It can sometimes be pretty amusing to watch vulgar libertarians flails about in their attempts to at once deny income inequality is a problem and, at the same time, insist that even if it is a problem, there’s just nothing we can do to fix it:
What makes for smart fiscal policy, though, doesn’t necessarily do anything to deal with income inequality, or the lack of mobility that the economy has experienced in recent years…taxing the rich doesn’t put money in the hands of the poor, it puts in the hands of the government, who then transfers it to any one of a number of politically favored groups. Right now, the biggest government-controlled wealth transfers go from the relatively poor young to the typically better-off retired, and that’s a phenomenon that’s only going to accelerate as the Baby Boomers retire. If anything, that is going increase income inequality regardless of what we do about taxes on the “rich.”
Moreover, it’s simply a lie that taxing the rich is going to do anything to help the poor in the long run. It’s a lie built on simplistic notions of egalitarianism, the notion that people who have succeeded have done so nefariously, and the idea that there’s just something wrong with being “too rich,” whatever that means. It works politically for the same reason that populism and appeals to envy have always worked, and it’s totally wrong. The government can’t make people equal. In fact, if the Occupy Wall Street crowd were paying attention, they’d realize that it’s government manipulation of the economy that has created the very inequality they complain of. And yet, they have the illusion that the solution to their perceived problems is more, and bigger, government.
I read this kind of flimsy bull on a daily basis — one of the unfortunate side-effects of the overall laudable achievement of Occupy, putting inequality front-and-center in the national conversation — and I tend not to want to bother responding to it because it’s just so self-evidently unserious. But whatever; here I go, just this once.
The idea that government raising taxes on the wealthy won’t matter because that money will be used for programs that benefit the “relatively poor young” —a.k.a Social Security — is self-refuting. I’m not even sure how to respond to it, honestly, it’s so steeped in wing-nut and impenetrable to anyone who doesn’t find Tucker Carlson a font of wisdom. But in any event, if government has more money to spend on Pell Grants, public schools, police, firefighters, public land reclamation — in other words, “politically favored groups,” that often are comprised of human beings — this all quite obviously will have an impact on inequality. Safer neighborhoods and better schools means young people with a better chance to get into prestigious colleges and universities; Pell Grants mean that those very same kids can get into those schools without amassing utterly unmanageable and self-destructive levels of debt. They can then go and get jobs, make money, live the dream and so on.
This is what people are talking about when they say equality of opportunity, and it’s what people are talking about when they say inequality. There tends to be an attempt among ideologues to portray taxation and opportunity as somehow disconnected, as if people who want to raise taxes on the rich don’t particularly care about what’s subsequently done with that money. By holding onto this bizarre piece of analysis, not only does one get to pretend they’re in favor of equality of opportunity and simply against taxation; but the generic and brain-dead nonsense about liberalism being an ideology of envy becomes less patently useless, too. It’s hard for me to imagine that many people are actually silly enough to sincerely believe that I think Clinton-era tax rates would be a good idea because I hate everyone who makes over $200,000 — but I can guess how useful a tool for rationalization and self-righteousness this grade school-level psychoanalysis must be.
In any event: when the government raises taxes on the rich and uses those taxes to pay for services that make economic attainment more possible for the middle class and poor, this does help combat inequality; and it does not prove that a conspiracy of parasites and ingrates has succeeded in oppressing those most unfortunate among us, the rich.
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There’s so many liberal cliches here that’s it’s hard to pick one but I’ll go with this:
“Safer neighborhoods and better schools means young people with a better chance to get into prestigious colleges and universities…”
Really? That’s the problem with the country? Not enough kids are able to go to NYU or Harvard? Talk about unserious. One of the biggest complaints of the OWS crowd that you seem to be increasingly enchanted with is high student loan debt. These kids obviously already dropped a nice chunk on college (I suspect some of them were even ‘prestigious’). The reason they can’t pay their bills is because there are no jobs waiting for them.
And let’s also be honest here, the fields that are hurting the most for applicants are often the ones that require no college education. A kid could become a machinist today and have his pick of job offers when he’s done learning the trade AND make a very comfortable living. You seem to be implying that America has a shortage of brilliant graduates from top-tier schools and if only we had more we could get back on track. This seems to contradict reality on several levels.
I’m not talking about America, Mike, but rather the poor. Obviously we’ll never even get close to agreeing on this, but I’d say that if we’re indeed going to have a post-Industrial economy that requires high levels of specialized knowledge, then everyone who doesn’t have access to the best education is at a structural disadvantage.
I think you would be wise to set the bar quite a bit lower. The poor can still gain upward mobility with something much less than a ‘prestigious university’. In fact a college education is not even mandatory.
Though I agree with your point, I do think that Mike makes a very good one: we have a shortage of welders, machinists, and pipefitters, for example. Telling the kids likely to go into these fields that they should instead go to college strikes me – in the economy we have, anyway – as problematic. We don’t live in the post-industrial economy yet, after all.
Though college certainly isn’t unimportant, presenting it as “the thing” leaves us with a lot of people playing on a field that does not cater to their natural strengths.
That being said, we do run into a North Dakota Non-Solution. The North Dakota Non-Solution is to point at all the job openings in North Dakota and say that the unemployed should move there. Well, of course, there are more unemployed people than there are job openings in ND. Likewise, while we do need more skilled industrial labor, it’s at best a part of the solution. A part of the solution, though, that seems to be denigrated in some circles because it’s “selling people short” because they should be going to college.
So it has limited applicability, but it’s still worthy of note. The problem becomes how we get a good and honest assessment of what jobs we do need filled, what we will need ten years from now, and who is best going in which direction (without sending people to college who do not belong there, but also without telling people they are not college material when in fact they might be).
our economy is on FIRE. By definition, that’s postindustrial. Hell, you might call it post-information age, too.
I had a comment here, but it disappeared. Check the moderation queue.
Can we please stop this ‘in the long run, you’re better off becoming a plumber’ myth? Please?
Look, here are the unemployment rates from the BLS.
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm
Notice the difference? Yes, it’s tough out there right _now_ for college grads, but in the long run, it’s still better off for even a “poor person” to get a college degree.
Not all instances are created equal, Jesse. How many of those unemployed college non-grads have certification to be a plumber or welder or training to be a machinist or pipefitter? Comparing non-skilled non-grads with those who have learned a trade puts two very different groups of people in the same pot. The point is not that they should just forgo further education, but that some of them might be better off getting vocational training rather than going the standard college route (where they might flunk out or drop out of because it’s not for them).
That doesn’t make this a cure-all for anything (see my other comment). But neither is “everybody should go to college.” At least, that’s the way some of us see it. Assuming that everybody should be on the same track favors those who excel in that environment and is less useful for those who don’t.
No, vocational training is fine. For the right person. But, I’m almost as tired of the ‘you’re better off becoming a plumber/pipe fitter/etc. than going to college’ as anything in the current parlance because for most people, that’s not actually true.
I don’t mind ‘tracking’ people so they have a better life, but the problem is that one of two things will happen – either the tracking will begin at some insanely young age that screws over kids or magically, all the poor kids in horrible schools get tracked towards vocational education while Mary and Bobby in Alderwood Heights all get tracked toward college education.
Finally, if I had to make a bet, I’m pretty sure that in the long run, if you point to a machinist at random and one of the people with a college degree at the current OWS protests at random, I’ll bet on the guy at the OWS protests earning more in his lifetime, because even with his Anthropology Degree, he still has a chance to become a VP somewhere and make far more than a machinist can ever make.
I will probably be writing a post on this soon, but I don’t disagree with your concerns about tracking. I was nearly put on the non-college track myself, and had my parents responded differently I never would have gone.
That being said, regarding your wager, I think it depends in good part on self-selection. Comparing someone that went to get an anthropology degree to someone that got welding certifications ignores the fact that the two are different people. The welder might not make as much as the anthropology student, but he might be making considerably (once you factor in student loan debt and foregone income) more as a welder than he would as a college drop-out, which he would be at greater risk for.
Another anecdote, I remember a guy who got his two-year degree in information systems. Even though he actually made it through, he landed in a job for which he was temperamentally ill-suited and very unsuccessful. We all agreed that he would have been better off getting a job fixing cars.
Will, I look forward to this, because that exchange with you, me, and Mike about a week ago has really been dogging me. It clearly is not as simple as just targeting enough people toward welding, and then doing it for plumbers, and so on. These are the results diffuse decisions influenced by a broad palette of incentives. Whatever Mike says about it, just bringing in some welders to talk to high schools isn’t going to get this kind of shift done. This is some pretty heavy-duty social engineering that we’re talking about here – and if done as policy, then it really does have a central planning aspect to it. It is an incredibly involved thing to begin to try to say what broad skills and educational shifts have to be undertaken if the assertion that present state is fundamentally misaligned. Cultural imperative drive a lot of this, where people feel the social distinctions of profession and education more now because they are in closer contact via The Internet. Those kinds of things are really hard to address. And, of course, we’re subsidizing college costs to such a ridiculous degree that we’re screwing up the pricing mechanism that let’s people decide if, whatever their interests and social aspirations say, spending what it now costs to go to college is actually worth it. Just transforming the political conversation enough to not promote college beyond a reasonable level is a huge lift, and that is the simplest and crudest way to address some of the problem. (I say crude, because just reducing college aid while not addressing the issue of whether college, as opposed to other areas of endeavor, is the wrong object for families hopes and aspirations for advancement amounts to a removal of a perceived lifeline to the means of social mobility for people. Taking this as the main prong of higher education reform could affect whether the people still see this as the land of opportunity we want it to be.)
I still feel this twinge of fear at the idea of steering people away from college if they are so inclined. To me, I can’t imagine life not having been able to pursue at least some amount of liberal education. And while I found myself immersed in that in a good public high school before continuing it at college, I can vouch for numerous examples of people who really only found the personal maturity to appreciate the value of such pursuits after having been amore care-free teenager bu done well enough to make the automatic decision to go to college. It really does happen. Beyond that, college can really expand a person’s social horizons if done right. On the other hand, why couldn’t a welding apprenticeship or trade academy do the same?
I think my one point I want to insist on is that if we insist that our social preferences on education are out of whack as to our economic needs and that this requires a policy fix of some sort, then we can’t deny the size and disruptive potential that mounting such a policy treatment amounts to. It would be a very large undertaking because the trend away from stable, blue-collar occupations and toward aspirational investment in college education is every bit as much a much a product of social trends, especially increased visibility and interaction across classes due to the communication revolution, as it is of economic or policy ones (the student loan racket). And it would be disruptive for the same reason that any policy response to socially-driven trends is. It might not amount to central planning, but it certainly would be planning of a kind, and if done as a matter of policy, well…
Assuming we should want to, can we redirect the social trend toward aspirational education back toward needed skilled occupations via individual decisions alone? That seems to me to be like blowing into the wind to try to get it to change directions. As I said, I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts, Will, and anyone else’s.
Jesse,
As someone with an anthropology degree I feel at least somewhat qualified to respond here. The problem with those anthro degrees is too often the professors and department heads aren’t willing to steer kids away from the field into some un-related business that will be happy to have anyone with a degree. There is a lot of pressure put on undergrads to do field work after graduation for peanuts and then to rack up loans while they get a Master’s and then they find out there just aren’t a lot of jobs out there, especially if you want to stay in the city you grew up in. So then they are over-educated and it can actually be harder to find work in unrelated fields.
So my point is that yeah, the degree is great – but if you only listen to your professors you will accumulate a ton of debt before you figure out an alternate path. And I don’t see college departments changing their strategy there because without people buying into this grad programs would quickly see enrollment dry up.
Mike:
Pay no attention to Elias, he’s been listening crazy uncle Joe Biden again ramble on about how if Repubs don’t raise taxes and give the money to cities that murders and rapes will rise. I find it amusing that all the bad press goes to Repubs that refuse to raise taxes but none goes to Dems that refuse to cut entitlements, talk about hypocrisy in reporting.
Um, almost every offer the GOP has turned down from Obama and other Democrats have included big cuts in Medicare and depending on the offer, Social Security. Thx plz bai.
Jesse:
Yes there have been offers and every time you hear from some Dems that say that any cuts to entitlements are a non-starter and that they will not vote for any any legislation that includes cuts. Thx plz bai.
Taxes on the “wealthy” are a GOP bargaining chip just as the settlements are in Israel. You don’t surrender them for nothing, which is the demand from both the Dems and the Palestinians.
The Corbomite Manuever: “Not chess, Mr. Spock: Poker!”
C’mon, youse guys, get some arm’s length from the game, some perspective. It’s the only way to stay sane. They set us @ each other’s throats, but
REDFORD: What we observed that night was mind-bending. Here were sworn enemies, the leaders who beat the shit out of each other all day in public, but the minute those doors closed for the state dinner, the daggers went away and it was one big happy family. Condoleezza Rice got up and couldn’t have been sweeter or more gracious; she was smiling at everyone. I thought, This is so bizarre. Then I saw former Republican senator Bill Frist weaving through the tables, and he came over to Ted Kennedy and started massaging his shoulders and laughing like they were the oldest buddies in the world. Everybody was crossing the aisles and chuckling, and I said, “Oh, I get it! It really is just a game.” They have to go out and say, “I represent so-and-so and such-and-such a platform,” but it’s absolute total bullshit.
Now, I understand True Believer Robert Redford being crestfallen, but I prefer a republic where they exchange neck rubs instead of suicide bombers.
If I have any advice on all this, it’s Don’t. Be. A. Tool.
TVD,
the end of civility is upon us. Again.
There have been assaults on members of congress before (by other members of congress, on the floor). I predict we will see them again, and soon.
Michael Drew and Will Truman,
I want to make it clear that I am not advocating trades over college per se. I’m simply saying that we should offer kids as many options as possible and there is nothing wrong with choosing a trade. They can be lucrative AND immensely satisfying. I just want kids to understand that and I also think we all know college isn’t for everyone. Also, I know more than a few people who went to college and then chose to learn a trade. They are now ‘lifetime learners’ and they enjoy working with their hands and having something concrete to show for it.
Jesse,
I’m going to be a bit partisan here and point out that most of the jobs created by the Democrat-planned Stimulus Bill were of the vocational trade variety. I’m quite sure the Left will applaud those jobs next year. Additionally, a lot of those ‘green’ jobs that we hear so much about are of the trade variety. I have a friend who was a plant manager at a college (trade job) and now works on wind turbines in Colorado. He’s making serious $$ and didn’t need a degree to do it.
@Michael, there’s a lot to process in your (8:21) insightful and thought-provoking comment. My post is to go in a slightly different direction (more what Jesse alludes to, differentiating between who should be encouraged to go to college and who should not). So I’ll respond here.
My only substantive disagreement with you is more of a nitpick: I am not as convinced as you are that the Internet has truly facilitated all that much in the way of cross-class conversation. At least, not between the class distinctions we’re looking at. I would venture to say that the vast majority of commenters here fall within the group of people that have college degrees, which itself excludes 75% of the population. This is one of the things that makes the conversation difficult, because of course people should go to college because we went to college and it was awesome (I don’t mean that facetiously).
Your point about it being a huge social undertaking is absolutely right. People aren’t going to college because the government subsidizes loans. They’re going to college because everybody knows that’s the only way not to get left behind. The industrial sector is so yesterday.
We’re increasingly defining success or failure along a single track. To succeed, go to college. And I think that there is an air about that people who did not succeed and did not go to college where… well there you go! You should have gone to college. Let that be a lesson to all of you! And we assume that if someone is not college material, that there’s something *wrong* with them.
(I recognize that some people are going to read what I say as an elitist “some people are too dumb for college.” I just want to say that’s not what I mean at all. In fact, I am trying to argue the opposite: Just because they are not made for college does not mean that there’s something wrong with them.)
Because of all of this, it seems that everybody is getting the same advice. So you have people that go to college and succeed (great!) and you have others that fail and as often as not end up in low-skill employment. Leading to a situation where we are relegating people to the latter for fear of telling them that they are not good enough for the former. Because we wouldn’t advise it for our kids, we shouldn’t for anyone else.
So if that’s the diagnosis, what’s the prognosis? I don’t know. It’s hard to change a culture. Getting rid of student loans tomorrow won’t change things the right way (however we differentiate between collegeworthy and not, it shouldn’t be by ability-to-pay).
I guess I think the first step is “stop digging.” By which I mean, not participating in the rhetoric that your right to success be defined by going to college and going to the right one (a brick-and-mortar, 4-year institution). This, as much as anything, is why I push-back. Not so much because I have illusions of a Program Policy Success.
In a “cutting our losses” sort of way (since I am not optimistic about redoing culture), maybe make entry-and-exit to college easier. Make our universities more selective (for non-transfers), beef up our community colleges, enhance cheaper distance learning opportunities (and actually make them cheaper). Then, if somebody is struggling, let them know what other options are available outside of college.
My best friend took seven years to graduate from college. On probation, suspended, off probation. Never at any point did anybody say to him “You know, maybe you should consider going this route instead.” He’s 33 years old and works the counter at a second-hand store. And he’s not a dumb person, by any stretch. He needed guidance he wasn’t getting. He needed a trade school (which, incidentally, he is saving up for right now).
So that’s where I am coming from on the issue.
dude. hang out on dailykos. hang out AnywhereElse other than here, really. You’ll see plenty of people without degrees. (FieldNegro had plenty in its commentariat, last I checked — an’ he’s a lawyer)
I do, but it seems the vast majority of places I do hang out, most have college degrees. In stark contrast to the general population.
hang out on FieldNegro more. Hell, find a few Latina sites… Or just find a few places that pull more kid-oriented foolz.
People do segregate, to some extent… but it’s comparatively easy to find people of different educational backgrounds (grannydoc writes about the men she meets down at the dump, Carnaki writes a lot about WV…) There are a lot of people out there, and many can give you perspectives, even if they aren’t there themselves.
Also: check out global voices.
I’ve done my time around non-college folks (it’s one of the reasons that I am so vocal on this subject). And it’s not that I won’t speak to non-college folks, but I am not particularly inclined to seek them out. And I think that is not uncommon.
(You’ve mentioned FN a couple of times and said some interesting things about it. I probably will check that one out one of these days.)
Will & Mike,
Will – Thanks so much for the thoughtful response. I agree with much of what you say. In general, I have a really hard time find where to approach this question from – every question I ask myself seems to lead unavoidably to more fundamental questions that I was consciously setting out to table (not dismiss) in favor of the more limited ones. I’ll enthusiastically admit to being wildly biased in favor of broad availability of higher education, and even for the broadest feasible exposure to a liberal arts/sciences curriculum as possible. On the other hand, are we just serially screwing cohort after cohort of young people by doing that when our economic future demands something else? I obviously need to be attentive to that, and that is what I am trying to do here (and I thank Mike for forcing me to take a hard look at these questions).
(Incidentally to Mike, I am glad to hear that you are not negative on college in general [that you even have an Anthro degree!]. Tho I did not take you to be trashing college education indiscriminately last time, a positive view of it was not coming through. So thatks for that reassurance.)
the notion of a cross-class converstaion on the internet was not so much what I was getting at so much as the accumulated process of increased cultural familiarity with the patterns of the upper-middle and upper classes that has occurred as the result of telecommunications generally, in particular television and the internet. i have a feeling that that has alot to do with why everyon feels that college should be for them: until very recently with people like Mark Cuban and so forth, college seems to have gone hand in hand with success in the the media and culture. I’m actually not so invested in my pet theory about this regarding whether the media drive it, so much as just glad we’re on the same page that this trend is not simply a result of a policy distortion, which you make very clear you agree with.
I have to think about all this much more. I very much am in harmony with Mike on the idea that college, or liberal education generally, and the trades should not be seen as an either-or choice. I deeply wish that the cultural dived between these realms were not so great in or country. (I think this is related to some of what Elias has been writing about recently regarding cultural signification in our politics.) And while it’s great for those who make it work, a college degree followed by trade school is hardly an economical path to set out on intentionally in most cases (law school being perhaps a paradigmatic rather than exceptional example).
I really don’t have much to offer, I’m just musing is search of some perspective. It’s a conversation that should continue.
@Michael, I’m really enjoying the conversation. It seems the more I think about it, the more I plot a NaPP post. I will try to carve out some time this week and get it written.
But while I’m here, I will say that my thoughts on liberal arts education versus vocational training are rather conflicted. I got a vocational degree but was also a member of the Honors College (requiring more-than-usual high-level liberal arts classes). The difference between my experiences in each were night and day. There was almost no overlap in terms of my classmates and experiences. I loved the political science classes (as you might imagine), struggled through the English ones but in retrospect was gaining more than I realized, and didn’t like and did poorly in the vocational stuff. And even among the classes towards the vocational degree, the ones that have stuck with me were not C++ or SQL, but rather the more abstract business-theory classes. In other words, the more directly useful the class was to a job, the less I got from it. But, of course, the more useful it was in getting that all important first job. I would have loved to get a degree in philosophy or theology, but I can’t bring myself to advocate people getting that degree.
A friend of mine got a philosophy degree and now works in the IT field and is doing quite well. He learned the IT stuff on his own time and has a natural drive for such things. Of course, I got my IT degree and am presently working my way through the Book of Mormon on my spare time. Maybe a part of me is just really reluctant to admit that the path I took wasn’t optimal. Or I look at my friend with the music degree who works at the thrift store and feel justified. It’s so hard to say.
I do think this, though: at least with my degree plan, far too much of the vocational training is too highly specialized. It’s not training you to succeed in a field so much as to do a job. And I think this has created ripple effects of its own. Employers believing that they can hire someone off the street who can sit down and do the job on the first day. And maybe, given the givens (investment in training turning into employees taking the training and running off to a better job) they are not entirely unjustified. But if we’re going to be training people to do a job, we certainly don’t need college for that. Not the four year kind. This sort of thing used to have a market in the form of certifications, which was a great concept, but one that got watered down near to the point of uselessness.
(It’s also entirely possible that this is an IT-specific problem. Colleges of Business are booming, and those may be geared as much towards general success as towards doing a specific job. I had but one major and two minors to spend my four years getting.)
There wasn’t much I learned at college that was directly applicable to the immediate activities of my employment.
However, the things I learned in college let me understand why we all did things the way that we did them.
In effect, college taught me the rules of the game, and when I got to work I learned the playbook. And, because I knew the rules, when it came time to write my own plays I was able to write good ones.
Very well said, Duck.
I definitely don’t advocate for people who are disinclined to do so to get liberal arts degrees. The problem that has been more topical lately around here and elsewhere is whether people who are inclined should in fact be disuaded from it. (To some extent perhaps I have simply been put on edge by a tendency mostly elsewhere to use the current economic circumstances to express scorn for people’s choices of educational focus, as if they deserve the personal consequences of a stricken economy.)
What I might advocate for is a more serious commitment to devoting a significant portion of vocationally-oriented curricula to liberal arts at institutions where world-class teaching and research are being done. It strikes me as tragic that our universities seem to be producing two kinds of students (which comes out in the disrespectful tones that people speak of young people today who majored in the “wrong” subjects): those who are highly trained in technical and business subjects but have developed little interest or knowledge of less “practical” subjects; and those who have consciously pursued a broad liberal arts education, but generally failed to develop a set of salable skills beyond research, writing, and critical thinking (and unfortunately, often enough, not developing those as well as they should). To some extent, this is simply a mateer of interest and temperament on the part of the students themselves, but I think that the direction and example could be powerful if these values were firmly and enthusiastically supported by the administration and faculty of business and engineering colleges.
At the vocational school level, the imperative is different, because the mission of the institution and its capacities are very different. But here again, the power of instruction and example can be powerful. It can be hugely consequential to have an instructor in one subject who rather than expressing disdain or simply showing no interest for things far afield from subject at hand (which is hopefully a rare thing), instead expresses interest and gives encouragement for the pursuit of other subjects for their own value. In that setting the question is not so much trying to institute a course of rigorous study of subjects beyond the core vocational ones, but instead of simply ensuring that a measure of exposure is offered, and avoiding an excessively narrow experience that actually discourages interest in the broad world of human knowledge.
I can hardly disagree with you that counseling young people away from a focus on pragmatism is probably malpractice of some kind. I’m not inclined to do that in the least. The hard problem is figuring out what place the arts, humanities, social, and pure sciences should play in formal education – whether it needs to be changed from its traditionally central role, and if so, how to do that.
That’s a fair point. I honestly don’t know if I fall into the “dissuade” category or not. For now, I just want to stop encouraging. The next step is to give people a roadmap that doesn’t involve traditional college (and refer to this roadmap in not-derogatory terms). Then we’ll see where we stand. It’s not so much that people going to college don’t want to go do college, but rather that we’re convincing them that’s what they want. I think an all-around reassessment is in order.
I almost went to trade school instead of college. It’s a long story, but there were questions as to whether I was really college material. I visited a state-sponsored trade school (I won’t name it for privacy reasons, but if you want to know I will email it to you). Think of it as a public ITT Tech, without the profit motive and without ambitions of being more than it is.
They had dorms. They didn’t have sports teams or whatnot, but they had a genuine campus. It felt like more of a college than a community college does. It was immediately what I thought of when you asked “On the other hand, why couldn’t a welding apprenticeship or trade academy [expand social horizons and such]?”
And this was a place I had barely even heard of. A lot of people haven’t. In my opinion, these kinds of places should be *everywhere* (it’s noteworthy that according to collegeboard, 15% of the student population comes from out of the state, which is a high percentage for this state and exceptionally high for a trade school). Which is not to say that they’re unavailable, but they’re mostly ITT-like institutions, which crave legitimacy (therefore increased enrollment and therefore more money) by trying to evolve into what everybody (including the customer) believes the customer should want.
As long as people think of trades as being “fat guys with their asses coming out of their pants swindling yuppies who need plumbing work”, then nobody will consider trades a valid career path.
Which is why the heavy lifting is cultural, rather than political. But the current political isn’t helping.
Just want to third this observation/conclusion shared by DD & Will.
Will,
I don’t know that I see vocational training as job-specific. Welders can work on a variety of projects, as can machinists, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, etc.
I wasn’t very clear. I was talking about vocational college. And I speak from the experience of IT and secondary observations on engineering. It’s set up so that you spend 4-5 years getting a degree learning specific things so that your employer doesn’t have to train you for them.
This is less of a big deal when it comes to strictly vocational training, because it requires less investment. For instance, my former employer had to send the whole welding shop to get certified on welding aluminum. That’s specific, but that’s also good (and would be good even if it wasn’t the employer paying for it).
What I was trying to get at was that I think we would do better by looking at college degrees, even ones that are vocationally-minded, as more abstract things, where you learn the more specific things on the job. That’s hard to do with the labor flexibility that our economy relies on, though.
Well you certainly get that non-specific job training with liberal arts dgrees. It’s why those people are so flexible when they get out into other fields.
Yeah, and that’s why I’m not as dead-set against liberal arts degrees as I used to be. But I think that there is something to be said for more abstractly-minded business and technical degrees. Business Law classes that are more geared towards “here are the competing interest that create the laws that govern businesses” rather than just “here are the laws of our state, which of course might be changed by the time you graduate.”
One ancillary detail I would mention is the tendency of some non-business majors to bump up against the ‘peter principle’ when they get out into the corporate world. This is a product of their liberal-arts flexibility also being non-specific enough that eventually they hit a wall. I see it in my own work and I have been extremely sensitive to the phenomenon since I am also a fish-out-of-water working at a Fortune 500 company with an anthropology and a history degree.
NELNET is gone. But people are still protesting it. I heart PHEAA, and say that if every blasted student loan was like it, we wouldn’t have such problems!
1) Multiple years of deferments
2) going to grad school gets you more deferments
etc. etc.
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