Stranger_On_A_Train
I was aware of the situation regarding non-industrial welding, but the question remains, how do you gain that initial experience?
“The push to emphasize the notion that everyone needs a “four year college education” started in the ‘Seventies and ramped up into the ‘Eighties until skilled trade work came to be looked down upon despite how utterly dependent our economic success is on such labor. Today, we have millions of people who are collectively carrying $1.6T of college and professional school debt, many of whom have degrees that are of no particular vocational use and are facing occupational obsolescence with the coming automation of intellectual labor.”
Exactly, and Europe has done much the same thing. The UK seems to have been a major offender in this respect, due to a long-standing disdain for the skilled trades and engineering, and in recent decades the proliferation of higher education through the creation of new universities. I am tempted to put “universities” into quotation marks for the newer institutions, as these new institutions were freed of the typcial requirement to do original research. Ergo, they are just degree mills.
Since there are more people in the UK in higher education, the money devoted to education has to be spread thinner. In the past, and at the time that I was at university, we had means-tested grants that (just) covered our living expenses, plus there were no fees. That has changed; now there are student loans, few get grants, and fees have been charged again, with recent increases that make me wonder how anyone could afford to go to university. There is a contradiction between higher education for all and then in effect privatizing it so that only the wealthy can afford it, as was the situation many decades ago.
Add to that the simple and inescapable fact that only a small proportion of the population has the intelligence and academic aptitude to study at university level. Widening the scope of the universities means lowering their academic level. In the past, it was well known in Europe that many US universities offered tuition at little more than high school level, and I suspect that some of the British ones are similar. Plus, they offer courses that the traditional uiniversities would not, such as the much-derided Media Studies, and which have next to no value in the job market.
Unlike much of Europe, an arts degree in the UK does not mean that your are more or less forced into teaching, it was regarded as an indication that you were capable of learning in your new job. But the multiplication of graduates has simply meant that employers raise the bar for the required qualifications and a degree of any kind becomes a requirement for quite mundane jobs. Those with one of the less regarded degrees are no better off than if they had never had a degree at all, and these days they are loaded down with debt.
I read that around 30 of these newer universities are in danger of bankruptcy, and I am very tempted to say that they would be no loss, as they merely perpetuate the problem. They would be better going back to what they often were, vocational colleges that provided useful education for those who needed to catch up. But in the last resort it is a problem that has been created at the government level, and needs to be resolved likewise. The policies in place do not provide the students that the labor market wants, and often it does not benefit the students either. Those that drop out, sometimes after quite a long period of study, are saddled with the debt, a sense of failure, and no qualifications beyond a school leaving certificate. And many drop out because they can no longer afford to study. The recent fee increases will no doubt exacerbate this trend.
But I have my doubts that the present UK government will resolve anything.