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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.'"
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.
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.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!