I’m not asking specifically about jobs that do not require college. Or that do. No restrictions. If college for most is the way to increase middle class jobs sure, but that is a possible response, not assumed in the question.
But the second comment here captures a large part of the difficulty. What are going to be the middle class jobs in both the near term and in the not as near term? How do we as a society create them? What education should we have our population have to best be able to create new jobs and new industries as old ones disappear? How confident are we of what they will be? Given some degree of uncertainty in what those future jobs will be what should educational options look like? How much should education attempt to create intellectual generalists able to think both critically and creatively and with an emphasis on communication skills, and how much on specific technical skill sets? At what point should students commit to a path?
Fow now the median income over the past decades has increased by virtue of a broad shift up the educational ladder, but with much family wealth spent and debt accumulated to achieve such. Is shifting more of the population into “college educated” and more of the current “college educated” into advanced degrees the best model to continue with? Is shifting more to learn some industry specific skills early on and encouraging more to avoid the college path the better option or does that go against basic American values?
I am looking for good thoughts mainly because all I have are the questions.
I don’t have a good sense for what jobs are out there and how that has been changing. I posted that NPR link but it’s at a fixed time and shows no trends.
Do we suffer from excess credentialism that makes it hard for people to switch jobs? IIRC Obama mentioned this in a speech last year.
It seems that there are a few skills that are essential.
Lifelong learning - the days when you could operating the same machine on a line for 30 years and not have it change much are gone.
Autodidactic learning - you are going to have to be responsible for picking it up yourself. If you are lucky, someone will train you - but you are going to be responsible for a lot of your own career development.
Critical thinking - if a machine can be programmed to do it - your job is in danger.
Flexibility - you may be asked to do something different next year than you do right now.
Personality - jobs where you don’t need to talk to anyone are done by machine. You will have to communicate. You will have to work with others. You will have to not be a complete jackass.
We should work on teaching those things from an early age. They are skills you pick up in elementary school.
None of it is an educational system. It isn’t trade school or tracking kids into vocational paths early or encouraging kids to go into stem fields on requiring a well rounded education. None of it is a guarantee for a middle class job. But you’ll have more chance of getting a middle class job - and replacing it as the market changes with another middle class job - with those skills.