Free Republic

* According to the survey Freelancing in America 2018, released Wednesday, 93 percent of college-educated freelancers say their skill training is more useful in the work they are doing now than their college training. * Sixty-five percent of children entering primary school will end up in jobs that don't yet exist, reveals the World Economic Forum. * The result is a proliferation of new, nontraditional education options. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Twenty million students started college this fall, and this much is certain: The vast majority of them will be taking on debt — a lot of debt. What's less certain is whether...

An older generation complaining that an emerging one will be the death of civilization as we know it is a cliche and constant as the North Star. However, based on some rather troubling data regarding today’s millennials, it could turn out to be true this time. In his first inaugural address as governor of California 47 years ago, Ronald Reagan warned us that “freedom is a fragile thing, and is never more than one generation away from extinction.” He also reminded us that freedom “is not ours by inheritance but must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation,...

Eric Isbister, the C.E.O. of GenMet, a metal-fabricating manufacturer outside Milwaukee, told me that he would hire as many skilled workers as show up at his door. Last year, he received 1,051 applications and found only 25 people who were qualified. He hired all of them, but soon had to fire 15. Part of Isbister’s pickiness, he says, comes from an avoidance of workers with experience in a “union-type job.” Isbister, after all, doesn’t abide by strict work rules and $30-an-hour salaries. At GenMet, the starting pay is $10 an hour. Those with an associate degree can make $15, which...

In September, 238,000 American jobs went unfilled, despite employers’ best efforts. At the same time, unemployment was at 7.8 percent nationally. And believe it or not, this was no statistical oddity. The manufacturing sector has long had trouble finding skilled applicants for its jobs. Around 48 percent of manufacturing companies are looking to hire, according to the most recent report from ThomasNet, a company that helps connect producers and suppliers. But 67 percent of manufacturing companies see a moderate to severe shortage of skilled workers, and last year, as many as 600,000 jobs went unfilled, according to a report from...

It used to be, well, perhaps it still is, that Indian students did their darndest to come to the US to go to grad school, learn business, or master the technology of the computer. Now, there has been a turn. American college grads are opting to go to India. A stint working in India can be quite an addition to a young worker's resume. India's high-tech and banking companies need skilled workers. A company like Infosys, which has grown from 500 workers to 50,000 workers in the past dozen years, has hired many young Americans. Of course, the biggest obstacle...

Inmates in California prisons may not be learning any job skills to help them stay straight once their terms end, but at least they're being taught to feel good about themselves. In a policy shift so irrational it could only have been designed by the state prison guards union, 300 vocational education classrooms in state prisons were shuttered at the beginning of the year. This might be understandable if it were a cost-cutting move, but the state is saving little or nothing by closing the courses. The instructors who formerly provided inmates a chance to succeed in the outside world...