[Bhaalspawn]

Note--this is a response to post #35 which is a response to post #32 and contains quoted material that is not showing up when I am quoting post #35. It is necessary to read posts #32 and #35 for context. Content from Post #32 is in blue italics. My apologies if, as a result of the amount of time that has passed, the response is somewhat disjointed.

Originally Posted by tuebor

Education DOES create wealth. Education is INVESTMENT, not consumption. Wealth creation requires three things: resources, labor, and capital. One can conceive of education as creating "human capital", or one can conceive of it as creating skilled labor, but either way it is creating something that is necessary for wealth creation. I am also going to use the term 'education' broadly so that it includes research; obviously, technological advances that come out of research lead to increased wealth creation. So education clearly is a winner at the global/macro level.

Does education create wealth? That depends on the end result. If someone ends up unemployed or involuntarily-underemployed-and-out-of-field then what wealth has the investment in education created? If the education ends up going wasted and unused then how was the act of education not consumption as opposed to wealth production?

Education helps create wealth in that it can lead to scientific and technological advance and/or the ability for people to perform high-value-added, knowledge-based work. However, it is also very possible that educational investment can be wasted. Educating people for non-existent job positions or in excess of what the economy needs wasteful.

What about the local/micro level? It is true that college towns benefit from the funding sources you mention. But they also benefit when all those students bring their money from out of town and spend it in the local economy (rent, supplies, entertainment, etc.). So if students from KY or TN or other places that shortchange education come to MI for their higher ed., owing to the higher quality of the universities here, MI wins. And if the federal gov't increases student aid, states with better universities will get more of it.

Sure. Michigan could attempt to corner the college education industry. However, surely Michigan isn't the first state or private institution to have contemplated doing something like that. Would the tremendous amount of investment needed actually pay off?

Try this thought experiment. If we double the number of people with computer science degrees, will the number of jobs for people with computer science degrees at currently prevailing wages also double, or will we merely end up with a large number of unemployed or underemployed-out-of-field computer scientists who wasted time and money and who now need to pay off student loans (in addition to depressed wages in the field)? We already have large oversupplies of people in other fields, such as MBAs, lawyers, and scientists (including science PhDs).

I don't know why we should look at specific fields in this way. If education were easier to get, we don't know what fields people would flock to. But even if we accept your thought experiment in those terms, we really don't know what would happen if we double the numbers in a particular field.

This is basic economics here. If you double the supply of an item relative to the demand, ceteris parabis, the price point must decrease.

If what you're implying held true then we shouldn't have any unemployment or underemployment of people out of field since the demand for labor would expand to meet the supply.

We don't know who might provide the next big advance in that field that would lead to more wealth and jobs.

It seems unlikely that people who are unemployed or underemployed-and-out-field would be the ones making that next big advance. If we could rely on those "big advances" to create more jobs for people in glutted fields, then why are we still having these unemployment and underemployment problems?

But more importantly, we don't need to talk about hypothetical situations at all. We can look at what actually has happened when the US has massively invested in education. Let's take two historical cases in particular: the land grant college movement and the GI Bill. As every Spartan knows, the Morrill Act of 1862 authorized the creation of land-grant colleges, which emphasized agriculture and engineering. Maybe it was not obvious in 1862 what the nation was going to do with all the graduates of these schools, but the result was this: all those engineers helped the US surpass Britain and Germany as an industrial power, and advances in agriculture, which the LG colleges helped generate and disseminate, made it possible to feed an expanding population, shift labor from farms to industry, and increase exports. The success of the GI Bill also exceeded expectations. It's kind of like "if you build it they will come".

You're taking this example out of context. Were the advances the result of funded research (both at public universities and in private industry) or the result of masses of underemployed and underemployed college educated people?

If we can't provide cheaper labor, then we will have to compete on some other basis, such as providing more advanced products or specialized services--and that will probably require investment in education (again, I'm including research in the category of education).

It doesn't merely require an investment in education but rather an investment in scientific and engineering research and development. Merely having masses of unemployed or underemployed-out-of-field Ph.D. scientists and engineers without laboratories or research budgets isn't going to make it happen.

As for the expense of education, there are about 16 million college students in the US; giving each of them an grant of $5000/year (~= average in-state tuition at a public u.) would amount to $80 billion, which is less than we are spending on the war in Iraq. We have the money, and it is an investment that would pay for itself.

How would it pay for itself if they're already pursuing college education? Might that money be better spent on actual research and development? Furthermore, by subsidizing students it's quite possible that the cost of college education increases as colleges (which are essentially businesses) recognize an opportunity to further increase the costs of tuition and fees.

Even if $80 billion more were spent on scientific research (which I'm not necessarily opposed to doing) it wouldn't necessarily provide a return on the investment since the extra projects that would get funded would presumably be those with lesser marginal utility (the most promising ones are, presumably, already funded).

I also question the value of education to students. If they can find jobs in their fields or good jobs in other fields, then yes, it's worthwhile. Otherwise it's an expensive waste of time and money that can result in have to pay off student loans for decades and tremendous feelings of humiliation and anguish.

Now we leave economics and get into philosophy. We should take a hard look at the idea that education only has value if it results in a higher paycheck. Should we get rid of art, music, and physical education at the K-12 levels because most students will never make any money at these things? This is a stunted view of what education is all about.

The context of this discussion was primarily about college education which is not free. People can always enrich themselves intellectually by reading books or even textbooks without having to pay for tuition. Given the tremendous costs of college education, a much more substantive return on educational investment is needed to justify the costs than merely being knowledgeable about the world.

As for humiliation and anguish--should we never accept new challenges because failure might be painful? Anyway, I suspect that the students who suffer most are those who pursue a field like engineering or medicine despite having no talent for it because their parents insist that they study something "practical".

So you're saying that the people who can't find jobs in their fields and end up having suffered an economic loss as a result of having obtained unused college education just aren't good enough in the fields they trained for? That may be; it may be that the bottom 50% can't compete with the top 50% of graduates. In a horse race only one horse will be able to win regardless of whether all of the horses are very fast.

And they wouldn't have such huge debts if more student aid was available.

Of course not, but what good is the government-provided aid (at taxpayer expense) if the excess and unneeded education it pays for serves no purpose or has no real value?

[/quote](Quoting post #32) Our nation would be better off if we had fewer colleges and a little extra capacity beyond what's needed to meet the actual needs of the nation's economy. Many middle class jobs don't make a real use of college education anyway. Many employers require people to have degrees before they will hire them for jobs that do not make any real use of the degrees; they merely serve a proxy for IQ, a sense of morality and responsibility and work ethic. We'd probably enjoy an efficiency gain by having fewer people spend time and money in college when it really isn't needed.

It certainly would NOT be better off.[/quote]

You're saying that we would not be better off if we had less economic waste?

Again, education is an industry. Closing a college is like closing a factory. And again, education is not just job training. But it certainly wouldn't hurt if employers would hire more people with associate's degrees for jobs that don't require bachelor's degrees.

Well, yeah, people who work in the college education field might lose their jobs if excess colleges were closed and/or if colleges were reduced in their size. But how is paying money to keep people employed in an endeavor that no longer serves any real economic purpose any different from a "make work" project? Instead of indulging ourselves (at the expense of unemployed and underemployed out of field graduates who have to pay back student loans) in wasteful education might we as a society be better off if the tuition dollars and years of students lives and effort were put to better use? The unemployed/underemployed graduates would be in much better financial shape had they not wasted money on tuition and living expenses and instead had done something that had real economic value. The people who lose their jobs in the college industry might not be better off but overall, as a society, we would have more wealth.

Our politicians (like Gov' Jenny) and the news media are trying to sell us on education as the solution to our nation's economic problems. That way they don't need to address unpleasant issues like global labor arbitrage (foreign outsourcing, H-1B and L-1 visas, illegal immigration, and mass legal immigration) and population explosion. Sadly, the public's buying it. Just like sheep drinking Kool Aid, the politicians are doling it out and the masses are drinking it up.

This is a false dichotomy. We can do both. The Gov. has never said that education all by itself is the solution; she talks as much about entrepreneurship as she does about education.

Sure, we can address global labor arbitrage and the global (and local) Malthusian crisis while improving education at the same time. However, the politicians rarely mention that. Besides, in that sentence I wasn't merely talking about Granholm but about the media and the nation's intellectuals as well.

And if you think the "masses" are ignorant--well, what's the solution for ignorance?

With regards to the ignorance related to the issue of global labor arbitrage, spending money on college education to explain it to people isn't the solution. We just need the media and our nation's intellectuals to explain it instead of lying and misleading the people.

[quote]How many more college educated, unemployed and underemployed people do we need? We need not worry about a shortage of qualified people; people will invest the time and money needed to obtain college education to meet the market's demands without their being artificially encouraged. Merely look at the number of people who try to get into medical school seeking the promise of high incomes, social status, and job security. People will invest in education if they feel that it makes financial sense.

They won't when education becomes so expensive that only the very wealthy can come up with the funds to invest in the first place.

Where did I imply that it should become more expensive?

Note also that real human beings are not like the people of oversimplified economic models, which assume that people have all the information they need and are motivated only by economic gain.

I've never assumed that people have all the information they need nor that perfect competition can ever exist.

With regards to economic gain, certainly some people go to college to learn more about the world, but the notion that the overwhelming majority of people's motivation is not economic gain in some way considering the huge amounts of expenses involved is ludicrous.

As for underemployment, we could put all those people to work. We could lower the work week, for example. It shouldn't take over 40 hours of skilled labor to support a family.

At issue would be the total amount of time people are spent working and the amount of compensation they would be receiving. It might be possible that instead of having unemployed people everyone could be employed but for fewer hours, with those people who had been previously employed for 40 hours/week receiving less total income and those who had been unemployed receiving more than they had before.

I don't think this is such an awful idea and that having shorter hours might improve the quality of our lives, but I'm not sure it would result in more wealth production or a greater utilization of college education (in terms of work hours that make use of it).

And we could put the OP to work by lowering the teacher-student ratios in our K-12 classrooms, which would also help the kids.

I might enjoy teaching high school but in my case that would still constitute a tremendous waste of education.

Instead of trying to offer education to the masses as an opiate, our nation's politicians should instead raise tariffs, enact a zero-dollar trade deficit policy, abolish the H-1B and L-1 visas, end illegal immigration, and reduce legal immigration to pre-1965 levels or institute a moratorium on it. Perhaps then, after we're restored our nation's job market to first world status, perhaps then we'd have a greater need for college education.

Again, this is a false dichotomy. Making postsecondary education available to all does not preclude addressing problems caused by globalization or immigration.

Of course not. But you're missing my point. My point is that our politicians and the news media aren't trying to substantively address the problems caused by global labor arbitrage. They barely even acknowledge it nor seem to have even contemplated trade protectionism. Instead of telling us what our nation's real problems are and what we need to do to fix them they say that better education will solve our economic problems when in fact it won't. It's difficult to open up a newspaper op-ed page or to listen to an NPR interview with an economist where education and not trade protectionism is not mentioned as the solution to our economic problems.

It is important to keep in mind the distinction between wealth creation and wealth distribution. Education as an industry does both, but when people talk about businesses "creating wealth" they are often being misleading (unintentionally, I presume-- perhaps they are uncritically equating GDP growth with wealth creation). Take a stroll through a shopping mall. Is wealth being created there? No, wealth is being distributed.

You could regard the material wealth's having been distributed to people who want it and/or need it as a form of wealth or at least as a value, though.

That's not a bad thing--the distribution of wealth is important. But there are better ways to do it. Instead of you buying a Chinese-made electronic game from my store, and me buying Chinese-made novelty items from your store, how about if you study a foreign language at my school, and I get a preventive check-up from your hospital? Instead of using consumerism or the military-industrial complex to provide jobs and distribute wealth, how about we distribute wealth by basing our economy on industries that serve genuine human needs?

Why not just have American buy American-made electronic games and novelty items instead of making them pay for foreign language classes that they don't really ant.

What you say about basing the economy on industries that serve genuine human needs sounds good, but I'm having difficulty understanding exactly what the substance of that is. Should we dramatically raise taxes to provide for housing and health care? It's not as though our economy isn't already doing that for people who can afford it.

[Bhaalspawn]

Originally Posted by tuebor

These issues have reappeared on some recent threads. I'm still waiting for that response, Bhaalspawn!

Done. It might be a little disjointed since the auto-quote function on this board won't quote quotes that were included in the previous post.

Let me know if you find an issue that I failed to address.

[marylee54]

Originally Posted by lavendersunrise

Medical billing isn't really a high demand field. My cousin did medical billing and was laid off.

Its being outsourced to India!

[and the]

Are there any high demand areas that can't hire fast enough?

Yes! I was a door gunner on a Wonderbread truck for a couple years. I did over 63 missions before being shot down near Linwood and Davison. The company provided excellent E & E training however, and I was able to make it back to Livonia fairly easily.

I hear they're hiring like crazy due to attrition. Our truck, the "Hellzapoppin' II" was recovered and went on to drive over 100 more missions to party stores all over the city.

[Cliffie]

If you already have your degree, in ANYTHING, you can start, probably, tomorrow as a drug-company sales rep. So many new prescription drugs come out on a yearly basis that they can't keep up with the demand. You get a company car and an expense account, the whole bit. VERY flexible hours.

[Cliffie]

I forgot to add that last I heard, CVS was still sending their pharmacy techs to pharmacy school FOR FREE. Pharmacists are in painfully short supply and they can just about name their own salaries at this point. Some of you have read this story from me before, but here it is again: a friend of mine is a pharmacist and wanted to quit one of her jobs. They begged her not to leave because they wouldn't be able to replace her. "OK then," she said, "I'll stay if you give me a $100/hr raise."

THEY GAVE IT TO HER.

[MI-IRISH]

best careers that last the longest,anything to do with sex or drugs...seems our vices may yet save us...amen

[Cliffie]

Originally Posted by MI-IRISH

best careers that last the longest,anything to do with sex or drugs...seems our vices may yet save us...amen

Yeah, OK, but just trying finding a pot-farming job with a decent 401(k)plan.

[kcam213]

Originally Posted by Cliffie

I forgot to add that last I heard, CVS was still sending their pharmacy techs to pharmacy school FOR FREE. Pharmacists are in painfully short supply and they can just about name their own salaries at this point. Some of you have read this story from me before, but here it is again: a friend of mine is a pharmacist and wanted to quit one of her jobs. They begged her not to leave because they wouldn't be able to replace her. "OK then," she said, "I'll stay if you give me a $100/hr raise."

THEY GAVE IT TO HER.

I believe this. However Pharmacy school is very hard, and very competitive. Only medical school lead pharmacy for brutal school curiculum (sp?) and competition.

I have heard from a colleague that you have several YEARS of science classes, and I don't mean chemistry 101... we are talking about level 3 science and chemistry classes. She could not pass one of her chemistry classes so she switched to RN school.

Pharmacist do make great money. I tell my 7 year old that is what she will be when she grows up. She doesn't know what a pharmacist is but that is what she replies when asked what does she want to be when she grows up.

[and the]

I tell mine that they're going to move to Somolia and be pirates.