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China To Cancel College Majors That Don't Pay
theodp writes "The WSJ reports that China's Ministry of Education plans to phase out majors producing unemployable graduates. The government will soon start evaluating college majors by their employment rates, downsizing or cutting those studies in which more than 60% of graduates fail for two consecutive years to find work. What if the U.S. government were to adopt China's approach? According to the most recent U.S. census data, among the first majors to go: psychology, U.S. history and military technologies. Lest you computer programmers get too smug, consider this."
Historically, students and 'intellectuals' have been perceived(sometimes accurately, sometimes with paranoia verging on hysteria) as menaces to the social and political establishment...
I'd be interested to know how much of this is purely about resource allocation and how much of it is about ensuring that absolutely as many people as possible are doing something practical, chasing the brass ring, and generally staying out of idle theorizing and similar such trouble...
CS should be for the higher level theory based stuff.
But the other stuff like tech work, programing, web, it security, IT management needs to have less theory and more hands on work. As well class room with more of tech school based course load.
Isn't there a fundamental difference in that China pays outright for the student to go to college, whereas the U.S. provides loans which the student repays with interest for years afterward? So in the U.S. there's anti-incentive to cut people off from going to college; it's yet another way to skim off the value of the working people's lifelong labor. China pays for the student, whereas the U.S. gets paid by the student.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Because otherwise education is only available to rich people. It means you filter people to get a high education based on the money their parent have instead of the natural ability of the kid. It is first extremely unfair (but you would classify that as a socialist problem) but it also mean that you prevent very smart people to get a reasonnable education and contribute positively to the society. Instead they are going to work for walmart.
I both agree and disagree with that. The survival of a species during a sudden change is enhanced by the diversity of individuals, viz. Von Neumann's theory that random moves are the best strategy in any sufficiently complicated game. So I am for Liberty and against government manipulations, whether to provide a basic standard of living or to subsidize education.
This is CHINA we're talking about here. The United States would never "cancel" degrees or otherwise dictate to colleges/Universities, private or otherwise, what classes or degree plans they can and can't offer. HOWEVER, it could happen that government funded student loan programs could be optimized to only go toward degree plans that have a reasonable chance of resulting in a decent job later. This helps to insure that the loan gets repaid. You can still study nuclear underwater basketweaving if you so desire, but you'll get to spend your own (or more likely your parents') money on it instead.
-Restil
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Ah, another Philistine. Way back when, long ago before your simple mind has read, there were physicists who thought about amazing things yet those things had no relevance to the then modern life. They thought about atoms and particles and forces and such. They built grand theories, mathematics that would cause a grown man to cry, but not you since you haven't a prayer of understanding it. It happened, in the long distance future that their theories and mathematics created the foundation of many modern industries.
But you argue, mathematics and science were bound to give us untold riches, surely we wouldn't axe those. However, it turned out that these crazy scientists built their new theories on older mathematics and older understanding. How could this be? Well, those precursors surely had no idea where it would all lead.
Further analysis reveals even these old "natural scientists" based their theories on even older philosophers. They deemed of "atoms" composing everything material. Forces moved the particles. The heavens controlled the forces.
Back in those ancient times, geometry was esteemed and developed to align human thought with the heavens and how they influenced life on this earth. They conceived of the universe as a giant machine. This notion seemed pervasive, it never seemed to go away, no matter how many influential people declared it void of any practical use.
The precursors of the atoms and particles and forces and such conceived of machines which moved in lock step of gears and wheels and such. The common folk (you) laughed and exclaimed it was all worthless and would come to nothing.
But lo, machines were built, textiles made, the machines became reified. Astounded, compatriots of the atoms and particles and forces people conceived of mathematical theories to describe precisely what the ideal machines could actually do.
Inconceivably, some wild-eyed engineers thought to build approximations to these machines. The approximations were not robust, they broke down a lot, needed lots of spare parts.
Then lightning struck! The engineers read what the scientists were saying about atoms and particles and forces and such. The transistor was born.
The rest is history. Think of how educated you'd be if you understood this.
Stupid old people advocating policies that not only don't favor them as a class but might even hurt them as a class. Whatever can they be thinking of?
Maybe Stewart, Colbert, and (now with extra class!) Jimmy Fallon can explain it all to us poor senile fools, your grandparents.
The problem is that in practice it doesn't work.
During the dotcom bust I spent three years unemployed, it sucked graduating from college on an economic downturn. Sure, I had the odd job fed my way by the temp agencies I'd registered with but it was sporadic at best, a month here, six weeks there, followed by months of nothing; I ended up working 6 months out of every twelve, just enough to continue qualifying for Unemployment Benefits. No matter how many resumes, interviews, call backs, meetings, and hitting the job boards I did I got no nibbles. It was demoralizing as hell trying to find full time work.
Oddly though it was also the best part of my life so far.
I got up every morning and would check the job sites, call the temp agencies to let them know I was still available, comb through the newspaper, do my call backs, check my e-mail, set up interviews and then send out the next batch of resumes. Most days I was done "work" by 11:00 AM. Once I had done what I could to find a job I had the entire rest of the day to myself and damn, was that ever freeing. Knowing the unemployment cheque was still coming meant I didn't need to worry about the roof over my head or the food in my stomach, I actually got to live. One of my favourite things to do on a nice day was to sit under a shaded tree at the park on a weekday afternoon curled up with a good book, I'd watch all the worker drones quietly grumbling about how much they hated their jobs and would just love to take the afternoon off and curl up with a good book under a tree.
I got to catch up on my reading, watch movies and interesting documentaries, play games, try new recipes in a cook book, look up things online solely for the pleasure of attaining knowledge, etc... Hell, I even found time to use the workout equipment I'd bought when I was previously employed and was on my way to getting a six pack. I was technically "poor" but I was amazed at just how much living a person can do with a limited budget and loads of free time. With all that freedom, and keeping in mind my limited budget, I found I could do what I wanted when I wanted and not have to worry about my basic existence.
Once a person's basic needs are taken care of anyone with even the tiniest hint of imagination will be able to figure out what to do with their day and be fully and completely fulfilled with it. Up to the point of my unemployment I had never had as much satisfaction or enjoyment in my life as I did when I wasn't working. Now, I make enough money to be considered on the low end of the middle class and have all kinds of cool toys and tonnes of spending money but I'm not happy. I've tasted real freedom and now so much of my day is filled with doing things I don't want to do but need to in order to survive. If I knew I could collect a cheque that would keep my stomach full and a roof over my head and there were no strings attached, I'd quit my job right now and spend the rest of my life doing what I want to do when I want to do it.
And so would a lot of other people.
Until the day someone invents Star Trek replicators, giving people the bare necessities with incentives to work doesn't work. Someone will have to work to provide the tax dollars we're going to divert to those who are on the basic allowance, eventually we would have a very small number of the population supporting the majority. The people who are working are going to get angry at being the only ones working while every one else stays at home and lives a happy fulfilling life.
You're just not being imaginative enough.
How do you provide housing to everyone? You have the government offer a zero interest, zero payments loan up to $150,000 toward the purchase of a home to every adult. The principal is payable in full the day you stop living in the house. The government can fund the program by itself borrowing the money, which it can do at extremely low interest rates, so that the cost to the government will only be e.g. $1500/year. Then pay that interest using property tax with a $150,000 personal deduction, so only homes costing more than the loan amount will have any property tax, and so that way the price of homes won't just go up by the subsidy amount because people won't be willing to pay that much extra property tax.
Think about that: We could have a relatively small tax that primarily falls on the rich (or at least, people with large houses) and provide the option of free housing to everyone. Which is the most expensive part of a basic income.
In addition to that, the idea that everyone is going to just quit their job is ridiculous. What will happen is that lots of people will quit and to get them back to work, the employers will have to pay higher wages and provide better working conditions. It will also provide a large incentive to automation, because of the higher labor costs. I don't see either of those as a bad thing.
Not to mention their military became even worse of a clusterfuck than ours. there was a time when they had no less than FOUR main battle tanks ALL under production, nobody would cancel them even though they only needed one because 'he is a friend of the party" bullshit. So instead of a nice streamlined assembly line you had the T55, T62, T72 and the upgraded T72 (T80?) all being cranked out.
I'd say the bigger problem we are gonna have to face is we are rapidly approaching a time when the vast majority simply won't be able to trade their labor for capital simply because they are not needed. What do you do with the workers when the factories are all automated, the trees and fields are picked by robots, hell even the highways will be made by machine. What happens then? Most can't be educated up to a level high enough to be an engineer and frankly we don't need that many engineers anyway.
I think after several ugly years with more than a few civil wars we will come to the realization that capitalism as a system will have simply run its course. We'll end up with some sort of resource based economy where all get an equal share of the resources. Either that or we end up with a "make work" economy where you have masses of people doing jobs that are as pointless as the work you outlined above but are kept doing it just so you don't have tea party types screaming out "lazy bums".
Because look at how we are now in the USA. Several of the factories in my area that used to employ thousands are now run by a handful of guys, the machines do all the work. the machines don't get tired or sick, don't get workman's comp or need FICA, they work on holidays and don't care about hours. lets face it the machines are simply better workers. So you really have to do something with all those people that aren't needed and unless you think you can put them in camps or take away their reproductive rights there will simply be more of them in the coming decades. look at how it is now with those with years and degrees having to fight with 300 guys for a single opening, this system simply isn't sustainable in the face of technology.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.