Posted on 09/04/2014 6:57:52 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
This week, millions of young people head to college and universities, aiming for a four-year liberal arts degree. They assume that degree is the only gateway to the American middle class.
It shouldnt be.
For one thing, a four-year liberal arts degree is hugely expensive. Too many young people graduate laden with debts that take years if not decades to pay off.
And too many of them cant find good jobs when they graduate, in any event. So they have to settle for jobs that dont require four years of college. They end up overqualified for the work they do, and underwhelmed by it.
Others drop out of college because theyre either unprepared or unsuited for a four-year liberal arts curriculum. When they leave, they feel like failures.
We need to open other gateways to the middle class.
Consider, for example, technician jobs. They dont require a four-year degree. But they do require mastery over a domain of technical knowledge, which can usually be obtained in two years.
Technician jobs are growing in importance. As digital equipment replaces the jobs of routine workers and lower-level professionals, technicians are needed to install, monitor, repair, test, and upgrade all the equipment.
Hospital technicians are needed to monitor ever more complex equipment that now fills medical centers; office technicians, to fix the hardware and software responsible for much of the work that used to be done by secretaries and clerks.
Automobile technicians are in demand to repair the software that now powers our cars; manufacturing technicians, to upgrade the numerically controlled machines and 3-D printers that have replaced assembly lines; laboratory technicians, to install and test complex equipment for measuring results; telecommunications technicians, to install, upgrade, and repair the digital systems linking us to one another.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
The book was hard to get through. It was the sort of thing that would take a whole chapter to cover what could have been done in five bullet points. As I look back, I can feel the unpleasant texture of the pages in my fingers!
reich is a waste of perfectly good air.
Our children (and their parents) have been conned into believing that the only path to success is a four year degree.
The comes from the constant propaganda put out by the ‘education-industrial’ complex.
This complex can be destroyed by simply getting the government out of education.
Get them out of every school, high school, and university.
When we get to the point where educators are held responsible for the content and value of the service they provide, education will meet society’s need.
If I remember correctly, Reich, when Secretary of Labor, was talking about a massive Federal training program. The program would spin up workers to do a specific job or set of tasks, then re-train them as FedGov saw shifting needs for talent.
In a system like that, college would not work as college is usually self-directed education. The individual picks the major without regard to the needs of the state, if you can imagine! So a student might pick a major like civil engineering when what the nation needs is more environmental scientists.
...... and Reich gets big fat speakers fees from various universities
many are seeking the prestige of a college degree regardless of the marketability.
*************
Completely agree with you. A degree is just a status thing with many people that gives them the illusion of being in a higher social strata and the “respect” of your friends and family. Colleges sell this illusion everyday because they make money off of it.
True success comes not from posessing a degree but from a combination of hard work, perserveance, and the application of education.
I’m taking classes now, and I agree with him. College is a waste of time which does not prepare you for the real world at all.
There is also a load of idiots who think the world evolves around them.
agree, and after taking classes then college means nothing for the real world.
It’s all a scam for kids to party, to think it’s all about them, and to influence young kids away form home for the first time.
One class I ma doing had a deadline , but half the class did not do the work so the professor extended the deadline.
It’s all a joke
/johnny
This “nugget” from a midget, mentally and physically, who has infested academia for decades.
Notice how this elitist isn’t proposing making higher education more ACCESSIBLE to the middle class, oh no, he’s just telling the middle class to stop thinking about upward mobility! He is not addressing the fact that liberal arts education has become a luxury item for the rich, he just says, learn how to become a technician. Now, all work is dignified, and yes, we do need more technicians, but my alma mater only cost $8,000 per year when I attended and now it costs $62,000 per year. There is no rationale for this inflation. Some economist!
He may be right in some circumstances. Most of the time,though,Robert Reich is a ludicrous waste of money.
“Too many young people graduate laden with debts that take years if not decades to pay off.”.........
Most courses taught today are worthless when it comes to making money in “after college life”. As a former professional recruiter, people with TECHNICAL backgrounds and degrees were the easiest people to find placements for. Now that Common Core teaching methods have been implemented, there will fewer and fewer technically oriented candidates out there. Go ahead and waste your money on a liberal arts degree, IF you graduate you can work at a fast foods place that pays you $15.00/hr. Might take a long time to pay off those old school loans though.
Germany does this much better. They have trades training in high schools. Businesses and unions have excellent apprenticeship programs.
Most importantly, perhaps, they have no idiotic notions that to be promoted very far in a business one must have a finance or business degree. Lots of top executives in Germany were promoted from the factory floor.
Though to be fair they probably got business training later on, paid by the company. My point is that US firms ignore this major potential pool of talent.
I care about general literacy and the ability to express one’s self in print with some competence.
Says the man who has been milking academia for an exorbitant paycheck his entire adult life.
Just make college free, and then it won’t cost so much. /liberal idiocy
They end up overqualified for the work they do, and underwhelmed by it.
And how would it make them overqualified for a real job?
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