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Robert Reich: College is a ludicrous waste of money (1 Viewer)

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FlapJacks

Footballguy
The piece is eally mistitled, It should be called a Liberal Arts Degree is a Ludicrous waste of money; and he's right.

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/03/robert_reich_college_is_a_ludicrous_waste_of_money_partner/

This week, millions of young people head to college and universities, aiming for a four-year liberal arts degree. They assume that degree is the only gateway to the American middle class.

It shouldn’t be.

For one thing, a four-year liberal arts degree is hugely expensive. Too many young people graduate laden with debts that take years if not decades to pay off.

And too many of them can’t find good jobs when they graduate, in any event. So they have to settle for jobs that don’t require four years of college. They end up overqualified for the work they do, and underwhelmed by it.

Others drop out of college because they’re either unprepared or unsuited for a four-year liberal arts curriculum. When they leave, they feel like failures.

We need to open other gateways to the middle class.

Consider, for example, technician jobs. They don’t require a four-year degree. But they do require mastery over a domain of technical knowledge, which can usually be obtained in two years.

Technician jobs are growing in importance. As digital equipment replaces the jobs of routine workers and lower-level professionals, technicians are needed to install, monitor, repair, test, and upgrade all the equipment.

Hospital technicians are needed to monitor ever more complex equipment that now fills medical centers; office technicians, to fix the hardware and software responsible for much of the work that used to be done by secretaries and clerks.

Automobile technicians are in demand to repair the software that now powers our cars; manufacturing technicians, to upgrade the numerically controlled machines and 3-D printers that have replaced assembly lines; laboratory technicians, to install and test complex equipment for measuring results; telecommunications technicians, to install, upgrade, and repair the digital systems linking us to one another.

Technology is changing so fast that knowledge about specifics can quickly become obsolete. That’s why so much of what technicians learn is on the job.

But to be an effective on-the-job learner, technicians need basic knowledge of software and engineering, along the domain where the technology is applied – hospitals, offices, automobiles, manufacturing, laboratories, telecommunications, and so forth.

Yet America isn’t educating the technicians we need. As our aspirations increasingly focus on four-year college degrees, we’ve allowed vocational and technical education to be downgraded and denigrated.

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Still, we have a foundation to build on. Community colleges offering two-year degree programs today enroll more than half of all college and university undergraduates. Many students are in full-time jobs, taking courses at night and on weekends. Many are adults.

Community colleges are great bargains. They avoid the fancy amenities four-year liberal arts colleges need in order to lure the children of the middle class.

Even so, community colleges are being systematically starved of funds. On a per-student basis, state legislatures direct most higher-education funding to four-year colleges and universities because that’s what their middle-class constituents want for their kids.

American businesses, for their part, aren’t sufficiently involved in designing community college curricula and hiring their graduates, because their executives are usually the products of four-year liberal arts institutions and don’t know the value of community colleges.

By contrast, Germany provides its students the alternative of a world-class technical education that’s kept the German economy at the forefront of precision manufacturing and applied technology.

The skills taught are based on industry standards, and courses are designed by businesses that need the graduates. So when young Germans get their degrees, jobs are waiting for them.

We shouldn’t replicate the German system in full. It usually requires students and their families to choose a technical track by age 14. “Late bloomers” can’t get back on an academic track.

But we can do far better than we’re doing now. One option: Combine the last year of high school with the first year of community college into a curriculum to train technicians for the new economy.

Affected industries would help design the courses and promise jobs to students who finish successfully. Late bloomers can go on to get their associate degrees and even transfer to four-year liberal arts universities.

This way we’d provide many young people who cannot or don’t want to pursue a four-year degree with the fundamentals they need to succeed, creating another gateway to the middle class.

Too often in modern America, we equate “equal opportunity” with an opportunity to get a four-year liberal arts degree. It should mean an opportunity to learn what’s necessary to get a good job.
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I agree wholeheartedly that more students should seek technical training instead of going to college.

Of course, you can make that case without running down the liberal arts, which are great options for some, but clearly not all, students.

 
I wouldn't say it's absurd. College has become ridiculously overpriced. This isn't to say that college isn't important, or can't add value to your future, as it obviously can.

But it's quickly getting to the point where you have to question whether the costs outweigh the benefits?

College admission prices haven't kept up with median household income. They've exploded and are reaching the point where many families just can't do it. So some kids are getting in major debt just to get the degree.

Kids need to stop being told that they have to go to college if they want to be successful. But colleges aren't going to do it because they want the gravy train to continue.

 
Also, Reich is horribly misinformed about state funding in higher education. He's right that states provide bare-bones funding to community colleges are a relatively more generous (though still stingy by historical standards) when it comes to four-year universities. But that public funding generally doesn't flow to colleges of arts and sciences. It goes to subsidize colleges of business, engineering, pharmacy, medicine, etc. The vocations that Reich presumably approves of. And obviously state legislatures don't generally fund small liberal arts colleges, the overwhelming majority of which are private.

 
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While student loans/grant are a noble idea, they have had a role in driving up the costs, by increasing demand. I believe that there's a creative solution out there for bringing down the cost and making it so that truly smart people have that opportunity. I'm just not sure that it has been proposed....

Getting more people into technical training may be a start, since it will drive down demand and make many more people "shovel ready" for the job market than a Liberal Arts degree.

 
My question - does your average college student really view a liberal arts degree as a surefire gateway to a long and fulfilling career? When I was in school a few years ago, I knew plenty of liberal arts majors, and it sure seemed like every one of them knew they were going to struggle to find a job upon graduation. It was a common joke among friends. Most of them - like most 18-21 year olds - had no idea what they wanted to do when they got older and, lacking the desire to study something that didn't interest them, just picked something they found interesting, like French or Linguistics or English Lit, etc.

The only reason I make this comment is that these articles usually paint the student as having been sold a bill of goods of misleading promises of a lucrative future with their English Lit degree. No one I knew seemed to have that mentality. They all knew it was going to be extremely difficult to build a career off of that degree (and they were right). But they were there because going to college is just what you do...their parents wanted them to go to college, their friends were in college, they underestimated the debt burden upon graduation, and so on.

 
The Economic Price of Colleges’ Failures

Four years ago, the sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa dropped a bomb on American higher education. Their groundbreaking book, “Academically Adrift,” found that many students experience “limited or no learning” in college. Today, they released a follow-up study, tracking the same students for two years after graduation, into the workplace, adult relationships and civic life. The results suggest that recent college graduates who are struggling to start careers are being hamstrung by their lack of learning.

“Academically Adrift” studied a sample of students who enrolled at four-year colleges and universities in 2005. As freshmen, they took a test of critical thinking, analytic reasoning and communications skills called the Collegiate Learning Assessment (C.L.A.). Colleges promise to teach these broad intellectual skills to all students, regardless of major. The students took the C.L.A. again at the end of their senior year. On average, they improved less than half of one standard deviation. For many, the results were much worse. One-third improved by less than a single point on a 100-point scale during four years of college.

This wasn’t because some colleges simply enrolled smarter students. The nature of the collegiate academic experience mattered, too. Students who spent more time studying alone learned more, even after controlling for their sociodemographic background, high school grades and entrance exam scores. So did students whose teachers enforced high academic expectations. People who studied the traditional liberal arts and sciences learned more than business, education and communications majors.

Yet despite working little and learning less — a third of students reported studying less than five hours a week and half were assigned no long papers to write — most continued to receive good grades. Students did what colleges asked of them, and for many, that wasn’t very much.

“Academically Adrift” called into question what college students were actually getting for their increasingly expensive educations. But some critics questioned whether collegiate learning could really be measured by a single test. Critical thinking skills are, moreover, only a means to an end. The end itself is making a successful transition to adulthood: getting a good job, finding a partner, engaging with society. The follow-up study, “Aspiring Adults Adrift,” found that, in fact, the skills measured by the C.L.A. make a significant difference when it comes to finding and keeping that crucial first job.

The students in the study graduated in the teeth of the post-Great Recession labor market, in mid-2009. Two years later, 7 percent were unemployed, consistent with national studies finding that recession-era college graduates were more likely to be unemployed than recent college grads in better economic times, but much less likely to be jobless than young adults with no college degree. An additional 16 percent were underemployed, working less than 20 hours a week or in an unskilled job such as grocery store cashier.

Even after statistically controlling for students’ sociodemographic characteristics, college majors and college selectivity, those who finished school with high C.L.A. scores were significantly less likely to be unemployed than those who had low C.L.A. scores. The difference was even larger when it came to success in the workplace. Low-C.L.A. graduates were twice as likely as high-C.L.A. graduates to lose their jobs between 2010 and 2011, suggesting that employers can tell who got a good college education and who didn’t. Low-C.L.A. graduates were also 50 percent more likely to end up in an unskilled occupation, and were less likely to be satisfied with their jobs.

Remarkably, the students had almost no awareness of this dynamic. When asked during their senior year in 2009, three-quarters reported gaining high levels of critical thinking skills in college, despite strong C.L.A. evidence to the contrary. When asked again two years later, nearly half reported even higher levels of learning in college. This was true across the spectrum of students, including those who had struggled to find and keep good jobs.

Through diplomas, increasingly inflated grades and the drumbeat of college self-promotion, these students had been told they had received a great education. The fact that the typical student spent three times as much time socializing and recreating in college as studying and going to class didn’t change that belief. Nor did unsteady employment outcomes and, for the large majority of those surveyed, continued financial dependence on their parents.

Students who were interviewed in depth by Dr. Arum and Dr. Roksa put great stock in collegiate social experiences that often came at the expense of academic work, emphasizing the value of the personal relationships they built. But only 20 percent found their most recent job through personal contacts, and of those, less than half came from college friends. And while the recent graduates were gloomy about the state of the nation, they professed strong belief in their own future success. The vast majority thought their lives would be better than that of their parents. “They learned from the experts that they can do well with little effort,” Mr. Arum told me, “so they’re optimistic.”

On average, college graduates continue to fare much better in the job market than people without degrees. But Mr. Arum and Ms. Roksa’s latest research suggests that within the large population of college graduates, those who were poorly taught are paying an economic price. Because they didn’t acquire vital critical thinking skills, they’re less likely to get a job and more likely to lose the jobs they get than students who received a good education.

Yet those same students continue to believe they got a great education, even after two years of struggle. This suggests a fundamental failure in the higher education market — while employers can tell the difference between those who learned in college and those who were left academically adrift, the students themselves cannot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/upshot/the-economic-price-of-colleges-failures.html?rref=upshot&abt=0002&abg=0

 
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Surely there is more to life than "go to college in order to get a job"? That's certainly important, but college should also be a highlight of your life, not simply a stepping stone. I was a political science major, which has no bearing whatsoever on my current profession. But I loved the years I was there.

 
timschochet said:
Surely there is more to life than "go to college in order to get a job"? That's certainly important, but college should also be a highlight of your life, not simply a stepping stone. I was a political science major, which has no bearing whatsoever on my current profession. But I loved the years I was there.
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Yeah. If your dad is just going to hire you then go to college and have fun.

 
Slapdash said:
timschochet said:
Surely there is more to life than "go to college in order to get a job"? That's certainly important, but college should also be a highlight of your life, not simply a stepping stone. I was a political science major, which has no bearing whatsoever on my current profession. But I loved the years I was there.
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Yeah. If your dad is just going to hire you then go to college and have fun.
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i was earning lots of money at what I do long before I ever went to work for my dad, sparky. As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.
 
The fact that the typical student spent three times as much time socializing and recreating in college as studying and going to class didn’t change that belief.
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This doesn't mean what the author thinks it does.

 
Slapdash said:
timschochet said:
Surely there is more to life than "go to college in order to get a job"? That's certainly important, but college should also be a highlight of your life, not simply a stepping stone. I was a political science major, which has no bearing whatsoever on my current profession. But I loved the years I was there.
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Yeah. If your dad is just going to hire you then go to college and have fun.
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Seriously. If you don't have a career path to step into choosing a minimally useful degree and paying an exorbitant amount of money to have fun for four years carries some pretty crappy odds. It's certainly feasible for some, but it's not really a great option for most.

 
timschochet said:
Surely there is more to life than "go to college in order to get a job"? That's certainly important, but college should also be a highlight of your life, not simply a stepping stone. I was a political science major, which has no bearing whatsoever on my current profession. But I loved the years I was there.
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True, but how much did college put you in debt then? How much does college put graduates in debt now?
 
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timschochet said:
Surely there is more to life than "go to college in order to get a job"? That's certainly important, but college should also be a highlight of your life, not simply a stepping stone. I was a political science major, which has no bearing whatsoever on my current profession. But I loved the years I was there.
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Exactly. If you're not looking back on those 4 years as some of the best years of your life, then you did something wrong. As a parent, I know that experience is a large part of what I'm going to be paying for.

 
Gary Coal Man said:
timschochet said:
Surely there is more to life than "go to college in order to get a job"? That's certainly important, but college should also be a highlight of your life, not simply a stepping stone. I was a political science major, which has no bearing whatsoever on my current profession. But I loved the years I was there.
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True, but how much did college put you in debt then? How much does college out graduates in debt now?
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I graduated 14 years ago and my cost now for the same education would be 2.5x. It's insanity, and shows no signs of stopping.

 
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.

 
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Slapdash said:
timschochet said:
Surely there is more to life than "go to college in order to get a job"? That's certainly important, but college should also be a highlight of your life, not simply a stepping stone. I was a political science major, which has no bearing whatsoever on my current profession. But I loved the years I was there.
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Yeah. If your dad is just going to hire you then go to college and have fun.
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STING!! You see Timmy some of us common folk actually have to actually have to worry about things like that? Have you ever even had to worry about being poor?

As soon as Carter started pumping guaranteed federal loans to students the price of University went up. This however is not a R vs D problem, both sides are guilty. The Universities have sold Americans a bill of goods convincing us that our children must go to college to get a job.

I think doing away with federal funding would drastically reduce the costs of college. College campus are like Palaces. Way to much money.

 
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
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Correct. Way too many kids in college given the structure of the workforce. And my guess is that this bottom chunk are the ones getting a lot of these useless liberal arts degrees.

But I don't think the students have much of a choice until the paradigm shifts so that companies are more likely to hire without degrees and more effort is made to get them career ready.

I think it's happening, albeit very slowly. Our school used to say they wanted every kid 'college ready'. Now they say 'college or career ready'. Little change, and not really going to change anything without adapting the curriculum, but I think people are starting to get it.

 
timschochet said:
Surely there is more to life than "go to college in order to get a job"? That's certainly important, but college should also be a highlight of your life, not simply a stepping stone. I was a political science major, which has no bearing whatsoever on my current profession. But I loved the years I was there.
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International Affairs - 1992. Technically took a reduction in salary to move from intern to employee. Wahoo! $15K!!! Got healthcare and vaca and all that stuff, but still sux. Not-for-profit is an understatement!

 
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
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I was a bottom third college student. Hell, probably bottom 10th. :shrug:

Besides the first job ir two you get, nobody knows whether you got A's or C's in school

 
IvanKaramazov said:
Also, Reich is horribly misinformed about state funding in higher education. He's right that states provide bare-bones funding to community colleges are a relatively more generous (though still stingy by historical standards) when it comes to four-year universities. But that public funding generally doesn't flow to colleges of arts and sciences. It goes to subsidize colleges of business, engineering, pharmacy, medicine, etc. The vocations that Reich presumably approves of. And obviously state legislatures don't generally fund small liberal arts colleges, the overwhelming majority of which are private.
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I don't understand your criticism. Is it about these paragraphs?

Community colleges are great bargains. They avoid the fancy amenities four-year liberal arts colleges need in order to lure the children of the middle class.

Even so, community colleges are being systematically starved of funds. On a per-student basis, state legislatures direct most higher-education funding to four-year colleges and universities because that’s what their middle-class constituents want for their kids.
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I don't think anything is wrong with what he writes here.

 
The existance of certain degrees is not the problem. It's the number of people choosing them that is. There aren't enough jobs for the number of students choosing liberal arts degrees and too many jobs for the highly technical degrees they aren't choosing. The solution would be for colleges to reduce the number of students allowed to pursue underdemanded degrees, but that would in turn reduce the need for faculty of those degree fields.... and those faculty tend to be in charge of the schools.

 
the moops said:
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
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I was a bottom third college student. Hell, probably bottom 10th. :shrug:

Besides the first job ir two you get, nobody knows whether you got A's or C's in school
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I don't think students gradutating with that kind of academic performance are getting hired today. When did you graduate?

 
Juxtatarot said:
IvanKaramazov said:
Also, Reich is horribly misinformed about state funding in higher education. He's right that states provide bare-bones funding to community colleges are a relatively more generous (though still stingy by historical standards) when it comes to four-year universities. But that public funding generally doesn't flow to colleges of arts and sciences. It goes to subsidize colleges of business, engineering, pharmacy, medicine, etc. The vocations that Reich presumably approves of. And obviously state legislatures don't generally fund small liberal arts colleges, the overwhelming majority of which are private.
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I don't understand your criticism. Is it about these paragraphs?

Community colleges are great bargains. They avoid the fancy amenities four-year liberal arts colleges need in order to lure the children of the middle class.

Even so, community colleges are being systematically starved of funds. On a per-student basis, state legislatures direct most higher-education funding to four-year colleges and universities because that’s what their middle-class constituents want for their kids.
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I don't think anything is wrong with what he writes here.
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That's accurate in a vacuum, but it has nothing to do with liberal arts degrees. A very large number of students who attend four-year universities study things like business, not the liberal arts.

 
the moops said:
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
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I was a bottom third college student. Hell, probably bottom 10th. :shrug:

Besides the first job ir two you get, nobody knows whether you got A's or C's in school
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We still sometimes ask to see college grades from law students and junior lawyers. Although the law school attended, or first job after college, can often suggest how they did in school.

 
chet said:
the moops said:
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
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I was a bottom third college student. Hell, probably bottom 10th. :shrug:

Besides the first job ir two you get, nobody knows whether you got A's or C's in school
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I don't think students gradutating with that kind of academic performance are getting hired today. When did you graduate?
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I graduated in 2005. I don't recall ever being asked for transcripts for my white collar jobs. I haven't been applying to be CFO or anything, but I think for the majority of jobs, its not a factor.

 
chet said:
the moops said:
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
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I was a bottom third college student. Hell, probably bottom 10th. :shrug:

Besides the first job ir two you get, nobody knows whether you got A's or C's in school
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I don't think students gradutating with that kind of academic performance are getting hired today. When did you graduate?
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Won't there always be a bottom third of college students?

 
Sabertooth said:
If I had it to do again, it'd by plumber for me. Just a ton of money in it.
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a guy I know was a plumber and his son wanted to get into the business. He got a nasty call with a septic backup, and he brought his son along. He haves the kid a gloves and boots, then calmly peeled a hundred dollar bill off the ample roll in his pocket, threw it out into the poop water, and said, that's the job.
 
bostonfred said:
Sabertooth said:
If I had it to do again, it'd by plumber for me. Just a ton of money in it.
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a guy I know was a plumber and his son wanted to get into the business. He got a nasty call with a septic backup, and he brought his son along. He haves the kid a gloves and boots, then calmly peeled a hundred dollar bill off the ample roll in his pocket, threw it out into the poop water, and said, that's the job.
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Yep. Then drove home in his $60,000 truck to his McMansion.

 
bigbottom said:
chet said:
the moops said:
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
Click to expand...
I was a bottom third college student. Hell, probably bottom 10th. :shrug:

Besides the first job ir two you get, nobody knows whether you got A's or C's in school
Click to expand...
I don't think students gradutating with that kind of academic performance are getting hired today. When did you graduate?
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Won't there always be a bottom third of college students?
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Not if we give them all A's, which seems to be the direction we are headed.

 
the moops said:
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
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I was a bottom third college student. Hell, probably bottom 10th. :shrug:

Besides the first job ir two you get, nobody knows whether you got A's or C's in school
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I've been out of college for 7 years. Have worked for 2 different pretty respected companies. Neither one looked at my college transcript.

 
I'll look at the video later but just came here to post that colleges and universities are fine places to be if your goal is to learn, read, research, etc. They are not (and should not be, IMO) job-prep centers. Universities should be above that. But with the crazy money out there, of course now they will try to be whatever the customer wants them to be. The money is indeed out of control.

 
The nature of the collegiate academic experience mattered, too. Students who spent more time studying alone learned more, even after controlling for their sociodemographic background, high school grades and entrance exam scores. So did students whose teachers enforced high academic expectations. People who studied the traditional liberal arts and sciences learned more than business, education and communications majors.
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Did everyone slagging the liberal arts in this thread miss this part of the original post?

 
MattFancy said:
the moops said:
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
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I was a bottom third college student. Hell, probably bottom 10th. :shrug:

Besides the first job ir two you get, nobody knows whether you got A's or C's in school
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I've been out of college for 7 years. Have worked for 2 different pretty respected companies. Neither one looked at my college transcript.
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Congrats at using a small sample size. This must mean no jobs look at transcripts!

 
The_Man said:
The nature of the collegiate academic experience mattered, too. Students who spent more time studying alone learned more, even after controlling for their sociodemographic background, high school grades and entrance exam scores. So did students whose teachers enforced high academic expectations. People who studied the traditional liberal arts and sciences learned more than business, education and communications majors.
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Did everyone slagging the liberal arts in this thread miss this part of the original post?
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I think the primary issue being discussed in this thread is the job prospects for liberal arts majors, not the rigor of the curriculum.

 
BobBobby said:
MattFancy said:
the moops said:
chet said:
As I have said many times before, the bottom third of college students are wasting their time and shouldn't be there. There aren't enough white collar jobs in this country and the bottom tier of college students is graduating with no real chance of getting a job commensurate with their qualifications. This leads to frustration which eventually results in rebellions such as Occupy Wall Street.
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I was a bottom third college student. Hell, probably bottom 10th. :shrug:

Besides the first job ir two you get, nobody knows whether you got A's or C's in school
Click to expand...
I've been out of college for 7 years. Have worked for 2 different pretty respected companies. Neither one looked at my college transcript.
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Congrats at using a small sample size. This must mean no jobs look at transcripts!
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I'm not saying they all do. Was just stating, that I haven't run into one that has. The only one I know for sure that does is the Federal Government.

 
As college degree was almost an guarantee of keys to the kingdom in previous generations (not so now) there was a lot of prestige that went with a degree. Parents understandably pushed theirs kids towards it with the good intention of wanting them to have a better life. A side effect of this happening for a long time is that choosing not to pursue college got saddled with the notion of a poor choice, a bad family, limited upside, something’s wrong.

This perception still hangs around, if a family you know had a kid who made great grades in school, took all advanced classes, was bright personable, sharp etc.; and you asked the parents what he was going to do after his last year of High School and the replay was “He’s going to be a mechanic.” A lot of times the response would be somewhere between confusion to outright disdain.

It’s almost a knee jerk response (at least in my experience), and there needs to be no social ‘shame’ for lack of better word, with choosing this path. I like to hope most of us have no issue with having friends from all career types, blue and white collar. It’s somehow different with the young when they are at the age where they are laying down the first steps of entering the work force. But seeing a kid intentionally choose non-desk work is still causes a hiccup socially which we need to get away from. A lot more choices to pass on college would be made otherwise IMO if there wasn’t a family/social pressure to go to college regardless of situation or goals.

 
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