Colleges caused their own demographic nightmare

“The private Christian college across the street from me in Siloam Springs, Arkansas,”

Interesting flashback for me. I attended a private John Brown military school in SoCal back in the 50s. Virtually all of the teachers and other staff were graduates of John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. I believe the SoCal John Brown schools are but a distant memory now.

Exactly. Universities chase “famous” people, not because they can teach, but because they can bring in research money. Very few of these “famous” educators are great teachers. There are exceptions: Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell for example.

That's not the reason. The reason is that colleges have been selling an outdated product that nobody needs. They swung too far to the left's social agenda and stopped selling job-prep skills, and that's why nobody is going there now.

I wrote this piece in 2020 from the perspective of college graduates not being able to pay off their expensive university degrees.

I believe the problem is that universities are putting out a product that there is no demand for.
I believe it's a three-fold issue.
The job market isn't paying the salaries.
The students aren't pursuing the marketable degrees.
The universities are cranking out graduates without regard to whether the job market is there for the graduates. In other words, they are graduating buggy whips.
The causes for #1 are two-fold:
The jobs are being off-shored to lower-cost geographies.
The cheaper workers are being imported via H-1B visas and are displacing our graduates.
The causes for #2 are two-fold:
The students are choosing social-justice degrees with no anchoring in reality.
The K-12 schools are socially promoting students who either aren't ready for college or are better suited to trade studies.
The causes for #3 are two-fold:
The students have been socially indoctrinated to believe the only way to succeed is with a college degree, so everyone must now go to college.
The change to government-sponsored student loans has made it easy for universities to pad their enrollments in order to get the funding to sustain their tenures and research programs.
I believe that if there is a market balance between supply and demand then the price paid will equal the cost plus profit. If the universities were balancing the supply of graduates with the demand for graduates, this would mean that the graduates were being paid a salary that allowed them to pay off their loans plus their living expenses.
The fact is that the university degree market is completely unbalanced and out of whack. Young students may be making good decisions to pursue a degree, but many are too uninformed at that age to understand that the universities are glutting the market right now. The universities have built up a capital investment in professors and manufactured an inventory of graduates that can't be sold.
The university result will eventually be the same as a business selling unwanted products: their inventory of unsold graduates will lose their value (in terms of alumni donations, university brand reputation, etc.), and the university might eventually go out of business if they can't get new student enrollments because the word is out that their graduates are unemployable.
Is all of this the fault of the student loan scam? Is it the result of students making bad career decisions? Is it the fault of businesses that are looking for cheaper workers or exporting jobs? Is it the fault of universities hungry for students flush with loan cash that they keep taking them in regardless of the ability of the job market to absorb the graduates?

I wrote this in January 2020; the H-1B was already established in society. The new problem was the inflated cost of college and the uselessness of the degrees that the students pursued. The tertiary problem was the unqualified students who were going to college, assuming student loan debt, and then failing.

The failure of our K-12 schools to educate the young also showed up in the military, where the aptitude standards for operating sophisticated weaponry was also reduced because the new recruits couldn't meet the educational standards.

Starting with the Obama administration, the universities and the military became social reform programs for minorities, almost a de facto reparations program that paid our uneducated youth for the left's failure to prepare them for adulthood.

And now we apparently have an emerging STEM-educated labor shortage. I'm sure that we have many qualified engineers, mathematicians, and practical applications workers, but are there enough to support a repatriation of manufacturing back into the United States?

That's the chicken-and-egg problem -- what comes first? Is our educational system going to be changed to produce a new generation of educated workforce so that highly-skilled businesses can emerge, or do the highly-skilled businesses have to be created first to incentivize the educational system to begin training up the next generation of workers?

It seems to me that if industry will be moving back to the United States, that our educational system will need time to retool itself to go back to producing qualified graduates, and in the interim those industries will need temporary highly-skilled workers until such time as our educational system can catch up.

It is my hope that the qualified workers that we do have (those who are not ready to retire) can find gainful employment in these industries and that the H-1B program supplements the remaining need until our schools can replace the temporary worker demand.

-PJ

Whites are not having nearly enough babies

This stupid site requires one to PAY to read it! Phooey!

Perhaps colleges should target men who skipped college, and are not satisfied with their lives! Offer them generous scholarships, and special programs for older students!

I just saw a video on LinkedIn about how large corporations will be laying off thousands of employees in the coming months due to automation.

That is merely gaslighting from the large corporations.

"Automation" is a convenient explanation used to deflect blame for executive decisions away from the managers who will make the decisions. It might even be truthful but often it is not.

Organization tend to accumulate useless procedures and activities over time. Entire departments of people end up doing activities which are not needed or even harmful. Eventually, the corporate executives need to decide which of those activities must be discontinued, and which people must be laid off.

It is not necessarily due to any fault of the targeted workers. They may have been doing exactly what they were directed to do as well as it could be done, working hard and competently on their tasks.

Layoffs cause hardship for the people targeted. They are stressful for the decision makers as well. And they are never "fair". They cannot be "fair". And there are always some people targeted who should have been kept on because they turned out to be performing essential activities at reasonable costs.

Mistakes happen during layoffs. There is never a restitution or acknowledgement of those mistakes. At best, people move on to something better.

I’m glad that I went the tech college route in at least one way.

No student loan to follow me everywhere.

I make ok for county IT person and I took six classes in computer repair at local tech college in 99. That was enough to get an A+ and couple of Microsoft certs in NT and W2K when those were things.

My A+ and experience got me pretty far.

Fast forward to 2024 when my company was in the process of being bought out by a German one. I started getting back on the certification horse again.

My management at the time did not care about any personal achievement unless one was a favorite. It wasn’t always that way. The attitude came about close to when Joey B. got elected.

I hadn’t taken any cert exam since about 2000 and it looked like there were going to be some opportunities to advancement. I was big time wrong there.

Anyway passed a few lightweight exams such as ITF+ and a couple of LPIs. I was also taking a class when I could afford it at the same tech college I learned computer repair from.

Some people’s management would get their people sent off or reimbursed for advanced schooling. I was taking Cyber security and made some A’s and B’s. The plan was to face Security+.

My new village idiot worldwide IT service desk manager had zero concept of anything I proposed or had in mind. His mentality is whatever you were, you are and forever will be. The rest of the monoliths in my direct management, new or old guard felt the same way.

Never mind it was usually one of them who ran to me needing something since I was the only person in a critical job. The applications idiot who never came in, never knew anything, and did even less got to coast.

After a month of having a shouting match with the village idiot and trying to figure out the secret phrase to get reimbursement, I gave up and left one day.

During my time as a pro bum which was a year and half to August 2025, I have racked up almost 30 certifications. A mix of low to supposedly higher ranking ones.

I’ve worked out a system to taking tests of studying, practice tests and a lot of Udemy.

There elites sterilize themselves, the middle class kill their babies but we import morons who will make learning great again, just at lower levels, allowing our DEI professors to continue employment with eyeglasses in place of competency.

I say in 20 years, more than half of football players will be foreigners.

Not sure that will happen. Although a number of kickers from Australia are showing up on US teams, football remains a uniquely American sport, and most people outside the US wouldn't know a quarterback from a cornerback.

“national economy would be perfectly fine with a declining population”

Social Security is designed and predicated on a constantly increasing number of contributors. And Congress doesn’t have the guts to acknowledge it and their part in creating the problem.

I’m 82. I will have to live well over 100 to receive back everything I paid in for 67 years. And that despite the fact that when I started paying in there was no medicare. There was no Part C or Part D. Congress has constantly expanded the benefits. It is pegged to inflation such that it drives inflation as much as following inflation.

Only a few will acknowledge the Social Security problem of demographic decline. Immigration was the only positive of the Social Security System and many here on FR want to cut that off.

Immigration was the only positive of the Social Security System and many here on FR want to cut that off.

I am definitely in the group that wants to end immigration or bring it down to net zero.

Immigration is a net loser for the Social Security program even though most immigrants will never be able to collect payments.

Too many immigrants get paid in cash and never pay any income taxes at all.

Some legal immigrants do collect payments, in particular, social security disability payments. They have not been in this country long enough to offset those payments with tax contributions.

Too many immigrants collect payments from other welfare systems which greatly exceed any taxes they may ever pay.

Social Security was always a "Ponzi" scheme. It cannot be fixed. The bill has come due. The problem will be solved mostly by inflation that exceeds benefit increases. And by benefit caps. And by "means testing" and surtaxes on benefits. And by the passing of the baby boomer generation.

End all immigration. Then our own population will be able to afford SS.

No. Just the opposite. The more immigrants we have (of Mexican types who work and not disaster relief types), the farther down the road we have pushed the problem. Of course, eventually the problem will pop its ugly head.

Cheap labor pays little SS and uses other public resources.

The Baby Bust has a thousand causes, but

as part of feminism and the rebellion against what God ordained,m the main reason is the "sacred cow" neither side wants to cite, which is the "sacrament" of contraception, which is overall embraced (no pun intended) by both evangelicals and Catholics (despite what leadership may say), as well as the "reproductive rights" Left. But who also contend for the right to engage in infanticide, which has only become easier, thereby equating a living human being to being worthy of becoming sewage. Yet we do not expect Divine judgment?

Be single and continent, or be Scripturally married and have all the offspring God will give you as part of a temperate lifestyle.

They are going to have to consolidate the way churches with big old buildings and no one under 60 attending have been doing. Close three out of every four.

I am definitely in the group that wants to end immigration or bring it down to net zero. Immigration is a net loser for the Social Security program even though most immigrants will never be able to collect payments. Too many immigrants get paid in cash and never pay any income taxes at all. Some legal immigrants do collect payments, in particular, social security disability payments. They have not been in this country long enough to offset those payments with tax contributions. Too many immigrants collect payments from other welfare systems which greatly exceed any taxes they may ever pay. Social Security was always a "Ponzi" scheme. It cannot be fixed. The bill has come due. The problem will be solved mostly by inflation that exceeds benefit increases. And by benefit caps. And by "means testing" and surtaxes on benefits. And by the passing of the baby boomer generation.

Some relevant research on the issue I hope you will find helpful:

The overall percentage of U.S. working-age adults (ages 16 and older) who are employed—known as the employment-population ratio—is 59.1%. Bureau of Labor Statistics (.gov) +1

About 19% of the U.S. workforce consists of foreign-born workers, and the labor force participation rate for immigrants is approximately 66.6%, which is higher than the 61.8% rate for native-born Americans [sadly mainly due to one cultural demographic]. USAFacts +1 https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-immigrants-are-in-the-american-workforce/

Race / Ethnicity
Percentage Employed
Hispanic or Latino (Any race) ~67.0%
Asian ~63.0%
White (Total) ~60.0%
Black or African American ~60.0%
American Indian / Alaska Native ~56.0%

Percentage Employed
Hispanic or Latino (Any race)	~67.0%
Asian	~63.0%
White (Total)	~60.0%
Black or African American	~60.0%
American Indian / Alaska Native	~56.0%

Racial and Ethnic Breakdown of Child SSI Recipients
Race / Ethnicity Share of All Child SSI Recipients
White, non-Hispanic 33.1%
Black, non-Hispanic 29.4%
Hispanic (any race) 21.0%
Some Other Race, non-Hispanic 14.5%
Asian, non-Hispanic 1.9%
🔍 Key Demographic Disparities
While White children make up the largest absolute number of recipients, looking at the wider child population reveals major differences in how frequently different groups utilize the program:
Disproportionate Enrollment Among Black Children: Non-Hispanic Black children represent approximately 13.8% of the total U.S. child population, yet they account for nearly 30% of all children receiving SSI. Public policy researchers attribute this disparity to a higher rate of severe childhood poverty and systemic differences in health outcomes.
Community Legal Services - Philadelphia +2
Lower Enrollment Among Hispanic and Asian Children: Hispanic children make up over 25% of all U.S. children but represent only 21% of SSI recipients. Asian children make up roughly 5.4% of the U.S. child population but make up less than 2% of the recipient pool. Advocacy groups point out that systemic language barriers and limited outreach to immigrant families often create obstacles when applying for benefits.
Social Security Administration (.gov) +3

Race / Ethnicity	Share of All Child SSI Recipients
White, non-Hispanic	33.1%
Black, non-Hispanic	29.4%
Hispanic (any race)	21.0%
Some Other Race, non-Hispanic	14.5%
Asian, non-Hispanic	1.9%

In response to blaiming immigration for US problems, I asked what would the birth rate have to have been to have the same us population as now without immigration

If the goal is to retroactively match today's actual population total (roughly 350 million) without the tens of millions of residents and descendants added by immigration since 1965, a temporary surge to a much higher fertility rate (historically akin to the baby boom era peaks of over 3.5 children per woman) would have been required across prior decades

Some relevant research on the issue I hope you will find helpful:

I do indeed find your posting helpful to establish a perspective.

I believe the statistics in your posting are for the general US population. Have you been able to find comparable statistics limited to US immigrant populations?

They can count, when they’re suddenly desperate, and can’t be lazy.