNY graduates were unusually accomplished.

There's also a plausable mechanism between making college free and having more people attend college: the free market.

I know a lot of people at the margins who couldn't afford to go to college, even if CCNY was free, because the had to work to support their family. I know a kid who had to drop out of Hunter College (a branch of the CUNY system) and get a job when they raised their tuition to about $1,500 a year. His parents couldn't afford it. In the real world, it's really not possible for people in the bottom 2/5 to pay their own way through college.

for education, more is better. There is no diminishing return on education (you also seem to think that all education is equal).

I think that all education is diverse and the people who are taking it are best placed to decide whether it's worthwhile to them.

I've repeatedly seen the estimate that each dollar invested in education returns five dollars to society. That's the number these economists in TFA were challenging.

If it is true, then the point of diminishing returns on education is pretty far down the path -- probably past a 4-year degree. If society gets a 5:1 return on public education, you could afford to include a lot of inefficient education and still come out way ahead.

it simply isn't feasible to have both an industrious society and a society in which everyone is simultaneously putting in considerable effort to learn.

We have a society that just spent $10,000 per capita for the war in Iraq, to prevent Sadam Hussein from threatening us with biological and chemical weapons that didn't exist. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 1% of the population in prison at a cost of $25,000 per year, and another 2% in the parole system. These are basically needless expenses.

So we are obviously a wealthy society. If we were to "waste" the same money by "overeducating" our population instead of putting them in jail or sending them to war, I think it would be a better use of this money.

Such an overeducated society would have some economic inefficiencies, but for all its failings it would be a better society than the one we've got.

It's like having a patient come into the hospital with an infection with some of the symptoms of meningitis. You could give them a lot of antibiotics, and most of the time you'd be overtreating them, but on the whole you'd be catching one or two cases of meningitis that would result in avoidable death or crippling strokes. The downside of overtreating everybody is a lot better than the downside of undertreating them.

The downside of overeducating people is a lot better than the downside of undereducating people.

Here's a closely related question. What level of education should everyone have?

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[Anonymous Coward]

How good a welder can you be if you don't understand basic physics and chemistry?

Pretty damn good. I know a guy that can weld damn near anything yet has trouble reading the daily newspaper, has an IQ under 100, and a vocabulary which is comprised mostly of "Fuck", "Ya Betcha", and "Nother Round for tha Boyz". Sure, he can't tell you the melting point on three different temperature scales, or the molecular weight of the solder, or anything about the chemical properties of the flux. But he can turn a couple valves on some tanks and make one of the strongest, cleanest welds you'll come across.
Does a race car driver need a PhD in mechanical engineering in order to drive the car? Does a professional NFL quarterback need to be able to mathematically describe the aerodynamics of the football to 6 digits of precision? No.

everyone should have the opportunity to go to a 4-year college if (and when) they feel like it too

You already HAVE that opportunity. Oh, wait- you meant you want the taxpayers to PAY for it... sorry but you can pay for it yourself or find others ways to get that knowledge. I don't recall Pythagoras bitching about not getting a good quality education, or Descartes whining about nobody paying to send him to public schools, but those guys managed to figure a few things out.

$20,000 in debt that you can never discharge in bankruptcy, and that will accumulate exhorbitant interest for years

The loans you can get for college are about as cheap as can be had, especially for people with no borrowing history or assets. Most people who got screwed did so because they keep deferring their debts, and only paying the "minimum". Probably because they are bad at math.

Up to the 1970s, America used to be a land of opportunity. Free access to college education was a big part of that.

It still IS a land of opportunity. It's just that people today assume that "opportunity" means "somebody will give it all to me for nothing and no effort" as opposed to "nobody's going to wipe your ass for you so do it yourself".
And I've never heard of Free College education at any point in US history, and in fact for a good bit of time if you weren't part of the "Good Old Boys" club you didn't get into college at all. And to be IN that club, you had to be white, male, and an owner of land, and wealthy to boot. It wasn't until the GI bill after WWII that large numbers of "poor" and "lower class" people were able to attend college.

We just spent $3 trillion on the war in Iraq (according to Nobel-prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz). That's about $10,000 for every American. So we can certainly afford to spend $20,000 or so for a college education for anybody who is capable of it.

Apparently you failed at math as well. If we already spent $3 Trillion, what makes you think we have another $6 Trillion to spend on top of that? Just because we wasted money in one place, or even if you feel it was well spent, it does not justify running out and spending twice as much on something else, no matter how much it merits funding.

We can tax the rich to pay for the poor. There's more of us than there are of them. All we have to do is vote

Well the rich can pack up and leave, and many are doing exactly that. Combined with some careful foreign investment, the "rich" can quickly become middle-class for all effective purposes. And while there may be "more of us" than of "them", "they" happen to own most of the resources and have a good bit of influence and control over the people who own things like tanks and nuclear weapons.

In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy committed us to the goals of sending a man to the moon and eliminating poverty.

No, he committed us to the goals of sending a man to the moon and bringing him safely back to earth, which we did.

We sent a m

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[khallow]

City College, the GI bill, and Andrew Grove were a special case?

Absolutely. Currently, I gather there are somewhere over a hundred million college graduates in the US plus a bunch more with either an associate degree or a few college courses. The original GI bill helped 7.8 million people (according to Wikipedia) and it didn't necessarily mean free education. The City college system is a drop in a bucket compared to those numbers. When you are discussing programs that are at best a small fraction of the entire group, then calling them a "special case" is not in the least a stretch.

We have a society that just spent $10,000 per capita for the war in Iraq, to prevent Sadam Hussein from threatening us with biological and chemical weapons that didn't exist. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 1% of the population in prison at a cost of $25,000 per year, and another 2% in the parole system. These are basically needless expenses.

So we are obviously a wealthy society. If we were to "waste" the same money by "overeducating" our population instead of putting them in jail or sending them to war, I think it would be a better use of this money.

IMHO, we already are wasting money on higher education and it is hurting us (which the word "waste" would imply). As I see it, education inflation, which has been rising faster than general inflation for decades, is driven by government spending and loan subsidies in education over this time period. This means to me that people who can use a college education are paying higher costs than they otherwise would be. And people who aren't currently suited to college are encouraged to go in and waste their time and money.

End result is that it's becoming another money sink like prisons or wars.

If you wind up in an emergency room with a heart attack or a stroke, do you want to be treated by a registered nurse who doesn't have a four-year degree?

I want to be treated by someone who knows what they are doing. I am quite comfortable with being treated by someone with two years training or even a knowledgeable person who acquired their knowledge by some means other than formal education. It is better to be treated by someone with say an associate degree than not treated by an overworked nurse with a four year degree.

If a nurse is going to decide on whether to pull the plug on you while you're unconscious, I'd want a nurse who took some philosophy courses.

I can't take this seriously. There's already cut and dry medical "philosophy" that covers this situation. Basically, if I made a "do not resuscitate" document, then they're supposed to pull the plug (by "they" I mean someone with a pay grade above nurse makes the decision to comply with the document). If it's a crisis situation (with lots of injured people), then there is triage where they put me aside while they help someone that can be helped. These things are too important to leave to philosophy.

And the NYT article just repeats the myths. We don't know that college improves salaries or makes better voters. Correlation does not imply causation. The people who graduate tend to be more ambitious, intelligent, and hard working than the people who don't try. Anything that filters for such people would show a difference in these things.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[nbauman]

City College, the GI bill, and Andrew Grove were a special case?

Absolutely. Currently, I gather there are somewhere over a hundred million college graduates in the US plus a bunch more with either an associate degree or a few college courses.

The City college system is a drop in a bucket compared to those numbers. When you are discussing programs that are at best a small fraction of the entire group, then calling them a "special case" is not in the least a stretch.

The CCNY was a small system that produced a large number of Nobel laureates (using Nobel laureates as a proxy for all the other accomplished graduates). They also produced leaders in politics, finance, law, and other fields.
Their economic influence wasn't a drop in the bucket. Intel was a major contribution to the U.S. economy. It was replicated in the state university systems of New York and California.

At CCNY, you could walk into your professor's lab and see the research he was doing. You can't do that at a 2-year college with vocational courses taught by adjuncts.

When you have a model that works well, you expand it, not destroy it. But some people oppose public education for ideological reasons.

If you wind up in an emergency room with a heart attack or a stroke, do you want to be treated by a registered nurse who doesn't have a four-year degree?

If a nurse is going to decide on whether to pull the plug on you while you're unconscious, I'd want a nurse who took some philosophy courses.

I can't take this seriously. There's already cut and dry medical "philosophy" that covers this situation. Basically, if I made a "do not resuscitate" document, then they're supposed to pull the plug (by "they" I mean someone with a pay grade above nurse makes the decision to comply with the document). If it's a crisis situation (with lots of injured people), then there is triage where they put me aside while they help someone that can be helped. These things are too important to leave to philosophy.

Boy, if you think the decision on whether to pull the plug is as simple as that Wikipedia article makes it out to be, then you are a walking advertisement for the dangers of a narrow specialized education. If you come into the emergency room unconscious, how can you sign a DNR order? In reality, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/collection/medical_ethics advanced directives are usually useless because there are too many possibilities for any document to cover all of them. These decisions are often made by ethics committees that include nurses.

Suppose a baby is born with a genetic defect and will die right away without resuscitation, and will die anyway after 6 months of painful, expensive treatment. Do you want a right-to-life nurse to impose her own religious beliefs on the couple and take it upon herself to perform resuciation? Or do you want a nurse who has taken a couple of philosophy courses and has had her ideas challenged by someone who believes differently?

Nurses aren't just technicians. They need a liberal arts education to do their job well.

That's a good example of the dangers of downgrading qualifications. If we replace well-educated nurses with 4-year degrees with poorly-educated nurses from 2-year technical schools, we'll have unqualified nurses making bad life-and death decisions. It's important to for a nurse to understand that a medical professional can't impose her own religious beliefs on her patients. I don't think you can teach that lesson in a stripped-down 2-year vocational course.

And the NYT article just repeats the myths. We don't know that college improves salaries or makes better voters. Correlation does not imply causation. The people

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[khallow]

using Nobel laureates as a proxy for all the other accomplished graduates

Invalid measure since virtually everyone is not in fields that have Nobel prizes.

When you have a model that works well, you expand it, not destroy it. But some people oppose public education for ideological reasons.

I don't recall saying anything to oppose expansion of CUNY. If New York City wants to make it bigger and "freer", then by all means they can do so. If you're saying that we should make all education "free", then I want to see a demonstration that this makes sense on the scale of the US. I don't consider CUNY large enough or for that matter "free" enough since they do charge significant tuition for a public school.

I use "scare quotes" around "free" because you don't actually make education free. You just make someone else pay for it.

Suppose a baby is born with a genetic defect and will die right away without resuscitation, and will die anyway after 6 months of painful, expensive treatment. Do you want a right-to-life nurse to impose her own religious beliefs on the couple and take it upon herself to perform resuciation? Or do you want a nurse who has taken a couple of philosophy courses and has had her ideas challenged by someone who believes differently?

The first nurse would make the hospital liable for the cost of treatment. Problem is solved without requiring philosophy.

That's a good example of the dangers of downgrading qualifications. If we replace well-educated nurses with 4-year degrees with poorly-educated nurses from 2-year technical schools, we'll have unqualified nurses making bad life-and death decisions. It's important to for a nurse to understand that a medical professional can't impose her own religious beliefs on her patients. I don't think you can teach that lesson in a stripped-down 2-year vocational course.

As I implied before, I'd rather have a 2 year religious nurse saving my life than a 4 year non-religious nurse not saving my life because she's spread out between too many patients. Further, you're very unrealistic about the morals that will stick to liberal arts graduates. I think it just as likely that they'll be more effective cheaters and bullshitters. That'd be a real help to my life expectancy.

Also, you employ a tricky little bit of rhetoric in discussing qualifications. Qualified people are qualified tautologically no matter the level at which the qualification exists.

If you took a good social science or economics class, you'd know that those are testable hypotheses and the way to answer them is with data. Social scientists (like Samuel Bowles) say that people who succeed tend to credit their own hard work, skill and virtue, but in reality when you look at a large pool of people, people seem to succeed because of their father's social status (eg George W. Bush).

So we don't need to dump money into education, we need to increase every fathers' status? Else, this observation seems irrelevant, even if it really is true. Maybe you should get some of this "data" before you speak further?

I'll go with the data. The data seem to show that, for those who want more education, the point of diminishing returns is more than 2 years of college, and not less than 4 years of college. If anyone has data to the contrary, I'll be happy to look at it.

Whoops, goalposts got moved! We're no longer in the "everyone should get an education" argument and moved to "everyone who 'wants' an education should get one". As I see it, the people who want more education can get it in the current environment just fine.

In all, I still see very sloppy reasoning here. Sure I'm not lifting any serious intellectual weight either, but all you've done is cite a couple of examples of free

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[nbauman]

Perhaps the reasoning published in a peer-reviewed journal will be acceptable to you. (Although there are some people who will never change their opinions no matter how strong the evidence.)

Science, 26 Sep 2008, 321:1779, Books: Economics: For equality, education matters, Thomas Lemieux.

Book review of The Race Between Education and Technology, by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz.

Remarkable growth in US economy during 20th century, inequality declining, defying tradeoff between equality and efficiency. By 1970s, US was richest and most educated country in the world.

But beginning 1970s, "productivity stalled and inequality started growing rapidly." Fraction of Americans completing college level. "Inequality now reaching highs not seen since the Great Depression."

In early 20th century, "rapid technological change was accompanied by stunning gains in educational achievement that provided enough qualified workers to meet the demands of an increasingly technologically sophisticated economy." But now technology is advancing with stagnant education.

"Post-World War II, the G.I. Bill continued from where the high school movement of 1910 to 1940 had left off, opening college to the masses."

But now other countries have caught up. Young Americans no longer have educational advantages over the rest of the world.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[khallow]

Perhaps the reasoning published in a peer-reviewed journal will be acceptable to you.

No, because such a process doesn't handle observer bias. Almost everyone involved would not only have a college education, but one or more advanced degrees. Further, most of those depend in part on an influx of students to justify their employment. The evaluation of the effectiveness of education is a particularly insidious problem because most everyone doing the research has already bought into the program and needs the education system to stay employed. Given that this class of people have crippled K-12 public education in the US, I wouldn't trust their opinion on the matter.

My view is that education is useful for people who would pay to get one anyway. They have some sort of ambition rather than seeing education as a means to party and avoid having to work for a few years. There's no additional value to making that education free.

But beginning 1970s, "productivity stalled and inequality started growing rapidly." Fraction of Americans completing college level. "Inequality now reaching highs not seen since the Great Depression.

[...]

But now other countries have caught up. Young Americans no longer have educational advantages over the rest of the world.

There's the flaw with trying to solve the US's problems through education alone. No matter how hard you try or how much you spend, eventually everyone else catches up. In the meantime, you generate vast economic inefficiencies that speed the process.

Here's my view. The US has ultimately priced itself out of the job market for anything that doesn't involve creation of local value (local services, tourism, etc). Jobs that require more education will disappear in time as other countries catch up. When I look at the US's historical advantages, I see two things, great mobility in what a person is and does, and a great ease in creating new businesses. Merely pumping up education doesn't help either of these two advantages. If everyone gets a college degree, then there is little to distinguish the ambitious person. Similarly, if everyone is educated for free (as you desire), then that money has to come from somewhere. That hampers the creation of new businesses and jobs.

Instead of distorting an education market that worked in the first place, I suggest reducing the obstacles to job creation and ambition. For example, school vouchers and ability to move between K-12 schools to reduce the effects of the worst K-12 schools (this means that people spend less time getting educated). Eliminate Social Security. I think it's more important to have workers who are roughly 15% cheaper, than workers with a slightly better retirement package. Greatly reduce government spending. It's not just ending a war or two (that never was enough to balance the budget), but actually cutting back greatly on all spending by the federal, state, and local governments.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[nbauman]

Oh, now I see where you're at -- education doesn't promote mobility or job creation, replace public schools with vouchers, eliminate Social Security, cut back government spending.

I started reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page years ago, because they were conservatives who actually had respect for the facts, even when the facts went against them. Now unfortunately, along with the rest of the conservative movement, they've been completely taken over by anti-government ideology and have abandoned facts. The traditional fact-based conservative movement actually has a name for this, "epistemic closure."

So I'm familiar with your fact-free arguments. When someone dismisses the facts in peer-reviewed journals like Science, I know that facts and logic will never convince them.

I rest my case.

BTW, for the record (in the unlikely case that anybody else is following this) you have a complete misunderstanding of what nurses do, and what their educational requirements are. http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos083.htm (more facts) and a complete misunderstanding of what the legal requirements are for decision-making in hospitals. This is a good example of the intellectual methods of conservatives today: just make things up.

I admit that if you buy health care on the free market, you probably won't need Social Security.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[khallow]

Oh, now I see where you're at -- education doesn't promote mobility or job creation, replace public schools with vouchers, eliminate Social Security, cut back government spending.

Apparently, that "seeing" doesn't extent to knowledge. I'm not sure why conservatives own these meme spaces, since it should have wider support than that. It's not being "conservative", it's being responsible and encouraging responsibility in others.

So I'm familiar with your fact-free arguments. When someone dismisses the facts in peer-reviewed journals like Science, I know that facts and logic will never convince them.

Just like you've neglected to mention that CUNY hasn't done free education for more than three decades? And they stopped doing it because they couldn't afford it?

I can't question this research in a Slashdot thread, because I don't have access to the journal article. But given your tendency to ignore inconvenient facts, plus the inherent bias in discussing the virtues of academic education, via an academic process run by people who owe their jobs in large part to education, I doubt it'd be worth the effort. I'd rather wait for independent study. That comes from anyone who cares what you actually know, but doesn't have a stake in exaggerating your competence, namely, employers. They seem to complain quite a bit about the quality of graduates (and not just the H1-B factories).

BTW, for the record (in the unlikely case that anybody else is following this) you have a complete misunderstanding of what nurses do

You wouldn't know. I have not revealed that level of ignorance in this thread as anyone who actually has read it would see. Assertion of things beyond your knowledge is a sign that you are full of shit. But let's keep in mind that we weren't discussing esoteric details of the training of nurses or anything else that required a detailed knowledge of some aspect of nursing (I don't have that level of knowledge FWIW), but whether a four year degree were desirable or not. I still assert that there's nothing in nursing requiring the alleged "well-rounded" education of a liberal arts degree (a cursory examination of the registered nurse training standards in your link indicates that there's at least some places that don't require that level of training either). Also, I assert that the supposed ethical dilemmas you mentioned earlier were well beyond the purview of a nurse. I still believe that a hospital that allowed a nurse to make the kind of decisions you mention (like going against the wishes of parents in keeping a child alive) would expose that hospital to tremendous liability.

This is a good example of the intellectual methods of conservatives today: just make things up.

Pot calling the kettle black. I already mentioned the little detail where you forgot to mention that CUNY (or the GI Bill for that matter) hasn't offered free tuition for a long time. We also have the contrived "right-to-life" nurse story. Now you're accusing me of being a conservative (a typical ideologically stupid argument, you'd hear on "well-rounded" college campuses). And we still have the BS that you dribbled onto this thread in the first place.

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[khallow]

I'll post to summarize my points in a coherent manner.

• I grant that college education has value. I don't grant that universal college education is better than the current partial college education. For example, in the US we're seeing a drop out rate (compare the percent who get some college education to those who get a degree) of almost 50%. While I'm sure some of those are doing so for financial reasons, I doubt that is a majority.
• I think there are a number of pervasive myths about the value of a college education. This thread illustrates a few of them (such as the number of Nobel laureates indicates the quality of a college program for average people or that getting an education will be better for anyone, a sort of one-size-fits-all approach to life).
• The same parties advocating a college education have been overseeing the decline of the K-12 public education system in the US.
• Employers have been complaining about the quality of college graduates. Some of it's pragmatic (they want college graduates with more vocational knowledge) or self-serving (want to show the "need" for more relatively cheap H1-B imports), but there appears to be a real problem of declining quality in college graduates.
• I believe the current student loan programs have had a harmful effect on colleges and their integrity, for example, leading to an increase in student cheating combined with lack of college enforcement (as I see it, colleges get their money no matter what the quality of the student they produce). This is another indication to me that a free tuition approach wouldn't improve the system.
• We haven't demonstrated that free tuition is better than paid tuition from the point of view of the student. I find people value something more, if they have to pay for it.
• We haven't demonstrated that the US can pay for this system.

On this last point, I have this to note. According to the College Board, in 2006-2007 public school students paid $5800 for that year just in tuition while private students (after financial aid) pay $22,000. At a glance, total college cost is over $100k for a degree (that is, money spent by the student not everyone else), public or private (including room and board, "fees"). A free education would cover all these expenses.

Given that there are currently, almost 20 million college students who are US residents, that's an effective cost of near $2 trillion just to educate the current group of students to a degree. This appears to be somewhat less than 60% of total people of this age, so the actual number who could get a degree are about 50% higher, I'd guess. That means our free, universal education now costs somewhere around $3 trillion to educate this estimated group to a degree. Suppose it takes six years to do so (average stay apparently for public college students BTW), then that's $500 billion per year of spending that has to come out of the federal budget. While that may be better than one Iraq war (which this is roughly equivalent to in cost), it's a huge amount of money to burn.

We also have to consider that this isn't the only source of cost, since there probably would be other subsidies that would get paid to colleges (eg, the public universities are already subsidized by state and federal governments, traditionally) to cover the additional students under a universal college education policy. There's also the matter that education costs are increasing far faster than the rate of inflation or GDP. Since 1986, inflation doubled, GDP tripled, and education c

Re:Do we want a society of rich and poor?

[nbauman]

Governments can invest money in education at no charge to the student, in order to increase the economy as a whole. Individual taxpayers can benefit more from that increase than they paid in taxes. Most people believe that this is true of elementary and high school education in the U.S.

The question is, at what point does free education pass the point of diminishing returns for the economy as a whole. European countries seem to believe that it benefits them to educate a substantial proportion of the population to a level equal to our 4 years of college. The social scientists I read in Science agree. They think the GI bill created post-war American success.

My intuition is that those Europeans and social scientists are right. If we increased our educational expenses substantially, and increased our taxes to European levels, and overeducated our population until we had taxi drivers and mail carriers with art history and philosophy degrees, we'd still have an educated population with scientists, engineers and managers that was so much more productive that it would justify the cost of education in economic terms alone. The Scandinavian countries seem to be doing OK.

And in non-economic terms I'd rather be living in a society in which blue collar workers learned art and philosophy.

But that's only my intuition. My intuition doesn't count for much, and neither does anybody else's intuition. The only thing I care about now is facts. I can get that from Science magazine. As one Canadian doctor said, "If it's not peer-reviewed, why are you wasting your time on it?"

I rest my case.

another bubble

[rhendershot]

Too many of one thing and a general unrealistic expectations?

That's a bubble.

circular logic

[Anonymous Coward]

So, here is what we have done:

1. Cut the financial aid available to students so they have to take more student loans.
2. Complain that people shouldn't go to college because students have too much debt when they graduate.
3. Conclude that since college leads to a lot of debt we should stop "subsidizing" students

My conclusion would be that we need to subsidize college students more so they have less debt when they graduate.

Re:circular logic

[yuberries]

If you consider education a personal investment, it makes no sense to subsidize it any more than subsidize everyone the materials to build a rocket to travel to the moon...
Each person should be responsible to pay for their investments in full, and they are responsible to weight the benefits v. cost, in my non-aggression-principled view.

Re:circular logic

[Anonymous Coward]

too much debt ... subsidize college students more

Why does it never occur to you numpties to ask why the COST of education keeps growing so much?

Supply and demand

[hsthompson69]

If a society finds itself with an overabundance of qualified, educated people, the correct response is not to try and cut down on the overabundance, but to start doing more interesting things.

You're mixing the cause and effect -> having more supply doesn't create more demand. The question should be, "if we have an overabundance of qualified, educated people, what do we have a dearth of?" If we have a dearth of people doing interesting things, great. But if we have a dearth of people picking up trash, or digging ditches, or milling machine parts, the proper adaptation is to fill the existing demand - anything else is just going to create another artificial imbalance.

Not to bang on the libertarian drum too hard, but one might suppose that with a lighter tax burden and less government regulation and intervention, "more interesting things" might be more likely to occur.

Re:Supply and demand

[SanityInAnarchy]

Robots are also getting better at doing these things. If they're not good enough yet, maybe we have a dearth of good robotics engineers.

Re:Supply and demand

[foobsr]

... But if we have a dearth of people picking up trash, or digging ditches, or milling machine parts, the proper adaptation is to fill the existing demand - anything else is just going to create another artificial imbalance.

Half a century ago the idea was to build robots to overcome both problems.

CC.

Re:Supply and demand

[Hatta]

The only thing we have a dearth of is free time. Instead of focusing on making more, lets take the time we would have used to produce excess and enjoy life instead. If we have too many people and not enough work, distribute the work around equitably. We could all work 20 hour weeks if our society weren't so focused on production as the only measure of value.

Re:Supply and demand

[BoberFett]

I've thought before that I'd happily take a 20% pay cut as long there was a corresponding 20% cut in my responsibilities. If everyone did that we should have close to zero unemployment, theoretically anyway. This whole 40 hour work week thing seems to be ingrained in the US mindset unfortunately.

Re:Supply and demand

[hairyfeet]

I'd believe that if it wasn't for the systematic destroying of jobs by big business. All the college educated jobs are going to H1-Bs, who get their degree (if they even have one, fraud is pretty rampant) for pennies compared to ours, while the good honest jobs that the poor did are being given to illegal scabs. For those that don't believe me, here is a fun "game" we play here in the south, and you can play along!

Next time you are going by a construction site, which was once a job that those that weren't able to get a degree were able to learn a trade at, try this: Yell "IMMIGRA"! in a loud and authoritative tone, and see what happens. You will watch illegals scatter like deer sensing wolves buddy!

The reason why we have a "dearth" of college graduates, is because the kids really don't have a choice if they want to survive. The jobs that don't require a degree are going to Paco who gets paid pennies and can be treated like shit, and of course now the college degree requiring jobs are being taken by Apu who...well gets paid pennies and treated like shit. See a pattern there? the problem with the whole "libertarian ideal" is all you end up with is a third world country because everything degrades to the "get yours and fuck everyone else" attitude we have going right now in this country.

Or do you think they make videos like How NOT to hire an American on American soil just for shits and giggles?

Re:Supply and demand

[Fareq]

<Insert cliche about how I hate people that THIS something, but that I'm going to do it anyway> ..There... much better...

Oh, yeah.

THIS

1000 times THIS!

Re:Supply and demand

[hsthompson69]

But production is the only measure of value. If we all worked 20 hour weeks, we'd all by 50% poorer...which means worse housing, schools, food, education, etc, etc, etc.

Now, that being said, if someone wants to choose to work a 20 hour week, and take the hit, more power to them. But don't expect me to sacrifice my children's education, or standard of living, in order to give someone else half of my job. Root, hog, or die.

Re:Supply and demand

[darkwing_bmf]

If we all worked 20 hour weeks, we'd all by 50% poorer

That's only true if you value leisure time at $0.

Re:Supply and demand

[couchslug]

"We could all work 20 hour weeks if our society weren't so focused on production as the only measure of value."

Our competitors would crush us. Business is war, the world is full of people who want money and will work for it.

Re:Supply and demand

[hsthompson69]

When leisure time can pay rent, buy food, or otherwise be traded for services and goods, I'll value it > $0.

Will you pay me $10/hour to stay at home and enjoy myself?

Re:Supply and demand

[darkwing_bmf]

Lets say you come home from work at a real job and it's your time to do whatever you want. Would you rather work even more for $1/hour or would you rather watch TV (or surf the web or spend time with your family - basically anything you would want to do that doesn't pay cash)? Clearly free time has more value than $1/hour, at least if you aren't destitute to the point of needing that dollar.

In fact the value of free time is a function of how well your material needs and wants are met along with how much free time you already have. If you're unemployed, you're more willing to give up 8 hours of your day for cash than if you were already working 8 hours a day and were asked to give up 8 more.

Re:Supply and demand

[hsthompson69]

Clearly free time has more value than $1/hour, at least if you aren't destitute to the point of needing that dollar.

If free time has value, who is getting paid for it? Whether or not I "value" free time in some subjective sense does not mean that a dollar value can be placed on it (unless, of course, you're talking about selling a vacation package to someone, or renting a bowling lane to someone, or offering some other leisure service to them).

I'm not averse to being convinced I'm wrong on this point, since of course I "value" doing things for their own sake rather than renumeration, but I can't see asserting that there is a dollar value that can be placed on it, at least not in any uniform manner.

Educated idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad got a Master's from Cal Tech. I went to trade school.

Have no idea about his costs, but I saved enough to pay school off in full after three years.

We earn about the same. Granted, he has a better means for advancement, but at this point, there is no difference in our earnings.

We compared notes on classes that we had in common. There is no doubt in my mind I got the better education. Not to open a flame war, but his philosophy classes read more like indoctrination than a well-rounded overview of philosphocial thought. Ditto his ethics classes, English, etc.

It concerns me that people assume education seemingly ends after college, and that the point of view expressed there is somehow "educated" when both of our readings after covered a more nuanced view of the world.

It reeks of classism those purporting that you need a college education to participate effectively in a democracy, or that it is a requirement to have a career.

Judge Smails was right!

[SoundGuyNoise]

The world needs ditch diggers.

This might have been insightful ... 25 years ago

[s3ph1r0thcl0n3]

I'm graduating this month with an MS in Chemistry, also got a BA in Chemistry. As a TA I have taught 10 lower level college chemistry classes. In the non-majors classes, about 90% of the students couldn't have cared less about what they were supposed to be learning and their work through the semester proved they were not thinking about chemistry at all. So my point is not to say the kids were stupid or condemn them, they were smart and realized they could just reach a class consensus in the hallway about the right answers to the problems. What I don't understand is why the f__k people have to take so many classes on topics they don't give a rats a** about. It's all about money. Education is one of the most profitable industries in the country and is still growing in this bad economy. All the Universities need to do is get some high-minded PhD eggheads who never encountered the real world to persuade policy-makers that every kid needs a liberal arts education.

Sad but true

[mathmathrevolution]

During Graduate School I was living in the hood My neighbors were disadvantaged urban youth and I talked to them about their about their future. They were being pushed towards college and considering engineering. But they just didn't have the basic skills to succeed in a college engineering program. Their senior level math was going to algebra/geometry. They weren't ready to fore-go the prime of their life to play academic catch-up. They didn't even know what tools they lacked. Sending these kids to college is setting them up to fail. It's horribly cruel: colleges with lenient admissions standards just take their student loans, and then kick them out when, predictably, they cannot independently function in an academic environment. The schools keep all the money, and the students are labeled failures for life.

Like so many other things, higher education in the hood is just a scam. It's a much better idea to just get certified as a mechanic or a electrician or a nurse. If you are a mediocre student, those are probably the best ways to enter the middle class. Instead we keep repeating "You must have a college education to succeed" which only encourages unqualified youth to saddle themselves with an enormous debt.

Just-in-Time killed On-The-Job Training

[MagikSlinger]

I think the problem is that companies wanted interchangeable people that they could hire & fire at will. In the "good old days" (with overt racism, sexism and red meat), you went to work at a company, they taught you what you needed to know, you worked for the company until you retired.

Now, it's we need someone who can do X right now! then drop them 8 months from now. The time spent training the worker is now wasted money from the employer's point of view. And you know, 2-year vocational/business schools are nice, but really, most corporations have very unique skills that no formal school could ever teach.

My solution: every job is on-the-job training. Then, if the employee leaves early or is let go early, the lost hours can be returned as a non-refundable tax credit. The non-refundable part discourages companies from just hiring someone, claim to train them for 6 months then fire them for quick cash.

For more complex jobs, university/college prepares you with basic knowledge for the first 2 years then you can go work with on-the-job training then take the remainder of the courses you want to finish your degree if that's what you want.

Re:Just-in-Time killed On-The-Job Training

[cycleflight]

This reminds me of a discussion I was having recently about how public ownership of companies can be harmful to the market in some ways. It provides an influx of money for the company and allows people to become wealthy by supporting the company, but public ownership also means that many people own a company who don't give a damn about what the company does or makes or how they treat customers. All the public owners care about is cash flow. When that happens, pressure from the top of the company gets put on people in the middle to do impossible things, and the result is often shitty decisions that hurt the career of the decision maker, the company in the long term, and especially the consumer. A company has to make money. But a truly successful company that breeds loyalty with customers will make money through delivering a quality product competitively. In the end though that company has to be interested in what they're producing, and they have to care if they do it well. It seems that with a big enough company that is traded publicly, no one but the consumer and those laid off care at all if the company does a bad job and charges the same price as that for a good job.

And there was even a book reviewed on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Beating the College Bubble

The main site is a great blog.

No failure == no identification of success

[hsthompson69]

Your second point is driving to the root cause of the problem. Having a system of social promotion and inflated grades is probably *the* ultimate root. If people could actually fail, could actually be told in 2nd grade, "look, you're just not ready for third grade, let's try 2nd again", then maybe this wouldn't be an issue. How you deal with 18 year olds in 2nd grade is another question, but at least you've told them the truth for 12 years, instead of fooling them (and others) into thinking that they're ready for higher education.

The other thing that needs to be addressed is behavior problems in public schools -> with no penalty (either corporal punishment or expulsion), there's no consequence for bad behavior.

If we flunked more kids when they deserved it, and kicked kids out of school when they misbehaved, we might actually have high schools filled with people ready to succeed in college.

Re:No failure == no identification of success

[An Onerous Coward]

Regardless of anything else, would *you* personally hire someone who had been held back three times in their K-12 career?

Teachers know that there's a stigma to being held back, which is why they look for any excuse to keep pushing kids forward. Sometimes their hopes are rewarded, and the kid actually does pull things together in high school.

Show me a society where kids don't get branded for life when they get held back, and I'll show you a society whose teachers are willing to hold kids back.

Re:No failure == no identification of success

[hsthompson69]

I wouldn't hire someone who had been held back three times in their K-12 career for office work, but I might hire them to dig a ditch. They would certainly have a better idea of what they were capable of if they were held back, rather than getting a high school diploma and wondering why they can't do anything but dig ditches.

That being said, if it took someone till they were age 30 to get a bachelor's degree, I'd be willing to hire them for an entry level job related to their major just as quickly as a 21 year old. If someone's K-12 career took them till age 30, good for them.

Of course then you've got to ask yourself, should we be paying for public school for 30 year olds, which leads to the question, should we be paying for public schools at all.

Horseshit

[A nonymous Coward]

Thanks mainly to Nixon in the 1970s and NAFTA in the 1990s, those jobs are gone. The foundation they provided is gone. They probably won't come back unless the federal government does the right thing and impose trade barriers against nations that have an oversupply of labor, and unsafe working conditions, and unsuitable wages.

What a ridiculous load of arrogant, narrow minded pablum! I see college taught you how to think rationally.

One of the ways progress happens is to make old jobs easier so the workers can be freed for new jobs. You automate factory jobs, you make jobs easier, everything you can do to require fewer workers for the same output. There's a term for that -- productivity. We now use bulldozers and powered cranes instead of picks and shovels and wheelbarrows, and those are in fact an improvment over sticks, which were an improvment over bare hands.

Tools -- maybe you've heard of them.

The fact that some jobs go overseas is another benefit. Let someone else do the manual labor factory jobs which produce old fashioned items. That frees up the previous workers for new fields, such as building computers, or the programs which run them, or the websites which use them.

There's another aspect you would probably be glad to stay ignorant of. These "foreign" countries are not just producing stuff for the developed countries, but also for themselves. China has an increasingly bigger economy, and has something like a quarter of the world's population. They want the same things the developed countries already have, but in larger quantities. Are you seriously suggesting that they should continue to depend on the developed countries to build them? What would they pay for them with? Or would they just remain on mud houses and not even have shovels and wheelbarrows to build with and not want medecine or cars or computers?

If they are going to use one quarter of the world's cars, computers, and everything else, logic says they should be building one quarter of the worlds stuff. Or maybe you think each country should be self-sufficient in every category? It's a lot more efficient to have cars made by companies who are good at that, as determined by a free market, and if that happens to be China, good for them -- the developed countries have to make something of equal value to trade.

Maybe you should go back to Economics 101 for an education.

Re:Horseshit

[FlyingGuy]

Ok, while I agree with your overall opinion I have to take umbrage with a few things.

The problem is that the "invisible hand" does not take the human quotient into consideration.

If this were 2405, star date whatever the fuck, then invisible hand not matter because, "material needs are seen to, there is no hunger there is no disease there is no ...", but since this is 2010 none of that is true.

There used to be excellent blue collar jobs in the semi-conductor manufacturing sector in the Santa Clara valley ( aka silicon valley ) but those are gone. My sister worked in wafer fab, QA for some of the biggest. Those are gone, overseas where they can get cheap labor and very little if any environmental regulation.

When I was graduating from High School in Fremont CA I had a neighbor who would have walked my application into the GM assembly plant, aka NUMI aka Now Closed, and I could have had starting pay of 8.50 an hour in 1977 and at that time it was a good wage. I could buy a car and a house and raise a family. There was also a Peterbuilt plant, a Mack plant and a Ford plant and now those are all gone.

There used to be foundries and all sorts of manufacturing in the San Francisco bay Area. We had two Naval Shipyards , Hunters Point and Vallejo. Hunters point is now light manufacturing but will soon be a SF-49'rs stadium and more shopping malls. The City of Vallejo is pretty much Bankrupt.

The cities of Oakland and San Francisco are not far behind and that is because the manufacturing base is gone. Bank of America used to have a huge Development Center in Concord California and now that is gone. Off-shored to India with the usual kicker of, "Want your severance package? Guess what you have to sit and train the guy from India that is replacing your job because we can pay 1/10 of what we pay you. People were so distraught that one woman picked up her package after she had trained her replacement, walked out to her car and blew her brains out. Bank of America moved to North Carolina where they pay people half of what they used to pay people here and nothing has taken its place.

So while this might be good for BofA and its shareholders it is not so good for the rest of the people that used to have good jobs.

The problem is we have 200 million or so people in this country. Not everyone can be a programmer or a web designer. Not everyone can be the garbage collector, not everyone can go and work the fields. Not everyone can be an engineer or a doctor or even a lawyer.

We used to be a diverse working country that did a lot of everything, now we don't do nearly as much as we used to do, and what is left we try and do with as little human intervention as we can get away with because robots don't get tired and make mistakes and they don't go on vacation or have kids and need to take time off.

The cycle has shown that manufacturing will move to the cheapest labor pool and the least regulation. The problem is that the labor pool will demand more and the regulation will increase as the next love canal's happen etc. etc. They went to Japan, then to Korea and then Malaysia, then hear and there and now they are going to China.

One would think that as things move around the world that they would eventually find their way back to the USA when we are a 2nd world country and our people will take whatever job they can get because it will put food on the table.

I am not sure that will actually happen because you know what? There are over 2 billion people in China and their government is very happy to ram just about anything up their peoples asses if it will make the old fuckers in the party look god and get them rich in the process. Wait.... Hmm reminds of the old robber baron days of the USA. I guess they paid attention. Unfortunately I see no change on the horizon as they will not yield to the calls to get the breaker boys out of the coal mines.

Here, take this life preserver...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and throw it to the intelligent point that's drowning in your sea of hyperbole.

Plenty of manufacturing right here

[sjbe]

Disclosure: I've made my living in manufacturing for the better part of 20 years. I also have a LOT of experience in international business and global sourcing.

The problem is that too much manufacturing that was formerly done in America is now done elsewhere, in third-world nations like China, Mexico and India.

I've been to China and Mexico on a professional basis. I've worked there. There is more manufacturing (by revenue) done in the US than in all three of those countries combined. In fact the US manufacturing sector is larger than the GDP of every country on earth except for Japan, China, Germany, France and maybe Great Britain depending on which numbers you look at.

In the past, domestic manufacturing provided the solid foundation upon which the strong American economy was built.

America has a $2.7 Trillion (yes with a T) manufacturing sector and it is GROWING despite all the hand wringing you hear. (the last two years are due to other causes than fundamental weakness in US manufacturing) Yet employment in manufacturing is dropping. How could this be? The reason is the same as what happened to farming over the last two hundred years. Automation, technology, and productivity have gone up and fewer people are needed to do the same work. It used to be that over 90% of the US workforce was in agriculture. Now it is around 2% and yet no one would argue that the US hasn't done well. Manufacturing is undergoing a similar process.

The jobs in the US are going to be less and less in manufacturing in years to come. This does not need to be a bad thing. Yes it will be hard on quite a few people - fundamental changes in the economy never are easy - but trying to keep jobs in industries where the wages are uncompetitive is pointless and damaging. Where will the jobs be? I don't know and neither does anyone else. That's the scary bit but that's also where the opportunity is. All I can tell you is that the job growth won't be in manufacturing for the next 20 years. It may be that wages in the US fall back to more competitive levels with elsewhere in the world. There is no fundamental reason wages in the US must be higher than elsewhere. But if the US invests in promising industries and provides an environment with sufficient capital, labor mobility and appropriate regulations then the US will be fine. The economy of 2040 will look nothing like the economy of 1940 and that is something to be celebrated.

Thanks mainly to Nixon in the 1970s and NAFTA in the 1990s, those jobs are gone.

The reason those jobs are disappearing is because labor costs too much in the US relative to elsewhere for certain jobs. End of discussion. Labor intensive work migrates to where labor is cheapest. It always has and always will. Work is either labor intensive or capital intensive (by definition it cannot be both) and the manufacturing that is capital intensive is staying here in the US and doing just fine. NAFTA and the other stuff you mention plays a role but it's a minor one. Blaming NAFTA misses the big trends. The US manufacturing jobs are fundamentally a victim of success. Companies made money, wages went up but some work requires relatively high inputs of labor and those jobs inevitably will head where labor is cheap.

They probably won't come back unless the federal government does the right thing and impose trade barriers against nations that have an oversupply of labor, and unsafe working conditions, and unsuitable wages.

The concept of an "oversupply of labor" is ridiculous. That's like saying a country has an oversupply of coal, or timber, or gold. Yes, some countries have a lot of labor. It's an asset like any other. The US has the third highest population in the world so you really could only be referring to two other countries if you are talking about population. Yet labor is mor

Re:Plenty of manufacturing right here

[frank_adrian314159]

The concept of an "oversupply of labor" is ridiculous. That's like saying a country has an oversupply of coal, or timber, or gold.

Yes, but economies have limits on how much raw materials they can feasibly absorb in a given unit of time. That includes labor. And, unlike coal, gold, or iron ore, those resources cannot be left unmined for long without rebellion ensuing. Yes, in the long run, the market can sort things out but, in the long run, we shall all be dead or be crying revolution.

Re:Plenty of manufacturing right here

[astar]

sincere question

Now I have heard that the usa labor component of a ton of steel is less than the transport cost from asia for a ton of steel. Also I hear that steel manufacturing in the usa has been going downhill for quite some time. Generally, I would figure lack of capital investment, and for that, I would look to a number of things revolving around crap financial monetary systems, which these days everyone sort of notices. Note that here I am not particularly interested in beating up on industrial capitalists. Because of some accounting background, I particularly like to look at the difficulty in devaluing obsolete capital "assets" by the individual firm. So where am I screwing up?

Re:Plenty of manufacturing right here

[An Onerous Coward]

>> The concept of an "oversupply of labor" is ridiculous. That's like saying a country has an oversupply of coal, or timber, or gold.

And that, friends, is the idiocy of treating labor as just another commodity. Labor is only an asset when they have something useful to do. But feast or famine, they need to be fed, sheltered, educated, and provided health care. It's an expensive proposition, and it's no wonder that some countries just don't bother.

When you cut your cost for any other resource, the whole economy benefits. When you cut your labor costs, you must either find something of equal or greater value for the labor to do, else you create human suffering in proportion to the cutback.

No such thing as an oversupply of labor? Tell that to Zimbabwe, which has a 90% unemployment rate.

Totally bad advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Our economy has shifted almost completely away from blue collar production. Without a trained workforce that can survive in this services/information based economy this entire country will only further decline. Education is the only real key to prosperity in this world, and it is far more valuable than tradeskills because of the flexibility with which graduates have vs. an individual that is focused only on one activity.

The problem is the expectation of a degree

[PFI_Optix]

I take a small amount of pride in the fact that I am NOT college educated. I went into IT after high school and have learned everything either at home or on the job. Over the years I've picked up some college courses here and there to the tune of about 60 credit hours. I've yet to learn anything useful. The reason we have so many college graduates in America today is the notion that you have to go to college to have a "well-rounded" education. There are jobs for which I will never be considered solely because I lack a degree. Never mind my work history, my level of expertise, or the glowing recommendations I can produce; I don't have a piece of paper issued by a college, therefore I'm not qualified to do the work.

What this country needs is a good reality check on how many qualified workers exist who just don't have the paper requirements listed in the job description. The real irony of it is that when I was 22 and others my age were just getting out of college, i was vastly more knowledgeable than they were. The gap has only grown wider as the years have passed. College grads with IT-related degrees seem more likely to coast on what they learned in college, whereas we the self-educated learned from the start that IT work requires constant education. I've run into a few employers who recognize that degrees aren't worth any more than experience, and will treat a fresh graduate the same as someone with 3-5 years of experience and no degree. We need more people like them to help dispel this myth that college is necessary.

Yes, I'm biased. No, I'm not making this up. I'm speaking from anecdotal experience at best; take it for what it is.

(It takes a great deal of effort to talk about not finishing college without going into a rant about the bullshit college passes off as education, by the way)

Re:The problem is the expectation of a degree

[damnfuct]

This is true; learning on-the-job should not be undervalued. This is the traditional way in how trades were passed on, and it worked rather well.
On the flip-side, there are now some things that should be taught before entering the work force (take engineering, for example); you need a basic understanding of quantum mechanics before you can begin to comprehend the operation of a scanning tunneling microscope.
Maybe the proper approach is some sort of hybrid school/on-the-job-training approach (much as it is with some trades).

Re:The problem is the expectation of a degree

[PFI_Optix]

I most certainly agree that formal education is crucial for some fields. Science is an excellent example: there is so much foundation knowledge required to get started that it doesn't make sense to try to learn while doing (except in the sense of structured lab experiments in school).

I'm finding now that I probably should have gone to school for programming. While I've been reasonably successful in the past two years at teaching myself quite a bit, I don't have the benefit of an experienced programmer teaching me the proper way to do things. I often improvise and then reimprovise as my newer projects reach scales I didn't imagine months before.

Here's a Catch 22 for people like me: when we do decide we want a degree, we can't get it. I can't get a computer science degree, as no one offers online study or night classes. I have to quit my day job and become a fulltime student. If I quit my job, I have no use for a degree or the education that comes with it.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[maxume]

The rhetoricians need to start treating 100 million dollar salaries as glaring signs of economic inefficiency.

It is very unlikely that each person earning 100 million in today's economy are actually producing that much more value than the next best candidate (or even, the minimally acceptable alternative candidate, if you want to go that far).

Maybe someday willingness to do a job will be as valuable as the perceived ability to do a job (currently, there are plenty of willing, so it isn't much of a distinguishing characteristic, except in highly dangerous fields, and even then, it is only worth so much, 'hazard pay' doesn't really match up to Wall St. bonus pay).

Slippery Slope

[Iamthecheese]

I would encourage you to look at Japan to see where the degree slippery slope leads. Japan has a great focus on technical skills, from high schools that focus on trade schools to technical colleges and yet it's all but impossible to get a job in Japan unless you have a college degree. College has entirely replaced high school as the minimum acceptable level of education in society. Once one could get a job having only completed elementary school. Then one needed to be a high school graduate. Now one needs a two to four year degree. And this is for a job as a waiter or dish washer.

The reason is simple: colleges are absorbing the unemployed and underemployed. And it is a system that can successfully absorb as many as can borrow money. Individuals who can't get work go back to school in hopes that a degree will help them. This takes them out of the work force for that time.

I would argue that if there is any hope for the current economic paradigm this is a good thing. Here's what I mean: Either technological unemployment (i.e. the jobless recoveries of the 90s and today) cannot be resolved at all or it will be resolved by having almost every person in society being educated enough to innovate their company's way out a la Google.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[TheGeneration]

You really nailed it on the head. We've over valued office work in our society to the point where we've denigrated anybody who works with their hands.

Of course, this has been going on for centuries. Look at the aristocracy in Europe prior to the 1970's and their disdain for tanning, or calloused hands.

The difference is that now we have a media that is telling everybody they can be wealthy. This really started in the 90s and went full throttle in the 2000's. Look at what teenagers making life decisions are being told about life via these shows: My Super Sweet 16, The Hills, Laguna Beach, Cribs, The City. These shows give the impression that every teenager just needs to get a college degree in order to live a life of super wealth. When was the last time a TV series showed middle and working class life in a positive light? I can't think of any shows that show the working class as anything other than stupid (My Name Is Earl is a prime example, King of the Hill another example, The Simpsons portrayal of working class Homer, or Cletus for example.)

Anyway, I do enjoy some of these shows. I just think that our society is being influenced by a media that weaves itself into the thoughts and philosophies of our national psyche. Is it any wonder why nobody wants to be Earl, Homer, or Hank, when they've been told a life of luxury and easy money is waiting for them if they just go to college and act a certain way.

prisoner's dilemma

[mmmmbeer]

I think this sounds like a large-scale example of the famous Prisoner's Dilemma. Collectively, we might be better off if a lot fewer people went to traditional colleges; but individually, each person is likely to be better off if they do go to a traditional college.

Re:prisoner's dilemma

[yuberries]

Disagree...though I love the Prisoner's Dilemma, the problem here lies on the subsidizing of the schools and tuitions. If the government weren't stealing from everyone to pay for these malinvestments in education, people would naturally be less likely enroll in them since they'd be paying in full.

I would in fact say that the prisoner's dilemma here is the exact opposite you proposed. Using public funds for your own benefit, aka stolen property acquired through taxation, would be defecting. Not using it would be cooperating. So it's the defectors that are stealing and misappropriating resources, you see...

The "Mallard Fillmore" factor

[RevWaldo]

One of my benchmarks in life - if the guy who draws "Mallard Fillmore" is against it, I'm all for it, with bells on. (This is based on about 95% reason, 5% spite.)

And he hates, hates, HATES colleges. As far as he's concerned if you didn't learn it from home schooling, it wasn't worth learning. Otherwise you're a communist god-hating droid who can't add two and two together.

.

Re:The "Mallard Fillmore" factor

[mathmathrevolution]

I worry about sending too many kids to college because I doubt it will actually improve their critical faculties. Republicans are worried about sending too many kids to college because they worry that it might improve their critical faculties.

Re:The "Mallard Fillmore" factor

[ciggieposeur]

And he hates, hates, HATES colleges.

According the all-knowing wiki, Bruce Tinsley attended at least three universities:

"He is a graduate of Bellarmine University with a degree in political science, and attended the Harvard University Summer Program as an undergraduate. While in High School, he won a cartoon contest sponsored by Louisville's Voice Newspaper chain, and began working as an editorial cartoonist at age 16. He attended the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, studying journalism ..."

Wonder why he hates them so much considering his own career appears to have benefited from them?

Actual Statistics

[LordBmore]

TFA was sorely lacking in actual statistics stating how many Americans actually have four year college degrees and I didn't see any posted in the comments yet, so here goes. This chart Educational Attainment of the Population 25 Years And Over By Age: 1947 to 2003 seems to show that approximately 25% of the population has at least a Bachelor's Degree. You may think that the number is skewed by the older generation being less educated, but the chart also shows that the number is still under 30% for people ages 25-29. I would hardly say that this means that there are too many college graduates in the US.

Counterpoint

[orthancstone]

4. Politicization. "If you want an A in English Literature with Dr. Rosenberg, you'd better write about feminist theories of hermeneutics."

Actually, there's a valuable lesson to be learned from that situation. Specifically, at some point in your life you're going to have a boss who gives you a task you don't like and tells you to do it in a way you don't want to. Suck it up and do it well anyway.

Re:Counterpoint

[DigiShaman]

No, the lesson here is that the indoctrination of bullshit material to our young students often creates societal damage the echos on for generations to come.

Re:Counterpoint

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and what with Dr. Rosenberg being so caught up with theory, her neglected daughter ended up nearly destroying the world.

Re:Counterpoint

[orthancstone]

No, the lesson here is that the indoctrination of bullshit material to our young students often creates societal damage the echos on for generations to come.

Oh horseshit, stop letting the media brainwash you into believing that students are sponges waiting to absorb whatever they're told. I wrote plenty of papers to appease a professor, and none of it "indoctrinated" me into agreeing with an idea I considered flawed but bullshitted my way through anyway.

You give too little credit to student's ability to write out several pages of "research" and opinion without agreeing (or, hell, thinking more than 2 seconds about) with any of it. They're pros at it. Most college students could successfully out-bullshit a politician if they knew it would get them an A.

College like high school is watered down

[MallocFork]

To do best service to society, we have to up the standards. We have to give up the crap we allow to pass along. The stories of what "smart" college students get away with is frightening. In my immediate family I have members that have taught in either upper crust high school, two big state schools and an Ivy League university so I have a real idea of how bad things are.

Entitlement has destroyed most high school top tracks and college. Students do not have to work hard enough. If high school and undergraduate degrees were worth more than toilet paper, society could benefit. I though my undergraduate and masters computer science should have been harder. And it has only gotten worse in the 10 years since.

They need to first fix high school. If people would just learn that no matter how hard you try to do crap like No Child Left Behind, there are just going to be a good number of people that just can not reach true college tier. If they would stop feeding the bullshit that everyone can and has a right to go we can move forward with creating college degree programs that are worth the parchment they are printed on.

Time to start penalizing job listers.

[tarlss]

Yeah...honestly the solution to the problem isn't to start throwing money at colleges to subsidize them or whatever..

It's to start forcing employers to start lowering there hiring standards. How much grief would we save in the country by making sure when someone says "You need a college degree" a college degree is actually required?

It doesn't require an inspecting office or anything- just allowance for suing/penalizing companies if they're clearly inflating their job requirements.
At the very least it could be handled by the Better Business Bureau- if a number of applicants complain about a job listing/etc that is clearly overestimating job requirements, some one steps in and invokes a fine.

The real way to curb inflation is actually doing something about it..because if you let inflation get 'corrected by market forces' you just wind up with a crash cycle.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[smitty777]

I definitely see your point, and I agree with you on not undervaluing the "less important" jobs. But I think you're missing some key factors - motivation and desire. What gets some people up in the morning is the thought that you can improve your lot in life, maybe by going to school to get a better job. Not all people, mind you. Some are pretty happy being construction workers, truck drivers, whatever. I was a dishwasher for a number of years, until I decided that I really needed to do something with my life. A few degrees later and presto, a very satisfying IT job.

I don't think I would have been a very motivated/satisfied worker if I hadn't been able give it a go for myself. That being said - I'd much rather see the sanitation worker get the six digit paycheck than the douchbag that comes up with that garbage they pass for entertainment/advertising on the tube nowadays.

So don't play that.

[khasim]

If I wrote down everything I did, I'd be more capable then most IT admins these days, the problem is I don't have that fancy piece of paper floating in front of my name.

So don't. Since you already have so much experience, get that documented instead.

If you have a CCIE, you'll get job offers even if you don't have a degree.

The point is that you need SOMETHING other than your claims about your skill levels. And 3rd party, standardized evaluations come in many flavours.

Re:So don't play that.

[commodore64_love]

CCIE == Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert? Better than the Microsoft variant? I think I'll look into this.

Re:So don't play that.

[wmbetts]

Speaking of CCIE that's very true. My best friend at the ripe old age of 23 is damn near pulling in 6 figures with out a degree, because he's that good. His CCIE has put him in that bracket and he'll have 2 CCIEs before he's 25 and probably pulling in closer to 200k a year with out a degree.

My landlord was out,

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

And I had to call a plummer. Not a single one would come out to my house without guarantee of my paying them at least $150.

I have the most ridiculous driveway you have ever seen and one time my car slid halfway off of it. The tow truck bill was $175.

In both cases the contractors were at my house for less than 30 minutes and they both had their own licenses. They were also not very interested in being competitive in price due to an abundance of work. Getting a contractor's license usually means apprenticing for a while at 'low' pay, vs. going to college and digging a deep hole of debt.

I went to community college for a while and I would always tell the kids there that if they're not that interested in school, regardless of academic potential, they should get a contractor's license and go to school when they are more into it. They'll make more money and if they ever do get a degree it will be something more enjoyable for them.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[TooMuchToDo]

If you ever happen past Chicago, this post deserves a beer. Thank you sir for your contribution.

Grade inflation for money

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the past 6 months I have interviewed:

BS in Mathematics that didn't know what a dot product was.
A PhD EE (solid state) that could not draw the energy band diagram of a diode.
Masters in CS that couldn't program - at all.

ALL from top 50 respected state colleges.

Grade inflation for money, period.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Locke2005]

I'm pretty sure the guy driving the septic tank pumping truck makes twice as much as I do. And you know what? He deserves it!

College Marxist Myths

[mathmathrevolution]

The "college marxist" phenomenon might have had some basis in the culture of 60s radicalism, but today it's completely exaggerated. There are a few aging hippies of the "Ward Churchill" genus but younger professors do not have the luxury of engaging in politics.

In my time at college, I can only recall one time when a professor espouse a leftist political viewpoint. During an English class discussion I claimed that "there's never been a female dominant society." The ardently Feminist professor suggested (wrongly) that I was ignorant, but refused to provide a counter-example.

And that's it. That's all the "Marxism" I endured in my 4 year degree. It wasn't even enough to even sharpen my critical faculties. I should really write a letter complaining about what a limited exposure to different ideas I had in college. And given that I also had to endure lots of discredited right-wing propaganda in college, such as the "Laffer curve" and other falsehoods from my Econ professors, I think that on balance my college education basically just served to squelch all my political instincts and turn me and my fellow students into bland careerist rats.

Re:College Marxist Myths

[COMON$]

Wow, an actual response to my post :) Caught me offguard there. Experiences vary from college to college. My college for instance tended to lean to the conservative agenda. I have been trying to find a good reference to show my research and a number of other people I have stolen from, however I cant find a good one that would be taken seriously in this forum. It has taken a relatively large amount of effort on my part to attempt to discredit the Marxist agenda in colleges. However, what I found out was that I myself didn't understand Marxism. The ideas that are taught are things like classless societies are the best, Gov't forced re-distribution, even among Conservatives we have a championing of the proletariat. Among other sectors we see a championing of any "oppressed" group. Check out the ACLU's activities over the last 20 years. Many classes in the IVY league colleges champion the Marxist ideas rather overtly.

Now there is nothing wrong with opposing ideas and learning from a variety of sources. But being a humanist is no different than being a Muslim, Christian, or Buddhist. I just think it is rather unfair that Secular Humanists and the like are considered enlightened but the former are considered backwards thinking brainwashed idiots.

Re:College Marxist Myths

[gonzonista]

What has a female dominant society got to do with Marxist viewpoint? That being said, the Naxi in China were a matriarchal society.

Anyhow, I got some Marxism in first year, mainly because it was part of the curriculum. Presumably, if others had the same experience, the Marxist boogeyman wouldn't be around today.

Re:College Marxist Myths

[Hatta]

However, what I found out was that I myself didn't understand Marxism.

I think you still don't understand marxism.

The ideas that are taught are things like classless societies are the best

I have been a student at 3 colleges, employed at one other, and a youthful hanger on at yet another. I've never heard of such a thing. Students may be exposed to the idea of classless societies, in the proper historical context, but that's not the same thing.

Gov't forced re-distribution

What, you mean taxes? Given that most universities would not exist without taxes, I'll give you that one. But taxes != marxism, so I don't know what your point is.

even among Conservatives we have a championing of the proletariat

In a democracy, if you want the most votes you have to cater to the most people. Under capitalism, the proletariat is always the largest class. It only makes sense that appealing to the lower classes would be a good strategy to get votes. Not that this has anything to do with Marxism.

But being a humanist is no different than being a Muslim, Christian, or Buddhist. I just think it is rather unfair that Secular Humanists and the like are considered enlightened but the former are considered backwards thinking brainwashed idiots.

What does secular humanism have to do with anything? We were talking about Marxism. But, to answer your question, secular humanism is the idea that evidence and not magical thinking is the way to improve our lives. The reason we're considered enlightened is because we're right. Science has brought us indoor lighting, motor vehicles, refrigeration, computing machines, vaccines, and so on. Magical thinking has brought us... um.. trees with twinkly lights.

Yeah, I know. IHBT.

Re:College Marxist Myths

[mathmathrevolution]

No. No. No. None of this "Experiences vary from college to college" crap. You said that 60% of college professors are Marxists who support "Gov't forced re-distribution" and similar policies. And now you're changing your story. I went to an elite university for both undergrad and grad, so by your estimates I would have been encountering "Marxism" left and right. You should just admit that your estimates for the prevalence of Marxism are totally baseless.

Re:College Marxist Myths

[Eli Gottlieb]

But, to answer your question, secular humanism is the idea that evidence and not magical thinking is the way to improve our lives.

No, it's not. That's not the definition of secular humanism. Secular humanism is an ethical system, not a way of knowing how "to improve our lives". It can include a belief in the use of science to better mankind, but it actually includes loads and loads of other things. This is why it's called humanism instead of secular scientism.

Underemployed

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look at some of the underemployment data out there. It is not surprising that areas with popular universities have pockets of high skilled workers flipping burgers.

degree-deflation

[peter303]

My company has hired PhDs for positions that batchelors did 20 years ago. Amazingly enough several take it.

Many high school level desk jobs require a college degree now.

I don't understand that.

[khasim]

I had to delay entering college for two years and work while I was in school to afford the tuition -- but I managed to do it without burying myself under a mountain of student loan debt.

-and-

Of course, this guy hasn't suggested taking that help away, all he's suggested is applying some common sense to way we dole out that help.

So why did you spend 2 years avoiding the money being doled out?

And student loans are designed to be repaid. That's not being "doled out".

I think too many people are confused between "money for education that does NOT have to be repaid" and "money for education that DOES have to be repaid).

Re:I don't understand that.

[DriedClexler]

I think too many people are confused between "money for education that does NOT have to be repaid" and "money for education that DOES have to be repaid).

Why shouldn't they be? The government fosters exactly this confusion with their "instantly forgiven" loans to the car companies and the loans that get "repaid, 5 years ahead of schedule" with ... other government loans.

Okay, sorry, just had to rant about that and it was sorta on topic.

Re:I don't understand that.

[Shakrai]

So why did you spend 2 years avoiding the money being doled out?

Because I hate debt and would rather pay for things up front than be buried under a mountain of non-dischargeable-in-bankruptcy debt?

That's not being "doled out".

Sure it is. The cost of education would come down if it wasn't for all this money being thrown into the system.

Outsourcing did it

[blair1q]

Maybe if certain people hadn't shipped millions of jobs to sweatshop countries we wouldn't have "too many" college graduates chasing after shit-work jobs now.

school vs prison

[TravisO]

It doesn't work for either institution, but they sell it like it does anyways.

Dumbed Down

[ChiRaven]

Even the college curriculum is getting weaker all the time. I teach statistics, and a couple of years ago the program director I worked for told me point blank that it was not important that my students know what the variance or standard deviation of a distribution weere; what was important was that they get grades good enough that they got reimbursed by their employers so they would stay in school and eventually qualify for the school's masters degree program.

The math program throughout our undergraduate program is slipping. A few years ago, candidates for all four-year degrees had to have basic algebra (the equivalent of a high school freshman course) plus one "liberal arts math" course beyond that. Now that requirement has been dropped. Most degrees no longer require that additional course, and some no longer even require algebra.

Degree is Needed to Get Hired

[MrTripps]

As others have said, without the sheep skin your application will not make it past HR. It is the difference between a $40K a year job and a $70K+ job.

AP

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like an Associated Press article to me. But then again, judging by your comment it appears unlikely you have clicked the link or read the article. Maybe you should educate yourself before you assume you can educate others.

The article makes a fair point. For starters the assertion that working to attain a degree is not usually worthwhile can be verified by two statics: the amount of debt incurred ($23,000) and the graduation rate (57% after 6 years). Clearly there are a lot of people working to attain degrees who do not stand to benefit (financially) from that decision.

Also, it seems like you are saying people should attend 4 year programs because that will make them less likely to subscribe to certain economic theories. It sounds like you are advocating strapping people with financial hardship for the purpose of indoctrinating them.

Re:AP

[Gary W. Longsine]

So, you clearly don't read... how did you learn to write? The fine article (as quoted by the article summary, you didn't even need to click) states: "The notion that a four-year degree is essential for real success is being challenged by a growing number of economists, policy analysts, and academics. "

Not so simple.

[MaWeiTao]

There are certainly a ton of economic forces out there driving this shift. I do think one important one is social. Society demeans people who work at McDonalds or Walmart. Anyone who watches television sees some celebrity constantly flaunting their wealth. People are made to feel inadequate if they aren't constantly buying the latest and greatest cars, clothing and toys. People are losers if they aren't out partying every night. We're constantly being told that we should be living extraordinary and unattainable lives. In the face of all this how can anyone tolerate living an average life? With reasonably frugal living a person could live a modest, but comfortable life, own a decent car and their own home. I know quite a few people who have achieved this and a good number of those without even having gone to college.

But this is not enough for many, maybe most people. These people have a burning desire for more. And I fully admit that I suffer from some of those same feelings. So what's the solution? Go to college. A degree offers the promise, whether it's true or not, of job security and an opportunity at a better life which actually means more income. So people go to college, even when they've got no real skill and no real passion. And this is where you get a lot of these idiots who get these business degrees because, well, it's open-ended enough that it should enable them to land a job almost anywhere. And with today's corporate mentality they're the ones who get promoted first because, well, they have a business degree so they must understand something about running a company. Even when they don't. So we've got this whole class of workers who seem to exist only to protect their own positions.

There's another significant problem out there: unions. Without question unions, in principle, provide a real value to workers. But unions, as they exist today all over the world, are an unmitigated disaster. All they're doing is strangling our economy making ever more absurd demands. They've turned into as big a business as the corporations they're supposedly fighting. And I'm convinced they're just as responsible as corporate management and the government for driving away jobs. Who wants to risk not going to college and entering an unreliable job market?

One thing that I find unbelievable is how many people out there have complained about abusive practices on the part of banks issuing college loans and the lack of government intervention and yet nobody seems to be saying a word about the universities themselves. Universities are among the most inefficiently run entities out there who like the government and raising taxes the solution to their problems is always raising tuition. It's obscene what universities charge for tuition and yet nobody complains. There's nobody fighting to force colleges to keep spending under control and bring down the cost of education. It's no wonder so many people end up buried under student debt.

I could go on and on. There are countless problems facing American workers. Although while European nations were smart to embrace trade schools they're not necessarily the solution either. Europe is facing just as many problems as we are. I have first-hand knowledge of people, with both college and trade school degrees struggling to find a job related to their field. This is definitely a complicated problem and while I agree that there are probably more people going to college than need to there currently aren't many compelling alternatives.

Re:Not so simple.

[CMontgomery]

One thing that I find unbelievable is how many people out there have complained about abusive practices on the part of banks issuing college loans and the lack of government intervention and yet nobody seems to be saying a word about the universities themselves. Universities are among the most inefficiently run entities out there who like the government and raising taxes the solution to their problems is always raising tuition. It's obscene what universities charge for tuition and yet nobody complains. There's nobody fighting to force colleges to keep spending under control and bring down the cost of education. It's no wonder so many people end up buried under student debt.

A rather funny thing happened at my university recently. Some fraternity was pulling a prank where 2 people jumped out of an unmarked white van to 'abduct' some initiate. Now seeing this happen someone on the street called the cops and thus the university sent out texts to everyone on the e-alert list. A few hours later it was discovered to be a prank, so the university sent out another text to tell everyone not to worry. The next day the university blasted these kids and told everyone the cost of the two texts: $7,360. I get about 4-5 texts a week from them. I have no idea how they spent $7,360 on (at most) 40,000 texts.

carpentry, pipe fitting, welding, plumbing

[Anonymous Coward]

Using his example, you don't need to know anything about math, science, literature, etc, to cut down trees.

You need to know what they train you to do on the job. Therefore, an elementary student graduate could do the job, short of the physical requirements. So make him a dish washer until he's big enough to work a chain saw.

Nope, this isn't a slippery slope...

Do they teach carpentry, pipe fitting, welding, plumbing, etc. in high school?

Lumberjack? Wrong; it's a "logging spider"

[damnfuct]

Someone forgot to tell this guy that modern lumber harvesting is not a job that has no skill required. Like operating a crane, working a harvesting machine is an art. http://www.impactlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/logging-spider.jpg

Re:Lumberjack? Wrong; it's a "logging spider"

[damnfuct]

No one is going to trust that thing to a high-school dropout with no experience.

Re:Lumberjack? Wrong; it's a "logging spider"

[russotto]

Ah, so that's where they got the idea for the Avatar vehicles.

As long as it isn't their kids.

[strangeattraction]

Let's survey these same economist etc and find out how many would not send their kid to college based on this evidence.

ability to do the job, not boy scout badges

[TravisO]

Sounds like you want your appeal to be hired to rest on how many boy scout badges you got. The reason you are treated so well is because you have management that understands what makes a good programmer, and then rewards them accordingly. So no, you should get brownie points for having a degree, they prefer skilled people who have proven their ability to do the job they were hired for.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[getSalled]

Check out this article and the pay some garbage collectors actually get...
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/04/trash-collecting-entrepreneur-squashed.html

$109,533 in annual compensation -- not bad if you ask me but they're going on strike over it...

The Real Amerikan't Dream

[jameskojiro]

Is to have 50% of children grow up to go to a four year college so they can get cushy jobs and live in their ivory towers in the "good part" of town. While 25% of the Children are dependent on the Government for their Governmnet cheese and these people vote to keep the 50% in power. While the rest of the population who actually DO the work is made up of College and High School dropouts and Illegal aliens who are essentially "Legalized slavery".

Re:Things that make your college degree less valua

[rillopy]

It's like having $100. If you give everyone in America an extra $100, the value of your $100 declines because there's more money floating around.

No - education is not a limited resource being divided up among the population (like the work being represented by money). It is like an mp3. You can overpay, not like the song, but its value is dependent entirely on you - how you appreciate it, how you use it.

Start by getting a degree that YOU value, and you'll use it to make your life better. It might mean more money, but it also might mean a more fulfilled life.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[nine-times]

Why can't we admit that not everyone gets to be a fashion model, a football star, or a CEO?

Well you have a bunch of rich workaholic CEOs running things, and they go around telling everyone that rich workaholic CEOs are the only valuable people in the world and everyone else is a useless piece of crap. Surprise!

One of the problems a culture who believes that "capitalism" is an ethical/moral system rather than simply an economic system. For example:

I’m a free marketeer. I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system — goods and services represent tangible benefit to people, market prices represent the true value of goods in society, and wages represent the value that a worker provides to others. Absent negative externalities or monopoly effects, a man receives from the free market what he gives to it, his material worth is a running tally of the net benefit that he has provided to his fellow man. A high income is not only justified, but there is nobility to it.

If "wages represent the value that a worker provides to others", then implicitly no one can ever be underpaid or under-appreciated. Rich people are rich because they're good people who deserve all that life has to offer. If a garbage man or janitor is poor and suffering, it must be that he is a bad and worthless person who isn't contributing anything to society.... right?

Yeah, so that really sucks, but that belief system persists, largely because the rich and powerful are egocentric enough to actually believe that they deserve everything they've gotten, as well as being powerful enough push that belief system into our culture as an absolute truth.

Taxation

[MoriT]

Agreed. I really like the idea of taxing on a curve. Want to pay less in taxes? Raise the median income level.

Re:Taxation

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Finally, the ONE guy who got it!

"Policy Wonks"

[Un pobre guey]

Count on "policy wonks" to draw the maximally moronic conclusions possible. Naturally, spending trillions of dollars on invading other countries, the "War on Drugs," the "War on Terror," and other orgies of pork-barrel politics is just fine and dandy for our economic and industrial development, trade deficit, social well-being, etc.

The whole higher education model is broken.

[hey!]

But nobody inside really wants to fix it. It's so hard to establish a career there. The tenure system is a bit like medical residency. If you look at the practice, it's frankly nuts,but there are two kinds of people in the system: those who are going through it right now and are trying to keep their head above the water, and those who've made it out of the water and don't want to rock the boat.

The fundamental problem is with the idea that really drives the acquisition of degrees as a kind of vocational qualification: the notion that you can certify a person's intellect at some point in time, and then it never needs to be upgraded. That idea may have worked in late medieval times. Gentlemen to University and received a pretty solid sample of every branch of knowledge there was. After the invention of movable type, they could purchase a library for themselves on the way home that also represented a majority of all the books that were worth having. Thirty years later they could bequeath that library to their descendants, who need add no more than a few new volumes to bring it up to date.

Even if such a library could be amassed today, much of it would need replacing every decade, if not every year. The same goes for the information inside the young baccalaureate's head.

A four year degree with a liberal smattering of liberal arts as a lifelong job credential makes zero sense today. And all those 20 year old kids taking classes in literature, politics and psychology to fulfill their distribution requirements... well sure, they get some benefit from that, but how much more benefit would they get if they took those classes when they were 30, or 40? And as for the vocational aspects of a degree, even an engineering degree is only the start of your education.

If I were philosopher king, I'd ban the Bachelor's degree. Instead, I'd send students for an Associate's and then a certificate, renewed every five years, of lifelong learning. A BS takes something like 128 Credit Hours. I"d let them out after 64 and require 16 credits every five years for the rest of your life to keep your lifelong learner's accreditation current. That system would be cheaper and more effective.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Well spoken!
I couldn't agree with you more. But how do you fix it in a capitalistic society? People don't want to pay 500 dollars a week to have their garbage picked up and if Americans don't want to do it there are plenty of others who would.
One thing that I tend to believe is that more and more technology will assume the role of "grunt" if you'll pardon the expression. The jobs will revolve around the development and maintenance of this technology thus requiring education. Instead of digging ditches I would monitor and coordinate automatic/robotic ditch diggers. We're just not there yet.

But in the meantime, we really should be respectful towards all people no matter what their occupation is. Remember that the next time you're in a public restroom and feel it's ok to make a mess and not clean it up or throw your used paper towels on the floor. Or you think it's ok to clean your car out in the supermarket parking lot and leave the garbage in one of the shopping carts etc..

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

But society says this privileged douchebag is worth thousands of times more than the guy who washes dishes. So what do we expect people to do? Everyone wants to be that pampered and privileged CEO, nobody wants to build bridges and roads. And so we have Wall Street profiting while the economy crumbles, and meanwhile, most of our infrastructure is falling apart.

This makes zero economic sense.

If few people wish to perform a particular labor, that will tend to drive up its cost, and vice versa. This is why starting garbage collectors make more than starting teachers, and starry-eyed aspiring actors/actresses are willing to work for free.

Facts are, running a business successfully is a talent that few people have. Remember Apple before Steve Jobs came back? Without Jobs, there would be no iPhones, iPads, or i-anythings... in fact, there would be no Apple Inc. at all! And you're going to try to tell me that he doesn't deserve every penny of his compensation? You're nuts.

"Education"

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought "getting an education" was a euphemism for being indoctrinated. What else could be the purpose of sitting for hours on end listening to a professor and taking notes? Isn't that how you indoctrinate someone? Is there any room for thought and reason and learning on the one-way street we call education?

No, learning happens outside the classroom. But our society has several tricks up it's sleeve to keep it from happening there too. For starters, as long as we are saddled with debt we will be under pressure to perform. That means there won't be room for learning (too busy making ends meet).

On top of that, we have several "required beliefs" which people must adhere to in order to be accepted by society. That means turning from them will get you branded as a crackpot or a non-conformist (which I suppose is technically what you are. . .). Most people don't really accept the required beliefs (the ones they have time to think about, of course they don't question things they don't consider) but they will still pretend in order to be accepted. It's all for the sake of social order, which facilitates control. And where would we be if society were out of control? (the correct answer to that question is a required belief). That is why indoctrination is necessary.

my plan

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could do it over again, this is how I'd do it. Being that this is impossible, I'll just do what everyone else does, and make their kids do it:

- taught to read and basic math before KG
-GED achieved by age 12, ship off to nursing school
-RN by 14. GO TO WORK.
- 4 year pre-med degree completed by 18
- MD or DO by end of year 21
- residency complete by 25
- law school, JD by 28
- business school, MBA by 31

then what you have, as a worst case schenario, is a 30-something RN, MD, JD, MBA... who when they CAN'T find work, can slum it as an RN and still clear bank.

Economic False Assumption

[Kashell]

The article assumes one things: Going to college is a trade off for wages. Either you get student loans and study, or you work full time.

That's not true at all. I would argue that it's barely a trade off to get a low wage job full time, or be a student and part time earn a low wage job. Either way, you'll likely need government / parent assistance or want it.

So I pose a better solution: Let HR departments toss non-college degrees in the trash, but students should differenciate themselves on experience, not GPA.

In other words: CS grad with 4.0+ vs CS grad with 3.2 + work experience -- who do you think will win?

How do you get work experience? Well fortunately it's pretty easy -- go do stuff for free, then market your free work to a real low paying job -> Then graduate and tout your experience.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Stan Vassilev]

Why do we emphasize the importance of some jobs, like advertising executive or investment banker, that add nothing of real value to humanity, while denigrating those who pick up our trash?

Wait, did you catch that, everyone? "Those who pick our trash"? You don't see yourself as one of "those", do you? As long as it's "those" and not "you", it's ok to speak down on everyone, because they dare try to be anything more than pick someone's trash.

I say lead by example. I want you to pick my trash. We have a deal?

Or maybe you don't want to do this, as you think you're good at coding or designing or engineering. Shouldn't have graduated then. It's all your fault.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[cycleflight]

So, have kids grow up watching Lassie, The Andy Griffith Show, and Family Matters and all shall be saved. The part I never understood about assertions like the one above is that they assume that television is the only input we have to society, and that there is only one society in the country. We had a civil war almost 150 years ago and people on both sides still occasionally think it wouldn't be a bad plan to obliterate the other half of the country. There is certainly more than one true society in America, and with that knowledge, we simply have to choose which to be a part of. If you don't like the TV-commercial-o-minute-55%-of-the-fat-I'll-take-two-love-this-thing-and-buy-it-get-rich-quick-and-lazy society, and I don't blame you, remove yourself from it. Do something else with your time, and absorb yourself in something you deem more worthwhile.

We keep hearing the same thing over and over

[RevWaldo]

Our public schools are inadequate and don't teach our kids the basics. Kids are so overwhelmed with school, homework, and extracurricular activities they don't have a chance to just be kids. Kids waste their time playing Nintendo and sexting each other. Our schools are grossly underfunded. Our teachers are overpaid. Teachers are heroes. Teachers are unionized civil servants who barely have the skills to flip burgers. All schools nowadays only focus on college prep and not marketable job skills. Colleges have lowered the entry bar because schools don't hone basic skills. College students don't learn anything, they just waste time and party. College students are under such pressure to get good grades they're taking prescription drugs to help them focus. You need a college degree to get a good job. Some of the best people in the company don't have college degrees. Most of what you learn in college is useless. A college education ensures you're able to think. Colleges do a lousy job in teaching problem-solving skills. College students and their parents get buried in debt. A degree from an affordable college isn't worth the paper its printed on. The government is spending too much money on higher education. We're so being other nations in the number of college grads its embarrassing.

Obviously there's only one conclusion to draw.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[damnfuct]

So true. Not everyone is equal, but that doesn't mean anyone is better. Everyone is good at something, and it's not good for society on a whole if everyone is corralled into one specific job.

Re:Things that make your college degree less valua

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with all points except politicization. While it occurs, how does that devalue the degree? OK, it makes the degree less useful, but if *everybody* experiences politicization then the *everybody* has a degree that is less useful. And really - no employer has any clue what you learned in whatever class you took.

The other points are extremely valid. As a college instructor I can vouch for all of them. But I would add the one that everybody else has mentioned: promoting college for everybody is just stupid. Of the classes I teach - in spite of grade inflation and dumbing down - there are always a few students who don't show up (and receive an "F") and a few more students who _earn_ an "F". Tack on the roughly 25-30% of the class who should have failed (but received a "C" or "D" instead) and we have about 40% of the class that can't pass a freshman course. BTW, don't blame me for grade inflation - that is a direct result (as in, I was told to do so) of higher faculty and administration trying to keep the private college rooms full.

Mike Rowe Ted Talk

[Anonymous Coward]

Mike Rowe had an interesting Ted Talk about this a couple of years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVdiHu1VCc&feature=channel

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[ericrost]

No marketing drone makes "hundreds or thousands of times" what a sewer worker does. Get a sense of proportion dammit. Yes, lets say a marketing drone makes $250,000 a year and the sewer worker makes minimum wage (both wrong in all but extreme cases). $250,000/year -> $125/hr, minimum wage is $7.25/hr which is a ratio of 17.2. Get real and drop the hyperbole. I even estimated in your favor in both cases. Sanitation workers tend to be paid relatively well and market droids tend to top out in the low sixes.

expensive

[xaoslaad]

College is frackin' expensive. I could not afford to finish if it wasn't for the G.I. Bill... It's costing me ~ $10,000 a year for 27 credits. (3 semesters 3 classes each)

I have a home I'm paying a mortgage on, and finishing would not be an option otherwise; racking up $30,000 in debt is not acceptable.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[bcat24]

No marketing drone is worth hundreds or thousands of times what a sewer worker is worth. Yet our society says they are.

I think there is a contradiction here. Worth is precisely what society says it is, no more and no less.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

My point is that plenty of people do get up in the morning motivated by false promises of being able to improve their lives. If everyone who tried to improve their life actually succeeded, who would be left to do the crappy jobs? That is my point. Not everyone who works hard and makes smart choices gets ahead. Statistically speaking, in our economy, they can't all get ahead. We like to think the ones that fail, fail due to character defects, bad choices, or poor work ethics. But we're fooling ourselves. Structurally, it isn't possible for everyone who tries to get the 'good' job they are looking for.

elephant in the room

[uncreativeslashnick]

What about the fact that the gov't making it easy to get extremely cheap loans and/or grants contributing to inflation in college tuition? I mean it's a simple supply/demand curve. The gov't is increasing demand by allowing a lot more people to throw a lot more money at college. College tuition has increased astronomically compared with inflation over the past few decades. Anybody else see this as NOT a coincidence?

Maybe the real answer here is to stop making it so easy for kids to afford college so they have to actually consider there options, plan, and/or work hard instead of getting easy money up front and then being a slave to it later.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

If only AC's could mod... I'd mod you with +10 "Applause"

That's not what the statistics say

[mpsmps]

FiveThirtyEight looked at this question from a fairly rigorous statistical point of view. Their conclusion was that college graduates have far better career prospects than lower levels of educational achievement. In fact, US college graduates have remained at (the technical definition of) full employment throughout the current economic downturn, while other groups have suffered terribly. The obvious conclusion is that there are not too many college graduates.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[NiteShaed]

This is one of those rare posts that I wish would actually get passed around in emails, and posted to other websites. Easily one of the best posts I've ever seen on /.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[misexistentialist]

We don't need any lumberjacks, sanitation workers, or construction workers.

With increased mechanization, efficiencies of scale, business consolidation, and general economic stagnation it is mostly true that we don't need many of these low-prestige workers. And it's hardly worth trying to compete with illegal immigrants for those jobs anyway. A shortage of labor is certainly not the reason for crumbling infrastructure.

Want to cut down on pointless bachelors degrees?

[russotto]

How about making a high school diploma mean something again? The bachelor's degree has become the new high school diploma. Which only continues a very long process; used to be in the early part of last century that 8th grade was the end of the line for most students. This wouldn't be so bad if people were actually learning more, but I think in many cases they are not; they're just wasting time and effort.

Step one (and it's a doozy) is to get the primary and secondary education working in the many areas where it's simply broken, and to get it working better in the areas where it is not. Basic literacy and arithmetic by the end of elementary school, and the ability for nearly all students to pass something like today's GED by the end of 8th or 9th grade. Then the rest of high school can actually be used for some of the advanced academic stuff, or for training in trades. Do that, and convince the rest of society (particularly including employers) that it has been done, and people won't need the bachelor's degree.

I don't see it happening. Instead, we'll see the masters become what the bachelor's is today, a basic requirement -- it's already starting to happen in some fields. Which is too bad.

silly

[Anonymous Coward]

so...learn how to a job, but under no circumstances enrich yourself via the social sciences, the arts, the sciences, and the humanities...fantastic recipe for success.

and as for the whole "as long as i don't have to pay for it" thing - selfish, pig-headed thinking. people should share burdens, not try to pawn them off on others.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

I would like to see a better source for that than some investment banker's blog and a crappy scan of a document anyone could have created in five minutes. Heck, they could have at least put it on Waste Management stationary...

Not that I'm saying it's wrong, just that someone with an obvious axe to grind and no reliable sources is a bit hard to trust.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

"The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good." --Gordon Gekko

One of the primary benefits of positions of power is that no one is going to shatter your comforting and self serving illusions. The only people with the power to do so have the same illusions you do.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Barrinmw]

You don't have to be very smart to clean toilets in a McDonalds so any high school dropout can do it. Since that High School dropout has few opportunities, McDonalds gets by with paying him less since his relative work is worth less.

At the very least referring to high school dropouts, why would an employer hire them over somebody who didn't drop out halfway through something incredibly easy?

Alan Greenspan predicted this

[prgrmr]

Years ago during a congressional committee hearing, Alan Greenspan was addressing the proposed (and since passed into law) income tax deduction for student loans. He noted that this was going to have the desired effect of putting more students in college, but also cause student loans--and their corresponding default rate--to rise accordingly. And then he questioned the wisdom of that outcome. When challenged on this, he pointed out that which Congress taxes we generally get less of, and that which Congress provides incentives for, we get more of.

From a supply-and-demand perspective, this makes sense, especially if we consider taxation (and its opposite, tax deduction) to be "cost", wannabe students demand, and colleges supply, we will have more colleges cranking out more grads if the cost goes down.

About 10 years ago in its annual review of colleges & universities, U.S. News was speculating that we didn't have enough colleges to meet the ever-growing demands of future needs. Of course that was all based on the assumption that the economy was only, ever, always going to grow. I hope at some point we can get over that notion.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Your post was almost as well written as the GP's.

Easy fix

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone is getting a degree, is because your system is flawed. I was an exchange student in the USA (civil engineering) and unless you are blatantly stupid and work hard to fail your courses it's almost impossible that you get a grade under a B, and impossible to score under a C. In my home university im glad if I pass the exams, usually noone gets an A or a B, and the best grade can be a C+, with 20% of the students that passed getting a C or a D, and 70% of the class failing the course.

Thats because I come from a country where 31% of the population tries to get an university degree. And obviously, there is first not enough market for that, and second the university is public and free (as free beer) and the state is not going to expend 100.000€ in training you so that you wont find a job here and leave the country and go somewhere else. So what was the solution?

Well, university should train you to do a high qualifyed work. If lot of people want in, you have an exceptional opportunity to rise the standards, teach better, teach more, expect a deeper understanding and a faster and better reasoning from the students. Also they give people more learning time (2 semesters without holidays, 4 months courses, 2 months of examinations with 2 weeks free to learn between each exam). They also stopped asking the people for their GPA to acces the university. The general thought is, if you didnt liked highschool and sucked at it but passed, doesnt mean generally that when you start studying something you love and are obssesed about you will perform badly, on the contrary. So they made the first year or two years "selective". That means absurdly difficult exams that noone can do, so that only 10-30% of the people that comes in can go beyond 2nd year. In those two years the very basics are thought, the level is very high, and they expect you to be almost obssesed with your studys.

Also make university harder, let 70-80% of the people fail, get kicked out and get on with their lives. In exchange you get better surgeons, better engineers, scientists, teachers,... professionals in general. And the people who are not able to do it will find their way into the "technical trainees" of two years that everyone is talking about or will find a more suitable job to their capacity.

The motto shouldnt be "you can be whatever you want", it should be "if you are smart and work really really hard, you can be whatever you want".

Instead what USA Universities offer are students programs where, "if you get in" and "if you are able to pay", they assure you that your GPA is going to be really good and look really nice in their curriculums. Yeah, well welcome to privatizing education, students prefer the easy way not the hard one, and if they are going to have to pay anyway... More competitivity should allow you to have better professionals, but wait for that you would need... ah, regulation, i forgot you were against that.

Read the Economist article

[Animats]

That article is worth a read. The elephant in the room is that real income per hour worked in the US peaked in 1973. Real income per capita doubled from 1947 to 1973; it's only gone up 20% since then, and that gain is only because there are more two-income families and longer hours.

Think about that. All the progress since 1973, and there's no payoff. Nobody talks about that much. Until the 1970s, annual improvements in per-capital real median income were trumpeted in the press. Today, it's tough to find those numbers in Department of Labor tables.

Until the 1980s, the US had very few homeless people. Now that's accepted as normal.

There's an illusion that things are getting better, because one of the classic measures is whether income is increasing for an individual. Income increases with age, but today's thirtysomething makes less than the thirtysomething of twenty years ago.

So doing better with your life requires getting ahead of someone else. That's where a college education comes in. It's not so much the useful skills; it's a product differentiator for people.

Re:Things that make your college degree less valua

[Anonymous Coward]

Things that are making college degrees less valuable, and therefore necessary for an even wider range of jobs:

1. High school degrees are now worthless. "Bill showed up for four years."
2. Affirmative action. "Even though Jake got a 950 on his SAT, he can go to Harvard."
3. Grade inflation. "We wanted Suzy to feel on par with her classmates, so the lowest anyone can get is a B."
4. Politicization. "If you want an A in English Literature with Dr. Rosenberg, you'd better write about feminist theories of hermeneutics."
5. Dumbing down. "The staff decided it's too hard to code up a parser on a 64k Apple II, so we're going to start you off on Logo for Windows 7."

Thanks to the feelgood policies of the 1970s, every precious snowflake feels entitled for just showing up. Schools have responded by making sure everyone has a place. The result: college degrees are no longer worth much, since they're easy to get.

Rarity of college degree = value of college degree

It's like having $100. If you give everyone in America an extra $100, the value of your $100 declines because there's more money floating around.

You can say that a college degree is easy to get, but how many people actually obtain one??? The statistics are not pleasing in anyway.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[TheGeneration]

We're talking about teenagers. Who, on average, watch 3-4 hours of television per day according to google. And that is the point in life where people make the decision to go to college or not.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Many, many people have the talent for running a business successfully, but no capital and therefore, no chance to prove it. The illusion that running a business takes some kind of special genius is a self serving illusion perpetuated by the people who run businesses. You know why so many businesses fail? Because shitheads with no skills, no brains, but plenty of good old fashioned daddy-money are the ones who get to start businesses. It's got nothing to do with how hard it is.

In the Mondragon Cooperative in Spain, they have a 90% startup success rate, because everyone is encouraged to start a cooperative, and they are given all the help they need, from cooperative lending, to cooperative staffing, to cooperative business planning. It's not hard. Anyone can do it. Only in capitalist societies where the barrier to entry is set so high only the rich can start a business do we see the reverse, with the majority of startups failing. It's not that rich people are idiots, or even less intelligent than average. It's just that they believe their own lies, and you can't be that delusional and function well.

Top Unemployed Majors

[TheSync]

Questions about "whether too many people are going to college" represent a bunch of sub-questions.

1) Is the student actually never going to graduate (due to low skills, bad performance, or financial problems)?
2) If the student graduates, will they be able to get a job to pay off their loans?
3) If the student graduates, and they get a job, will it pay enough to pay off their loans?

Regarding (1), just 54% of students entering four-year colleges in 1997 had a degree six years later. It is worse at some institutions, for example only 33% of the freshmen who enter the University of Massachusetts, Boston, graduate within six years.

Regarding (2), based on unemployment by major, here are the majors with the most unemployment:

Industrial Design 30.0%
Architecture & Urban Planning 22.2%
Natural Resources 20.0%
Cultures/Civilization 18.2%
Interior Design 16.7%
Agriculture/Horticulture 16.1%
Zoology 15.0%
Civil Engineering 14.4%
Video/Media 12.0% (I know a TV production assistant who now works as an admin)
Art & Design 10.9%
PreLaw and Legal 10.1% (I suspect this reflects the number of people who didn't go on to law school)
Music - Composition/Theory 10.0%

And regarding (3), the following degrees have less than 10% unemployment, but here are the ten-year in salaries:

English: 4% unemployment, $76,348 (call me crazy, but I suspect a lot of English majors leave the workforce when they get married...)
Journalism: 6.4% unemployment, $77,161
Linguistics: $48,534
Music performance: 6.6% unemployment, $52,803
Performance arts: 4.6% unemployment, $55,770
PreVet and Veterinary: $59,774
Social Work: 6.4% unemployment, $69,535
Sociology: 4.2% unemployment, $68,462

Compare with:

Electrical Engineering: 3.7% unemployment, $104,344 10 years in.
Computer Science, 5.1% unemployment, $98,678 10 years in.

A Marathon Analogy

[crf00]

A marathon analogy is the best way I can think of to describe the current picture of education system in places especially like China.

Imagine a marathon race with twisted rules, where only the first 60% of participants are allowed to pass certain checkpoints located at the 200m, 500m, and 1km. Whereas the lagging participants are forfeited to take a longer and tougher route. The rational that the organizer gives in this race is "If you can't even win in the first kilometer, don't even think about winning when you reach the end of 40km!"

It is too sad to say that the checkpoints on 200m, 500m, 1km, 2km, 5km each corresponds to the checkpoints of our life at kindergarden, primary school, high school, college, and university. And the filter rate is increasingly strict as competition gets intense. Everyone rushes to win at these checkpoints, but then suddenly stop upon exhausted and walk slowly towards the end of race because there is no big shinny trophy waiting there.

Life is like a marathon. Yet too many people focuses on who gets number one at the 100th m and 1st km, instead of who are the few people who can eventually reach the 40th km before they died.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[numbski]

I wasn't going to comment in this thread - I really wasn't, but I couldn't ignore this.

I've studied enough economics that, well, my college education can debunk this right away. ;)

Supply and demand. Let's say "no one wants to pick up garbage". What you're saying is that "no one wants to pick up garbage at such a low pay rate and no respect". (Actually, the truth is, *really* - no one wants to pick up garbage, not even the guys that do it, but that's besides the point...)

Trash company suddenly can't find anyone to pick up trash at the rate they're asking. What do they do? Well - they could go out recruiting (unlikely), or they could up the pay rate. Cycle continues until either the trash company goes out of business, or they find someone willing to work at that pay rate. If enough people are working at the higher pay rate, if the trash company can't turn a profit, they will raise the rate of what they charge their customers. If customers switch trash companies as a result, that one might go out of business, but someone else will step in - the cycle continues. Actually, we're describing rudimentary inflation to an end - but the basic point is this: society won't collapse from too many well-educated people. Sure, I like to work in my field of choice, but at the end of the day I kind of like to eat, have clothes on my back, and a roof over my head. Push comes to shove, even I would go pick up trash if I had to in order to make ends meet. Would I be happy with it? Heck no! Society WILL find a way to adapt. That's the beauty of unmitigated capitalism. The ugliness of it however is that it breeds monopolies over time. That's why we have anti-trust laws, which are clearly socialistic. We have grown into an amalgamatic socialistic/capitalistic state.

Anyway - your point is moot. :P Our infrastructure may crumble - for a time. Pride will eventually give way to necessity. Always does.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

I would be more than happy to pick up trash, it's not demeaning doing what needs to be done. I just wouldn't like being forced into it, and then scorned for having to do it. Heck, if everyone spent two hours a day doing the shitty jobs rather than forcing them onto the unfortunate, we'd get the shitty jobs done with plenty of time left over to do what we like.

When you try to score points in an argument based on guesses and assumptions, you will usually lose.

Who determines what your income will be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxes isn't how the department of education wants it's money back. As for some I'll name no names, but I know one person taking care of their invalid parents, so a full time job is kind of out of the question.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[cycleflight]

Your title rings a bell, as I indeed intended to be all of these things, and I only managed to be a fireman, an avid musician, and a rocket scientist. Still working on the fame money and orbit parts of the plan; I'll let you know how it works out.

An Example From Ohio

[Mr_Blank]

Nobody funded my college degree.

Most students get help and do not even realize it. Many States use money from the tax coffers to make higher education more affordable. Even people who beg, borrow, or steal the money to "pay their own way" through a university in these states are getting help from all tax payers.

Citation: Ohio's Office Of Budget Management Budget Highlights

Making Higher Education More Affordable

State Share of Instruction
To supplement the general operation of the state's 13 four-year universities, 24 regional branch campuses, one free standing medical college, 15 community colleges, and eight technical colleges, H.B. 119 appropriates over $3.5 billion in the fiscal years 2008-2009 biennium for unrestricted operating subsidies through the State Share of Instruction (SSI) line item. ....

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[numbski]

The larger concern here is that people are, whether they realize it or not, hawking darn-near outright socialistic behavior. If they would calm down and think through this logically, the capitalistic side of this will correct for itself over time, *PRESUMING* the anti-trust mechanism of our government does the job it should.

I'm not one of the socialism fear-mongers. Obama's playing the hand he was dealt, and it sucks. But I have another post in this thread - it lays out exactly how this will play out.

At the end of the day - people HATE capitalistic correction, and rightfully so, because it always puts us in our place (or darn near always). It's not a happy thing when a company goes out of business because they were inefficient, but it is likely the right thing to happen. Sucks when a mall goes desolate - but if we build too many malls, it will inevitably happen. This is partly why trade unions are so evil - they force inefficiency to "protect jobs", yet the reality is that unions (I'm looking at you, auto workers) will persist in making it cheaper to manufacture elsewhere, and forcing companies to stay here will only force them to be inefficient, quite possibly to the end of going out of business.

Fact is that man/most manufacturing jobs could and should be automated out of existence. It really sucks when friends/family/coworkers lose their job and can't find work. It *has* to happen. Society will adapt - we don't get to skip out on taking our medicine just because we don't like it.

The trick here is holding those on the high dollar end of this inefficiency responsible for the failures that they create. When only the bottom end pays dearly - that's inefficient too.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

You assume that labor actually operates under the laws of supply and demand. First off, you learned some economics, so you know the paper about lemons? As in, bad cars? It talks about the effects of information imbalance on the market. Well, the labor market is a prime example of this effect. Workers know more about their true value than bosses do, therefore, bosses must assume that all workers are overstating their value and therefore, all bosses systematically undervalue labor.

Capitalism values capital more than labor. It's systemic. And the owning class see each other as valuable, while the working class are replaceable. Thus systematically devaluing labor again. Your theory also assumes people are rational actors, this has been disproven by many, many recent experiments. The owning class do not make decisions based on their rational self interest. Many of them, for instance, would bankrupt themselves rather than give in to worker demands because giving in puts them lower down on the old totem pole, and being high in the social hierarchy is the real reason they became rich in the first place. They would rather go bankrupt and be able to say "Fuck you!" to the workers than pay a fair wage and be seen as an equal. That is culturally systemic to the owning class, and they make the rules because they have the capital.

Just like

[conspirator57]

Greece?

Italy?

Spain?

Ireland?

Portugal?

Yeah... Those governments ran their countries just fine. (For values of "just fine" corresponding to "give the unions whatever the hell they want in the short term to get elected regardless of the capacity to pay for it in the long run") Of course, the US is pretty far down that path as is, so we're really following Europe's example pretty well.

Re:Just like

[wish bot]

If you think that they're bad, you should see the mess that California is in...

Re:Just like

[blackraven14250]

Last time I checked, California still isn't given a junk rating on their debtor status, but Greece is, and the others are heading there.

Also, the last time I checked, California has as large of an economy as the largest of those nations (Spain), with far more robustness and diversity than most of them; the only real problem with California is government overspending and a recession impacting capital gains taxes, not overspending AND a recession AND a lack of global competitiveness AND massive corruption AND a government that consistently falsified their economic status AND junk debt.

Re:Want to cut down on pointless bachelors degrees

[nero4wolfe]

A few comments from the latest entry in my aunt's blog (http://www.travelwithhopi.blogspot.com)...

What did Obama mean when he said our children need to be better educated? Let us take a look at students around the world. In India, pupils in the elementary grades are learning advanced mathematics by the time they reach the age of nine. They are expected to know a minimum of two languages when the reach middle school, their own and English. Most pupils are able to speak two or three Indian languages as well as English before they reach middle school.

Pupils in China must memorize 5,000 characters before they can read their newspaper and 12,000 characters in order to enter the university. Their ability to memorize is unequaled. This doesn't stop them from studying mathematics at much higher levels in the high schools than we study here.

In Singapore, students will take eight A level exams before they graduate, while in England the populace is happy if their students learn and take two A levels.

When I state some of these figures, people brush it aside, saying that foreign students learn by rote and our children are learning to think critically and analyze.. Yes, that is true. In the early years Asian students do learn by rote. But when they begin analyzing and thinking critically they have a wealth of material to think about critically. They aren't playing catch-up in their teens and their twenties.

Two Bloated Institutions

[the eric conspiracy]

There are two large bloated institutions in the US right now that are unsustainable. The first is the medical care system and the second is the traditional four year college.

Both of these have high costs out of proportion to the benefits and not only that the costs are growing at rates higher than inflation making them completely unsustainable.

They are both ripe for replacement by non traditional service delivery systems that will crash their business models, just like the internet crashed the traditional phone company model.

Sooner or later these colleges will be replaced by other systems.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Huh. What an odd situation. Here we have people without jobs, and no money to buy the things they need. If only there were something those people could do to work at creating the things they and others need, why, we'd kill two birds with one stone, wouldn't we? They would have jobs, AND things!

I mean, I'm not criticizing capitalism or the free market for failing in the simple task of matching things that need to be done with people not currently doing anything, heavens no. Obviously, we have the best of all possible systems and any "failings" of are simply because, uh, well.... Hey! look at that interesting thing over there!

We obviously don't have a shortage of labor. We have a system that is incapable of matching the labor available to the work that needs doing.

There is a difference

[tchdab1]

between education and job training. This article just helps prove that point.

Take advantage of Community Colleges.

[Anonymous Coward]

After high school, I went on to a four year, accumulated debt and got my MIS degree just in time for the tech bubble to burst. Then I worked in unrelated fields and took windows admin (MCSE) classes at a community college before I got into tech.

Looking back at it, I wish, after high school, I had gone to my local CC, gotten an AS (and AA) in something like network administration, worked a couple years, and then jumped to a four year for a BS (while still working). That would have made me a twenty-two year old junior with some work skills and even some money.

That CC's career dept. had amazing opportunities for internships and entry level positions.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

So a slave is only worth his market price? I mean, in his own society, he might have been a chief or a skilled hunter. But obviously, our society is the only one that counts in determining worth. You know, us. Not them, over there. They shouldn't really get a say.

Everyone gets a vote in our free market, a vote saying how valuable they think things and people should be. Except, it isn't one man, one vote, it is one dollar, one vote. Those who have the most dollars get the most say in determining the value of things and people. And considering the wealth inequality in our country, what that means is that the top 1% get more say in what the value of things are than the bottom 90%.

There is no contradiction, you just haven't thought through what society really is, minus the comforting illusions.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[thatgun]

My University nickname is the lumberjacks, you insensitive clod!

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Are you by chance a brain surgeon as well? Travel through any solid rock recently?

Who are these "experts", exactly?

[mattdm]

Leaving aside the whole actual argument of the article, I find the journalism troubling.

There's a few lede paragraphs. And then, it's all about "a growing number of economists, policy analysts and academics". It turns out "they say" things that back the arguments point -- anonymously and collectively. "Experts cite" statistics.

But then, whose names do we actually get? Well, there's the president/CEO of a test-taking company, who only says "The reality is, they may not be ready for college." (Take my test and find out, I guess.)

Then we get some paragraphs about how much school costs. Fine. Then we're told that college grads have a much, much lower unemployment rate than those with just a high school degree, which doesn't seem to support the point at all, but the statement is given as if it does.

That's followed by a quote from some career-center councilor -- hardly a national expert -- who complains that a four-year degree doesn't get you much (again without actually speaking to the thesis of the article).

Then we have some quotes from a high-school senior, the one from the introductory paragraphs.
And her mom.

Okay, _finally_: Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder, who gives the pull-quote above. Apparently some more on him here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Vedder . Anti-immigration, pro-tobacco, shockingly opposed to public funding for higher education. But okay, at least he qualifies as an "economist, policy analyst and academic".

Next up: Margaret Spellings, former federal education secretary under George W. Bush. Wait, she's a counter-point. She supports more college grads. Okay.

Next: John Reynolds, but all he is quoted talking about is whether dropping out makes you depressed. (It doesn't, overall.)

And then we close with a quote from the test company guy, who says, shockingly, that we need a new way of measuring skills rather than just trusting college degrees. Perhaps if there were *some sort of test*. Right, I see where you're coming from.

So, in summary, this WHOLE ARTICLE, which purports to show some sort of trend, is really just a framework around the argument of this Richard Vedder guy. His research may be sound, or it may not be -- but it sure isn't enough to support what the article claims.

Hypocrites?

[microbee]

is being challenged by a growing number of economists, policy analysts, and academics

Is any of them not a 4--year college graduate?

remedial classes are good

[pigwiggle]

I graduated from a lousy public school. Just made it into college. I didn't have basic math and science type skills. None at all. My college also had remedial classes to help students like me. These classes - at least at my school, but I imagine yours as well - were zero credit and charged extra tuition to fund the program. They work. I graduated with a BS in Mathematics and Chemistry, a minor in Physics. Today I am a PhD Physical Chemist, and make a great living doing research on the worlds fastest supercomputers. I'm glad there are programs like these.

Your post is very off-putting. It drips with condescension and self importance. Bend over backwards for the dumbest among us? You are a dick. There are a lot of people who didn't have the advantages you had coming up. My parents are blue collar, just like their parents. They didn't have the experience or means to improve my education. I'm happy there are people more insightful and compassionate than yourself, in positions to create these kind of special purpose classes.

Re:remedial classes are good

[Culture20]

I graduated from a lousy public school. Just made it into college. I didn't have basic math and science type skills. None at all. My college also had remedial classes to help students like me. These classes - at least at my school, but I imagine yours as well - were zero credit and charged extra tuition to fund the program. They work. I graduated with a BS in Mathematics and Chemistry, a minor in Physics. Today I am a PhD Physical Chemist, and make a great living doing research on the worlds fastest supercomputers. I'm glad there are programs like these. Your post is very off-putting. It drips with condescension and self importance. Bend over backwards for the dumbest among us? You are a dick. There are a lot of people who didn't have the advantages you had coming up. My parents are blue collar, just like their parents. They didn't have the experience or means to improve my education. I'm happy there are people more insightful and compassionate than yourself, in positions to create these kind of special purpose classes.

I was being intentionally condescending. That course wasn't created to better someone and hope that they pass all the way through college. Its material was the math equivalent of learning to write a sentence. Literally 1st Grade material. The only reason the course was created was to make more short term money for the math department. They could (should) have turned the students away, told them to go to night school at their local high school, and come back to college prepared. Instead, the math department decided that the stupid twits who couldn't learn how to subtract in the first eighteen years of their life were ripe for wallet-raping. Something I just thought of: these are the folk that probably write "some college" on their resumes these days.

Congratulations on your doctorate. If you're doing research at a Uni, maybe audit a remedial course and see if they're the same as you remember?

Re:remedial classes are good

[Anonymous Coward]

To the extent that some universities are using remedial classes as revenue generators, that's shameful; to the extent that some universities must provide such classes to allow students to reach their true potential (as in your case), that's deeply disappointing.

My parents & grandparents were blue collar, too (well, mom was more often "no collar" as she couldn't hold down a job for very long; her mom was a full-time homemaker, so also "no collar"). My high school wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. Neither that nor my parentage stopped me from learning math and English. But that's tangential. High schools shouldn't be graduating students without such skills, and the universities really should be turning away those students as long there is an effective option available, such as night classes or a decent community college. It isn't a matter of condescension (or being a dick), but correcting a horribly broken system.

Your high school (and parents) clearly failed to meet your academic needs. Your university helped you turn things around. That's great, but it isn't the way we should be doing things. Taking the other post at face value, there was a remedial math class teaching fundamentals like addition and division because HS graduates hadn't learned them - that's insane. How is such a student even promoted into high school, let alone allowed to graduate from one?

If a university must be the middle school (or grade school, teaching multiplication, FFS) of last resort, that's better than giving uneducated HS graduates no option at all. But things are seriously broken anywhere that that's the norm.

Out of curiosity, what school system - Chicago, Detroit? And how long ago?

- T

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[mpsmps]

Nice way to hide misrepresentation of the facts with an emotional appeal. The actual facts are that 4.5 million construction and manufacturing jobs have been lost this decade (~20% of the total). Jobs that don't require higher education are declining (this is spelled out in a lot more detail at the link). While I have no disrespect for the guy who washes dishes, there are a lot more people who are willing and able to wash dishes than dishwashing jobs. We're not doing anyone a favor by not educating our population for the jobs that we will require.

The problem is in the Schools, not the students.

[scottwilkins]

I believe there are a number of real problems in modern higher education institutions. Two of which are very negative toward the success of the students, and ultimately the human race. They require way too much unrelated material in many degrees, much of which is basically useless. I do believe some are needed. But the requirements are far too heavy just to "make hours available". It's as if it's padded to look good, not be good. And, the method of "success or failure" is very wrong. No single student learns material the same. Some learn it better in some situations, other do completely different. Any student should be able to learn at his/her pace, be it fast or slow, and be allow to re-do any course for success only. The whole idea of grades is competition based and serves no real purpose other than for vanity. Competition is good, but only for competitive goals, not for life or education goals. It is a negative burden in this use of education for life. And who's to say a student who takes a single class again won't learn it deeper than a single time? Wouldn't that be better in some cases? Or a student who can learn some materials very quickly and effeciantly so as to move on to more material? Modern higher ed needs a complete reboot. IMHO.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

The thing is, there aren't enough high end jobs to go around for all those ex construction workers. We will still require things to be produced. Is it all going to be made by robots and poor foreigners? We have a fundamental disconnect in our system, there are people out of work while there are things that need to be done. Personally, I think that is because we have a bad infestation of wealthy parasites, sucking up all the wealth and leaving none to pay people to do necessary things. So things don't get done and people don't have jobs, just so some asshole can have three yachts instead of two.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the American idea, and it is mostly just an American idea, that a Liberal Arts degree is something valuable. It is not, and it generally does not prepare for people for life. Ask the girl working as a cashier at wholefoods who has a degree in international studies. International studies would be good for someone who's goal was to be a diplomat or work for an aid agency but the supply is orders of magnitude greater than the demand. You need a goal and a realistic plan before you go to university or you will be wasting your time and your parents money. The plan should be along the lines of do degree in X and that will prepare me for job doing Y that I really want to do.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Eli Gottlieb]

Dear God, it's comments like these that make me wish Slashdot had a "BESTOF" button.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

> No marketing drone is worth hundreds or thousands of times what a sewer worker is worth. Yet our society says they are.

Equivocation, or contradiction if you prefer, I'm not sure which. The consumers of this marketing drone's product, and ultimately society, determine the drone's income. If you take "worth" to mean this person's income, then the drone IS worth that much, regardless of any other interpretation of "worth", e.g. holistic value to society, work ethic, how much people respect him, or any other unmeasurable quantity of worth.

I don't think there's any reason why ones worth (in income) must necessarily correlate with worth in other areas, as meritocratic and pleasing to us as it might seem.

Agreed on other points though, I think that people should not be denigrated in any way for legitimately earning money by work, no matter how beneath us we might consider it. Everyone's got to eat.

Here is a job for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I heard some garbage haulers -- the ones that are unionized -- got pay very well. If most people -- including you -- can't be a successful investment bankers and CEOs, maybe they do deserve more pays and respects than you do.

If you are not satisfy with your job, maybe you can try to be the next presidential candidate of a left-wing liberal party. Good luck with that endeavor!

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[boudie2]

It's a noble concept you have, but not only is there a huge gap between those at the top and bottom, but especially with the slow malingering death of unions that gap is growing. And I see no sign of that reversing or even slowing. That is, short of fighting in the streets. That's the way it's been all throughout civilized history ... here we go again.

Seriously? You blame Communists?!

[n dot l]

Considering the prevalence of Marxism in colleges

I got to listen to quite a few friends (at several universities) bitch about the ridiculous shit their legally-mandated "Social Justice" class taught, so I think I know what it is you're railing against. I honestly don't blame you, it disgusts me too, and I say that as a fairly left-leaning Canadian (Communist scum, I know, I know). What amazes me even more is how utterly convinced you and a good half of your fellow citizens are that academics, having seen how wonderfully communism turned out for the USSR, are now, for some reason, hellbent on turning America into another communist state.

As far as I can tell, you're painting them all with a brush best reserved for the most extremely fundamentalist remnants of the old Feminist movement mixed with I couldn't even guess which other influences. The whole "we should hold back smart people so that idiots have a chance" crap my friends had to sit through in their SJ lectures was not at all typical of Soviet thought or culture (a culture which, if you recall, built entire cities so that the smartest of the smart wouldn't be held back by every day idiocy).

...in pursuit of the secular humanist agenda that has been pushed on them by profs who claim it is the only "intelligent" way to think.

Secular humanism has its roots in the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. In practice, that is. The core ideas are much much older, many of them traceable to the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Your religion now entails of some mysterious Gov't entity that will make your problems go away through promises of safety nets, re-distribution of wealth

That's not a religion. That's someone that studied what actually happened during the French Revolution thinking that not ending up with another Paris Mob is a really keen idea. See, I'd rather have the government redistribute my wealth a little at a time in a controlled manner that I can vote on than paying no taxes up to the day when a mass of starving poor people overrun what little police my no-taxes provide and take everything (including my life). For all but the most ludicrously rich, safety nets are cheaper and safer than their equivalent in armed guards.

and a general distaste for anyone with Ambition.

Distaste for ambition? You mean like when you work your ass off to make the company a lot of extra money and your boss laughs at you as he pockets all the gains without so much as giving you a pittance of a bonus? Like how your colleagues treat you when the boss says that there's gonna be a 15% downsizing soon and nobody knows whether they've still got a job or not? The sort where your manager gets you fired when you stay late every day for a month and pull off the efficiency gain he couldn't manage in five years of running the department? Yeah, that's common to all peoples of all times, regardless of ideological, political, or intellectual affiliation.

How is this different than what your Right wing parents believe? Good job on switching brands of Koolaid there, you must be so proud to be enlightened now.

One involves a Great Sky Fairy returning to solve everything for the low low price of sitting on your ass and having faith. The other involves people working their asses off to achieve the best society that mere humans can construct. Historically speaking, people working their asses off has, despite all of the spectacular failures, yielded better results than ass-sitting faith ever did.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

daddy-money

Drink!

Job != only goal of college

[fropenn]

The outcome of a quality college education is not reflected simply by whether or not you are able to get a high-paying job. Rather, college is about developing your ability to think critically about the world around you, to help you understand complex political issues when voting, to develop your sense of self-awareness and your appreciation for the arts, and other cultures...in general to enhance the quality of your life.

Is there value in obtaining a degree to the individual and society even if it doesn't lead to a high paying job? Absolutely.

If you think things are bad now...

[Necron69]

wait until robots take over most manual labor jobs. They've got a robot than can fold towels now. How much longer until you have a good multi-purpose robot that can do the work to replace janitors, lawn maintenance people, shelf stockers, short order cooks, etc?

Then it will really hit the fan.

Everyone can not be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc. A LOT of people just aren't cut out for that sort of thing. What will they do then? Enjoy your 10% unemployment while it lasts, America. Those lost jobs not only aren't coming back, many, many more will be going away in coming decades.

Necron69

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[mpsmps]

The robots idea isn't far from the truth. The value of goods manufactured in the US has actually grown during the past decade (no "poor foreigners" involved) while manufacturing employment has gone way down. That is the result of increased productivity. While manufacturing may come back strong in the US, manufacturing employment won't. There are a lot of things that need to be done, but they many of them require strong educational background and 21st century skills.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Did your college education not teach you the difference between socialistic and capitalistic systems? Regulations to discourage monopolies aren't "clearly socialistic." Clearly socialistic would be the state facilitating monopolies and subsuming them under control of its citizens.

And the GP never constructed the end of civilization scenario that you tried to debunk. In the real world, your scenario breaks down when the poor quality of work (be it psychological or physical) makes the barrier of entry for new garbage firms prohibitively high while dismantling the existing ones. This often happens to particularly crucial services that are difficult--some would say impossible--to privatize, like military, police, or firefighting, and is how most economists see the amalgamation between socialism and capitalism occurring. Of course, there is always the debate over whether or not state control is synonymous with citizen control (ie, over whether this is actually fascism and capitalism, rather than socialism and capitalism), but that's more of a political science debate.

But your college education told this, already, I'm sure.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Unless the question is, "What is NOT the answer?" then violence is not the answer. In the chaos of violent rebellions, the sociopaths always rise to the top, and we get to meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Or worse, usually an entrenched ruling class develops a sense of noblesse oblige, and an understanding that there are some lines even they can't cross. The new boss is unlikely to know those lines or care about his 'noble' obligations.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Simetrical]

The rhetoricians need to start treating 100 million dollar salaries as glaring signs of economic inefficiency.

It is very unlikely that each person earning 100 million in today's economy are actually producing that much more value than the next best candidate (or even, the minimally acceptable alternative candidate, if you want to go that far).

Um, really? How about someone who's running a company that makes a hundred billion dollars? If they can increase revenue a tenth of a percent more than the next guy, it's worth it for the company to pay them $100 million more, because the gain will be more than the cost. Typically, CEOs are paid less than 0.1% of the company's revenue, although that might be millions of dollars in absolute terms. Stock brokers and so on are similar. They get paid millions because if they do a good job, they're making their customers billions. (Whether they still get paid if they mess up is a separate question.)

Another reason for someone to be highly-paid is because they provide a small service to an enormous number of people. Pro sports players can get paid millions of dollars. Why? Because millions of people are willing to pay to watch sports games. If one player will attract just a small percentage more viewers than another would (for instance, by being a better player), it makes sense to pay that person a million dollars or more.

Objections to enormous salaries are usually grounded in some wishy-washy analysis that's crippled by the human mind's inability to intuitively grasp huge numbers. The fact is, some jobs are really worth thousands of times as much as others, in economic terms. If you're going to point to injustice, point to the people who make millions of dollars from inheritance, not people who are paid for services that are really worth millions to someone.

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[account_deleted]

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Street Cleaner, Phil Dr.

[deteronicfrombotzer]

I think this news illustrate where we are heading: (In Portuguese) http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Concursos_Empregos/0,,MUL1349960-9654,00-CONCURSO+PARA+GARI+NO+RIO+REGISTRA+INSCRICOES+DE+CANDIDATOS+COM+DOUTORADO.html A selection for 1900 positions as a street cleaner in Rio de Janeiro got 109000 incriptions. 45 of them with people with a DOCTORATE DEGREE

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Appealing to emotion by invoking slavery, which no one is defending or advocating. The very words you used when referring to the worth of a marketer and sewage worker were "hundreds or thousands" which indicate that you are referring to something quantifiable, assumed to be dollars of remuneration.

Defining terms in discussion is optional, but recommended for you, and preferable to setting rhetorical traps.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

You can see the end result of this trend, right? Robots and AI will be able to do anything. Therefore, capital will not need labor anymore. And heck, the owning class will have plenty of robots with which to hunt the rest of us down and kill us once they no longer need us. Except, they will always need us, because they need someone to be better than. So they will keep us around in abject misery, just to have someone to lord it over. Ah, the future. Good times, good times.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 internets to you, good sir.

very lucid and insightful.

AP - the non-source, source of quasi news

[Gary W. Longsine]

By the way, yes the AP wrote the article found by the Slashdot geek. But AP usually obtain their material elsewhere. A quick search turned up the likely source: The Case Against College Education which was written by Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review. The notion was promoted in the blogosphere (echo chamber?) by Stephen Spruiell in this post at the National Review blog

Neither of those guys seem to have even an undergraduate degree in economics, but in their defense, neither appear to have claimed that "a growing number of economists" support this idea -- unless one of them wrote the AP piece. In any case, I wasn't able to turn up any economist who said anything like this, nor any other article on the topic at all. It seems to have been invented from whole cloth at the National Review, and propagated without questioning. Their motivation appears to be to invent a quasi intellectual cudgel to use against certain initiatives of the Obama administration in the area of higher education funding.

Certainly it's possible that somewhere in the vast literature of economics somebody somewhere might have explored this notion, but there doesn't seem to be any apparent evidence for this "growing number" of economists who support this idea.

That aside, some of the arguments offered in the TIME piece are worthy of pondering, but they ignore many of the societal benefits of higher education, or assume those have no value.

In any case, concerning your cowardly anonymous chicken shit rock throwing, like Jon Stewart said famously, fuck off.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[BoberFett]

As a fairly staunch free market supporter, you've made an interesting point in the "one dollar one vote" giving the wealthy undue influence in determining value. I'll have to mull that one over for a while. My capitalist brain needs some time to consume it. :)

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Simetrical]

Why do we emphasize the importance of some jobs, like advertising executive or investment banker, that add nothing of real value to humanity

Investment bankers add nothing of real value to humanity? Really? They seem essential for the stock market to function. Do you think the stock market adds nothing of real value to humanity? It's a great way for businesses to get capital without having to get so much support from the rich, I'd think.

[Why do we denigrate] those who pick up our trash?

We denigrate those who pick up our trash because it's an unskilled job. Most people will only become a garbage worker if they're incapable of getting a better job, so people naturally assume that garbage workers are not particularly smart or capable. This reduces most people's opinion of them. (This is a sociological observation here, not a statement of what I believe.)

Maybe we should instead strive for a more egalitarian society where everyone's contribution is respected. I respect a dishwasher who works hard and does a good job more than I respect a CEO who golfs all the time and takes credit for his underlings hard work.

You're basically restating Marx's maxim of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." It's a nice attitude in principle, but experience shows that if you reward people based on your perception of what's valuable instead of what jobs actually need to be done (as determined by employers who don't want to go out of business), you get massive inefficiency. Washing dishes is easy – anyone can do it. The people who can do things other than washing dishes need to be encouraged to do those other things, such as by higher pay, or else everyone will just take an easy job like dishwashing.

(Granted, being CEO isn't the hardest job in the world, and some people would want to be CEO even if it didn't pay well. I'm not disputing that CEOs might get paid too much, but your logic doesn't work in general.)

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[BoberFett]

You're being unfair to the majority of small business owners (roughly half of America works for a small business) who make a modest income and pay their employees fairly. The mega-rich are a symptom of globalization and mega-corporations. Corporations who in many cases were given their vast through government influence of some kind (be it monopoly status, government contracts, etc.), so they're hardly a product of the free market.

The Dumbest Idea

[b4upoo]

This is that same absurd notion that the laws of business must reach out into unrelated issues. America will prosper and survive according to the level of education of our population. New breakthroughs, winning products, science to defend and keep us alive, as well as arts to bind us together and keep us as a coherent culture all depend upon very high levels of education. Not only that, but in the end our economy will also depend upon our people being able to establish better businesses than the rest of the world has.
                    Please keep the right wing loonies who constantly try to eliminate quality education in the sewers where they belong.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[RAMMS EIN]

``Many, many people have the talent for running a business successfully''

Perhaps, but ...

``but no capital and therefore, no chance to prove it.''

I don't think that is necessarily a problem. How much capital do you really need to start a business? It doesn't have to be a lot. It also doesn't have to be yours.

I would say the main reason that people don't start businesses is that they simply don't want to.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Stan Vassilev]

I would be more than happy to pick up trash, it's not demeaning doing what needs to be done. I just wouldn't like being forced into it, and then scorned for having to do it. Heck, if everyone spent two hours a day doing the shitty jobs rather than forcing them onto the unfortunate, we'd get the shitty jobs done with plenty of time left over to do what we like.

When you try to score points in an argument based on guesses and assumptions, you will usually lose.

It's not demeaning to do what's done. Who said it is? Who's forcing you? Who's scorning you? That pesky strawman again.

This is not about verbal skills and arguments. You're really happy to pick up trash, you believe it should be done, then no one is forcing you. Great: go do it and keep me posted on your progress. I'm completely serious. I'll "score you some points" depending on how far you go supporting your bold rhetoric with real actions.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Hey, I'm a far left liberal born and raised, and I've had to admit that the free market actually works quite well in certain circumstances, because the evidence I've seen supports that conclusion. I think that some hybrid of socialism and the free market will end up being the best option.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know about you, but in my city individuals cannot opt-out of one garbage pickup company and start buying another; such is a decision made at City Hall about which service company gets the city contract and for how long and at what price.

Does the rules of supply and demand still apply?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

It is not an appeal to emotion, it is a valid point regarding societal valuation. The dominant culture gets to set the worth of things, despite what the rest of us may value. So I ask you again, assuming you are the same AC, whose society do you refer to when you say society sets worth?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[boudie2]

So we will have to hope that the noble ruling class in the United States will continue to provide part time minimum wage jobs at WalMart for the unwashed masses. Of one thing I am certain, if things keep sliding in the direction they are and a lack of opportunities for educated individuals is only one example, reason will fly out the window. By nobility, you must be referring to the Bush family?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Rich people have rich friends and family to lend them money. Poor people don't. When you say, "It doesn't have to be yours" you reveal your own cultural assumptions, which are very different from those of say, a working poor family. You just assume that capital is easy to come by, because for you, it probably is. For most people, not so much.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[ridewinter]

I don't have any daddy-money. But I found someone who did, and who also happened to learn quite a bit of business acumen from said daddy. He funded our operation, handles the business side, and I handle engineering. It worked out very well in the end. Of course the real world isn't always fair, but there's always ways to adapt and come out on top. Step 1 is to stop complaining about it.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

I've worked for enough dysfunctional small family businesses to know that I'm not making shit up out of whole cloth. But you have a point, many small business owners are decent, hard working, and good leaders. I don't begrudge those people their success at all.

Case in point, my friends the coffee roasters. Cutest little old couple you could imagine. Literally mom and pop. Worked corporate jobs they hated, risked everything on a business they loved, worked their asses off and provided a better product than anyone else in town. They broke even in a year and a half, and started pulling a decent profit in two. Expanded their line to herbs and accessories. And it was word of mouth that did it, most people who went in their had just never tasted that good of a cup of coffee.

So they are doing well, and not only do I not begrudge them their success, I fully support them. This is what the American dream is supposed to be about. I get disheartened thinking about all the hard working people I know who haven't made it, but there are always counter examples like this.

So cheers to all the bosses and small business owners out there doing it right.

But if you think the imbalance comes from government interference, well, you've not thought it through. The money the corporations pour into government would go to other extra-market channels if government did not exist. Money is power, with or without government. At least with government, we have checks and balances, and we have one vote per person, not one vote per dollar. Without government, corporations would be even more powerful and less accountable.

Civilization

[brundlefly]

In Civilization this is no problem! Build a Factory or an Iron Mine! Problem solved!

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

+1000 INSIGHTFUL

Society should be an egalitarian meritocracy where EVERYONE has the same opportunity, and government protects the weak/poor from the strong/rich

That word you use...

[hsthompson69]

...I do not think it means what you think it means.

The reason why we have a "dearth" of college graduates, is because the kids really don't have a choice if they want to survive.

The article is talking about an overabundance of college graduates, "dearth" is the opposite of that.

FWIW, if an immigrant can come here, work hard, and be successful, great. I got no problems with that. The problem is when we have a welfare state government handing out benefits to immigrants who come here and aren't contributors. If everyone who came to the US and everyone who was born in the US had to stand on their own two feet, instead of relying on government redistribution of wealth, the immigrant issue would be a non-issue.

Re:That word you use...

[hairyfeet]

Sorry, that's what happens when one types while running a backup and getting used to a new keyboard at the same time. my bad. But how can you say "immigrants wouldn't be an issue" when we have Americans losing their homes while illegals are practically burying us here in the south? Illegals don't just affect the job situation (although they pretty much destroy pay scales by working under the table) but everything around them.

Your insurance prices? Higher because illegals consider hit and run SOP and use ERs for clinics. Housing prices? ever see what illegals do to rental properties? They don't give a shit, it isn't their country and they have no plans of staying. Taxes? illegals don't pay but as you say take benefits like nobodies business.

And that of course don't count the H1-Bs, which have turned many college educated jobs into "McJobs" thanks to them being brought over and being paid pennies on the dollar. This is actually pretty simple: FREE TRADE IS A LIE, okay? No such thing. It is an invisible pink unicorn trotted out by libertarians. Try sending mass amounts of Americans to India to take their jobs and see what happens. You ass will be shown the door, because they are "nationalistic" which is a code word for "give a shit about their own people" which sadly we don't anymore. Same thing with China, where stealing IP from American companies will get you a slap on the wrist and from a Chinese company will get you shot.

We need to bring the troops back and park their asses on the border, round up every illegal and give them a one way trip home, cancel the H1-B program and send their butts home until America is below 4% unemployment THEN we can talk about "guest workers". Until then I'm afraid all that 'free market" bullshit is simply destroying what little we have left, thanks to major multinationals like IBM and MSFT demanding more slave H1-Bs, which is exactly what they are-slaves and both D and R pitching a shitfit when AZ actually tries to enforce THE LAW and keep illegals out.

Re:That word you use...

[hsthompson69]

So taking your issues one at a time:

1) insurance -> simply turn people away from ERs unless they're headed for surgery. heartless, yes, but it would solve your issue;

2) housing -> bringing down property values can certainly happen with any set of people

3) taxes -> eliminate the income tax and just have a flat sales tax. eliminate welfare, public education and other benefit programs so there is no incentive to come and mooch off the system.

4) H1-Bs -> my experience with them is actually mostly positive. I'd rather have the cream of the crop from some other country decide to come here and make a life (and believe me, a good 99% of them want to stay here permanently), rather than some lazy public school educated american with a chip on their shoulder.

5) free trade -> dude, it might hurt some industries, but it works, and just because other countries may put up tariffs and other barriers does not make them right or prosperous

6) guest workers and unemployment -> if you sent all the H1Bs back, you'd probably also see a massive offshoring of work, with all the inefficiencies that come with it. unemployment here would stay high, and we'd be losing the economic side effects of having H1Bs here, in country, spending money.

What we need to do is put government in its proper place and create incentives for people to come here to work, not leech. I've got no sympathy for natives in the tech fields that can't compete against H1Bs, and I do think we should fast track H1Bs that want citizenship. But I've also got no sympathy for people, any people, living off of government welfare programs.

Because ...

[PPH]

... a trade school education is going to plant you square in the middle of the job market occupied by Chinese prison labor and immigrants.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Sir,

    You make an interesting point. My counterpoint is this: the effect you speak of leads to a winner-take-all society. For example, the sports players that are in the top 1% of their field collect 99% of the money to be made. Minor league baseball players make diddly squat compared to the major league players.

    This is due to the effect of mass media and a global society. Everyone watches the major leagues, because the media carries them, while the minor leagues are ignored. And the money follows the media attention.

    So there are a VERY FEW "winners" and a lot of losers who barely scratch by.

    This holds true for ALL entertainment. Many talented musicians make nothing. The top 1% of their field makes a killing.

    With large companies, this is happening too. Executives are cleaning up in companies, everyone else is getting diddly.

    This is leading, almost inevitably, to an insane stratification. Someone who outperforms YOU by 5% or even 1% gets paid 1000x what you do. The elite collect ALL the wealth. Everyone else just scratches by. Whole professions are dominated by a few superstars who collect all the money to be made, while the rest (who are almost as good, or BETTER but unknown or unlucky) languish in obscurity.

    Yes, this is a result of supply and demand, and a result of mass media and popular culture, and is an "economic" truth. THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT OR DESIRABLE. It offends me that some idiot THUG who CAN THROW A BALL 1% better than OTHER BALL THROWERS makes hundreds of millions while the doctor who saves my life by spotting and removing a melanoma makes $200k/year working 80 hour weeks and has to spend 40 of those hours filling out BS health insurance forms. (And incidentally, by catching this melanoma early, this doctor also saves my health insurer $1M in cancer treatment bills!)

    This is pure social inequity and I have NO problem fixing this brokenness in the market via VERY progressive taxation at the high end. The capitalist free market is NOT holy, it is NOT moral, and it should serve HUMANS not the other way around!

--PeterM

Universities are losing competitiveness

[Flambergius]

Ok, guys, let me explain:

University and other forms of tertiary education are no longer the repositories of the best knowledge humanity has. Or more precisely, not to the degree they used to be just a decade or two ago and definitely not the only repositories that matter. Well into latter parts of the previous century, let's say 80s, universities really were the only place to learn the coolest stuff. Now there's a lot of knowledge in companies, business networks and on the Internet.

There always has been a cost associated with going to a university. It costs money and you lose four or more years from your professional life. However, it used to be a good investment because an university education gave you a know-how advantage, the student life gave you a network of allies and, very importantly, a degree allowed you an access to additional opportunities. Today you can get most of those benefits from other places too.

So it's not that people spend too much time learning stuff, but that the university that has lost competitiveness, as a place of learning, and it doesn't any more make (as much) sense to spend four years there.

Even the bastion of university competitiveness, the degree, has taken a real beating. A bachelor is almost worthless. Entry-limited fields where you need to have a degree to be allowed to play, like medicine or law, have been losing weight in the economy. (Largely because new ones don't get born easily.)

Btw, I'm not predicting the death of universities, and not just because I work in one, but I will say that our grand-kids universities will have fairly little in common with the universities we want to.

 

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

In theory, the stock market is great. In practice, not so much. Were you in a coma the last three years?

There are only so many better jobs out there, there are many, many more people qualified to do them than there are positions available. And so, if everyone got the best education available, someone who is overqualified would still have to take out the trash. That's my point. The shitty jobs still need to get done, even if everyone goes to college to become a lawyer or a CEO.

Now, I never said that everyone should be paid the same. I'm perfectly happy with people smarter and harder working than me making more money than me. But I'm a little weird. I don't really want power over others. And beyond what we need to take care of our basic necessities and maybe a little for fun, that is all that money is: power to make other people do things you don't want to do.

The more money you have, the more power you have. And the more power you have, the more say you get in what is valuable and what is not. So, you get to say, "I'm valuable, and he's not" if you have money, but not if you are poor. It's a self amplifying cycle, a positive feedback loop. There are no checks and balances. We see this in the phrase, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer," which has been true for decades. See this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Income_Inequality_1967-2003_relative_to_median_(log_scale).svg from this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States

This will get worse

[b4upoo]

What we are seeing is a long term trend that will continue to worsen. The very goal of technology is to eliminate labor. And that is not just muscle labor it is noodle labor as well. As technology succeeds more and more people will experience less and less real income. Our government will also feel the pinch as they can collect less and less taxes from people making less and less money.
                          There is a very easy solution but the mind set that prevails can't hear it. We need to cut every single person a real pay check that is sufficient to lead a good life. Watch the people shop and spend and cause businesses to prosper.Those that want to work would simply get a lower pay check from the government according to how much they earn from their job. People who want to go to a job will do a better job than those forced to work or go hungry. The reality is that a whip and chains slave and a slave to wages are not very different at all.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

That is one of the most ridiculous arguments I've heard in a while, and I think you know it. Right. Like I'm going to go pick up everyone's trash for free. What would be the point of that? Why would you even suggest it? Your initial argument fell flat, and so your counter argument is, "Yeah, well, then go be a garbageman if you think it's so great." It's an argument a two year old would use.

Here's the thing: most people are naturally more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than self interest. They will go out of their way, harming themselves, to enforce fairness if they can. But if everyone around them is acting unfairly and selfishly, they will too, out of self defense. Our society lets the rich and powerful take advantage of the poor. The poor, in self defense, act selfishly as well. The answer is not to blame the poor, it is to give the poor real power to punish unfairness. Only when everyone has access to justice and the ability to punish unfairness can society to truly fair and equitable. Which is what we all want, right?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Actually, it's quite simple. We will just have to convince the ruling class that it is in their own best interest to be equals rather than superiors. Luckily, it actually is in their best interests. Sure, it is great to be top dog, but you can never be real with anyone. You never have real friends, you have temporary allies who will stab you in the back, and vice versa, if the opportunity arises. You can never show weakness, or doubt.

Of course, this only applies to the non-sociopathic rich. I'd say kill all the sociopaths but even that would have negative consequences. My theory is that getting a few 'sociopathic' genes makes you a good leader or a survivor type. Getting all of them makes you an inhuman monster, but if we kill off all the monsters, will we still have great leaders?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

What harm does complaining do, except to make certain people uncomfortable? Here's the thing, you are part of the dominant culture. You have never had to question your assumptions, that's one of the privileges of being part of it. Minorities who try to believe "there is always a way to adapt and come out on top" run smack into the cold hard wall of reality, which says, no, sorry, there is not always a way for you.

Your assumptions only hold true for you and your culture. Or do you really think every poor black man from the inner city has a rich friend to lend them money?

And it's always the members of the dominant culture who say, "All you have to do is SHUT THE HELL UP AND STOP BITCHING!" Not because this actually works, but because they don't like to have their assumptions questioned. They like to believe that they are superior, that the reason they succeeded where other failed is because they are better. They hate to be reminded that it was luck of birth and culture, not hard work, that got them where they are.

German Model!

[luis_a_espinal]

The notion that a four-year degree is essential for real success is being challenged by a growing number of economists, policy analysts, and academics. They say more Americans should consider other options, such as technical training or two-year schools, which have been embraced in Europe for decades.

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

There is too much emphasis on 4-year college degrees to the detriment of post-HS vocational education (or a HS education that actually lead to *gasp!* education and preparation to enter the work force in some specialized capacity.

Something along the lines of the German Hauptschule and Gymnasium is what we need. Certainly not the exact same thing, but we need something that institutionalizes meaningful vocational training in a manner that makes sense to our society and economy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptschule

A similar mechanism has existed for more than a century for preparing HS graduates as elementary school teachers in many parts of the world... and dare I say that has been extremely successful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_school

I can imagine at this point a few of the ZOMG-THINK-OF-TEH-CHILDREN crowd arguing that teenagers aren't capable of making a serious educational decision when they are in their teens. Bullshit. The rest of the world does it well, so what can't we? Are we that stupid?

The other thing to keep in mind is that in most parts of the world, industrialized or not, people have to pass qualifier exams to apply to a limited # of opportunities for a given degree. You just don't sign up for Law or Physics. Only the top-N candidates get accepted... and that's for most degrees, even for Fine Arts.

Countries understand that, it is stupid for us not to. Besides, in countries with vocational high schools, kids prepare themselves with vocations with multiple applications - mechanics, plumbing, electricity, HVAC, book keeping and secretarial training.

And contrary with some tards who argue otherwise, a kid graduating with a vocational degree can later prepare and apply for entrance to a 4-year university program. If he qualifies, he goes in.

You get to apply for a 4-year degree based on merit, and you get the opportunity to learn a vocation that can help you get somewhere (possibly even your own technical service business as you become a master technician.)

But here in the US, what do we get? A HS system that churns kids who can't add fractions, with an education that qualifies them as hamburger flipper engineers, in a society where there is no merit or glory unless you have a college degree.

And what's worst (and saddest) is that if any of these kids wants to train in a vocation, they have to go to a 2-year college (which are usually looked down even if they are excellent), or worse, fork thousands of dollars in private vocational schools... for vocational training they should have gotten when they were in the public education system to begin with.

it's all about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute, we have too many college graduates while at the same time, we need to increase the number of H1B's because there isn't enough qualified people?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

You right about the problem about lack of capital hampering some people from being able to become a business success. But get over it. Life isn't fair and everyone needs to made do with what they have and can acquire. However the ability to raise funds is an important aspect of any business. If a person does not have that ability or does not have the ability to partner or hire someone who does then they really lack an important business skill.

As for the failure rate for new business... There is no way that every, most, or even a significant percentage of new businesses can or should be able to succeed in any free or relatively free market. The reason should be clear enough. At any given time the economic environment already is pretty much filled to capacity with every product or service that the economy needs. And while from time to time a new technology or service may arise to change matters that is quite rare. Most of the time a new business will go head to head against an older established business providing the same product or service. Obviously the older well established company will have the greater chance of survival as they are already quire familiar with the territory. Besides which if a significant portion of new businesses always succeeded then a significant portion of older businesses would in turn have to go bankrupt. There is only so much product or service that an economy can absorb at any one time.

The only way that cooperative you mentioned can have a 90% success rate is if they either heavily subsidize any new business to the detriment of others or if they were so selective and picky that only a minuscule number of request got approved.

School for upper-class

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly -- Everyone who isn't born super-rich should spend their lives cutting trees and flipping burgers, underpaid and clueless enough to be blissfully unaware they are underpaid. None of the lower class should have the privilege of knowing what caused past economic or societal collapses because the elite class will be guided by the great economists of today. We should get rid of grade schools too, so children go straight into the work field with only the bare minimum skill set they need for their field; can't waste our bailout/war money on those now, can we?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[maxume]

I don't think there should be a law or anything (and they are paying plenty of taxes with today's rates). I just think the analysis that says "they're worth it" is poppycock. Look at the Detroit automakers. Sure, they were in dire straights 20 years ago, but the only CEO of any of those companies in the last 20 years that has been worth a damn has been Alan Mulally. That's a pretty bad success rate.

So the story is that they are really valuable, and they are adding value to companies, but the reality really doesn't seem to live up to the story.

If you want another angle, compare company founders that stay on as CEO to people that are brought in as business managers (An easy comparison would be Bill Gates to Carly Fiorina, but that's me cheating, Gates took advantage of a near singular opportunity, and Fiorina is probably one of the worst CEO choices in history (well, according to the market anyway, the market cap of HP went up by over $1 billion the day she resigned)).

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Bigjeff5]

Average pay range for a garbage collector: 26,000-50,000 per year.

Average pay range for a chemist: 39,000-55,000 per year.

There is a big difference in entry pay, but at the top end they make about the same.

Who's being disrespected here, the garbage collector or the chemist? In the four years that chemist got his degree, the garbage collector was working up close to his pay level, so who comes out ahead?

College can improve your prospects, especially in high-demand fields like engineering and the like. But it is not a given that it will improve your prospects, and you are going to come out of it with a lot of debt if your parents can't afford to pay your way.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[ridewinter]

Hey, you have a point. I'm definitely lucky. You're probably lucky too relative to most sentient beings. Feelings of being superior are a natural defense mechanism to the fear that we all have. The question is, what are you going to do about it? You can play the cards you're dealt. You can help others. You can work on understanding your life. Or, you can blame others or blame society. Which do you think leads to happiness?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[maxume]

Sarcasm?

(I really can't tell)

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Bigjeff5]

It is very unlikely that each person earning 100 million in today's economy are actually producing that much more value than the next best candidate (or even, the minimally acceptable alternative candidate, if you want to go that far).

You realize the next best candidate is already pulling down close to 100 million, right? And the guy next down the line? Just a little bit less. The reason that guy makes 100 million dollars a year and you don't is because he has skills that you will never possess, and they just happen to be a hell of a lot more important than you think they are.

The fact is, there are very, very few people with the skills and experience necessary to run a multi-billion dollar company. If that were not the case they wouldn't have to pay these guys so much.

Why the hell do you think a structural engineer can demand $100k a year while a chemist tops out at $55,000? It isn't because engineers are twice as smart as chemists, far from it. It's because there is a greater disparity between the number of people with the skills and training to be a structural engineer and the number of structural engineers needed than there is for chemists and the number of chemists needed. In other words, it's easier to find a chemist, so you don't have to pay them as much.

Top executives pull down millions of dollars because their skills are in very high demand, but there are very few people (relative to the demand) who can do the work. Even the people you think suck are a hell of a lot better at it than you ever would be. Frankly, that you think 100 million dollars is too much for someone to make doesn't matter in the slightest. You don't get a vote, the people who need the executive get to vote. Your opinion on the matter is meaningless.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Trash company suddenly can't find anyone to pick up trash at the rate they're asking. What do they do? Well - they could go out recruiting (unlikely), or they could up the pay rate.

Meanwhile, here in Realityland, trash companies do what they've always done, which is hire illegal immigrant labour and pay them illegally low amounts, with no benefits. And because nobody else is willing to do the work but do want their trash to continue magically disappearing every week, they turn a blind eye to the practice.

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!111

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[maxume]

Your first two paragraphs are every bit the simple assertion that my post is.

You claim that, in fact, the market has worked, and the people getting paid enormous salaries are worth it. I claim this is not true.

We don't really have any decent facts (or rather, I don't, and you haven't presented any, perhaps you have them), and we can't really run an experiment. So there we are. Conveniently, I have stated my post in terms of the wishy-washy thoughts that it is based on. Unfortunately, you have stated your post in terms of absolutes.

Thanks though, for informing me about how it is, and about how I am, at the end there.

Have you considered not going to school?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've just answered an analytical argument (college is worthless, $$$ prove it) with an esoteric one (fluffy bunnies and happy rainbows and such) as if such an argument could not also be made for staying out of college. Have you considered that there are life enriching aspects to not going to college? Any time can be life enriching, it doesn't have to be school. In that regard, particularly, school is not a good option because of how much time it takes up for mundane tasks (busywork and such, paying off debt afterward).

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[BoberFett]

I just can't agree with that. Once a company has reached a status of market dominance, the only way it can stay on top is either

a) through truly being the best at what it does such that no competitor can provide a better or cheaper product to it's customers which means that the market is providing what the people want

or

b) through government interference in the form of patents, copyrights, support of abusive lawsuits, regulation to prevent entry to market, etc, etc.

I am still assuming of course that rule of law still applies, and that government would prosecute actual crimes such as murdering their competitors. I am only referring to direct interference with the market.

EVERYONE gets to be what they CAN be.

[Howitzer86]

I'd like to think there were enough people who lacked ambition (enough Hank Hills), that these jobs can and will be filled, and that my trash will continue to be picked up.

"Maybe we should instead strive for a more egalitarian society where everyone's contribution is respected."
My opinion is that people can think what they want, and it is not up to the government to tell us to be comrades. I don't think about the dishwasher. If someone were to ask me about the job a dishwasher does, I'd ask them if that was a trick question.

"We overvalue positions of leadership and expertise, while lying that everyone could do those jobs. And tons of unqualified people rush to fill those jobs, because they were told they could, and that those jobs were more important than hauling garbage"
It's not up to you to say who can, and cannot, do something. How would you feel if your advisor told you, "No, you can't do this very well - I can tell by just looking at you. You shouldn't go to college either. You should work in the coal mines instead."
That's not the government's job - that's the job of the hiring manager. They are responsible for filtering unqualified people out. If a person wants to waste their lives trying to do stuff they aren't good at, fine, let them be.

I think it is important that we should pursue what want. We live not to serve the state, but our own interests. It's not up to the government to decide what we should do with our lives.

Although this isn't a career: I want to strap a pulsejet to a bicycle. Not everyone wants to do that. Not everyone should do that. But this is a free country. (And that's just for a hobby. For a living I want to animate- I am teaching myself because the schools that teach animation are prohibitively expensive. My success in this field are completely dependent on my ambition and willingness to work harder than everybody else. -- In the meantime I attend a local college for a degree in Graphic Design.)

They say freedom isn't free. You pay in other ways. If that means my degree isn't worth much, so be it. At least I'll have one. I'll let my brains (provided its not splattered on asphalt) push me the rest of the way through in life - as it should be.

There are 300 million people in the country. They don't need protection from disappointment. If they can't do something, they will find out - and they will look for other work. That's perfectly fine.

Re:EVERYONE gets to be what they CAN be.

[An Onerous Coward]

So, I'm born poor, work like hell through high school, take out massive student loans to pay for college, then see my one chance at breaking out of the poverty cycle blown because the career path I gambled on five years ago suddenly has too many applicants?

I'm lost, because I haven't seen anything proposed that remotely sounds like "letting the government decide what jobs we have." But you seem to have no concern for the massive waste of human life that happens when people educate themselves for jobs they're never going to find. It's especially tragic when a bright, talented person works hard, ends up saddled with student loans, and ends up doing the sort of menial job she would have been doing had she skipped college.

There is a huge difference between having the government "telling us to be comrades" and the government saying that you have to pay the people in your employ a decent wage. One is about personal conscience, the other is about curtailing your ability to exploit your fellow citizens.

By your reasoning, it's also not the government's job to regulate banks to ensure that they're safe places for consumers to park their money. Why should they protect investors from disappointment? Investors will learn that their choice of institutions was unwise, they'll move to a different bank, and that's perfectly fine.

It makes perfect sense... so long as you ignore the deep disappointment and human tragedy that comes from the words "they'll move to a different bank."

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay at a Holiday Inn last night?

Private college debt crisis

[Chess Piece Face]

"The average student debt load in 2008 was $23,200 -- a nearly $5,000 increase over five years."

This is fueled mainly by the boom in higher priced private colleges (University of Phoenix, etc.) and their shifty recruitment practices. Exactly in the same way that mortgages were being given to unqualified homeowners, there has been a huge rise in the numbers of students enrolling at colleges who will let anybody in the door. Recruiters are paid per enrollment in many cases. Frontline covered it recently:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/ (you can watch the show online here)

One of the standout statistics was the 10 percent of public university students are in default, while private colleges have a 44 percent default rate.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

EXACTLY!
Hard work and contributions should be admired rather than position. BUT these CEOs must network, their golf games are not leisure. Rather, it takes a lot of PR for their position, so they have to think before they talk.

Assuming a LOT

[cherokee158]

Has anyone ever stopped to consider that all of these labor-saving devices we've invented over the past several centuries are really working? Maybe their simply isn't enough work to go around any more.

Too many degrees kills the economy?

[crossmr]

Someone tell South Korea.
Degree acquisition among young people in South Korea is at ridiculous levels I've heard some people quote over 90% and that's supported by being here. Just about everyone goes to and graduates with a degree here, yet their's was one of the economies to rebound the fastest.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

"but at the end of the day I kind of like to eat, have clothes on my back, and a roof over my head"

And...unfortunately, this is why society won't adapt, because in America today, you don't have to work to have these things. When you can have more (or as much, or minimally marginally less than) by not working than you could by working some low paying job, well, so much for that unmitigated capitalism thing you portrayed as this great self-righting mechanism.

"Pride will eventually give way to necessity" - never been in an American inner-city for any substantial amount of time now, have you? As some point, even pride goes out of the window.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they automate. The US has more manufacturing than it ever has, and fewer jobs in manufacturing. Maybe you shoulda become a robot repairman. But most "robots" are just mechanical engineering. Visit a bakery and see how many machines there are, and how few bakers. Seriously, what this country needs is full unemployment: a 4 hour workweek. Job titles give people a sense of self-worth, but let's face it--nobody really likes to work at anything. We can be "all watched over by machines of loving grace." (Richard Brautigan)

econ is all about opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

but real world is about real men
not opportunity

School for the upper-classes inddeed.

[FunWithKnives]

What's sad is that what you consider to be sarcasm, someone else (possibly in a position of great authority and influence) actually considers to be logical argument. Our values have been skewed radically in this country. It is quite disillusioning.

As for the supposed outrageous subsidization of our public universities, I can only speak anecdotally. I'm in my senior year at the University of South Carolina, and I am honestly beginning to fear that I may not graduate on time, simply because certain required classes are now being cut due to lack of funding. Adjunct professors have all but disappeared in the last couple of semesters, and student organizations across the board are experiencing drastic budget cuts. Some haven't survived. Tuition here has been raised at a higher percentage than ever before, though the most recent hike was thankfully rather modest in comparison to previous ones. These economists can talk out of their asses all they want about how we're spending too many tax dollars on public higher education institutions, but what I'm seeing here on the ground, at least in the state I currently reside in, leads me to conclude the complete opposite.

If these people have something against federal educational grants (of which I am one of many thankful recipients), then they should make a specific argument against them, but they shouldn't lump our largely state-funded institutions in with that argument.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[w1z7ard]

You guys are both forgetting that as time progresses...

(1) Technology is, and always will be, replacing human labor.

(2) In the United States, outsourcing is getting rid of "lower educated" jobs.

No sir

[DesScorp]

Except in America every child is special and deserves to go to college

No, they aren't, and they don't. The vast majority of people are average and ordinary. And that's just fine. That's reality. Most work is done by ordinary people, not Einsteins and Mozarts. One of the things I despise about modern education is the way we lie to children and parents... every child has untapped genius!, when the truth is, no, most of us don't.

Now, anyone can improve themselves. Anyone can work harder and learn more and better themselves. But that's not the same as being special, and it's not a justification for sending everyone to college.

Re:No sir

[tsm_sf]

Now, anyone can improve themselves. Anyone can work harder and learn more and better themselves. But that's not the same as being special, and it's not a justification for sending everyone to college.

I'm not sure which archetypal university we're all talking about, but the one I go to offers welding certs, GIS programs, flight schools, officer training (some kind of ROTC deal? no idea), law enforcement courses, a teaching school, music programs, agriculture studies, etc etc etc, in addition to the normal liberal arts offerings.

I think perhaps we're really talking about all the "business" degrees people used to want, maybe? I don't know, this whole conversation seems pretty divorced from reality to me.

Re:No sir

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely that means that colleges are having to expand their offering because they people they're taking are not academic enough to do the more traditional subjects. I'd prefer to see trade and vocational schools that specialise in these things an leave academic institutions to be academic. I know that here in the UK we have the real problem of degrees being diluted because so many people are doing mickey mouse subjects* (things that should be in a trade school) just so they can say they have a degree. Some very good quality and respectable trade/vocational schools would be far better than stuffing everyone through a degree program. Then they could have well funded equipment, teachers who have been in the trade and know what they're talking about and good facilities rather than relying on whatever is left over after the bigger and better funded academic departments have taken most of the budget.

* By mickey mouse I mean not difficult in an academic setting. I'm not trying to pretend that tradesmen are not some very talented folks.

Re:No sir

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, and was well put by this speech. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULRosL7AOpk

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[pipingguy]

Thanks, spun, well-said.

Impressions

[athlon02]

No I didn't read the article, but my impressions from the summary is just socialist thinking. To reference Europe as a model for America is silly. The problem is not too many graduates, it is too much socialism being perpetuated upon American society. If those in govt. stood back and stopped interfering in free market capitalism then the market would take care of the issue. It might not fix things overnight, but it would ALWAYS fix such things in the long run.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[ShakaUVM]

>>Minorities who try to believe "there is always a way to adapt and come out on top" run smack into the cold hard wall of reality, which says, no, sorry, there is not always a way for you.

Like my girlfriend that got a free college education because she was a minority?

It only came with a mandatory summer education that taught her that white people were the devil, and that the cold hard wall of reality is keeping her from success.

While you're right that the dominant culture is so pervasive we'll probably never have a black president in our lifetimes, the simple fact of reality is that we WANT minorities to succeed. It's not the 1830s any more.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[mmaniaci]

To get a good view of society, one must separate himself from it. Your grammar/wording Nazi-ness doesn't invalidate any of spun's points.

And are you a garbage man Stan? Or just the Morality Police?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[mmaniaci]

Really? "Supply and demand" is all your college education can muster up? I always thought that economics was 99% common sense, but you kinda just proved it to me.

Pie Iesu frugalitas, dona eis requiem
*smacks forehead with paddle and puts $5,000 on my credit card in homage to our Lord, the Economy*

And

[mahadiga]

College education should ideally create employers and not employees.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Oh, that's the problem with the internet. I meant it as a compliment, both to you and the GP.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The larger concern here is that people are, whether they realize it or not, hawking darn-near outright socialistic behavior.

Well, a strong safety net isn't really socialism. That deals with ownership of the means of production. Also, you kinda have to put everything in perspective. Not all ideas that derive from socialist thought are inheritly wrong. I dare say every political philosophies has been right about some things and wrong about others. Not that, on whole or because of the extremeness of some parts, they are all good or equal. But to dismiss a whole philosophy is pretty wrong-headed.

Pure communism: Failed. Pure capitalism: Failed first.

A mix works. As soon as you admit that, we can debate where to draw the line. But "line moving closer to an evil philosophy" simply doesn't work as an argument.

Fact is that man/most manufacturing jobs could and should be automated out of existence. It really sucks when friends/family/coworkers lose their job and can't find work. It *has* to happen. Society will adapt - we don't get to skip out on taking our medicine just because we don't like it.

That doesn't suck. Them not being able to eat, afford shelter or medical care, those really suck. Not being able to find a job is bad, but if that means cutting down on luxuries instead of not surviving, I think we can deal.

he trick here is holding those on the high dollar end of this inefficiency responsible for the failures that they create. When only the bottom end pays dearly - that's inefficient too.

And telling those fortunate among us able to generate that much wealth through improving society that they have to help everyone else out.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[An Onerous Coward]

>> the market cap of HP went up by over $1 billion the day she resigned.

Citation?

I mean, I believe you. But I'd love to throw that one in a few Republican faces.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[An Onerous Coward]

But when the shoe is on the other foot, and that foot is the foot of a sweatshop worker who gets paid a dollar a day for creating thousands of dollars of value for some corporate clothing outlet, suddenly the question isn't, "How does her salary stack up to all the value she's creating," but "What's the minimum amount we can get away with paying her?"

I don't care if Tiger Woods has a unique, singular talent that sells hundreds of billions worth of golf swag every year. He's a grown man who gets paid to fly around to exotic locales and knock a tiny ball around. I doubt many athletes would complain about making a hundred grand a year, if that were the going rate.

As for CEOs, it's nearly impossible to tell how well they're leading their respective companies, and literally impossible to guess how they'd be doing with someone else at the helm. There is, however, ample evidence that CEOs and boards of directors collude to get each other cushy, can't fail contracts. If they were so sure they were creating real value, they'd happily agree to contracts where their compensation was tied to the long-term performance of the company.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[An Onerous Coward]

I had no idea the Geico Gecko was such a douchebag. I'm switching to State Farm or something.

Thank you for an outstanding contribution to this thread.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[An Onerous Coward]

Look at actual organized crime syndicates. They're not based on either official government support or the production of a superior product. And yet it can take decades to build a case against them.

Also, it's not obvious why the section of government in charge of enforcing "the rule of law" would be less corruptible than the sections of government that oversee the interference you describe in b).

Hell, corporations already commit all manner of crimes to get or keep market share. Far more often than they get caught or prosecuted for it.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[An Onerous Coward]

Or they could C) manipulate the money supply to ensure that we always have at least 5% of able-bodied Americans out of work, so that no matter how crappy the wages you're offering are, there is always somebody desperate enough to take you up on it.

Follow that up with D), lobbying congress to make sure that the minimum wage laws stay low. Add in E) threatening to take your entire trash-generating factory overseas if your trash haulers try to unionize.

Your point misses the broader point: the garbage would need to be picked up even if we had an ironclad trash collector's union that demanded $100K/year and six weeks vacation. Ooh, and full dental. It would also get picked up if we trashed the laws against child labor and made you compete with your own nine year old for the job. The question isn't whether capitalism "works" in the sense of matching supply to demand. If supply meets demand at a price that is so low that the people doing the work are too poor to present themselves creditably to the rest of society, then capitalism is failing in its broader social obligations.

Winners win, Losers lose

[leereyno]

There is more to the story than mere intellect.

There is also that nebulous concept we call character.

While it is true that a person with a 90 IQ will never become a neurosurgeon, it is also true that there are many people with IQ's 50 points higher than that who never will either.

There are lots of talented losers in this world; people whose intellectual gifts are completely wasted upon them. We've all met these types. The genius high school dropout who works at Starbucks. Or the bright girl who gets married and sits at home all day. Intelligence is only worth something if you use it.

On the flip-side there are those with modest intellectual gifts who achieve a great deal in life. I know a man who is the victim of a drive-by shooting that left him with a bullet in his head. He cannot read. He is easily confused. He works moving furniture for a living. Yet he owns his own home. He has a nice truck that he enjoys driving. His mother helps take care of those things that he cannot do for himself, and in return she has a place to live. Given his circumstances, he has achieved more than what could reasonably be expected. The reason he is a success despite his profound disability is that he works very hard. He doesn't make excuses to give up, or to not try.

There are a lot of 35 year old losers with high IQ's still sponging off their parents who could learn a great deal from this man.

I used to bitch all day long about the state of public education in America. But as I've grown older I've come to realize just how irrelevant it is. It isn't created to teach anyone anything. Its purpose is to warehouse the young while their parents are at work and to provide them with some modicum of education before handing the brightest ones off to a university to actually be educated. The schools will never be "fixed" because they are operating according to plan already.

If you actually want your children to be educated before you shell out 100,000 to send them off to an elite university, then you have to either home school them or shell out 25,000 a year for a good private school, and even then there are no guarantees.

I'd also like to point out that there are not too many college graduates. There are too few jobs for which college graduates are suited. Don't confuse lack of demand with an excess of supply.

It should also be remembered that a recreational degree like Art History or English Lit is not the same as a real degree like Business or Engineering. If you're going to school and pursuing a course of study that does not lead to a better job than you would get with just a high school diploma, then you are wasting your time. If you want to study something because you are interested in it, do so AFTER you've graduated from a real degree program and have a good paying job.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Stan Vassilev]

Like I'm going to go pick up everyone's trash for free.

It's not free, dude, they pay you for it.

What would be the point of that?

Don't ask me. You said you'll be happy to do it. If your own echo sounds like an argument a two-year old would use, then you get my point.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Stan Vassilev]

To get a good view of society, one must separate himself from it. Your grammar/wording Nazi-ness doesn't invalidate any of spun's points.

So low-wage workers are the society, but he and his trash isn't part of the society. Next thing, he argues it's childish to ask of him to carry out what he himself stated should be done. I see a bright career in politics for him.

Talk is cheap, you know. Watch me do it. At least I'm not quick to restructure the entire society around vague concerns for taking care of my garbage. In my opinion, a big step up from the current level of discussion.

Yeah, but europe has social security

[unity100]

you dont go out homeless in the streets looking for food in dumpsters if you do not find a job for a while in europe. you are guaranteed employment pay sufficient enough to keep your dignity as a human being, and keep an acceptably human living style.

furthermore, the income divide in between the rich and poor is not as high as america. it doesnt matter too much if youre a technician or someone is an engineer there. engineer just earns some more. you do not feel like you are someone who is valued lower than someone else as a human being. and the engineer doesnt come up living a high life like a cock over the masses like you.

therefore, technical positions are easy to fill. those who really want to do science or engineering go to universities. and they end up doing science, or practising engineering.

this is how europe can keep their technological edge and manufacturing industry despite they (many of those countries) have little population, and little resources.

in america you dont have this. if you end up not being able to find a job, you end up bad. therefore, youth HAVE to guarantee finding a job. hence, youth are forced to go to universities, colleges, just to have something more to put in their resume.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[stepdown]

You describe the problems of asymmetric information about the "quality" of a worker, but there are ways to overcome these difficulties. With monitoring and proper contracts you can go some way to solving the problems Akerlof describes. Part of the reason there are so many college graduates is because having a degree signals to employers that you're a peach rather than a lemon. The problem with college is it's a very long and expensive process for what is still a noisy signalling method.

The worth of a marketing drone is hundreds or thousands of times that of a sewer worker to companies. Not everybody being able to do these jobs is the precise reason those who can seek a higher wage. If you can do the job of the "privileged douchebag" for less then I'm sure his employer would be happy to speak to you. The market does not treat labour any differently from capital. If labour had a higher value than its market price then a firm would stand to gain by hiring more workers, eventually pushing price up to equilibrium (assuming we can overcome the "credit rationing" problem you describe)

You're bringing fairness into the picture by saying that people are different to capital and everybody in society has a right to a certain level of respect and a minimum standard of living. That's fine, but redistributing wealth brings with it another set of hurdles and you may end up making society worse off than when you leave it to the "invisible hand".

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

so far as we are supposed to do in france, first of all, college and universities are public and free.. second as we see it, the goal of schools is not to have well trained people, well prepared to work in the industry. At least till, what one may call bachelor, the goal is to have clever, knowledgeable people, whom can adapt easily to new situation job, and understand their own world.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[maxume]

Here is a BBC article saying that the stock finished the day up 7%:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4250315.stm

The market cap was about 60 billion in 2005. So it probably increased by 3 or 4 billion dollars. It has gone on to almost double since then.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[smitty777]

Hrmmm..great points - now you make me ponder. It would seem that there are 5 different categories:

(1) Motivated to improve -> actually improve
(2) Motivated to improve -> can't improve
(3) Want to improve -> unmotivated (want easy $$$)
(4) Unmotivated to improve -> don't improve
(5) Unmotivated to improve -> accidentally improve(e.g., nepotism, win lottery)

So, obviously the group that should be targeted is (2). The point is that there are plenty of folks out there who don't have the motivation, skill, or attitude to take advantage of the opportunities. Speaking as an American, I've seen folks come to this country with absolutely nothing and build fortunes for themselves and their kids. I've always been a firm believer that persistence and attitude can win any battles.

And you can start from the bottom - I was literally at a point where I could not afford shoes when I started.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

One big speedbump in your argument --- Obama... err, entitlement programs. If you look at the plot of take home pay versus gross income, the curve is negatively sloped from about $25k to about $40k. This is due to things like earned (hah) income credit, tax credits and so on. Now, it's not that I think some things like this are a bad idea. You have to look at the effect, though. You've created a chasm over which companies can't attract employees, in effect creating a two class society of those who earn too little to want to earn more and those who earn enough that you can fleece them to support the bottom income levels.

In such an environment, there is no transition to this new mental state of "hey, I'll work for food at this wage" since you don't have to. Society can no longer adapt. It has been subverted to a different, less efficient and necessarily less stable solution curve in the state space of the system.

Re:Democracy

[Ltap]

The left constantly aligns itself with terrorists, militants, and dictators.

First of all, I find it ironic that you use this to describe the modern descendants of the peace movement. You're also ignoring the dozens of right-wing dictatorships in the past and future. Groups who want to control a populace find it easier when they can use religion to do it, and to create a closed, conservative society.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[merockstar]

"Actually, the truth is, *really* - no one wants to pick up garbage, not even the guys that do it, but that's besides the point...)"

As someone with just a high school diploma who tried to get a bachelors, I would happily pick up garbage for something more than ten dollars an hour.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, Economics sucks at explaining the economy because it completely neglects to include human nature.

Example, car manufacturers and oil producers in the past aggressively bought out as many patents on renewable energy production and mass transit for their own personal benefit. There's a reason that rail dropped out as the primary source of interstate goods transportation. All of which was replaced by freight truck drivers.

I would honestly like to see a poll across all of the truck drivers across the US to see how many actually like their jobs (especially since the gas price hikes). If all of that value added from using more efficient forms of goods transport (such as rail) was magically spread across the economy everybody would benefit. The drivers of dump trucks would make up a much smaller niche market and therefore would earn more; the cost to run the garbage operations would probably go down with the advent of cheap renewable fuel sources. Face it, oil may be cheap to pump out of the ground, but there are a lot of resources/time/money wasted in it's processing and transport. When locally produced renewable energy resources reach critical mass, there's no reason why it shouldn't be cheaper to produce than petrol from imported crude.

That is, of course, unless the major energy producers succeeds in convincing the people that they should pay many magnitudes more than the actual cost to manufacture. Economics theory be damned.

"The key to a monopoly is to get in the middle of an intersection and charge rent." -- Newt Gingrich.

it's the educational industrial complex?

[Anonymous Coward]

When few people have degrees, having a degree correlates to higher pay. The modern "analyze everything like a business" says "based on history, an "investment" in a degree is worth it, because of increased earnings"... Companies are willing to loan you money to "make the investment", which actually increases the amount of money chasing the degrees, raising tuition. The problem is that like all bubbles, when "everyone has a degree", the economic value starts to drop, and people default on their student loans...

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[drsquare]

Um, really? How about someone who's running a company that makes a hundred billion dollars? If they can increase revenue a tenth of a percent more than the next guy, it's worth it for the company to pay them $100 million more, because the gain will be more than the cost.

This assumes the companies profitability is down to the CEO. Of course, when the company loses money it's the fault of the market. Considering that the vast majority of people never get to be a CEO (it's not like these jobs are advertised to us commoners, they're headhunted from the existing executive class), how do you know that if it wasn't for that CEO, profits would have gone up even more?

If two CEOs, one of company A that makes a million dollars a year, and another of company B that makes a billion dollars, both increase their companies profitability by the same proportion, both paid a proportion of the profits, CEO A will make a thousand times less money than B, for the same results. Running a company with twice the revenues isn't twice as difficult. If anything, it's easier because you have larger economies of scale, more influence over the market, more ability to buy governments etc.

Objections to enormous salaries are usually grounded in some wishy-washy analysis that's crippled by the human mind's inability to intuitively grasp huge numbers.

And defence of enormous salaries is usually grounded in either worship of the mega-rich (common in the US), or refusal to believe that trickle-down economics doesn't actually work. Someone who voted for Reagan, twice, on the promise of allowing the rich to hoover up all the cash, won't admit that they're actually being screwed over by their own decision.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[drsquare]

I don't think that is necessarily a problem. How much capital do you really need to start a business? It doesn't have to be a lot. It also doesn't have to be yours.

Businesses cost a lot of money. Premises, equipment, materials, bills, staff etc. The main cause of new businesses going bust is a lack of funding.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

"They say more Americans should consider other options such as technical training or two-year schools, which have been embraced in Europe for decades."

I`m from Germany and dont understand the Comparison to the "European System". For an Apprentence ship (after the Tenths grade or after Thritteens grade (in Total schoolyears) in for 3 Years in a Company, paid + 1/2 Schooltime OR Unpaid and for Free at a school) you get a "Degree". I think its not realy comparable to.

On the other hand, you can learn a field of Knowledge but thats not allways the Point! You have to learn to learn a field of Knowledge. Mabe this isnt given in the Bachalor System, wich is more like "going to school". If you managed to learn C it will be easy to learn Prolog and if you learned that you maybe able to teach yourself the Gramma of a language .... all it takes is a (Digital) library an some Time! It isnt writing Test and reproducing every crap they told you!

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[jketch]

The thing is, if the situation ever really got that bad, there would be an overwhelming tide of public opinion to change it. And don't say the fact that such a shift in public opinion thus far shows it will never happen. The current situation is nowhere near as bad as the one you describe. If we ever get to the point where the U-3 unemployment rate hits 25% while the rich are getting even richer, there WILL be movement to change the system.

Blame the stupid gatekeepers

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting the degree wasn't the problem.

The real problem now is getting the experience. It's like you manage to clear one hurdle (college), now they want you to pole vault. (2+ years experience) The problem with that is that those who have kept raising the bar have left a lot of people with no means to get past the next step. (It also seems ironic, because the majority of people with the amount of experience they're asking for can usually find better work than that offered on the job board.)

So now I'm straddled with college debt, and still left with no means to get a job in the chosen field or vocation because of yet another arbitrary requirement made by some doorkeeper.

I think there should be a program which requires corporate sponsorship before being eligible for college loans. It should be setup in such a way that you're guaranteed a choice of entry level jobs relating to your degree that are contracted to last a minimum of 1-2 years. Provided you don't absolutely fuck-up and get fired or the company doesn't go belly up - a chunk of the experience problem will be accounted for. Not to mention that having a guaranteed job to go with that degree would help cover the college loan problem to some extent.

Right now there's usually some spiel saying something about internships. But from my experience, they only count as 6mo rather than a year. And they often don't pay, which doesn't help with the loans. The small businesses that usually do it are wanting practically free labor. (They never hire on any of the interns. They just repeat it with new kids the next year and so on.)

I guess the only other way left for some chance at experience is volunteering. It's nice and charitable to do it, but it still doesn't do a damn thing about the debt situation.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, fuck you.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Simetrical]

Yes, this is a result of supply and demand, and a result of mass media and popular culture, and is an "economic" truth. THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT OR DESIRABLE. It offends me that some idiot THUG who CAN THROW A BALL 1% better than OTHER BALL THROWERS makes hundreds of millions while the doctor who saves my life by spotting and removing a melanoma makes $200k/year working 80 hour weeks and has to spend 40 of those hours filling out BS health insurance forms. (And incidentally, by catching this melanoma early, this doctor also saves my health insurer $1M in cancer treatment bills!)

The doctor provides an enormous amount of value to a small number of people, while the sports player provides a small amount of value to an enormous amount of people. It would be nice to think that the two types of value – entertainment and saving lives – were incommensurable, but that's not tenable. Amusing someone for a couple of hours is worth a certain finite amount of money, and saving someone's life is worth a much larger but still finite amount of money. (Because only a finite amount of money exists, and we can't spend it all on saving lives.) If you can entertain enough people, that's as important a service as saving one person's life, harsh though that may seem to our intuition.

This is pure social inequity and I have NO problem fixing this brokenness in the market via VERY progressive taxation at the high end. The capitalist free market is NOT holy, it is NOT moral, and it should serve HUMANS not the other way around!

95% marginal tax rates for the wealthiest sounds like a great idea, but it's probably going to collect less money than lower tax rates, not more. Consider: at a 0% marginal tax rate the government collects no money, but at a 100% marginal tax rate it also collects no money (because no one would bother accepting money if they have to hand 100% to the government). Thus the amount of money the government collects begins at 0, goes up as you increase the marginal tax rate, and eventually goes down again. What's the turning point? Do you really think it's as high as 95%? (There's probably some research about this, but I don't know what it is . . .)

By the way, I think your anger is misplaced. CEOs might get paid a few million dollars, but rarely much more than that, and they at least do put in a real day's work. The real injustice (and I agree that it is unjust) is when you make billions of dollars not because of your work, but because you invested in a business that happened to succeed massively. Bill Gates is not the richest man in the world because of his salary as a CEO, but because he owns so much of Microsoft. That's the real inequity here.

But the capacity for enormous wealth from investment is what makes capitalism work. People fund businesses only because they hope to make back their investment a hundredfold or more. Trying to bar that possibility on the basis that it's unfair, without regard to the consequences, is the fatal error of communism. Sometimes you really have to trade away fairness for more long-term wealth for society as a whole. It's the injustice of capitalism that has ensured that even the poorest people in developed nations are better off than the average person in the third world.

With any luck, capitalism-driven technological progress will eventually give us all so much wealth that the poor of the future will be better off than the wealthy today. That's what we should be aiming for: raising the bar in the long term, not trying to level things in the short term.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Simetrical]

I don't think there should be a law or anything (and they are paying plenty of taxes with today's rates). I just think the analysis that says "they're worth it" is poppycock. Look at the Detroit automakers. Sure, they were in dire straights 20 years ago, but the only CEO of any of those companies in the last 20 years that has been worth a damn has been Alan Mulally. That's a pretty bad success rate.

In all types of jobs, you have individuals who are being underpaid or overpaid, because the employer misestimates how much they're worth. A good CEO is paid millions of dollars because he's actually worth that much to the company. A bad CEO is paid the same, but only because the board can't always figure out if a CEO is good or bad in advance. Everyone agrees bad CEOs should be paid less (or, better, fired) – most of all the companies themselves. But first you have to figure out if they're bad. That's the trick.

The original study answers the wrong question

[razorhead]

More students should go to a 4 year college than do now. We should subsidize college more than we do. Every time a student doesn't leave high school wanting to go to college we have failed that student. Every job doesn't require a 4 year degree. Truth be told, college isn't the best indicator of work performance. Societal factors and family history is more important indicator of work success. Every student that goes to college to learn a marketable skill is missing the point of college.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Simetrical]

This assumes the companies profitability is down to the CEO. Of course, when the company loses money it's the fault of the market. Considering that the vast majority of people never get to be a CEO (it's not like these jobs are advertised to us commoners, they're headhunted from the existing executive class), how do you know that if it wasn't for that CEO, profits would have gone up even more?

You don't. Uncertainty is, unfortunately, part of life. But if the company makes billions, it's worth it to pay a few extra million to get someone you just suspect will make the company do better. Even if you aren't sure.

If two CEOs, one of company A that makes a million dollars a year, and another of company B that makes a billion dollars, both increase their companies profitability by the same proportion, both paid a proportion of the profits, CEO A will make a thousand times less money than B, for the same results. Running a company with twice the revenues isn't twice as difficult.

No, of course not. That's why both of the CEOs would prefer to be CEO of company B if possible. The board of company B will, in theory, pick whichever one is better, outbidding company A (which would also like the better CEO). If CEOs were truly interchangeable, and there was no reason to think you could guess which one was better in advance, they would all get paid the same in a competitive market. But they aren't, so the ones that are thought to be better get paid more, by the companies that can afford to pay more.

Of course, boards of directors probably do a poor job of guessing who a good CEO will be. And might have other kinds of biases that hurt the quality of their decision. But that's a separate issue – I was talking about principles, not practice. In practice, CEOs might well be substantially overpaid.

Private ins too !

[curri]

Many students in private unis do not care either, and many in public unis do care. There is a lot of variation on students all over.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Simetrical]

But when the shoe is on the other foot, and that foot is the foot of a sweatshop worker who gets paid a dollar a day for creating thousands of dollars of value for some corporate clothing outlet, suddenly the question isn't, "How does her salary stack up to all the value she's creating," but "What's the minimum amount we can get away with paying her?"

That's the same question that should be asked about CEOs. If a CEO's salary could be halved and he wouldn't care, he's obviously being paid more than he should be. If there are lots of such CEOs, then that speaks to a systemic irrationality in the market. It's possible. I don't know, since I'm not in the market for hiring or being a CEO. I imagine that most CEOs would actually care if their salary was halved, just because of the message it sends, even if the money itself means nothing to them.

But the actual market price for a good CEO, if everyone has good information, should in principle be much higher than the market price for an unskilled labor. I'm arguing that in principle, some people may deserve to be paid a thousand times what other people are paid. In practice, maybe some people are grossly overpaid, I don't know; I'm arguing about principles, not practice.

I doubt many athletes would complain about making a hundred grand a year, if that were the going rate.

Which accomplishes what? The owner of their team gets to keep the extra money instead? That's even less just. At least the athlete has managed to become popular somehow through hard work and talent. The owner could very well just be lucky.

(It's curious how people are complaining about highly-paid people who actually do a lot of work. Surely it makes more sense to attack the capitalists, who make orders of magnitude more money – billions instead of millions – and don't necessarily do any work at all.)

There is, however, ample evidence that CEOs and boards of directors collude to get each other cushy, can't fail contracts. If they were so sure they were creating real value, they'd happily agree to contracts where their compensation was tied to the long-term performance of the company.

CEOs like low-risk jobs, same as anyone. Companies can fail even under a competent CEO, through no fault of his. So CEOs are offered a lot of money guaranteed, and even more if the company does well. (E.g., they're given lots of stock, which automatically becomes more valuable if the company does well.) This is really no different from any job, except the stakes are far higher. You get a certain amount guaranteed, and more for good performance.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not buy into the notion of a class system, and call them for what they are. Upper income, middle income, and lower income groups.

Let's also ask us why higher income is better. Well, money provides options, but more importantly, there are things in life on needs. Health care, and general security. So, if we were to create universal health care, and provide an old age income (regardless of past employment), I think a lot of lower income people would be better off.

Maybe even throw in free college for the first two years two, that way people can go onto technical, vocational, and university (for the first two years) for free, tuition-wise that is.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[numbski]

dugg.

CRAP - wrong site, sorry about that. :P

Point taken - I left rational actors out of the equation, but still - I think even without rational actors my example stands. I don't think trash collection will just "go away" because no one wants to do it. Sure, someone might come up with a fully automated solution, but I don't think these "dirty jobs" just wind up going undone just because we're all better educated.

Top paying jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

There are actually a ton of educated college students in the U.S. All those students in top universities and top tier universities are capable of attaining high paying jobs. Yet, most of them do not because they go in fields that don't pay that well.

Even then, the competition for top paying jobs such as a front office position at Goldman is tough as nails. Only the best can get these jobs.

When you think of it, only a few jobs are going to be an avenue to high wealth. Doctors, top finance jobs, perhaps law and athletes.

Any where else and it going to take company presitidge such as ernst and young and some moving up.

scared..

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that many people are just afraid in the job market. They get scared when they hear news of the lowest graduating class or something. I feel that one's place in society is predetermined at around the college level. At this level, the person isn't going to move up one social class. Sure there are those people who go from CC to top univerisites or some that just have a change of life. Yet, the majority of those people are already established in their place in society. Those people in those state schools like Baruch are not going to be successful. Only the upper tier students have a chance.

It is tough to even do well in college and earn a 3.5 plus gpa. There are way too many slackers to let yourself lose that easily. Those people in top tier colleges are in a good starting position. They are ahead of the race for the job market. Yet, by making sure one does well in a good college is the best medicine for potential success. Sure a 3.5 at a top college is great but it doesn't mean one is going to get the job. Yet with incredible work ethic, a person of this caliber will be successful some where in the future.

There are avenues to continue the momentum. Lets say I don't get the job I want, I can instead go do an MBA at a top B school.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Yes, there are answers to the problems of information asymmetry. These answers all have, unfortunately, the same problems with information asymmetry. When trying to fix the problem, you get into an infinite regress. Who can you trust to answer the question, "Who can you trust?"

It's funny. I describe how and why the market devalues labor and overvalues capital, and your argument is essentially, "No it doesn't" without any supporting evidence or reasoning.

However, I agree that there could be unintended consequences to any system designed to replace the one we have. One way to overcome this is to make sure people can really opt out of the system. However, we do not want parasites leaching off the system without contributing. And by 'parasites' I don't mean the poor and unfortunate.

What I would do is essentially 'shun' those who can contribute, but don't. If you are not paying your workers a fair wage, contributing to the social safety nets, and protecting the environment, then no one who is doing those things will trade with you. And we will not trade with anyone who trades with you, either. You will be cut off from the community of decent people who take care of each other, free to do your own thing, just not with us. Taking care of the less fortunate is a positive externality for society. If you will not help pay for that externality, you will not get the benefits.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

You can't base a system on the exceptions. We've all seen these types of successes. The lie is that they are common, and that anyone with persistence and attitude will necessarily succeed. That is an example of a noble lie, a lie told for a good reason. The reason is, if you come from nothing, that type of attitude is a necessary condition of success. You DO need to believe that and live it to succeed. And so we tell people, if you believe that and live it, you will succeed.

Unfortunately, while it is necessary, it is by no means sufficient. That is the lie. We tell people it is necessary and sufficient. But the truth is that most people who believe that and live it will still not succeed. But we can't tell people, "Yeah, uh, persistence and attitude will give you a one in ten shot at success. Good luck with that. Oh and by the way, money and connections, which you haven't got, will give you a nine in ten chance of success, ain't that a kick in the pants?"

And the final problem with that ideal is that it provides an excuse not to care about the less fortunate. If we really believe that all it takes is hard work and determination, then those who fail have no one to blame but themselves, and we can wash our hands of their problems. We didn't fail them. Society didn't fail them. They failed themselves.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Your anecdotes, while certainly interesting, are simply personal stories and not actual useful data. You and I want minorities to succeed. The powers that be don't want them to. It is far too useful for all the different groups to be fighting each other, rather than looking for the true common enemy: the sociopaths at the top. And that is the real issue facing every society: what to do about the sociopaths. And how to do it without also screwing over the regular citizens, or just handing the sociopaths another tool of oppression.

The thing is, one must look at the results of one's beliefs. If a belief leads one to the conclusion that one is good and right and all one's rewards are deserved, while those who fail deserve to fail, well, it is pretty easy not to question the validity of that belief. IT's kind of funny how many widely held beliefs lead to exactly that conclusion, isn't it? It's almost as if people pick their beliefs based on how those beliefs make them feel, rather than any logical validity.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

It isn't all about happiness for me. Historically, who do you think has changed society for the better? Was it the people who "played the cards they were dealt?" Or was it the people who blamed society and others, when society and others deserved the blame?

I'd guess, the later. And maybe they weren't so happy during their lives. But they made the lives of many others who came after them, that much better.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

"Buckaroo Banzai." The reference was "Buckaroo Banzai" but thanks for playing and here's a copy of our home game, "Obscure references for total dorks."

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[smitty777]

OK Spun, I think you won me over to your way of thinking (wore me down?? ;^) Which is a feat considering I am something of an eternal optimist.

Let me just throw a twist on it, though - it also depends on your definition of "success". If success = $$$$, than what you are saying is true. However, if success = satisfaction with life, than maybe not. If it does = $$$, than you will not be satisfied no matter what you do.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

I'd say, success is being self actualized. Success is the freedom to define 'success' in your own terms, and work towards your own goals.

I've read a study on human happiness, where they asked people all over the world, "Are you happy?" and then asked them a bunch of other questions, to see what factors influenced happiness. Turns out there are only three factors. First is having the resources to see to your basic needs. Having more than that won't make you any happier, but not having it will definitely make you unhappy. The next is being a member of a close social group like a tribe or a village. And the final factor is being a part of a religion (which to me is just a special case of factor two.)

The thing is, we could have a society where hard work and determination were both necessary and sufficient conditions for success. Imagine living in a real meritocracy. I'd like that, and not because I think I'm awesome and would do great in a real meritocracy. No, I'm actually kind of lazy. But I have this sense of justice that I can't shut off, and it physically pains me to see the just fail and the unjust succeed. So my reasons for wanting a meritocracy are still selfish, really.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[smitty777]

Although I know what you mean, I think "self actualization" is a term that has always been somewhat poorly defined to me. But I digress...

Actually, I think you've somewhat painted yourself into a corner with that last definition. Because I think it is very possible for someone to be "successful" ( = self actualized) in the current workforce. I know plenty of folks who might be considered self actualized that have low paying jobs. And they meet your requirements for the three areas of happiness - jobs, good social structure, and go to church, etc.

It reminds me of the story of the Mexican Fisherman

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Self actualization is actually well defined in psychological theory, but yes, it has been co-opted by pop-psychology.

It is very possible for anyone who has their lower order needs met to be self actualized. That is the point of Maslow's Heirarchy of needs. The theory is, once one has one's basic physiological needs like food and water met, one can focus on the sociological needs, like status and love, and only once those are met, can one focus on being the person one wants to be.

And here is the thing, for me. I would have no problem with some folks making millions of times what other folks met, as long as everyone had their basic physiological needs met. It is only when some are starving and others make millions that I have a problem.

It is very possible to be self actualized in our current work force. But remember, in order to be self actualized, on has to have met one's sociological needs. One can not become truly self actualized unless one has met the need for social status and acceptance. Our society maintains an economic condition where a certain percentage of people will not be allowed to contribute, and thus not meet their sociological need to contribute. It is our stated policy not to let unemployment fall too low, lest the evil inflation rear its ugly head. Which means we are saying, a certain percentage of Americans will NOT be able to meet their sociological need to contribute. That sad truth is inherent in our economic system.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[ShakaUVM]

>>The powers that be don't want them to.

Damn that Obama!

I say we remove him and all those powers that be that put him there!

In all seriousness, though, do you know how easy it is to get a scholarship, grant, or job if you're, say, a female Hispanic student in computer science? There ARE inequalities, but our society pretty strongly stacks the deck for anyone of the right skin color to succeed if they want to.

The bigger issue is why females and minority students DON'T want to, but it's a lie to say that society will stamp them down if they try to go for it.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

You could make your argument more persuasive with some kind of statistics or citations to back it up. What you've got now doesn't even qualify as anecdotal, it's just bald faced assertion.

Look, I can make bald faced assertions, too: Our society stacks the deck for white men. Anyone who thinks the deck is stacked for minorities is a lunatic who can't be trusted to make simple, fact based observations. White men have power and privilege. Affirmative action hasn't even put a dent in the inequalities. For proof, I call your attention to the CEOs and board members of our fortune 500 corporations; our local, state, and federal elected officials; and our prisons. Oops, now I've gone and actually backed up my assertions with evidence. Looks like your argument is pretty well debunked. You could have at least tried to make it a challenge.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[smitty777]

Hey Spun, I have an advanced degree in psych, so I'm fully aware of the definition of SA. And I still think it's poorly defined. I mean "the full realization of one's potential"?? seriously? How do you operationalize that? Sorry, I've been in the biz for a while, and I think the whole hierarchy sounds good in theory, but not so much in practice. Also, according to Maslow, there were only a handful of people that were SA (Elanor Roosevelt? How'd he come up with that one?). I also know many artists that starve for their art. It would seem to me that this behavior would be counter to the MH - starving in order to obtain SA. Anyway - sorry, a little off topic.

I would totally agree with you that there are some serious social ills out there. And given the ever increasing world population, I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Not off topic at all, it's always good for me to get the insight of a professional in the field, as I am no more than an interested amateur. And I see your point, I guess it is poorly defined. But were the artists really starving? Hard to be an artist when you can't lift your arms...

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[ShakaUVM]

>>You could make your argument more persuasive with some kind of statistics or citations to back it up. What you've got now doesn't even qualify as anecdotal, it's just bald faced assertion.

Really? You're going to go out on a limb and claim that Microsoft doesn't put especial efforts into recruiting and giving scholarships to women and minority computer science people? Want to place a bet on how long this claim of yours will stand up to a Google search?

I know it existed, because my (female, Hispanic) partner in my assembly class was courted for years by Microsoft during her undergraduate years. Internships every year; scholarships, free software, guaranteed job out of college.

Or are you claiming there isn't a tremendous amount of support available for any minority wanting to go to college? You think that will stand up to a google search as well?

Let me know how much you want to bet on this, before you get a Let Me Google This For You link.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

I'll bet you a public "I was wrong and you are right." Heck, I'll post it in my journal if you like. But let me ask you, how many white guys get the same deal? A lot of them. Was your Hispanic partner an idiot who did not deserve the offers she received? Or was she in fact, quite smart, and thus likely to get those same offers whatever her race? Think carefully before you answer that, does she read Slashdot? Maybe some sort of code is in order, refer to her as your "loving genius partner" if you agree, or your "genius loving partner" if you don't. ;)

Now, on to what I will accept as evidence: statistics showing that white men have worse social outcomes overall than minorities. Show me minorities making more on average than their white male counterparts. If you can't show that, everything else is moot, because whatever advantage the minorities are receiving has obviously not outweighed the extant racism holding them back. Or do you think minorities are simply less capable than white men?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[ShakaUVM]

>>But let me ask you, how many white guys get the same deal?

"...we do award a large majority of our student scholarships to women, minorities, and the disabled."
(https://careers.microsoft.com/careers/en/us/collegescholarship.aspx)

And minority is defined solely as African-American, Hispanic, and Native American.

How many white guys get a minority or woman scholarship? Um, I know of one guy... and he nearly got kicked out of school. It was because the scantron misread his mark on his college application form. He had to show them his applications to other schools to prove he wasn't trying to get favorable admission by pretending to be black. (Kind of explodes your preferential treatment for white people doesn't it?)

>>Or was she in fact, quite smart, and thus likely to get those same offers whatever her race

She was a smart chick, but she was absolutely recruited so heavily because she was both a woman and a minority. Nobody even tried to pretend otherwise. Microsoft doesn't, and neither did she.

And this is just one program at one company among many.

>>Now, on to what I will accept as evidence: statistics showing that white men have worse social outcomes overall than minorities.

Ah, but fairness in society merely guaranteed equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. You can give incentives to increase desired outcomes (and there are a lot of incentives for minorities to go into high tech), but you can't force them to become computer scientists without holding a gun to their head. And I don't think you'd go that far.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Okay, look, equality of outcome is statistical over large sets. Given a large enough sample of different races, you will find equality of outcome, unless the race is inferior (are you arguing that?) or the there is institutionalized unfairness towards them (which is what I'm arguing.)

This institutionalized racism is evidence we are NOT providing equality of opportunity, and so we have affirmative action. Case closed, you can't show that minorities have better outcomes than whites, we still have racism, and thus, affirmative action, while doing something, is not doing enough.

I don't really have a lot of sympathy for people born with privileges crying about how they don't have enough privileges.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[cycleflight]

Just yesterday I traveled over solid rock, and I've held someone's brain in on their way to go get surgery... does that count?

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

Hehe, it was a Buckaroo Banzai reference. You know, because he's a top neurosurgeon, particle physicist, race car driver, rock star and comic book hero.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[ShakaUVM]

Given a large enough sample of different races, you will find equality of outcome, unless the race is inferior (are you arguing that?) or the there is institutionalized unfairness towards them (which is what I'm arguing.)

That's a false dichotomy. Or, in other words, the truth is neither of the above. My family (strongly conservative) has been working with poor black kids in education for the past decade, turning them into academic badasses, so I know what I'm talking about here.

The unfairness toward, say, black students is not institutionalized. As I've said above, there's actually an institutionalized bias FOR minority students. As long as you're not an Asian - there's a definite bias against Asians, but they do so well anyway they're not considered minorities by companies like Microsoft.

The main problems are threefold: 1) Poverty, 2) Culture, 3) Expectation.

You could argue that poverty is an institutionalized bias against them because property taxes and thus school funding is lower in poor neighborhoods - but that's why we have Title I and similar programs to make up funding shortfalls. You could also blame poverty on the poor academic outcomes, but the truth is a bit more complicated than that - it has to do more with culture than poverty.

A Chinese factory owner, who lost everything in the Cultural Revolution, was tortured, etc., and finally managed to escape by bribing the border guards with every last dollar he had, still has his culture of success. When he gets to America, he has less money than anyone else, and yet his kids grow up to be successful (an accountant, real estate agent, VP of a large bank, etc.) and THEIR kids become pharmacists, UCLA business school grads, etc. And if this sounds specific, it is because it is the story of my wife's family. Never forget the horrors of communism.

An established poor working class family, however, has much lower expectations than a poor family that comes with expectations of success. The culture is also heavily biased against the poor black kid. I went to school in the ghetto (which is why we returned there) - kids are absorbing the cultures and expectations and biasing themselves against success. So all of the institutionalized biases FOR them don't help. It doesn't matter how many opportunities exist when the kids themselves consider professional athlete or rapper as their only career options. While it's trite to blame Ludacris for the failures of poor black youth, it's certainly a significant part of the problem. Whatever you adopt as your identity for yourself becomes the most powerful factor guiding your life.

When you show them instead that they can become academic badasses, it turns them around for life, and they can take advantages of all the opportunities just waiting for them.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[spun]

I agree with your assessment, as far as it goes, but let me show you how racism plays into all three of your problems, not just poverty.

Obviously, minorities make less than whites. Poverty IS institutionalized racism. But culture is an important component. Being a part of the dominant culture has its privileges. You don't have to question your assumptions and beliefs, because no one does. When you are a part of a minority culture, whenever your assumptions and beliefs butt up against the dominant culture's, you are the one who must adapt. You are demonstrably a second class citizen, and you have it thrust in your face every day. This makes it difficult to succeed.

And expectations, when all you see people like you doing is failing, getting jailed, getting killed, or living on the streets, it is hard to expect anything different. Where are the role models? Sure, we have 'black' president now, but it will be years before the effects of that are seen.

The three main problems all have their roots in institutionalized racism. Minorities do not have the same opportunities as whites. Thus, we try to create more opportunities for them. This is only fair.

Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s

[ShakaUVM]

>>You are demonstrably a second class citizen, and you have it thrust in your face every day.

Thrust in your face? By whom? I think you're confusing explicit vs. implicit racism... if that's even the right word - I think culture is a far better way of describing it. Otherwise you get into problems by defining people like the Black Panthers to be racists against black people. And maybe you would make that claim, I'm not sure.

I actually think we're agreeing here, just using different terms. The real challenge is overcoming the expectations against success. Once you do that, the kids see all the opportunities that they have out there, and tend to do quite well. But all the scholarships in the world won't make more black kids go into CS if they themselves are not interested in it, for whatever reason.