In the 18th century, poor British youth accepted indentured servitude, a labor system whereby young people paid for their passage to the prosperity of the New World by working for an employer for a certain number of years. The employer purchased the indenture from sea captains who brought the youths across the sea to the colonies. Both sides were legally obligated to meet the terms, which were enforced by local American courts. Delinquents were captured and returned to their “owners”. About half of the immigrants to the American colonies in the 18th century were indentured.
In the 21st century, poor American youth accepts still accepts indenture for passage to prosperity. Ships and captains have been replaced by colleges and banks. About two thirds of college students incur an average debt of $26,000 and invest four years of their lives in this new voyage. However, unlike their 18th century brothers and sisters who were free after a term and open to virtually unlimited possibilities, today only a few good jobs remain after the factories have closed, unions busted, and the Golden Goose has been plucked fairly clean by the bankers, the hedge funders, Wall Street speculators, leverage buyout kings, and their willing accomplices in our government.
They thought they purchased a one way ticket to prosperity, only to find out it was a round trip. After the cap and gown are gone, all that is left are the same jobs with mediocre wages they sought to flee. They have fulfilled their half of the bargain but those in control of the American economy have not fulfilled theirs. Worse yet, they are bound by law to pay their debts. The “sea captains” will be paid regardless of outcome. There are no refunds, no arbitration, no bankruptcy provision.
And yet there is bankruptcy throughout this scheme, only it lies in the bankruptcy of morality in the American economic system.
…against the Academic-Industrial Complex.
The cheapening of the college degree, by turning it into the new high school diploma, is a national financial tragedy. The dumbest thing Bill Clinton ever said was, “Every child in America should go to college.”
I do not have a degree, although my spouse does (it is irrelevant to his small business though). My children have associate’s degrees earned in their 30’s. We have jobs and own homes without coming from a wealthy background. Young people have been told that our accomplishments are impossible, and that our jobs are beneath them. So they languish in parental basements, hoping for work that is prestigious enough, where they won’t have to ‘work with their hands’. The worst form of classism.
The concurrent inflation in school costs and what is considered ‘necessary’ education is destroying a generation.
The paradigm has been changed drastically since you and I were entering the job market. After high school, I found job in a factory that paid (in today’s dollars) $45K and full benefits. I made enough in one year to pay for my first three years of college. I worked part through school and only had a small loan upon graduation. After college, I walked into a job that has nothing to do with my degree and was making more than my siblings who were lawyers and teachers. It was a sales job and today, that same sales job pays less, adjusted for inflation.
You are half correct in “blaming” the liberal notion that we can educate ourselves into prosperity. Also to blame is the conservative notion that we can work hard and enter prosperity. No matter how hard we work or how many degrees we acquire, the majority of jobs will still be low pay.
Labor policy, trade policy, tax policy is all being written by the .01% for the benefit of the .01%. They are “earning” their wealth via a practice called Rent Seeking.
The dumbest thing any Republican laborer can believe today is that “hard work will pay off”. The historical data simply does support that belief.
Even doctors are earning less, as hospital and insurance CEO’s are raking in multimillion dollar salaries. In 2002, the average GP made $180K and today they make $160K, and yet they are seeing twice as many patients.
I know many Registered Nurses who, at times, are required to work for minimum wage. All the while, the CEO’s of the nursing agencies are earning millions.
Education and an honest work ethic are only two legs of the three legged stool. Without government’s support of labor on a scale at least as even as the one that capital is given.
Sorry, here is a link that works for Rent-Seeking
A nephew (30) did the proscribed route, went to Umass Amherst, 4 year degree, needed a job and went to work for an electrician. Now he’s a journeyman electrician (master in a couple of years) and is doing fine. If he went to trade school he’d be farther ahead of the game.
Trade schools are great opportunities, kids learn how to do not just think about things. If you get a degree in art history or Polynesian literature and then are expecting society to provide you with a job when you’re done, you’re going to be disappointed. You learn to plumb a house you’ll be busy.
We need truck drivers, tree trimmers, subway workers and you won’t have a ton of debt to pay off, start a 401K when you first start working and you’ll be fine. Middle school teachers need to burst a few bubbles and tell the parents of some kids their kid won’t be going on to get a PHD.
Trade schools are part of the solution, but we can’t all be tradesmen. Add to that the Republican plan to extend Social Security to 70 (and more after that) and ask any 60 year old plumber, truck driver, or tree trimmer how their backs, knees, and hips are doing. It still comes down to the new economy that has been engineered by the Republicans and helped along buy a few Democrats.
And for the record, that liberal arts degree is nothing to scoff at if you are part of the .01%. Joe Casssano had a degree in political science. Mitt Romney majored in English. Former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy was an English and journalism major. Peter Thiel, founder of Pay Pay is a 20th century philosophy major at Stanford University. Hank Paulson the former CEO of Goldman Sachs was an English major. And of course, there is yours truly, who majored in History with a minor in Political Science. At one time, I was the president and creative director of an ad agency where I hired people who actually majored in that stuff. At another, I drove a truck with my CDL-B license.
The point is that the degree or the trade has an effective glass ceiling over its earnings and that ceiling is getting lowered each year.
That is what we all need to address.
I think trade schools are underrated, as are community colleges. I think this is a discussion that needs to be backed up by data and needs to recognize that every person is unique. The everyone has to go to college meme is well past it’s prime, and something most millenials would agree with. My fiancee has direct exposure to hospitals and cadavers at her community college nursing program than she had at U Chicago premed. It’s also a supportive community that wants you to succeed rather than a competitive one trying to wash you out.
Another guy we know did two years of welding at the same community college which had a 50/50 cost splitting arrangement with the local union to fund the apprentice program. He will be doing pretty well. To the extent that community college can be free or state school free we should do it, and fund trade schools as well. No reason we can’t invest in that.
I reject this idea though as overly simplistic:
I don’t think there is a single millennial that expected society to provide us with a job, and I strongly resent that as someone who has had to be on unemployment and on and off health care assistance these past few years. Employers know we are completely disposable since another one of us will take our place, worker rights and collective bargaining especially at the entry level are totally eroded, and outsourcing is just as capacious at eating white collar jobs as it is for blue collar ones. Everyone doesn’t have to get a BA, but those that do shouldn’t be forced into dead end no benefits no protection careers either. Humanities and social sciences also offer profound benefits to society, as much as the trades. It’s not an either or dichotomy.
…that it takes many people longer to pay off college debt than many indentured terms were back in the day.
Some states have solid state universities at lower prices than quality-competitive private schools. The Southeast is particularly good about it.
The federal government has three colleges — The United States Military Academy (West Point), The United States Naval Academy (Annapolis), and The United States Air Force Adacemy (Colorado Springs). All tuition, room & board, and fee-free. Post-graduate obligations, of course.
So what if we built more national colleges, with similar price structures, but with a different post-graduate obligation. What if, in order to have attendance cost forgiven, for the next X years you had to use your medical training in a field or part of the country that was desperate for that service? What if you had to use your teaching degree in an especially needy urban or rural public school? What if you had to use your civil engineering degree working for a federal, state, county, or local agency?
The idea is twofold: Firstly, produce more workers in fields where they’re needed, either because there’s a specific need for the skill or because that particular occupation is difficult to staff because of various economic pressures. Secondly, by providing more seats at academic institutions with lower sticker prices, it forces the universities with higher tuitions to try and bring them downward again. This way, even if you go to a state or private school rather than University of USA – Springfield, you get the benefit of lower tuition due to the competition.
These federal colleges/universities don’t have to be 30,000 students each, and they don’t have to have a full offering of academics — they have to have sufficient variety and quality to be accredited, but they need not, for example, offer a degree in English Literature just because they have English 101 and English 201 — 209.
Of course, there’s tremendous opportunity for all sorts of other ways to reduce costs for all students. The kids in Calc I, II, and III will need textbooks. The U of USA system could write those textbooks and publish them under a copyleft/creative commons license, so that other schools could use them for free. That action alone could save all kids $2,000 over four years of college.
Just a thought…
Almost like “compulsory service” (instead of the draft), but without the “compulsary” part.
I think it’s a great idea. Too many men and women join the military because they see no other way to escape grinding poverty. This offers that path.
George Washington bequeathed money to the federal government for creation of a national university if Congress would extend a “fostering hand”. Alas, such a “fostering hand” never materialized, but my alma mater is named after him in honor of that vision.
..a citizen graduating from high school can, after, say, a four year period, earn enough in wages to support him or herself. Yes, this means the people at Walmart and the Mobil Gas Station, the clerks at Staples and the cashiers at Market Basket.
Even if we are all college graduates with 4.0 averages, degrees in engineering, medicine, and law, we still need people at Walmart and the Mobil Gas Station, the clerks at Staples and the cashiers at Market Basket.
Again, we can “educate” ourselves out of this.
To quote Adam Smith’s words from Wealth Of Nations: A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
We can’t educate ourselves out of this.