Posted on 12/29/2007 4:25:58 PM PST by SeekAndFind
.S. News & World Report, which has made a name for itself by ranking and announcing the best colleges every year, is now ranking and listing the best careers for young people. A comparison of the latest lists shows a shocking disconnect and makes for dispiriting holiday reading.
While the price of a college education has skyrocketed far faster than inflation, many careers for which colleges prepare their graduates are disappearing. U.S. News' Best Careers guide concludes, "college grads might want to consider blue-collar careers" because bachelor's degree holders "are having trouble finding jobs that require college-graduate skills."
Incredibly, U.S. News is telling college graduates to look for jobs that do not require a college diploma. Among the 31 best opportunities for 2008 are the careers of firefighter, hairstylist, cosmetologist, locksmith and security-system technician.
Where did the higher-skill jobs go? Both large and small companies are "quietly increasing off-shoring efforts."
Ten years ago, we were told we really didn't need manufacturing because it can be done more cheaply elsewhere, that auto workers and others should move to information-age jobs. But now the information jobs are moving offshore, too, as well as marketing research and even many varieties of innovation.
The flight overseas includes professional as well as low-wage jobs, with engineering jobs offshored to India and China. Thousands of bright Asian engineers are willing to work for a fraction of U.S. wages, which is why Boeing just signed a 10-year, $1 billion-a-year deal with a government-run company in India.
Society has been telling high school students that college is the ticket to get a life, and politicians are pandering to parents' desire for their children to be better educated and so have a higher standard of living.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
This is a key point that many do not understand...
Many kids go to college since they have nothing else better to do. Its a mistake. Consider this:
HS diploma and 4 years of hard work not earning a lot of money and you can be a jopurneyman electrician or other skilled labor. You can speen 4-5 years and lots of money and get a liberal arts or other general degeree. At the end the electrician is making a good wage while the liberal arts scholar is starving.
Your kids will pay the electrician while telling the liberals major if they want fries or not.
diagnosed as autistic
Most of the geek patrols in engineering schools of any types have their share of what is now called Aspbergers but was once called ‘Pocketprotector Syndrome”
Read this and I think it answers most of the degreed unemployables....
A Message to Garcia
By Elbert Hubbard
In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain & the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba- no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly.
What to do!
Some one said to the President, "There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."
Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, & in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.
The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing- "Carry a message to Garcia!"
General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.
No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man- the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slip-shod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, & half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, & sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office- six clerks are within call.
Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio".
Will the clerk quietly say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task?
On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions:
Who was he?
Which encyclopedia?
Where is the encyclopedia?
Was I hired for that?
Don’t you mean Bismarck?
What’s the matter with Charlie doing it?
Is he dead?
Is there any hurry?
Shan’t I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?
What do you want to know for?
And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia- and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.
Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your "assistant" that Correggio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile sweetly and say, "Never mind," and go look it up yourself.
And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first-mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night, holds many a worker to his place.
Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply, can neither spell nor punctuate- and do not think it necessary to.
Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?
"You see that bookkeeper," said the foreman to me in a large factory.
"Yes, what about him?"
"Well he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him up town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street, would forget what he had been sent for."
Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?
We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the "downtrodden denizen of the sweat-shop" and the "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment," & with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.
Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with "help" that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away "help" that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer- but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go.
It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best- those who can carry a message to Garcia.
I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, "Take it yourself."
Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular fire-brand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled No. 9 boot.
Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slip-shod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude, which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry & homeless.
Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds- the man who, against great odds has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there’s nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes.
I have carried a dinner pail & worked for day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; & all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.
My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly take the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off," nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village- in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed, & needed badly- the man who can carry a message to Garcia.
Je$$e Jackson’s friends list?
I hire and supervise a large number of young, urban professionals, many of them with very impressive educational backgrounds and cirricula vitae. Some general observations:
Most cannot write a coherent paragraph. They have great ideas, are innovative, and hard working, but they lack the basic skills to compose something that would be recognized as a product of the English language.
Math: forget it. If you can’t crunch it out on a calculator, they are lost. They don’t understand that 6/16 inch is exactly the same as 3/8 inch
If you don’t promote them every six months and seed their paycheck regularly with bonuses that may or may not be earned, they are out of there. Too many smiley faces on their sorry excuses for homework, I suppose.
These are very bright people with very expensive educations, but they have been poorly prepared for the real world.
The rats want to stick the taxpayers with those student loans. The rats have declared that interest rates should fall to 3% on subsidized student loans by 2012. In addition, government employees will only have to pay for 10 years.
Agreed 100%!! They are looking for MERIT scholarships, not loans that have to be repaid.
I am not sure if your post is on the level. Auditing and tax accounting has been a strong growth area for jobs especially the Sarbannes-Oxley bill. Staff accounting positions have been moved to India to some extent. I am not sure about Bush’s role in moving accounting jobs. I would like at government positions. Because of early retirement incentives in many government pensions, government employees are retiring early. In Colorado, there is a wave of early retirement with much hiring to replace retirees.
Is your post implying that your school took out student loans without your approval? In the recently passed student aid bill, the rats increased income contigent repayment. Since you have already graduated, you may not be eligible. Another reason to get a government job is to limit the payment duration of your student loans. The rats have given government employees another benefit by a provision that government employees only need to pay 10 years on student loans.
They are looking for MERIT scholarships, not loans that have to be repaid.
I agree they should seek these. My concern is that far too few are available.
A friend of mine recently started teaching math (one of the teaching specialties with relatively high demand) at a "inner city" Chicago Public high school.
Her starting salary was $32,000.
A good chunk of that goes to repay student loans - and her degree is from a relatively inexpensive state college.
With her intelligence and personality she could be making 10-15K more in the private sector with better long term prospects, and a lot less job related stress.
Pretty hard to see why anyone you would want doing her job would stay in it for more than a few years - they either change careers, or move to better paying lower stress jobs in suburban districts.
Thee are a lot of other reasons why the job is almost impossible - poorly socialized students, large classes and union and management politics being near the top of the list.
But the truth is we need to pay people like her a lot better, or they are not going to stay around no matter what else we change.
And when the generation of teacher now 50+ retires and must be repalced, the problem is going to get a LOT worse.
I think the bigger problem is housing costs. oh, and LAUSD is importing teachers from India, Philippines, and other countries now since the Cal State schools fail to produce an adequate amount of math and science teachers any longer.
http://www.faeala.org/docs/foreign_teachers.pdf
>>>The reason NYC has a teacher shortage is that teachers are in physical danger at many of those public schools. Same thing in the barrio schools in L.A.
Have some respect for your betters.
Who get off the Green Line at Kenmore Square.
Wow! I’ve heard of the message to Garcia but have never read it. Thanks.
Yes, I'll go out of my way to rent from Enterprise because they are so eager to secure your business and make sure you come back again.
Last thing I knew Enterprise was the single largest buyer/owner of automobiles in the United States.
I've always liked them because when I fly little airplanes into little airports they come and pick me up and then drop me off again.
I spent my career in IT, working for IBM for 31 years and as a consultant/contractor for 10 years after that. After that, I taught managerial economics in an MBA program for two years.
But Webster University would not allow me to teach any IT courses, because I had not taken 18 postgrad hours of IT courses. I had both a MS in Telecom. & Info Sys management and an MBA, but that was not enough, even with decades of professional work in the field and a client list many consultants would have paid for the privilege of putting on their CV.
I have been retired from any IT work for 6 years now, and would have to virtually start over in the field if I had any desire to return to it. My observation and estimate of the amount of time required to remain fully current in the field is about 16 hours of self-study, classroom, seminars, and studying manuals - EVERY WEEK! And G_d help you if you pick the wrong new technology or language to invest that much time and effort on, because you will have a hard time catching up with where you left the main path.
The IT courses in college can’t come close to keeping up with the constantly changing technology, so they tend to concentrate their teaching on the details and lose the big picture, which ALWAYS is to fulfill the BUSINESS purpose.
As for me, I made my millions and am out of the rat race now.
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