Free Republic

Alan Beggerow has stopped looking for work. Laid off as a steelworker at 48, he taught math for a while at a community college. But when that ended, he could not find a job that, in his view, was neither demeaning nor underpaid. So instead of heading to work, Mr. Beggerow, now 53, fills his days with diversions: playing the piano, reading histories and biographies, writing unpublished Western potboilers in the Louis L’Amour style — all activities once relegated to spare time. He often stays up late and sleeps until 11 a.m.

Thanks but no thanks, say students to the prospect of entering the computer field in college. According to the Computer Research Association, new enrollments in computer and engineering programs have dropped for four straight years. Simple economics shows the reason: good-paying tech jobs were wiped out in the dot-com crash and haven't returned. But USA Today observes that high-level jobs combining technology and business still exist in the US. The implication there says no candidates exist to fill those jobs. Oddly enough, the article doesn't state how a new college engineering graduate will have access to these high-level jobs. Since...