Too Many College Graduates? 1138
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.'"
US colleges don't come cheap (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the issues addressed in the summary actually result from the fact that top US universities are insanely expensive. Harvard is about thirty thousand dollars for an undergraduate degree whereas Cambridge is about three thousand Stirling.
Re:Democracy needs smart people (Score:4, Informative)
It still drives me up the wall how much cash I blew for my undergraduate CS degree. Looking at what I "learned" from my classes and what I taught myself in that period of time, I would have been much better off to have saved the $80K I spent on schooling and self taught. Professors even mocked me for the C# books I was reading when it was still in beta, years later *THAT* pays my bills, in dividends. (We can discuss how bad of a language it is in another thread, just the fact the professors couldn't see through the trees).
While college was a great experience, it is far from something everyone should go to. The fact that many businesses require degrees anymore is just plain stupid.
Re:US colleges don't come cheap (Score:4, Informative)
You mean that Harvard is about $30,000 (actually $33,696) for one year. I'm not sure if Cambridge is GBP3,000 for one year or for the degree.
Re:Ok, but (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not high school? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ok, but (Score:2, Informative)
Telling Americans to do something because Europe's been doing it is a lot like telling a 5-year-old not to go near the cookie jar.
This seems confused. Telling a kid not to go near the cookie jar usually leads them to doing so anyway. But this goes contrary to your point which is that telling Americans that Europeans are doing it will mean they won't want to do it.
Re:Follow the correct path for the career (Score:5, Informative)
And here the results of the European Jury (Score:3, Informative)
Having a very different school system here, but the same problem (and the same talks about 20 years ago), here's how it worked out for us.
We have a system that splits kids already at 10 years of age into schools that prepare them for a trade and schools that prepare for studying. At 14 years you split again (if you opted for studying) into "pure academics", business prep or technical prep. And with 18/19, you either go into business or you head on to university. If you opted for the trade path, you finished school with 15, then you went on to a "dual education system" where you spend half your time in a company (akin to an apprenticeship) and half the time in a trade specific school.
So far the theory.
Historically, the (age 10-15) trade schools were seen as "lower value" than the academic preparation schools. So our government launched a huge ad propaganda to up the reputation of those trade schools. And, being the good citizens that people here generally are, it worked pretty well. We have a lot more "professional" bricklayers, carpenters, mechanics and so on now. You can find them all at the local unemployment office. Why? Because the economy doesn't need them. Worse, a lot of the "academic prep" dropouts moved on into one of these trades and of course, having an (allegedly) better education, are prefered.
To make matters even worse, to actually use this system you have to find a company that would accept you as an apprentice. And there's a shortage of those now, too.
So what did the system accomplish? We have a lot of 16 year olds without a chance to an education in their chosen (or pretty much any) trade because of a surplus of people trying this path, should they find a place that wants to teach them (they get HUGE subsidies from our government just to do that), they get fired immediately once their education is done (and the subsidies cease) and we have an unemployed mechanic more, and at the same time unemployed academics are being prefered over those trained retail salesmen that actually got an education slot because, hey, you get someone with a university degree for the same price, what do you choose?
That's the reality. So please don't fall for the same bull that we fell for.
Re:Technical schools? (Score:3, Informative)
Where are these technical schools that the economists refer to?
They are often called Community Colleges, or Junior colleges. Most of them have Excellent programs doing just what you are lamenting is lost.
Problems is, in many states, these colleges fall under the same umbrella as Primary education, and not under higher education for funding. Also, there are perception problems. They are often in the community, so people drive to campus, take their classes (they usually also have an excellent selection of weekend and night classes to accomodate people that work) and then go home. To many high school students, they don't appear as exciting, they don't have huge dorms, lots of college night life and partying, etc. And that they are big in re-training people so the average age of the students is quite a bit higher than a 4 years school. Most of the time, they are made fun of (see the TV show "community") when really, they provide the best bang for the buck, and their graduates tend to stay in the local area, contributing more to the local area region.
Re:Ok, but (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not high school? (Score:3, Informative)
So yes, it is indeed possible to do pretty much what you want without any sort of degree at all (the usual academic exceptions apply here) . . .
Other notable exceptions: Engineers and Architects. Those call for a license with a four year degree (with some exceptions). You can work in many of those specialties without a license, but you'd usually need to rely on someone that does have the degree and license, so you would find a hard time rising above the rank of skilled laborer to professional.
Re:US colleges don't come cheap (Score:1, Informative)
Community colleges typically do two-year associate's degrees, not bachelor's degrees.
Re:public university (Score:4, Informative)
The same thing happens in France. Public university is flooded. I think the main difference is that a lot of students will fail. There is no quota but the required level is high in practice 50% of the student fail each of the first two years. If the student are bad one year, none will graduate.
I am working in a (not prestigious) US university. The grades are a joke. Some student I talk with did not get ANYTHING from some classes and still got B+. Fairly understanding is usually graded A.
Re:Yeah, in Europe... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, compared to the US continental Europe continues to have longer holidays, cheaper per capita healthcare, a healthier, happier, more active and longer-lived population and a comparable (some countries higher, some lower) GDP per capita. And now they can add to that a lower rate of unemployment. So pretty well really.
Incidentally, unlike what the submitter seems to think, higher education in Western Europe is normally 4-years.
Plenty of manufacturing right here (Score:3, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org] work migrates to where labor is cheapest. It always has and always will. Work is either labor intensive or capital intensive (by definition it cannot be both) and the manufacturing that is capital intensive is staying here in the US and doing just fine. NAFTA and the other stuff you mention plays a role but it's a minor one. Blaming NAFTA misses the big trends. The US manufacturing jobs are fundamentally a victim of success. Companies made money, wages went up but some work requires relatively high inputs of labor and those jobs inevitably will head where labor is cheap.
They probably won't come back unless the federal government does the right thing and impose trade barriers against nations that have an oversupply of labor, and unsafe working conditions, and unsuitable wages.
The concept of an "oversupply of labor" is ridiculous. That's like saying a country has an oversupply of coal, or timber, or gold. Yes, some countries have a lot of labor. It's an asset like any other. The US has the third highest population in the world so you really could only be referring to two other countries if you are talking about population. Yet labor is mor
Re:prisoner's dilemma (Score:2, Informative)
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...
Re:Why not high school? (Score:5, Informative)
A history degree doesn't provide anything past what you could get from an online, verified information source (I dare not say Wikipedia of course). If you're intelligent, you'll be able to comprehend whatever historical issue interests you, and have no need to spend 4 years on it.
As a history professor, I can safely say it's that kind of thinking that leads students to not come to lecture and instead rely on the interwebs when it comes time to study for exams.
Of course those students fail miserably, while those who attend lecture do much, much better.
Re:US colleges don't come cheap (Score:3, Informative)
£3000 per year. This gets paid by a student loan form the government (interest matching inflation in theory) for anyone in the UK. Cambridge subsidises its teaching heavily beyond normal government funding because the University (plus individual colleges) has large investments and gets a lot of donations from alumni.
Re:Technical schools? (Score:1, Informative)
What, you've never heard of ITT Tech [itt-tech.edu], Heald business school [heald.edu], or Western Career College [westerncollege.edu]? I'd say thats exactly what is meant by technical schools.
Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s (Score:5, Informative)
I wasn't going to comment in this thread - I really wasn't, but I couldn't ignore this.
I've studied enough economics that, well, my college education can debunk this right away. ;)
Supply and demand. Let's say "no one wants to pick up garbage". What you're saying is that "no one wants to pick up garbage at such a low pay rate and no respect". (Actually, the truth is, *really* - no one wants to pick up garbage, not even the guys that do it, but that's besides the point...)
Trash company suddenly can't find anyone to pick up trash at the rate they're asking. What do they do? Well - they could go out recruiting (unlikely), or they could up the pay rate. Cycle continues until either the trash company goes out of business, or they find someone willing to work at that pay rate. If enough people are working at the higher pay rate, if the trash company can't turn a profit, they will raise the rate of what they charge their customers. If customers switch trash companies as a result, that one might go out of business, but someone else will step in - the cycle continues. Actually, we're describing rudimentary inflation to an end - but the basic point is this: society won't collapse from too many well-educated people. Sure, I like to work in my field of choice, but at the end of the day I kind of like to eat, have clothes on my back, and a roof over my head. Push comes to shove, even I would go pick up trash if I had to in order to make ends meet. Would I be happy with it? Heck no! Society WILL find a way to adapt. That's the beauty of unmitigated capitalism. The ugliness of it however is that it breeds monopolies over time. That's why we have anti-trust laws, which are clearly socialistic. We have grown into an amalgamatic socialistic/capitalistic state.
Anyway - your point is moot. :P Our infrastructure may crumble - for a time. Pride will eventually give way to necessity. Always does.
Re:Technical schools? (Score:3, Informative)
Where are these technical schools that the economists refer to?
Here are some Lincoln Tech [lincolnedu.com], Universal Tech [uti.edu], Penn Foster [pennfoster.edu].
Plenty of auto repairmen and HVAC experts make a reasonable amount of money!
Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Everyone gets to be an astronaut fireman rock s (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ok, but (Score:4, Informative)
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.
German Model! (Score:2, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptschule [wikipedia.org]
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 [wikipedia.org]
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.