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Other than the fact that you can't even get an interview without a basic college degree and in many arenas a graduate degree, a college degree is only worth what the individual student puts into getting it. . . .
I recall this in the mid 1980s when I worked for the Army; if no degree you didn't pass the initial screening.
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You know, back in the late Jurassic era when I was in high school, the late 70s, they were swinging vo-tech towards the incorrigible teens. We actually had three tracks. We had the college bound, the business track which was actually training women to be secretaries, and vo-tech for the people that we knew were going to go nowhere.
And I have the feeling the vo-tech people are the ones who were laughing all the way to the bank.
And when I went to college, we were asked to declare a major, but we were also expected to take classes that were outside of our major and English and literature in order to be what they used to call a well-rounded individual. I look at a lot of course catalogs because the idea of going back to school to learn more about history or some other things that I’m interested in, and it looks to me that schools have narrowed their vision. Then once you get out of school you are trained for a position. The well-roundedness appears to have gone away. You’re being trained to be a cog in the wheel, the wheel that’s going to grind you up then spit you out.
My husband and I started our own business 20 some years ago was 1998 I believe and I don’t think our going to college made a difference or not. We owned a janitorial company and we were the operators of the janitorial company as in we pushed vacuums for a living. You certainly didn’t need to have a college education. Especially if you use an accounting software, we used QuickBooks. QuickBooks and a good accountant you’re set to go. And you have to have a lot of common sense. I can tell you lots of stories about some of the kids I went to college with. They were stupid then, and wherever they are I am sure they are still stupid.
But I don’t think a college education is a waste. I don’t regret my education, I got a lot more out of it than I knew, but I’m not saying that it’s not something that I could’ve picked up along the way. 30 years ago I got into my genealogy. Back when ancestry.com was four CDs that you bought at Fry’s Electronics. The techniques I learned doing research in college got honed to a fine point doing my genealogy.
This is getting further off-topic, but I will try to bring it back to the topic, which was the value of a US college degree. We asked what can we do for American workers who cannot, or should not, go to college. I see no evidence to suggest that government protectionism is the correct answer.
I think free markets move most goods the most efficient way possible. Restricting trade is not a viable long-term solution. For the US to remain competitive, we need to have a competitive education system that works for high-income and low-income families. With that said, trying to create a world where the jobs that existed in past generations is the strategy is not a realistic solution. We have to adapt if we want to survive. I find a certain romanticism on the forum when it comes to trade jobs. The world does need plumbers and electricians, but that is not the answer for everyone.
When it comes to immigration, the data show that when we limit H1-B visas, companies respond by increased outsourcing. They do not add more American workers. The data also show that bringing in high skill immigrants increases GDP and domestic worker wages. Immigrants found companies and innovate at a higher rate than domestic workers. I would say setting up a business climate that attracts immigrants is a step in the right direction for long term sustainability. 5% of the world's immigrants have a college degree, but 15% of America’s immigrants do. They are a key economic driver for us, and we should be doing everything we can to increase that number.
I wish I had a great answer for you. I do not, but I can tell you that a tariff based proposal is significantly worse for us than the status quo.
I said there was a political solution and you asked for an example. There is way more that can be done politically than just tariffs.
You are talking in terms of macro economics and GDP. During the Yellow Vest riots in Paris I learned that the Paris financial markets account for nearly all of France's GDP increase. That does workers zero good and you get riots in the streets. The same can be said for any country when the financial and tech sectors account for almost all GDP increases. There was supposedly a "STEM shortage" so tens of thousands of American kids went to state universities and now they can't get hired in the STEM field (not the ones who went to MIT). How does an increase in H1-B visas, which may pad GDP numbers, help American workers, including college graduates? Please don't give me platitudes about immigrants being innovators. Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk immigrated legally.
Jobs have been exported since NAFTA was passed. I am talking about factory jobs for people that can't hack it as a plumber or an electrician. There are 46 year old chronically unemployed guys turning to drugs and petty crime, getting killed by cops in America when they could be working in a factory stamping out widgets. For every guy like that there are dozens more on permanent disability. "Free Market" is not a panacea and it was a fashionable political "solution" back in the 90's that was supposed, just by inertia, to usher in Democracy in China and Prosperity for All, on the heels of the Tiananmen Square uprising. Now it's 30 years later. Where are the results?
I said there was a political solution and you asked for an example. There is way more that can be done politically than just tariffs.
You are talking in terms of macro economics and GDP. During the Yellow Vest riots in Paris I learned that the Paris financial markets account for nearly all of France's GDP increase. That does workers zero good and you get riots in the streets. The same can be said for any country when the financial and tech sectors account for almost all GDP increases. There was supposedly a "STEM shortage" so tens of thousands of American kids went to state universities and now they can't get hired in the STEM field (not the ones who went to MIT). How does an increase in H1-B visas, which may pad GDP numbers, help American workers, including college graduates? Please don't give me platitudes about immigrants being innovators. Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk immigrated legally.
Jobs have been exported since NAFTA was passed. I am talking about factory jobs for people that can't hack it as a plumber or an electrician. There are 46 year old chronically unemployed guys turning to drugs and petty crime, getting killed by cops in America when they could be working in a factory stamping out widgets. For every guy like that there are dozens more on permanent disability. "Free Market" is not a panacea and it was a fashionable political "solution" back in the 90's that was supposed, just by inertia, to usher in Democracy in China and Prosperity for All, on the heels of the Tiananmen Square uprising. Now it's 30 years later. Where are the results?
I don't see that there's a lot of value in focusing revitalization efforts in manufacturing/factory jobs, primarily because it's a fool's errand and is something that cannot be revitalized back to the way it was 50 years ago. It's not the 1960s anymore, and it never will be again. It's been pointed into the ground that those types of jobs can be done with overseas labor that costs pennies on the dollar compared to what US workers would need/want, and if we tariff it into the stratosphere, there's still going to be a ceiling with automation. If someone is doing work that can be replaced in 5-10 years with a robot, the robot's going to be more cost effective, both because technology continues to get cheaper and robots almost always require less overall operational cost to keep going (they work 24/7, don't have workers comp or vacation leave, etc). Call it cruel if you must, but from a business perspective, there's zero reason to pay a good salary with benefits and retirement to someone who is doing work that can be replaced with a machine running a script.
If you attempt to force a company to hire local, they'll automate instead. Force them to not automate so they have to hire, and they'll either go out of business due to competition not playing by the same rules or they'll pack up and move overseas and sell to us from there at a higher profit.
This all adds up to saying the days of the American factory worker as a driving piece of the workforce are behind us. There will be some factory jobs for decades yet, but long-term prospects here are such that I'd call the prognosis terminal and the government's efforts in this regard are going to be best spent adapting future generations rather than fighting an inevitable and losing battle with progress.
I think the answer I see to the question of what to do with people who aren't cut of college/white collar cloth is twofold:
1. Training in the (increasingly) few fields that remain viable for such workers (aka tradeskills), and
2. Tailor education programs in in elementary/high schools to prepare more people for the reality that the world is becoming less blue collar and more white collar. I think there's a decent chunk of the population today who aren't white collar/services but could have been with the right education and training.
For those who can't hack either, well...I guess minimum wage flipping burgers. Until we replace that with robots, too.
Regarding the STEM issue: the number one reason companies I've worked for (and that I've helped hire for) end up eventually choosing an immigrant and sponsoring their visa is because the American applicants we get are more often than not garbage compared to their international counterparts. It's not so much the colleges themselves teaching ineffective curriculum (though there's certainly some of that, too) as the American applicants will frequently have poor problem-solving skills and/or work ethics. The international applicants I've interviewed are frequently more hungry for the job: they show initiative on taking on responsibility and complex problems, they don't shy away from challenges, they show self-sufficiency (aka their response to complex 'what if' problems isn't always 'ask for help'), or they aren't just looking for a paycheck while they try to make it as an influencer or professional gamer.
To be clear, this isn't ubiquitous, and we've hired plenty of good Americans too, but on any given day I'm more likely to find a better-qualified person internationally, and when we do hire Americans, they're frequently 2nd or 3rd generation. I'm not sure how we fix this problem, as it feels beyond schooling. This is a societal/upbringing problem. We're a nation where vast sections worship at the altar of athletics and anti-intellectualism instead of academics, competing with nations that are the exact opposite. Is anyone really surprised that we're having to hire abroad for jobs that require interests and skills that kids get picked on or bullied for having in many US high schools?
I said there was a political solution and you asked for an example. There is way more that can be done politically than just tariffs.
You are talking in terms of macro economics and GDP. During the Yellow Vest riots in Paris I learned that the Paris financial markets account for nearly all of France's GDP increase. That does workers zero good and you get riots in the streets. The same can be said for any country when the financial and tech sectors account for almost all GDP increases. There was supposedly a "STEM shortage" so tens of thousands of American kids went to state universities and now they can't get hired in the STEM field (not the ones who went to MIT). How does an increase in H1-B visas, which may pad GDP numbers, help American workers, including college graduates? Please don't give me platitudes about immigrants being innovators. Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk immigrated legally.
Jobs have been exported since NAFTA was passed. I am talking about factory jobs for people that can't hack it as a plumber or an electrician. There are 46 year old chronically unemployed guys turning to drugs and petty crime, getting killed by cops in America when they could be working in a factory stamping out widgets. For every guy like that there are dozens more on permanent disability. "Free Market" is not a panacea and it was a fashionable political "solution" back in the 90's that was supposed, just by inertia, to usher in Democracy in China and Prosperity for All, on the heels of the Tiananmen Square uprising. Now it's 30 years later. Where are the results?
I’m not sure why Pichai and Musk coming here legally means that we should discount the fact that immigrants innovate more. Did you get the impression I like illegal immigration? I do not. 75% of the immigrants in the US are here legally. Of the other 11M who are undocumented, 90% came here legally and overstayed a visa. 40% of all startups have an immigrant as a founder. The firms they found have disproportionately more patents and R&D spend. 40% of the Fortune 500 firms were founded by a 1st or 2nd generation immigrant. We need immigrants. They should all be legal, but we need a system that facilitates that. H1B employees pay rent, buy food, hire workers, etc. would you rather we didn’t have them?
Going back to education, we should want our universities to attract and keep the best and brightest. My MBA class at Wharton was close to a third Indian. No surprise that Pichai was in the program a few years earlier. Satya Nadella did a similar program at U of Chicago. The best thing we can do is have a country where they want to stay after they graduate. Part of that is having a skilled native workforce that is well taught through our universities. The last thing we want is for bright people to leave because the native workforce is not capable.
Where are the Americans? Getting out hustled. I agree with id77’s take on the future of jobs.
Natives aren’t doomed. We are a country of 330M but our growth has slowed. To keep things going, we need to continue to attract the best and the brightest because they are the ones who will provide jobs to our citizens. Protectionism is a policy that kills American exceptionalism.
Not all college degrees are created equal. Two years of remedial High School at a community college followed by 2 years at an unselective state school is unlikely to impart much capacity for critical thought. That’s the valuable 21st century job skill. The problem is that K-12 is now so poor that jobs that require a High School education now require that watered down Community College + State school degree since a High School diploma no longer means anything beyond a certificate of attendance.
I prefer the German model where university is restricted to the top students and everyone else is focused on lifetime vocational training. That training also insists on reading, writing, and numeracy skills that are no longer required to get a High School diploma in the United States.
Where are the Americans? Getting out hustled. I agree with id77’s take on the future of jobs.
Natives aren’t doomed. We are a country of 330M but our growth has slowed. To keep things going, we need to continue to attract the best and the brightest because they are the ones who will provide jobs to our citizens. Protectionism is a policy that kills American exceptionalism.
You guys paint a bleak picture of a near future where lazy, Instagram-obsessed Americans are outclassed by foreigners and robots, and continue the downward spiral of generational poverty. And I agree, it looks bleak. But I believe the solution, if there is one, is politically and not 1990's-style free market driven, and I hope we find that solution before one is thrust upon us.
You guys paint a bleak picture of a near future where lazy, Instagram-obsessed Americans are outclassed by foreigners and robots, and continue the downward spiral of generational poverty. And I agree, it looks bleak. But I believe the solution, if there is one, is politically and not 1990's-style free market driven, and I hope we find that solution before one is thrust upon us.
Immigration is part of the solution, in both indirect and direct ways. We talk all the time about the direct impact of it (coming for jobs), but there's the indirect effect that will lift Americans as a whole up, hopefully.
That indirect benefit is through societal and cultural elevation. I speak of the work ethic and interests of 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants being suited to the workforce, and as more of them work here, they have children who go to schools. As schools start becoming less about the popularity of the high school quarterback and last Friday's basketball game and more about the competition for who is the smartest kid in math class, peer pressure will work its magic and perhaps these sorts of skills will become popular and cool in the US.
Immigration is part of the solution, in both indirect and direct ways. We talk all the time about the direct impact of it (coming for jobs), but there's the indirect effect that will lift Americans as a whole up, hopefully.
That indirect benefit is through societal and cultural elevation. I speak of the work ethic and interests of 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants being suited to the workforce, and as more of them work here, they have children who go to schools. As schools start becoming less about the popularity of the high school quarterback and last Friday's basketball game and more about the competition for who is the smartest kid in math class, peer pressure will work its magic and perhaps these sorts of skills will become popular and cool in the US.
Not gonna happen. Not without political change.
New York City schools, for political reasons, explicitly bar Asians from academically competitive public high schools because there are "too many of them". The Ivy's do the same. That sends the opposite message that I think you're hoping for and incidentally, what does that say to the H1B visa holders and other innovative immigrants about how their children will be treated in America? Does that make them want to stay and innovate?
New York City schools, for political reasons, explicitly bar Asians from academically competitive public high schools because there are "too many of them". The Ivy's do the same. That sends the opposite message that I think you're hoping for and incidentally, what does that say to the H1B visa holders and other innovative immigrants about how their children will be treated in America? Does that make them want to stay and innovate?
Speaking as a guy who went to one of those Ivys, my class was over 50% Asian when you add Indian plus other Asian. Ivys put much more emphasis on academics than they do on sports. Ivys dropped sports altogether during Covid.
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Solly says — Be nice!
