Thursday, January 6, 2011

How Far Does an Education Take You?

Because I somehow found myself on the mailing list of American's For Limited Government(www.getliberty.org) I receive all kinds of right-wing press releases and articles, many of which I disagree with but read to stay informed.

In yesterday's email I received a link to a blog posting by Rebekah Rast who is a contributing editor to the Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau, her blog post was titled "How far does an education take you ?" and for the first time in a long time, I was reading something from ALG that I can say I truly agree with, but not necessarily for the same reasons.

I agree with the principal that the cost of a college education is much to high and it is a fact that people who are graduating from college today often have debt of over $40,000 as a result upon graduation. I also agree that colleges today do a poor job of preparing students for life after graduation.

According to Rast, there are far to many colleges and far to many more who graduate them
with degrees that are practically worthless in the real world, especially today when college graduates are fighting for jobs alongside those who have more experience and better skills who have been unemployed because of the recession and changing economy, which I agree with also.

I disagree however with her solution, which is to end college subsidies and government funded student loan programs that cost the federal government billions of dollars a year and contribute to the federal deficit, in order to thin the ranks of those going to school just because it is the "American Dream" that families think they need to provide for there children in order to better themselves.

I believe that more emphasis should be put towards steering kids in the direction of 2 year trade schools or apprenticeships, which would save taxpayers and parents a ton of money.

It is becoming more and more difficult to find skilled trade labor today than at any point in history and many trades are dying because people believe that the only road to the good life starts behind a desk in some office complex.

Once parents and government bureaucrats understand this the better everyone will be. After all, not everyone is cut out for or entitled to a college education. I know just as many people that never made it through college that earn near $100,000 a year as tradesman as I do college graduates that earn less that $100,000 year.

Below is a portion of Rebekah Rast column, it is interesting and thought provoking. Even though I disagree with her reasoning, I think this is an issue that need to be addressed for everyone's sake now and in the future.

It is engrained in the heads of the youth that you must go to college to get a good job.

While overall that is good advice, some graduates are finding their $100,000 educations haven’t provided them with the necessary skills for the modern work world.

College is more expensive than ever forcing students to pay more than
400 percent more for a college education today than 30 years ago. And as a result of increased tuition costs, students are carrying mountains of debt and aren’t finding the high-paying, coveted jobs promised to them upon graduation.

In fact, a
n article by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) highlighted the trend of useless college degrees and cited a study that showed “60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the (Bureau of Labor Statistics) considers relatively low skilled — occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less.”

The article went on to say, “Of the nearly 50 million U.S. college graduates, 17.4 million are holding jobs for which college training is regarded as unnecessary. The number of waiters and waitresses with college degrees more than doubled in the years 1992-2008, from 119,000 to 338,000, and cashiers with college degrees rose from 132,000 to 365,000.”

What happened to the American Dream for the youth of America?

It’s simple. Because of the push for American youngsters to get college degrees through government subsidies, a four-year degree is becoming less valuable in the working world. Therefore, students graduating with a bachelor’s degree are finding it necessary to get a master’s degree or even a Ph.D to set themselves apart from the masses in order to find a relatively good job that requires their degree.

This new reality, coupled with rising tuition costs, leaves students with a mountain of debt. How are the
“5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees” ever supposed to pay off all that accrued school debt?

The Project on Student Debt estimates that
206,000 Americans graduated from college with more than $40,000 in student loan debt during 2008. Also shocking is a statistic printed in the Business Insider stating that, “Americans now owe more than $875 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.”...


Read More >>> Here

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The statistics show:
Unemployment is lower for those with a college degree.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm

Anonymous said...

This is a complicated problem, to which, as always, the right wing offers simplistic solutions. The children of those in high income groups will always have access to higher education, yet there is nothing inherent in their DNA that grants them superior abilities. The purpose of government subsidies is to allow ALL children to access higher education. Jonas Salk came from a lower middle class background and was the first in his family to attend college. He was fortunate in that not only was he gifted academically, he also had access to NY's City College system, which at that time at least, was affordable to the lower middle class. The real problem is the ever increasing price tag of even a public college education. The answer is not to end government subsidies. If we want to dissuade people from going to college based on cost, we should do the same for the children of the wealthy who are less than academically inclined. Maybe if G.W. Bush became a plumber instead of a world leader, we would have been spared more than a few of our current problems.

Anonymous said...

If you look, Getliberty.org's "archive" only goes back to September 2008. Funny how our limited government friends weren't so concerned about government spending until the specter of our first black president appeared on the horizon. These people are not true limited government conservatives in the tradition of Barry Goldwater- they simply used the September 2008 meltdown of the economy to tap into the ignorance and fear of so much of our country.

MiddletownMike said...

Anon 10:47

Statistics can be shown to prove any arguement that is presented whether your arguement is pro or con on a position.

My question would be; is unemployment lower for those with a college degree because of it or inspite of it?

It would make sense that unemployment is lower for those with a college education because so many more americans have gone to collage over the past 3 decades than at any other time in our history. So just by the law of averages of more people having college degrees, it would support the statistic of lower unemployment.