[QUOTE=Martiju]
That’s no bad thing either - but certainly better than an increasingly uneducated and unskilled workforce.
[/QUOTE]
How odd then, that with all these thousands of newly minted graduates around with their wonderfully transferrable skills, employers are complaining about having to teach basic reading and mathematical skills to new hires and graduate earning power is withering. Meanwhile, even in the decade I have been in the labour force, it’s gone from
“management positions are attainable by anyone, but people with degrees are more likely to get them”
to
“degree is a minimum if you want to do anything more than secretarial or call-centre work, forget about management unless you have an MBA”.
I’ve never seen a study anywhere that came up with a higher rate of return for government spending on tertiary education than for primary or secondary education. I’m sure there must be some, since in all honesty I’ve not gone looking for them that hard, but it’s generally a good basic principle to fix the basics before trying to apply the polish.
I agree that college has intangible benefits. I took full advantage of the libraries, research opportunities, chance to hear guest speakers, etc, and, as you say, msmith, I met lots of intelligent, interesting people. What gets me are the students who spend 4 years getting high, do as little as humanly possible, and don’t care what a great opportunity they have. The way I see it, these students are taking up space that could be better offered to someone who actually wanted to learn and better himself. (I doubt they’d do better at vocational schools, but I’m tired of them wasting space here.)
That’s increasingly what is happening, though. Plumbers, electricians and builders can work when they please and command a king’s ransom for doing so. Our workforce is increasingly becoming more and more unskilled due to the increasing number of people attending university and no longer taking up apprenticeships in trades.
[QUOTE=msmith537]
Maybe people should get the idea of the millionare pumber out of their head. The average salary for a plumber is about $50,000. So forget those dreams of graduating from voca school and driving around fixing sinks in your Mercedes Benz. To make the big money you need to have your own contracting business and have a bunch of plumbers working for you. So in other words, it’s just like any other business.
[/QUOTE]
I understand this. But you don’t neccessarily need to go to college to get the skills to expand a business. I know a few successful contractors who only have a trade-school education.
I’ll say something else too. $50,000 isn’t a bad living. You can absolutely live on that kind of money if you don’t spend the money on bullshit. I don’t need a house in the suburbs or a brand new car.
[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
College is no nothing more than a way to buy a better paying job because a long time ago a bunch of people decided to bar entrance to the club unless you gave up a minimum of 4 years of your life and 6 years of real earning power to waste time sitting with your thumb up your butt in classes that will never, ever benefit you in any way, shape or form.
I’d say give me a real job anytime except that college grads, all of them smarter and more sophisticated than I :rolleyes: , can reasonably expect to make many times more than I will without a degree. So I have to waste my time and labor through abject unhappiness and terminal ennui so that I can hopefully sometime in the future get a job that will allow me to raise my son in something other than poverty.
[/QUOTE]
This is true, but also misleading.
There are several types of college degrees that are extremely valuable – business, engineering, law and medicine (assuming you go on to the advanced degrees) and a couple others. There are also plenty of other degrees that are not. The few degrees that are valuable skew the averages and hide the fact that the likely income for people with degrees in liberal arts, education, social sciences, etc. is not much different from that of HS graduates.* When you factor in the ever-rising cost of tuition, and the loss of a four-year start on a career, there is a very strong argument to be made that …
Let’s put it this way. Back when I taught freshman at Major State U, required reading for my class was an essay entitled “College is for Suckers.” I didn’t agree with the author’s thesis, but only because I saw education as a humanistic enterprise. In cold, hard economic terms, I think he was spot-on.
FU Shakes – you are 100% right, and your brother is 1000% right.
*Sorry, no cites handy, but I’ve seen similar numbers from several different sources for the claim.
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
And, you know, I have a masters’ degree and a professional job and I’d love, and I mean LOVE, to make $50,000.
[/QUOTE]
Me three. I’d love to make plumber money. (Or unionized auto-worker money for that matter…)