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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.'"
Did the university economist go ahead and refund the publicly paid part of his tuition from years back, plus interest?
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...
This guy is forgetting that we live in a (sort of) democracy. How would a democracy where the people aren't educated work?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
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.
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.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
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.
All things considered, I'd rather have people overeducated than undereducated.
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?
How's that magical European lifestyle working out these days ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
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.
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.
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.
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 $30k to pay for a 4 year degree.
Any folks out there that crap on the skilled trades should consider: you can't outsource your plumber to India.
-- maskwa
College is the new high school. So much so that colleges are bending over backwards to allow entry to the dumbest among us. My University's Math department had a Math 001 course for preparation to take Algebra courses (001 taught basic math like fractions). But apparently 001 was too hard for some high school graduates; a Math010 course was developed to teach things like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In &$#%#%*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."
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!"
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
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.
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.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
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"?
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.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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 ...and I know I'm leaving several out.
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
If it's EDUCATION you want (to be well-rounded, in other words), there's: ...and so on.
Macalaster
St. Thomas
University of Minnesota
Augsberg
Bethel
Hamline
These schools exist. They're not hard to find.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
Futurist Traditionalism
> 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.
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.
Learn something new.
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.
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.
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.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
-and-
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).
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.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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``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.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
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
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.
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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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.