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How are you enjoying the New Normal?
While the rich have gotten richer from State bailouts and subsidies the 99% rest of the country have slid into wage slavery. A slavery predicated on workers taking on suffocating debt just to be educated. Education in most countries is partially or fully paid for by the government as it is seen as an investment in the future. But America is a little different. As Chairman Greenspan liked to point out heavily indebted workers don’t strike or make demands and the powers that be would rather destroy the middle class than dare have to pay out higher wages.
But there was always some vain hope and constantly repeated mantra from parents and the media that taking out epic amounts of debt to go to college was always worth it – not so much:
Nearly half of working Americans with college degrees are in jobs for which they’re overqualified…
Earnings in 2011 averaged $59,415 for people with any earnings ages 25 and older whose highest degree was a bachelor’s degree, and $32,493 for people with a high school diploma but no college, the Census data show.
Vedder, whose study is based on 2010 Labor Department data, says the problem is the stock of college graduates in the workforce (41.7 million) in 2010 was larger than the number of jobs requiring a college degree (28.6 million).
That, he says, helps explain why 15% of taxi drivers in 2010 had bachelor’s degrees vs. 1% in 1970. Among retail sales clerks, 25% had a bachelor’s degree in 2010. Less than 5% did in 1970.
“There are going to be an awful lot of disappointed people because a lot of them are going to end up as janitors,” Vedder says. In 2010, 5% of janitors, 115,520 workers, had bachelor’s degrees, his data show.
Literally consigned to the dustbin of American society.
To recap America’s current economic system. Those at the top are generally incompetent yet receive bailouts, guarantees, and in many cases outright welfare from the State. The working (formerly middle) class is educated but poor, indebted, and increasingly underemployed. While the poor are left to rot but are occasionally provided with some assistance so they do not starve or riot.
How much longer can this system go on? How much longer should this system go on?
Photo by JSquish, under Creative Commons license
9 Comments
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The premise that any jobs, in themselves, require a college degree is incorrect. A degree might be a formal HR requirement, but the purpose of an education, which may be formal or self-driven, is to educate and not to prepare one for employment.
A degree in philosophy is (naturally) not a requirement for most jobs but it might produce a more valuable member of society. Colleges should not be thought of as job-training institutions, but as sources of education. There’s a difference.
Couldn’t agree with you more but would you agree at least 90% of the people involved think of a College degree as a job qualification/requirement. The BS in education from pre school to Phd is Corporate propaganda controlled mis information.
To call it a system attributes the current situation with more organization and planning that it deserves. Unfettered greed, corruption, and profiteering has led us to this state of our society. Your last paragraph describes things quite well. Not much longer is my view.
i have coined a new phrase to describe this travesty of increasingly indebted young graduates who face lousy job prospects while universities continue to jack up tuition and pay exorbitant administrative salaries and pay for more unnecessary buildings, etc., etc. i call it the ‘education industrial complex.’
time to rip this sucker down.
Re: #1
I partially agree.
The HR “requirement” for a degree serves two purposes. From the gitgo it reduces the qualified pool to something manageable, and makes HR’s task marginally easier. Second, a degree proves the applicant would put up with a lot of crap for four years to get ahead, even though much of it was not job-task related.
For a wannabe banking exec patience and persistence are worthwhile to display even if they are demonstrated by persistence in studying ancient Greek vases at Swarthmore as opposed to, say, calculus at any state university. Any sheepskin counts, regarldess, as the first hurdle, to be followed by others.
And how does higher ed get away with this charade? Follow the money.
Re: #5. . .
Oops, “follow the money. . .”
I forgot to add the accreditation cartel there. Maybe it’s implicit, but just in case. . .
Oh, HR not only needs a degree but in a tough job market it also requires a connection.
NYTimes
In Hiring, a Friend in Need Is a Prospect, Indeed
I really think that progressives should be encouraging and helping people to find alternatives to the ‘education industrial complex’ because for many people it’s lost its usefulness.
I agree. I was in the business of teaching undergraduates for forty years at a top-tier university, and the main function was accreditation, for which the really labour-intensive work of teaching students how to read, think, and write clearly was not essential (Adam Gopnick’s father, who was one of my colleagues back in the day, was especially proud of having invented the multiple-choice Shakespeare exam). I went the straight route and corrected all my term papers. It did’t hurt my research, because I went for quality rather than quantity. Not sure I could get away with that strategy today, but I remain the only membet of my department whose work has been cited by the Nobel Committee, for what’s that’s worth, which in economics isn’t very much.
It was a big mistake 50 years ago for certain economists to have ‘sold’ higher education as a means by which most people could get reasonably well-off with hard work and average ability. It doesn’t count. For about 20 years (1950-1970) a BA was a ticket to social mobility, but there are specific reasons for this which no longer hold true. The personal value and social value of a strong liberal arts education is huge, but it is not the kind of thing that necessarily benefits the capitalist machine, which feeds on consumers, not citizens,
Agreed, but I don’t like the framing.
The purpose of college, and education more generally, is to create better people. It is not to create better workers.
The notion of a college graduate being over or under-qualified for a job has nothing to do with the degree.