Posted on 01/25/2018 8:41:08 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There has been mounting evidence that the financial payoff from the traditional bachelor’s degree is declining, particularly for men. For example, the Census Bureau data suggest that from 2005 to 2016, the average earnings differential for male workers holding bachelor’s degrees compared with those holding high school diplomas fell from $39,440 to $37,653 (in 2016 dollars)—at a time when college costs were rising.
Other evidence from the New York Federal Reserve Bank confirms that a large portion of college graduates are underemployed, working jobs traditionally held by high school graduates.
There are two interpretations of this data, one by the general American public and the second from the “College for All” crowd, the cheerleaders for higher education who believe the nation benefits from more students earning more degrees.
Turning to the first interpretation, in light of rising costs and at best stagnant benefits, more Americans are simply not going to universities. The National Student Clearinghouse reports enrollments are down for the sixth consecutive year, which is unprecedented in modern American history. Even during the Great Depression, enrollments grew.
The College for All interpretation is that the diminishing payoff to the bachelor’s degree means students need to get more degrees, specifically master’s degrees. Historically, a bachelor’s degree was a powerful and reliable signaling device, telling employers that the college-educated individual was almost certainly smarter, more knowledgeable, disciplined, ambitious, and harder-working than the average American. College graduates were special people — the best and the brightest, deserving a nice wage premium in labor markets.
But now that one-third of adult Americans have bachelor’s degrees, some college graduates have pretty ordinary levels of intelligence and the other positive attributes that employers like. The fact that American college students on average spend less than 30 hours weekly on academics for perhaps 30 weeks annually
(Excerpt) Read more at fee.org ...
Education has lost its ability to teach people to think logically.
The more you have of something, the less each something is worth.......................
This is from over a century ago, but still makes sense today:
THERE LIVED A KING
From “The Gondoliers”
(Libretto by William S. Gilbert / Music by Sir Arthur Sullivan)
Don Alhambra, Marco, & Giuseppe
DON ALHAMBRA.
There lived a King, as I’ve been told,
In the wonder-working days of old,
When hearts were twice as good as gold,
And twenty times as mellow.
Good-temper triumphed in his face,
And in his heart he found a place
For all the erring human race
And every wretched fellow.
When he had Rhenish wine to drink
It made him very sad to think
That some, at junket or at jink,
Must be content with toddy.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
With toddy, must be content with toddy.
DON ALHAMBRA.
He wished all men as rich as he
(And he was rich as rich could be),
So to the top of every tree
Promoted everybody.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
Now, that’s the kind of King for me.
He wished all men as rich as he,
So to the top of every tree
Promoted everybody!
DON ALHAMBRA.
Lord Chancellors were cheap as sprats,
And Bishops in their shovel hats
Were plentiful as tabby cats—
In point of fact, too many.
Ambassadors cropped up like hay,
Prime Ministers and such as they
Grew like asparagus in May,
And Dukes were three a penny.
On every side Field-Marshals gleamed,
Small beer were Lords-Lieutenant deemed,
With Admirals the ocean teemed
All round his wide dominions.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
All round his wide dominions.
DON ALHAMBRA.
And Party Leaders you might meet
In twos and threes in every street
Maintaining, with no little heat,
Their various opinions.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
Now that’s a sight you couldn’t beat—
Two Party Leaders in each street
Maintaining, with no little heat,
Their various opinions.
DON ALHAMBRA.
That King, although no one denies
His heart was of abnormal size,
Yet he’d have acted otherwise
If he had been acuter.
The end is easily foretold,
When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care—
Up goes the price of shoddy.
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
Up goes the price of shoddy.
DON ALHAMBRA.
In short, whoever you may be,
To this conclusion you’ll agree,
When every one is somebodee,
Then no one’s anybody!
MARCOS. and GIUSEPPE.
Now that’s as plain as plain can be,
To this conclusion we agree—
ALL.
When every one is somebodee,
Then no one’s anybody!
Only if it is in something useful.
We have way too many folks with advanced degrees in women’s studies and gender theory.
Where I live it will cost you $125.00 hr to get a boat motor worked on at the dealership and 185.00 hr if they come to you.HS diploma.
Stick with STEM related degrees and you will be fine. I have 2 Masters and my career opportunities are wide open. Lesbian dance studies? not so much. Most liberal arts degrees are completely worthless.
Rigid tier-binning (like Germany) won’t help either. It locks in an education path versus allowing flexibility like the US.
one of my best friends recruited me into the business i presently work in and for the company we have both worked for the past 31 years...
he has a masters and all these other professional designations next to his name and hanging on his wall...
i struggled to get through college as i was not a good student...
i work half as hard as him yet consistently out-produce him, sometimes by a margin of 2-to-1...he’s a great guy but just because you have dozens of degrees hanging on your walls does not mean you are a smart person...
These days kids read and do math at a 5th grade level at high school graduation, and probably no more than an 8th grade with an undergraduate degree. Technical schools make more sense to me with the degrading education system that was dumbed down to accommodate the less learned in society.
If you actually have the education that is supposed to go with the degree, you will do well. I don’t see liberal arts degrees as a problem, if you really are educated.
I have one. It’s utterly useless.
More like we have shipped all those jobs to low cost areas. We can teach all the stem we want but our major companies send all that work off-shore.
Kurt Vonnegut’s vision of the future in “Player Piano” has an interesting take on this. Jobs that previously required a high school diploma now require a bachelors degree or higher.
Unless we are developing Masters degrees in plumbing, electrical repair and maintenence, carpentry, HVAC repair and maintence, and other similar career areas then more Master’s degrees are a waste of time and tuition. As for high level business jobs... I know two guys who retired as VPs from JP Morgan Chase home office in NYC. One has a BA in History, the other in English. That’s it, no Masters nothing more.
Our country would be better off if productive citizens started having babies instead of abortions and masters degrees.
If you pursue a degree in anything with the words “studies” or “science” in the title not only are you wasting everybodies time but are guilty of an egregious waste of an opportunity that 99% of all humans throughout all time would have killed for. It still stuns me the amount of knowledge available at your finger tips to everybody unprecedented and unimaginable through the scope of world history is used primarily to view porn, look at cat pictures, and to push propaganda. there is university level and beyond resources that you can use to learn any subject for free.
bkmrk
When I was a young man, I ‘hoped’ I could qualify and be able to ‘get in’ to graduate school for a master’s degree. Today, people talk about getting a master’s degree as if they were going to the store for a loaf of bread.
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