Hundreds of millions of immigrants? Really? Do you have any idea how the immigration system even works? It doesn’t sound like it.
The immigrants I know are the ones who bought million dollar houses. They are the ones who are pushing their kids to go to Berkeley. Their taxes are going to be paying for your Social Security and mine. I don’t think any of them would have the slightest clue how to get food stamps. As for your numbers, mind giving a cite? Especially for the hundreds of millions flooding our borders?
Have you ever driven across Nebraska? I think it will take a while for us to be overpopulated. Without immigrants our population would be dropping, and then we’d be screwed by Social Security funding shortages.
Please, your spittle is getting on my shirt.
I lived back then also. And headhunters still call me, not as many as before the crash - which immigrants had nothing to do with. Good old pure American bankers and mortgage brokers screwed us, so much so that the Mexicans started going back. Your rant, by the way, did not even come close to addressing my point, which was immigrants who start companies here help us all, while non-immigrants who start companies in India take jobs. So, try again.
Service economy = computer programmers, finance, accountants, lawyers, marketing, advertising, consultants, engineers, architects, salespeople and a bunch of other stuff I can’t think of off the top of my head. IOW jobs that require an education.
So what’s stopping them? I hear commercials for trade schools all the time.
Kids don’t have an equal opportunity to go to college. It’s fucking hard to get into an Ivy League school!
I would say we need to stop selling kid and parents on the notion that all degrees are equal. I’ve interviewed a lot of college grads at a lot of schools in and around NYC. They are not all equal.
Family pressure. Schools that want their kids to go to college, not auto repair school. Media that talks about educational success in terms of who goes to college rather than who pursues additional training after high school. It used to be harder to get loans to go to trade school than to college, though I don’t know if that’s still true or not. It is also my perception that there are a hell of a lot more scholarships for kids going to college than for kids going to trade school, although I don’t know if that’s an actual fact or not.
Trade schools and training programs also have standards. You can’t be a certified electrician if you can’t do math.
…retail clerks, Walmart greeters, salesmen, garbage men, paper boys, nurses’s aides, motel clerks, fast food workers, flea market resellers, census workers, government employees, dock workers, warehouse workers, house sitters, gas station attendants, billboard wearers, stockboys, truck and cab drivers, maids… this is where most of the available jobs are.
(the higher educated jobs like computer programming, accountants, engineers, radiologists, help centers, etc are being eliminated, reduced, and outsourced to India and other countries )
I dont see where America changing into a “service economy” (where most people have the same jobs as the people of Haiti and Kenya) is going to get the country out of poverty.
Striving to become a nation of burger flippers, retail clerks, and hotel maids is not a very worthwhile, nor profitable, goal.
I don’t see a lot of my elite private college undergrad and MBA program peers working in burger flipper jobs. So clearly not all those jobs are disappearing.
I like your first two points, but I don’t think we need to worry about hurt feelings at the usual anti-immigrant frothing driving them away. There is more money to be made here than many other countries, driven individuals aren’t easily dissuaded from capitalizing on that fact. The many immigrant business owners I know personally just chuckle and shake their heads at this point. No one is stopping native-born Americans from starting or buying their own businesses.
Well sure…but now you’re getting into a fruitless discussion about a societal arrangement which does not exist in our country…
Go Germany. Good for them. But it ain’t gonna happen in USA. There’s too much money to be made by selling “hopes and dreams” in the form of college. That’s the mark of a true capitalistic economy…damn the people, just get me my money!
It seems like what many people mean when they say “college isn’t for everyone” is that almost anyone can go to college now if they can get their hands on enough money, even stupid people. And if stupid people can go to college then my degree is no longer proof that I’m smart and amazing.
Except that these days the market requires a college degree for almost any job, that’s just the way it is these days and that means more people are going to college. Yes, the fact that almost anyone can get a degree now means college degrees have less value than they did back when only the fancy folks got to go to college.
So you’ll have to find some other reason to consider yourself amazing.
Blaming the capitalist bogeyman may feel good, but it doesn’t deal with the reality: the large majority of the money being made by selling hopes and dreams is going either to non-profit private schools or government-run state schools. The only reason it’s possible for students to go into debt on a useless degree is because the government makes it possible.
What kind of idiot would give pretty much any 18 year old who asked a low-interest loan for $25,000, which he will invest in … well, he’s not really sure yet. He’ll figure it out sometime in the next few years, and he’ll pay us back over the next couple decades (with like a 3% yield for us). That is exactly what the government does every day, and we accept it because it’s *politicians *selling “hopes and dreams.”
The Obama administration has said they want to start requiring for-profit schools to meet certain student-achievement benchmarks in order to qualify for student loans. That’s a great idea, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. We need to limit the flood of student-loan money going to people who are not going to graduate. But any politician who tries saying “since there aren’t enough lawyer jobs to go around we’re going to limit the number of law-school student loans” is going to be crucified, branded a racist, etc., and voted out.
The problem, as always, comes back to we the people.
I do think I’m entitled to the nursing lab I’m required by state law to have in order to learn how to be a nurse, which is now “temporarily” closed because we don’t have the funds to pay a teacher to supervise it.
But we somehow still have the funds for millions of dollars in remedial education for people who can’t hack Math 101.
Yeah, I’m bitter.
But hey, you want a nurse who can’t place an IV line and 1000 more people who might be ready for Math 101 next year or, more likely, will drop out? Fine by me. But your arm may very well be the very first one I get to stick an IV into.
All this sounds like a bunch of sour grapes to me.
I always thought the reason people went to college (especially the good ones) was so that they could get professional and financial opportunities that would otherwise not be available to them.
And college degrees don’t have “less value”. More and more jobs require one.
So, when we “follow the money” we end up with politicians keeping their jobs by selling hopes and dreams. Still seems like there’s somebody somewhere saying “damn the people, just get me my money”.
I truly believe there’s nothing anybody can do about it, because, as we have seen, something else always “comes up”. War, oil spill, assassination, Guantanamo, another Bush.
The truly worthwhile causes will never be achieved, because there’s too much money being made, and whenever anyone gets some steam rolling, something else comes up and throws a wrench in the spokes.
But I still think it’s mainly about the money…I see college ads and I think…if you’re such a great college, if what you’re selling me is so worthwhile, then why do you have to advertise so much? You’d think a great product would fly off the shelves on it’s own. We don’t need millions spent on billboard advertising, tv commercials, mass mailings, etc. They are selling a product. Hence…making MONEY. Whether it be the schools themselves or the politicians pushing the laws that make it so damn easy, it’s all a bit too capitalistic for me to ascribe the superior motive of “education” to it.
Yeah, there’s education in there…but it’s like the tiny bit of whole grain in the granola bar that’s covered with sugar. Is it worth it - will it truly benefit you? I say for most people, no it will not. Happiness and contentment is easier achieved through other means. An expensive degree for a high paying job (you may not even get) just doesn’t cut the mustard for me. And I’m NOT apathetic. I work hard…just not for edjamicashun.
When we live in a society that affords an acceptable standard of living to people who get a liberal arts degree, or a history degree, or a major in engineering with a minor in horticulture, maybe I’ll go get one. And I’ll push my nephews and nieces to get a degree. And I’ll start a thread right here saying “College is for Everyone”. And I’ll even offer up my property for a billboard touting the secondary educational institution in the area.
But today, and tomorrow, and probably next year, college is NOT for everyone. It’s just too damned expensive and the chance you’ll land a job to pay off that debt is just too small.
Yeah, that’s what I think. I went to college and it worked out great for me. I don’t know of anyone for whom it was a mistake. Theoretically, yes, but in real life, no.
Ummmm. We do. Are you trying to tell me that most people with liberal arts degrees do not have an acceptable standard of living? I think you would find millions of mid-level office drones who would disagree!
About what I bolded: So you expect every college freshman to know their major the day they arrive on campus? And how can you predict in advance who will or won’t graduate?
There is more money to be made here than many other countries, driven individuals aren’t easily dissuaded from capitalizing on that fact. The many immigrant business owners I know personally just chuckle and shake their heads at this point. No one is stopping native-born Americans from starting or buying their own businesses.