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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.'"
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."
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.
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.
... more uneducated people. Because this country is just too damn smart. We need to dumb it down a little...
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.
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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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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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"?
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)
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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
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.
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.
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
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.
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.
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.
yea, but I'd rather have get sick from too many cookies than say things like "mumsies" and "sour stomach".
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.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Telling an American to do something because Europe's been doing it is like telling a Toyota to stop because you hit the brake?
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
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.
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
-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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
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.
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.
I am officially gone from
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.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
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
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."
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
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.
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.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
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.
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.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
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.
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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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.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
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 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.
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.
"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.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.
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.
I am officially gone from
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.