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Decoupling Education & Upward Mobility | 3 comments (3 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Education saturation (none / 0)

One of the biggest reasons I've been wavering on getting a Masters is because now, "everyone" has a college degree and Masters have become party favors. We are in an economy where an education doesn't guarantee a better paying job and I'd say it's been like that since the mid-90s. Too many people were caught up in the internet bubble notice, but I sat there unemployed for years armed with a college education watching high school grads get jobs I wanted because they'd take less money.

Even when I finally got a job, I was well aware that my friends with degrees, some of them with Master's were still having a hard time finding a job that would allow to live. Most of them were living with mom and dad or sleeping on sofas. Who knows. Maybe it was some sort of corporate backlash against GenX workers. Thanks to the media and movies, we have a reputation for being lazy and unmotivated, never mind that many of the dot-commers were GenXers.

But it's 10 years later and most of our friends have Master's/Law degrees and they still only make $15/hr. If I have to reenter the traditional workforce tomorrow, I have no illusions that my 14 year old degree is going to amount to much. I most certainly don't expect my children to be able to do better on their college degrees. I don't entirely blame NCLB on this situation. I think that forcing/shaming a lot of people into college helped. Now there's an even larger pool of college educated unmotivated people out there who are demanding a lot of money to cover the ever-increasing cost of living. That's can not be good for any economy.

~~~THIS SPACE FOR RENT~~~

by fabooj (fabooj [at} mail [dot} com) on Fri Mar 28th, 2008 at 08:01:10 PM EST

Re: Education saturation (none / 0)

Interesting. I hadn't thought of it in terms of too many people having too much formal education. I guess I've always thought of education as an absolute good.

One of the things Susan Jacoby write about in her book, "The Age of American Unreason," is the shift in attitudes towards education. The shift was from education for education's sake (or the pursuit of knowledge as its own reward) to education as the stepping stone to better employment, upward mobility, etc.

I'm not sure how we change it, though. If too many people are going to college, I guess the assumption is that some people are forced/shamed into college when it wasn't the place for them. But if not, then what? Would it be better to adopt a system that included more technical colleges and trade-oriented training?

The problem is that there's a death of blue collar jobs that pay good wages and have good benefits. They've been largely outsourced. And now even white collar jobs are getting more scarce.

I think not much will change until we do away with the incentives for corporations to ship jobs overseas. Then we might return to a manufacturing economy to some degree. That might be a beginning.

Terrance Heath
Washington, DC
www.republicoft.com

by TerranceDC on Fri Mar 28th, 2008 at 09:28:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

My suggestion (none / 0)

Was merely one cog in the wheel. Definitely agree that our jobs being shipped overseas doesn't help matters. Corporations like Microsoft exploiting the F1 visas doesn't help either. And yes, in some cases, the American education severely lags. For example, why aren't our students being taught more languages at an early age? The bigots get upset over bilingual immersion classes because for whatever nutso reason they think that means Spanish speakers are getting on the job training in English. But from where I sit, I'm watching young black and Latinos learning their entire curriculum in Chinese. Of course, those programs are most likely going to be cut soon.

But you're right, education used to open doors and offer a step up the rung. Now, it's not the case. I'm willing to believe that soon enough we'll be back to apprenticeships and fathers shipping their kids off to some guy in Minnesota who is willing to teach the kids a trade. Something solid.

~~~THIS SPACE FOR RENT~~~

by fabooj (fabooj [at} mail [dot} com) on Fri Mar 28th, 2008 at 11:22:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Decoupling Education & Upward Mobility | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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