Posted on 11/12/2015 8:39:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
He got a round of applause for this at last night’s debate but it’s a silly claim when you think about it. His point is that there are good livings to be had in vocational training without any of the debt or fascism that come with today’s university experience. True enough, but the cultural bias towards college grads in hiring means that even a lowly philosophy major with a B.A. probably stands a better chance of higher earnings out of school than the average welder does. According to Bloomberg, despite comprising just 34 percent of the total work force, college grads earn 53 percent of the total wages. Analysts both left and right ran the numbers this morning and found that philosophy majors do quite a bit better than welders, even if they don’t go on to become professors of philosophy. (Although those who do become professors do better on average than welders too.) Ethan Epstein at the Weekly Standard writes:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual salary of a mid-career American welder is $37,000 a year. The median starting salary of a philosophy graduate, meanwhile, is $39,000 a year, according to Payscale. The mid-career median salary of a philosophy graduate, meanwhile, tops $80,000 annually. Thatâs right: Contrary to Rubioâs assertion, philosophy majors make twice as much as welders. That philosophy majors are poor must come as a shock to philosophy grads Peter Thiel, Carl Icahn, and . . . Carly Fiorina. (Iâm hoping Fiorina took the opportunity to educate her opponent on the subject backstage after the debate.)
Think Progress, also citing Payscale, finds that the average salary for someone with a B.A. in philosophy is $97,000 per year while the average for someone with an associate’s degree in welding technology is $58,500. How can that be? How can it be that philosophy majors, whom Rubio wants you to imagine behind the counter at Starbucks pouring lattes because they didn’t choose a more practical major, are raking it in at a higher rate than someone who chose a profession for which there’s reliable demand? Simple: Many philosophy majors end up taking jobs in other professional fields. Some go into business, some go into law, some go into tech, and so forth. A few years ago, when the punching-bag major of choice for critics of college was art history rather than philosophy, Virginia Postrel explained why a degree in the humanities wasn’t necessarily an economic liability:
The critics miss the enormous diversity of both sides of the labor market. They tend to be grim materialists, who equate economic value with functional practicality. In reality, however, a tremendous amount of economic value arises from pleasure and meaning — the stuff of art, literature, psychology and anthropology. These qualities, built into goods and services, increasingly provide the work for all those computer programmers. And there are many categories of jobs, from public relations to interaction design to retailing, where insights and skills from these supposedly frivolous fields can be quite valuable. The critics seem to have never heard of marketing or video games, Starbucks or Nike, or that company in Cupertino, California, the rest of us are always going on about. Technical skills are valuable in part because of the âsoftâ professions that complement them…
The argument that public policy should herd students into Stem fields is as wrong-headed as the notion that industrial policy should drive investment into manufacturing or âgreenâ industries. Itâs just the old technocratic central planning impulse in a new guise. It misses the complexity and diversity of occupations in a modern economy, forgets the dispersed knowledge of aptitudes, preferences and job requirements that makes labor markets work, and ignores the profound uncertainty about what skills will be valuable not just next year but decades in the future.
Wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that philosophy majors gravitate towards higher-paying white-collar jobs upon graduation, not because of the pay but because they’re drawn to the sort of argumentation and abstract problem-solving that those jobs usually involve. But the pay is what it is, and it’s going to beat the welder’s on average. What could have semi-salvaged this argument for Rubio is if he’d emphasized student loan debt as a counterweight. “Sure,” he could have said, “college grads earn more, but they also owe much more than someone with vocational trading would.” That’s certainly true, but even there, philosophy majors might out-earn welders by enough of a margin to make the debt worthwhile. As of last year, the average college grad left school owing nearly $30,000. That’s a lot, but Epstein’s Payscale numbers show a $40,000 mid-career median gap between philosophers and welders each year. The mean, per Think Progress, is almost as much. That’s a lot of lost income just to avoid some debt.
Exit question via Postrel: What if thousands of high-school students took Rubio’s advice and skipped college to train as welders instead? What would happen to wages in the welding field with a fresh glut of labor?
Yup. Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman and a fabulous philosopher.
One is more likely to find a job as a welder than a philosophy major. And far more money as an engineer, even a mediocre one, than any philosophy major dreams of making.
Sure, but most of those jobs are for city and state governments.
Department of water and power, bridges and so forth.
Gets outrageous in the shipyards. That is where they all need regulating IMO.
Oh good....Rubio should go become a philosopher and quit the race he isn’t going to win....and same FLA from the other embarrassment they have had to face, then do away with the other embarrassment ‘cry baby’ bushy....
I work at Ivy Tech in Indiana..welding here is a BIG thing. We have HS kids coming here to get certified. It’s not easy and yes HS boys are idiots..but we also have older students coming here to learn new things, brush up skills.
Similar to what I’ve heard welders making in Milwaukee working for P&H (Joy Global) et al.
Having majored in Philosophy doesn’t necessarily make anyone a philosopher.
Think engineers ...
An experienced underwater welder working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico earns way more than a tenured Philosophy prof and he earns every dime of it, unlike the Philosophy prof.
I don't doubt that tenured college philosophy professors do okay, but how many philosophy majors does it take to support the career of one philosophy professor? And what percentage of college philosophy majors end up earning a living by doing philosophy?
I betcha more welding course graduates earn wages by doing welding than philosophy majors do by doing philosophy! And I betcha a greater percentage of recent philosophy graduates live in their mom's basement than welders!
If a philosopher fell in the forest, would anyone care?
Does Allah Pundit mean we need more philosophers ,than welders? Has he forgotten the admonition by the Emperor of Germany as he strove to unite Germany struggling with Marx and Engle ? The best way I know how to punish a province is to allow it be ruled by a philopspher.
Do we really need any more philosophers? Pretty much everything has already been said in that department.
It was in the context of votech. And he’s right. Welders earn more than philosophers. The stupid article twists it by saying that philosophy majors get jobs in other fields. But the larger point is that there’s nothing wrong with being a welder and it’s shame that we don’t’ see the value in those types of jobs.
Welders in the small, private, dirty,non-Union shipyard where I work make $22.50 an hour. That’s average wage for welders around here and here is in Alabama not Califonia.
Rubio is right in that there is no market for philosophers in this modern world.
The bearer of that degree has to also have some marketable skill in order to earn money. Writer? Higher degree on top of philosophy? People skills that lead to a management position? Tech skills?
But that’s true of any degree. In this world, you have to know how to DO something other than just think about it.
Like welding.
(I personally know a kid who has a masters degree in sociology. He’s getting by on temp jobs. He’s probably capable of welding if he weren’t so full of himself that he would think it beneath him.)
I have no idea what shipyards you are talking about but here in the south most welding jobs in shipyards are some of the lowest paying in the industry.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/23/shale-boom-pipeline-welders-make-150000-in-ohio-while-liberal-arts-majors-flounder/#ixzz3rIXVbblc
As Mel Brooks said: “Stand up philosophers? You mean stand up BS artists”
To flip a burger or weld a joint...that is the question.
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