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Trades can be very lucrative, but it's a gamble whether or not you can withstand doing physical work at 50+ years old. But I suppose you could be owning the company by then with a cushy desk job.
I find the anti-arts rant part of the original post interesting...
My wife went the fine arts route at a local state school. Every single student to graduate from the program in the last 20+ years has found a full time position in their field straight out of school and continues to do so to this day (the two most recent grads both have positions already before they graduate next week). Nearly all of them have changed jobs two or less times since graduating too.
The issue is not "what degree", the issue is "what program". This program is better than an engineering program at preparing students for a full-time career and making the connections for them to find a job.
I find the anti-arts rant part of the original post interesting...
My wife went the fine arts route at a local state school. Every single student to graduate from the program in the last 20+ years has found a full time position in their field straight out of school and continues to do so to this day (the two most recent grads both have positions already before they graduate next week). Nearly all of them have changed jobs two or less times since graduating too.
The issue is not "what degree", the issue is "what program". This program is better than an engineering program at preparing students for a full-time career and making the connections for them to find a job.
The underline is key. I feel that teaching, pre-med and even social work are better majors than most because most programs require practical experience. WHY? Because companies demand recent grads to not only have their degree but as much as two years worth of experience out of the blue. I think programs need to look career preparation as well as educational growth. Not enough programs even in good majors offer that.
Social work where I went for my undergrad is a five year program instead of a four. But I would also say that social workers make much less then other fields. Teaching on the other hand isn't really based on majoring in education but rather in the subject taught. Otherwise you end up as a teacher that might know teaching methods but just reads the subject matter out of the book. In middle school I had a teacher that was "supposed" to be more of a gym teacher but ended up teaching computers (maybe they felt sorry for him). Conversations ended up like this.
"Mr. ______, my computer isn't working"
"Turn it off and back on again"
Or maybe "Hit it".
Also remember again you are at the mercy of where you work for. In Mass the Department of Children and Families (DCF) has seen four children die under their watch in the past six months! It got to be so much of an issue that the normally calm Governor became visibly angry and asked that the head steps down. Now they took the former head of the Department of Transportation to turn things around. Training is fine but if the organization fails it can be a pretty bad mark. How many people did accounting for Enron and openly admit to it?
Well the long and the short of it is that college is experience and if someone cannot find a job then it is the only real way to show a deliverable.
"Many economists and pundits are predicting that the college system is going to collapse like the banks and housing market. Mainly for two reasons: If we keep graduating kids that are underemployed/unemployed, how exactly are they going to pay back these loans? And on the flip side, if things continue on the current path, why would anyone want to go to school if their chances are no better?"
The feds subsidize the loans which means prices go up. The simple thing to do is reverse it.
No more FAFSA. Instead it becomes significant grants for states to expand the number of institutions. So more building construction, more demand for professors, more demand for staff.
Fewer students would be able to afford but then competition would then create lower prices. It's that simple. When we subsidize supply prices drop like a rock. Remember high school? Remember how cheap student lunches were? Heck I knew a guy that tried going in months after graduation to get a cheap lunch! That's what we can do technically if we subsidized supply.
This is a concise summary of what is happening. Nearly unlimited loans and high levels of enrollment have pushed too many people into colleges. Costs are going up due to the stimulated lending marker. With too many graduates, the value of even good degrees declines, The loans aren't dischargeable, so the government gets it money, and the schools get the money on the front end. The indebted student who can't find a decent job due to the glut of graduates is the only screwed party.
I’m going to tell you the truth. A liberal art degree has been worthless in United States and elsewhere the last two decades. The worst thing you can do is to get a degree in The Humanities which include Philosophy, History, Religion and Fine art. I can guarantee you that if you are not aspiring to becoming a public school teacher – you chances getting a job close to zero. If you are among the top 20 percent in your class at Ivy League school you stand a chance. To succeed in The Humanities you have to have Resume so impressive that God himself would hire you - or just come from a very affluent family with connections. If you name is Clinton, Kennedy, Bloomberg, Koch, Mars or Walton you should stay far away The Humanities or you risk working part-time at your local McDonalds for a few bucks an hour and supplemented food stamps from the federal government. A Social Science degree in Political science, Public policy and Sociology gives you better options and raise your change getting a job significantly.
With a degree in Social Science – the average Joe has a 50-50 chance to landing a secure white color job after graduation. Did I say that the average Joe was the average Joe who went to upper half of the best schools in the country – if not the average Joe have to be among the best in his class. Some of you are smart enough to understand that you need a professional degree. For most people that would be a nurse, doctor, lawyer or engineer. In a country where little new is built and designed an engineering degree you may not land a prestigious corporate job building cool bridges, skyscrapers or even a consulting job but it will at least you be on the track to the middle class. A BA or MA in engineering will get with little luck get you hired within the city – calculating streams effects on sewerage pipes until you retire. If you ever retire because you pension may be gone when it is time for you to retire. So, Luke, choose wisely. Maybe mathematics is not your strong side and you therefore see law as the future than you should know something. If you didn’t go to an Ivy League school, well-connected or the new Johnnie Cochran – you better stay away from that path. Why? Not only is a law degree filthy expensive (not for the university but for you) but to land a white color job is just slightly easier than graduate with an MA in social science. Did I say that that white color job was not a Wall Street job but a job at some small family law-firm in Minneapolis? Going for a degree in any economical field may be cheaper option to a law degree but better get that economical degree within accounting because if you are not the smartest man in the room you will find that your degree in finance from a State University is worth little less than toilet-paper in corporate-America.
Should you go to college?
So what should you do? Well - When most of the white color jobs are performed by Indian and Chinese middle class you may look around in your community. What is always needed? You may say a “P.HD” but I will tell you that that is actually not what your community need. What you community need has to be separated from the dying corporate America – so a degree in accounting, finance or law will not cut it. Instead you need to look into what regular people need. That is your future customers. What they need is good nurses, doctors and dentists at least for twenty years more until universities start to mass-educated nurses, doctors and dentists because no-one wants to become a unemployed lawyer. In countries with universal higher education like Germany – they did just that. People couldn’t get a white color jobs so instead they mass-educated medical doctors and dentists. What was the result? Well – rising unemployment and reduced salaries among medical doctors and dentists. In Finland they told the middle class to get an engineering degree because social science was worthless. The middle class all went on to get an engineering degree and what was the result? That sociology major that just wanted to have fun in college ended up getting a white color job and the engineering student ended up working at local Pizzeria selling Moose-Pizza.
So should you go to college? The answer should be that if you do you taking a big risk. A professional degree – in particularly in health care is currently one of the more secure paths you can take and reduce the risk ending up among the educated working poor. Choosing your education is about statistical risk-analysis – still the spreads would be pretty significant. The reason why is because some fields would give you a low odds succeeding but if you do you will make much more money than you would in fields with a higher odds of getting a job but with general lower salaries.
If you are among the top ten percent in your high school class and know that you would also be so in your college class – you can take more risk when it comes to what educational direction you take. For an example – you may want to become a lobbyist in Washington DC. A good education could be Political Science, Journalism or Communication. Is it easy to land a lobbyist job in Washington DC? Apparently, the odds are very low but if you do succeed you will make it big if you not get caught in cocaine scandal. If you fail you will most likely get that boring but prestigious federal job in Boston making a pretty decent salary. Let say you know you will be among the bottom 50 percent in college. Would you risk taking a BA or a MA in political science? You know that you will not get that Washington DC job without connections and you know that you know that you will have to struggle for years just to get that federal job in Boston – a job your friend got because she didn’t land that one in DC. In fact – a person that will read social science in the lower bottom schools and will be in the bottom 50 percent in his/her class will more likely end up at McDonalds – having no wife/husband, apartment or happy future. Statistically your chances will be slim. Can’t the average Joe, succeed in life and should he even go to college? Well, average Joe may not take liberal arts or social science degree but a nursing, accounting or maybe engineering degree. He will play it very safe and will average Joe hopefully be middle class.
Higher Education and its profiters
So what can we learn from this? Everybody can get into college and college is not only big business in United States but most of the world. There is a government and corporation myth that education leads to a middle class lifestyle. These myths are based on social elites reading statistical charts as the devil read the Bible and regular people whom do not understand the very foundation in basic economics. Education is only worth something if there is a demand for it and if someone is willing to pay for it. In the old American days when you could go from high school/trade school to a good paying job in the skilled part of the factory – you didn’t have to go to college and why would you when you were given a “Detroit-salary”. If you went to college you would just earn slightly more money than the skilled factory worker – if you didn’t make a very fine career. At that point in history it wouldn’t make any sense to go to college for working-class people. In the late 60s the American (and European) working class were replaced by cheap imported foreign labor and workers in factories located in third world countries – of course an scheme of government and corporate lobbyists. So what happened? The only way to get a well-paid job was to go college because the only jobs that were left were low paid service jobs which are mostly temporary for students and young and the very poor in the society. Government in turn wanted to get rid of unemployment because unemployment is very dangerous for all governments because unemployment leads to poverty and poverty leads to political and social turbulence. So what did government do?
Well, the American government and entrepreneurs whom wanted to make money on education pushed millions of Americans into college. This create not only employment through people getting hired at college it also created more artificial consumptions. What was even better was (and is) that education pushing adult life upward. By doing do the American government reduced unemployment and the debt ended up in hand of those people whom went to college. In Europe and Africa – government did the same thing but sometimes in a much more significant way because education was (is) “free”. What happened was that in Africa people couldn’t get a job after graduation because there were no jobs for the educated. In Europe people couldn’t get a job after graduation and of course Americans couldn’t get a job after graduation. Why? Because when three blue color jobs were shipped to India there were one white color job connected to these three jobs that also went to India. To a major factory there are sub-contractors both whom do white color jobs and blue color jobs – so when Warren Buffett send a factory to Mexico he also fire some of his white color workers including that people whom worked for sub-contractors lose their jobs.
So what does the society do when a college degree is the new high school diploma? Well, they make jobs that didn’t require a degree into a job requiring a degree. This means that corporations and government hire people with qualified degrees that just ten years ago was done by people whom just had a high school diploma or a year at the community college. For example had most secretaries in the 70s just a high school diploma or maybe an associate degree if they were supervisor. Today – you need you need to have a BA to work as a secretary at most corporations – but the duties is actually no different other than some computer skills – which can be learned within a few months or less. Social security hot-lines that once were manned by high school graduates is now manned by college graduates.
The consequences of College.Inc
The consequences of these actions are very simple. The old female blue-color jobs at offices are given to female (mostly) college graduates. This push the working-class female out into temporary non-skilled retail jobs – that requiring the federal government to supplement with foods stamps – were working class men have ended up. They in turn push mostly ethnic minorities (mainly blacks) and the young into permanent unemployment. If you look at the statistics – African-Americans (as a group) were better off before the civil rights movement if we disregard the political discrimination then they are today. Today African-Americans have access to education and there is a significant black middle class that wouldn’t have been possible before the civil rights movement but for most black people things have gotten worse than it was before. In the 1950s blacks had pretty much the same crime rate as whites have today, most black men and women lived in stable marriages, they had a more normal demographic pattern, drug-use was uncommon, unemployment were uncommon and the social health was in general better. The standard deviation is rather clear on this matter and show similar patterns among whites. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer – leading to negative consequences for Americans of color and White Americans alike.
So should you go to college? Well – it is up to you.
I thank God every day of my life that my parents steered me to college before I had time to think about it. I have a double major in English and History and had what most would consider a great career in government service by being flexible and alert to opportunities.(Example: Spent eleven years working at Pearl Harbor. ) In other words, I disagree with most of your very long initial post.
as it should be. Knowing just the basics was fine..in previous centuries..not now.
This is why the education system needs to be revamped to meet the needs of the 21st century. The public school system is still running on the 19/20th century idea of mass producing factory workers. The European education system for example, nobody graduates without some marketable skill or is sent to college unqualified. Do we really need more people going 100k into debt for black history degrees that just gets them a job at Walmart where they can collect gov't subsidy?
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