12-10-2017, 09:00 PM
Personal comments:
1. For someone doing an entry-level job with little experience, someone with a four-year college degree is almost certainly more desirable than an eighteen-year-old with nothing more than a high-school diploma but no vocational specialization. One can assume that the college grad is more mature. College grads may be more cautious, and more likely to believe in their potential for failure. They are likely less willing to believe that they can get away with something questionable, like cutting out of work early or filching cash from a till.
If I were hiring someone to run a cash register I would prefer to hire someone with four years doing the job to someone with no such experience but a college degree, both aged 22. But a college-degreed applicant or someone fresh out of high school? The 18-year-old kid might be paying more attention to dates on Friday night than to the company's need for clerks to work one of the busiest nights of the week. The college grad may think the work far below his talents, but at least he knows that he needs to make some sacrifices if he is to get another job elsewhere.
2. Literature and the arts allow someone even with a job that he utterly hates to have a focus off the job. To be sure, the same can be said of the youth who took shop classes and has a hobby with carpentry that he can do when not doing some job that he hates. Few people must work 70-hour workweeks anymore, and due to technological advances, fewer people will have the opportunity to do 40 hours or more of paid toil. Leisure will be increasingly important as personal identity for anyone who does not have an intellectually-demanding profession or work at some craft for pay.
The idea that college can make a refined adult out of a callow youth is not reliable -- but where else can one learn the fine art of using leisure to enrich personal life? Leisure of course has its o0wn market, and it is much of the consumption that we now enjoy. As barest necessities become relatively less costly, leisure spending could be the difference between a boom and a bust.
3. Brilliance, persistence, an ability to put up with boredom, diligence, and the ability to find vital but hard-to-find information are desirable traits. Having these traits is easy to prove with someone who has a graduate degree. Finding them in an employee without more than a high-school diploma is possible but rare. It's not that such precious people do not exist; they are simply difficult to find if one has them and has no obvious means for finding them.
4. Formal post-secondary education has value for more than the person who gets it. It is best that someone know how to write a coherent report, have the ability to recognize logical fallacies, know something about human behavior, and recognize that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Freshman composition is a reliable subject in the freshman year; psychology. philosophy, and economics are obvious survey courses for college students. (If I were a college dean I would make them mandatory.)
It would be best that youths spend a couple years in post-secondary education just to take some courses that offer vital knowledge not usually taught in high school. We need K-14 education just to make people less likely to vote for demagogues, whether Donald Trump or someone equally damaging and destructive on the Left. One Donald Trump is one demagogue too many, and an American equivalent of Hugo Chavez will do similar harm, if with a different political flavoring. Demagoguery in the name of economic growth does not lead to sustainable growth, and demagoguery in the name of social justice rarely results in social justice.
5. The credential treadmill is excessively costly. It partly reflects the low, rigid glass ceilings that have emerged in bureaucratic organizations. Corporate hierarchies have tendencies to insist upon college degrees even for rather menial tasks, as at call centers. This may reflect the increasing concentration of industry and shrinking opportunities.
6. It is worth noting that although college graduates tend not to start businesses (if they have student loans, they will latch onto clerical work with pretensions of professional qualities rather than risk starting any new business other than perhaps a medical practice), people with vocational training can do so. Small businesses other than professional practices have potential for growth in employment as Big Business does not have; government agencies are always under the threat of budgetary cutbacks. I am tempted to believe that K-14 education and vocational training may be the best of both worlds for millions who neither attend college or who are not up to college-level work.
1. For someone doing an entry-level job with little experience, someone with a four-year college degree is almost certainly more desirable than an eighteen-year-old with nothing more than a high-school diploma but no vocational specialization. One can assume that the college grad is more mature. College grads may be more cautious, and more likely to believe in their potential for failure. They are likely less willing to believe that they can get away with something questionable, like cutting out of work early or filching cash from a till.
If I were hiring someone to run a cash register I would prefer to hire someone with four years doing the job to someone with no such experience but a college degree, both aged 22. But a college-degreed applicant or someone fresh out of high school? The 18-year-old kid might be paying more attention to dates on Friday night than to the company's need for clerks to work one of the busiest nights of the week. The college grad may think the work far below his talents, but at least he knows that he needs to make some sacrifices if he is to get another job elsewhere.
2. Literature and the arts allow someone even with a job that he utterly hates to have a focus off the job. To be sure, the same can be said of the youth who took shop classes and has a hobby with carpentry that he can do when not doing some job that he hates. Few people must work 70-hour workweeks anymore, and due to technological advances, fewer people will have the opportunity to do 40 hours or more of paid toil. Leisure will be increasingly important as personal identity for anyone who does not have an intellectually-demanding profession or work at some craft for pay.
The idea that college can make a refined adult out of a callow youth is not reliable -- but where else can one learn the fine art of using leisure to enrich personal life? Leisure of course has its o0wn market, and it is much of the consumption that we now enjoy. As barest necessities become relatively less costly, leisure spending could be the difference between a boom and a bust.
3. Brilliance, persistence, an ability to put up with boredom, diligence, and the ability to find vital but hard-to-find information are desirable traits. Having these traits is easy to prove with someone who has a graduate degree. Finding them in an employee without more than a high-school diploma is possible but rare. It's not that such precious people do not exist; they are simply difficult to find if one has them and has no obvious means for finding them.
4. Formal post-secondary education has value for more than the person who gets it. It is best that someone know how to write a coherent report, have the ability to recognize logical fallacies, know something about human behavior, and recognize that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Freshman composition is a reliable subject in the freshman year; psychology. philosophy, and economics are obvious survey courses for college students. (If I were a college dean I would make them mandatory.)
It would be best that youths spend a couple years in post-secondary education just to take some courses that offer vital knowledge not usually taught in high school. We need K-14 education just to make people less likely to vote for demagogues, whether Donald Trump or someone equally damaging and destructive on the Left. One Donald Trump is one demagogue too many, and an American equivalent of Hugo Chavez will do similar harm, if with a different political flavoring. Demagoguery in the name of economic growth does not lead to sustainable growth, and demagoguery in the name of social justice rarely results in social justice.
5. The credential treadmill is excessively costly. It partly reflects the low, rigid glass ceilings that have emerged in bureaucratic organizations. Corporate hierarchies have tendencies to insist upon college degrees even for rather menial tasks, as at call centers. This may reflect the increasing concentration of industry and shrinking opportunities.
6. It is worth noting that although college graduates tend not to start businesses (if they have student loans, they will latch onto clerical work with pretensions of professional qualities rather than risk starting any new business other than perhaps a medical practice), people with vocational training can do so. Small businesses other than professional practices have potential for growth in employment as Big Business does not have; government agencies are always under the threat of budgetary cutbacks. I am tempted to believe that K-14 education and vocational training may be the best of both worlds for millions who neither attend college or who are not up to college-level work.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.