Education and the Whining of America

You mean some college degrees are worth more than others?

Another day, another whiny story from the New York Times...

First it was the girl who got a degree in womens lesbian comparative religion literature studies. She’s upset because she’s $100,000 in debt and working a dead-end job for $22 an hour in high cost San Fran Sicko. As one reader commented, “She got the job she’s qualified for.”

Next, the New York Times reports on a spoiled young graduate who just can’t find a job worthy of his grossly overinflated sense of self. He’s living with mommy and daddy.

After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.

Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder. ( NY Times - A New Generation)

Good choice, Skippy! Why stoop to Abraham Lincoln’s level by working your way up? So this pampered prince continues sponging off his parents. But he worries to the reporter that the folks won’t be too pleased to hear he turned down a job. This after his grandparents paid for all his college expenses.

He’s had to work for absolutely nothing, and pay for absolutely nothing, so he values nothing. If this is the face of the new generation, our country is in big trouble.

For two-thirds of us, college is a waste of time

The 22 year old baby still living at home actually got a useful degree, unlike the first person in this article. She may have been better off learning the trade of photography. Educator Patrick Welsh says...

Over the past five years, I have seen students who didn't have the skills one would expect of a ninth-grader going off to four-year colleges where fewer than 30% of entering freshman graduate.

That means that 70% of the freshman class is likely to end up not with a diploma but a pile of debt. (USA Today - Is College Overrated?)

He goes on to point out that two-thirds of high school graduates do not need a degree anyway:

Arnold Packer, co-director of the landmark study "Workforce 2000: Work and Workers for the 21st Century," points out that in 2018 — as is the case today — two of three jobs in America will not require either a bachelor's degree from a four-year college or an associate degree from a community college.

We’re sending people off to college who really shouldn’t be there, and the drop out rate reflects that. Worse, colleges are graduating students who lack basic job skills, which ends up cheapening the value of a bachelors degree.

So what should the other two-thirds do?

Vocational training and professional licensing. Non-college credentials are gaining currency in the professional world of work. Unlike a degree, a license or certification proves to an employer that the holder has passed a comprehensive test proving she has the necessary job skills.

Welsh observes...

Jobs in health care and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, retail trade and so-called middle-skill jobs such as plumbers, electricians, legal assistants and police officers will require job specific licenses or certificates from community colleges or technical institutes, and/or on the job training.

In fact, many graduates of four-year colleges are now enrolled in community colleges to get the specific training and licensure for jobs for which college did not prepare them.