Overall, whites with a four-year college degree or more education made up 30% of all validated voters. Among these voters, far more (55%) said they voted for Clinton than for Trump (38%). Among the much larger group of white voters who had not completed college (44% of all voters), Trump won by more than two-to-one (64% to 28%)..
Roughly 35% of Americans have a BA or higher. Prior to the pandemic, unemployment in the USA was under 4%, what economists view as virtually full employment, meaning that the majority of jobs in the USA do not require a college degree.
Democrats see that they got 57% of the college graduate vote in 2016. Is their hope that more college degrees will result in more votes for Democrats? Is it their hope that the sheepskin on the wall has more influence on voters than the balance in their bank accounts?
Other Democrats are pushing to forgive the college loans. Again, how does this get more votes? Sure, maybe that 57% number will go to 60%, but how does this win the votes of the majority of voters who did not go to college and do not have college loans? Democrats lost this demographic by a wide margin. How is giving them nothing an incentive to win their vote?
On Biden’s own campaign website, it reads: 12 years of education is no longer enough for American workers to remain competitive and earn a middle class income. Is the leader of the Democratic Party and our nominee for President of the USA really admitting that a majority of Americans do not deserve middle class wages and are not due the justice of a middle class lifestyle, even though they are working full time in many occupations that our recent pandemic have deemed “Essential”? Has the world passed them by and is their only hope the possibility of a college degree. Is the Democratic Party really willing to dismiss the majority of voters who either do not have a college degree or are employed at essential jobs that do not require a college degree and are deemed not worthy of a middle class life?
This is the very liberal elitism that drives so many away from the Democratic Party and into the arms of men like Trump.
As I am reading in The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel, credentialism is the last acceptable prejudice. Call them people who “cling to God and Guns” or a “Basket of Deplorables”, will not win their votes. Offering them free college will not win their votes. Respecting their contribution to society, fighting for wage justice, and insuring that yes, a high school diploma and a solid work ethic is all one needs to live a middle class life in the USA is how to win their votes, and the White House, and the Senate, and all the rest.
As a footnote: If worker pay had kept pace with productivity gains since 1968, today’s minimum wage would be $24 an hour. In this world, a minimum wage worker in the USA would be making $48,000 a year. A young couple in Wisconsin or South Carolina would have a family income of $96,000 a year, more than enough to support themselves and put money aside if they chose to have a family and have one of them work part time while the children were not yet in school. This is not some fantasy. This is not socialism or communism….this was the USA of the 1960’s and early 1970’s.
You cite numbers about those with 4-year-college degrees, and I think you’d be right if that was the only issue.
“Free College” is a bad name because it is really tuition and debt free PUBLIC college, community college, tribal college, trade school, and other post-secondary education. Adding in those who have attended or plan to attend those schools expands the potential population quite a bit. And yes, those folks also have student loans, loads of them, but often without higher salaries that make the debt load manageable. The messaging should be that in this “great” country, we invest in public education at all levels and it is therefore free to anyone who wants the opportunity.
Yes, credentialism is very bad, and corporations love to use it as it can help them keep up the idea of the fake “skills gap” while not increasing wages and not providing their own worker training.
“Free College” isn’t going to do much alone, but the full, more inclusive idea coupled with debt forgiveness, union rebuilding, and, of course, things like Medicare for All could not only rebuild but greatly expand the middle class of the midcentury that you describe.
Sure it’s not the only issue but it is an issue that Democrats push very hard. Bernie Sanders was keen in it. Elizabeth Warren recently proposed to cancel debt for 95% of Americans with college loans.
While I support both of these, I continue to ask what these same political leaders are offering to those without a need for college and without college loan debt?
Sadly, many politicians, including Joe Biden, use this as well.
I have a lifetime of anecdotes that have driven me to this point. I do have a college degree but I have never, ever used any of of it where I was employed.
There was only one time that it made a difference and that difference was pure credentialism. I was employed as a sales/delivery driver for a major food company. There was an opening for a supervisor position that I applied for and I was offered the promotion. I had been on the job for less than a year. Virtually all of the training I had that made a significant impact on my job performance was by way of a co-worker who had been on the job for many years. I asked him why he did not apply for the position and his answer was simple. A four year degree was a requirement. How my BA in History over twenty years ago trumped his many years of experience on the job, superior sales numbers, and clearly evident teamwork skills was a mystery to me.
On the other hand, when I was in my early 20’s and fresh out of college, I got a job selling Toyotas. I made a significant wage, more than one friend of mine who had a masters in education and more than another with a law degree. One evening, while we were all sitting in my new house (while they were still renting and could not afford a house), they both remarked how unfair it was that they were not making more than I was considering their credentials.
I think they’ve been clear about that. It includes Medicare for All, much higher minimum wage, a jobs guarantee (or open to UBI), the Green New Deal (which is also a massive jobs program), expanded social security benefits, more support for unions, paid leave, etc.
Basically all of the things that can allow for everyone to have comfortable secure lives without being tied to bad jobs.
Biden did NOT say others don’t deserve a living wage. PLEASE stop trolling on this issue! He merely stated an economic fact that more and more employers look for college degrees, which usually leads to more income. This is very much a middle class issue and people feel financially held back by college loans.
Biden’s own website specifically states that a high school diploma is not worthy of a middle class income. I said nothing about a “living wage”
This is not an “economic fact”, it is an economic outcome that is the direct result of economic policy implemented by our government.
Here’s what Joe Biden’s website (https://joebiden.com/beyondhs/) actually says:
Joe Biden said:
“In today’s increasingly globalized and technology-driven economy, 12 years of education is no longer enough for American workers to remain competitive and earn a middle class income.”
You twisted that into this:
“a high school diploma is not worthy of a middle class income”
That’s just a lie, John.
This is just another troll that frankly is more suited for Rush Limbaugh.
I really wish you would stop this relentless nonsense about Democrats and college.
Sorry Tom, I’m not taking the bait.
Great, I’m glad.
The best thing you might do is take down the post — as its author, you’re allowed to do that.
John, I just don’t get what principle you are using here. What is so magical about a 12th grade education? Why are we veering into dangerous territory if we make education above the 12th grade free?
Couldn’t you just as well argue that we should stop making education free at the 8th grade level, and concentrate on appreciating and compensating people with an 8th grade education. Meanwhile those elitists who went to high school could just pay off their high school loans and stop whining.
I don’t see any point where education stops being a public good and turns into a privilege.
You underplay (to the point of disregarding) the possibility that the purpose of Biden’s position on free college is not to score political points, but is instead rooted in a normative political philosophy that asserts the following:
In order to have a just society, whatever education is necessary to provide equality of opportunity, should be precisely the education that must be public and free to all.
It is the very philosophy that formed the basis for the establishment of “normal schools” in the 19th century, which led to the subsequent establishment of free and universal public education.
Maybe that is the reason for the position, full stop.
I wish he had such a normative political philosophy on health care!
Had this diary and others like it been about health care, I would not have labeled it as trolling.
The point remains that this diary is yet another false and baseless attack on the Democratic Party and Joe Biden. John’s misquote of Joe Biden’s website is a particularly egregious lie.
The Information Age has been around for 25 years now and it’s not going away. It’s going to require a higher percentage of Gen Z to be college educated so that we have a broad-based economy. Even if there was no political gain to be had from it, it would still be the smart thing to do. And tuition-free public college inordinately helps those of lower means and those who are the first generation in their family to go to college. Those with means can still spend on the dream factory experience of sending a kid to private college. This equalizes opportunity.
And paying off college debt is just smart economic stimulus. We’ve got tens of millions of educated and largely employed people who are punching way below their weight economically because they’re saddled with debt into their 40s. Unleash them as an economic engine and you’d actually get money moving the around in the places where we live rather than all funneling toward investment. All those purchases they’ve forgone and delayed suddenly start getting made. It would remove a major bottleneck on the demand side.
Also, college gets the middle class invested in the larger social project. You want a higher minimum wage, healthcare and childcare? Well, higher education is part of the mix too, and it’s the one the middle class can most identify with being a tangible good.
And, just to add some hard numbers, roughly 2/3 of Millennials have gone to some form of college with that trend continuing into Gen Z – https://educationdata.org/high-school-graduates-who-go-to-college/. This is where our world has already headed, and it’s time our public policy caught up to it.
To say that “this is where we are headed” implies that natural forces, like the sun and gravity are the cause. Economic policy is man-made. It is also false that the “information age” is only threatening those without a college degree. Automation is cutting jobs across the spectrum. Your answer still ignores the reality that most occupations do not honestly require a college degree. Employers may require one, but only to weed out certain demographics. IN addition, your political solution offers nothing to the majority of Americans who do not have and may not want a college degree.
Finally, your assertion that “college gets the middle class invested in the larger social project.” is not supported by the data.
The natural force, “like the sun and gravity“, is called “supply and demand”. Your complaints are precisely the same as though who claim that the Earth is flat, that everything else revolves around the earth, and that heavy objects fall faster than light ones.
Nobody claims that “the ‘information age’ is only threatening those without a college degree.” (that’s another strawman of yours). The claim is, instead, that those without a college degree fare FAR worse than those who have one. The exploding wealth concentration of our economy threatens all of us. It threatens those without higher education FAR FAR more than the rest.
None of the right-wing Rush Limbaugh talking points you’re repeating here (yet again) are supported by the data.
Supply and demand are manipulated by humans. Follow the money to see who is pulling the strings. In addition, familiarize yourself with the concept of inelastic demand.
Sorry, I am not going to let you have it both ways.
Nope, not taking the bait…and think I was more like Jay Severin than Rush. Please update your file on me.
“Not taking the bait”?
This entire diary and its threads is a troll.
Economic policy is man-made, and it’s managed to be oblivious to the stampede toward college. None of my aunts and uncles went to college, but they all sent their kids to college. To quote the Jam, “this is the modern world.”
I think it’s time our policy equipped kids to make sound financial decisions for themselves. How many of those students will end up indebted in dead end careers? I was until I ended up in teaching, and had I listened to Joel Patterson and other teachers who told me to consider it in undergrad, I could have avoided the seven years wasted working in law firms and applying to lots of grad programs that were not a good fit for me.
I do push back against the notion that college is overvalued or unnecessary for success, which the thread starter sometimes beers into. I also push back against his antagonists who think people who do not acquire college degrees are not smart or do not deserve to be successful or cannot be successful doing something else.
The mindset has to be help the kids identify the careers they want and help them figure out the most affordable level of education they need to achieve those realistic goals. We have to kill the myth of college being the “only” ladder to the middle class (it isn’t even that much of a ladder anymore) or the “only” way to see the world and become global citizens. It’s a slip of paper that allows the holder to access many white collar professions. Equally good paying jobs can be had with other slips of paper, some of which are cheaper and take less time.
We are going to have a welder, construction worker, electrician, and plumber shortage. Plenty of Silicon Valley companies including Google are developing in house coding academics and IT academies. These will bypass colleges and be a lot more affordable and lead to good paying jobs.
I’m an all of the above kind of got, not an either/or person as John and Tom always are in this endless argument.
And no matter what side of the debate you are on, I’m a proud centrist on this one, vocational Ed for kids who want it, college for kids for want that instead. No one size fits all for me. No matter what side though, everyone should listen to Scott Galloway and his podcasts on higher ed. It’s going to be the next bubble to burst and we need a government plan to bailout out the kids Before the institutions that knowingly defrauded them. .
I invite you offer an example where I or anyone else here at BMG has implied that “people who do not acquire college degrees are not smart or do not deserve to be successful or cannot be successful doing something else”.
It is a plain and well-documented fact that those who do not have higher education have significantly lower lifetime earning capability. That is an objective statement about our economic system and says absolutely nothing about any of those people.
Nobody says that college is the “only” ladder. Some of us say, instead, that those with college have a much easier time. Those are two different statements. Similarly, I’ve never said that college is some kind of guarantee. Buying a lottery ticket allows you to play. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll win.
For many years. well-meaning voices from all over the political spectrum described professional basketball as a path for black boys (never girls, sadly) to “escape the ghetto” and live a life of prosperity. The media is chock-full of celebrity endorsements of famous black basketball players endorsing products, flaunting their hip and cool lifestyle, and occasionally mixing in “public service announcements”. Generations of inner-city black teenagers took the bait and spent their teens ignoring academics and focusing on their basketball skills. What nobody told those kids is that the odds of any given wanna-be ball player actually making it into a successful professional basketball career are staggeringly small. That is an example of a dishonest pitch that betrays young people and that has harmed generations of black families.
Nothing that the Democrats do is similar to that dishonest pitch.
Young men and women — especially young black men and women — who enter our society without higher education have a SIGNIFICANTLY lower likelihood of achieving material success or comfort than their counterparts who do have that higher education.
It is a dangerous, racist, and sexist lie to pretend that that isn’t true (the lie is sexist because the gap is even larger for black women with and without higher education). Even worse is to twist our party’s long-standing commitment to making higher education more accessible to minorities into an attack on them.
I am in an “endless argument” with John because he, and apparently now you, relentlessly misrepresents what I’ve said. I wish that he and you would stop misrepresenting my comments on this issue.
I
If only the world was limited to BMG. From BIden’s campaign website
In today’s increasingly globalized and technology-driven economy, 12 years of education is no longer enough for American workers to remain competitive and earn a middle class income.
Our Democratic Nominee for President tells us that a middle class income is only possible when one has more than a high school diploma.
Irrelevant, unresponsive, and mischaracterized to boot.
Here are the three things the Joe Biden quote does not say:
You’ve again misquoted the website.
I didn’t mean to put words in either of your mouths. I agree with Tom
and others that we can afford to make public college free for those who want it and should do so. I agree with John they we can also do a much better job helping kids who do not want to go to college find access to meaningful and dignified living wage occupations. We can do both. I think you both feel it’s an either/or argument and I simply disagree.
I think you overestimate how valuable college is Tom, John underestimates it. I think neither of you are talking about code academies and other disruptions there are going to totally change higher education and career training for the better. I think everyone should listen to Scott Galloways proposals on how to fix college. Let the small privates die, steer the federal money toward expanding state school admissions and scholarships.
It feels to me like you’re pushing me into a corner to satisfy your desire for “balance”.
I invite you to search my many comments here and offer any that support your contention that I don’t enthusiastically agree that we can “do a much better job helping kids who do not want to go to college find access to meaningful and dignified living wage occupations.”
John has staked out an extreme position, and he relentlessly mischaracterizes my commentary as well as the long-standing position of the Democratic Party.
I’m as weary of these relentless lies about me and my commentary as you. I’d like the lies about me and my commentary to stop. I’d like the lies about Joe Biden and his positions to stop. I’d like the lies about the Democratic Party and its positions to stop.
I don’t particularly care about your debate with John. I think you both talk past each other on this and many other subjects. I care about the kids in front of me, and I refuse to lie to them and say that college is a panacea or an investment that pays for itself. It is not either of those things. Some colleges have lousy track records of placing kids in good jobs or being institutions where kids of color and poor kids even graduate at the same rates. Kids should know what they are getting into and too many of them don’t know how many viable alternatives to college there are. Too many eschew perfectly good state schools for overpriced mediocre private schools that do not offer as many opportunities. Everyone forgets about community
Colleges which also provide a ton of technical training.
I don’t think Democrats talk about this stuff enough, but they should. I think many economists criticized the Sanders and Warren plans as huge giveaways to the upper middle class. The free college debate obscured a lot of other areas where we can make big gains now. Klobuchar and Yang had the best higher ed reforms, Tax endowments and use the savings to fund aid to community schools.
Bernie and Warren would have just bailed out the bad actors in the academy who inflated these prices to begin with. A public option for public college perhaps, a one time debt forgiveness for sure, but there’s no need to continue Pell or subsidize bloated administrations. Take all the money wasted on rent seeking private colleges and expand the enrollment and scholarships at public ones. Make community college free. Subsidize vocational institutions with good outcomes like Peterson and Ben Franklin.
I’ve enthusiastically agreed with you each you’ve said that. NOBODY is suggesting that you SHOULD lie to them like this. NOBODY!
I’ve also enthusiastically agree with you about this each time you’ve mentioned it.
Of the three of us — John, you and me — only one relentlessly repeats the same distortions and lies about college and about what Democrats like you and me say about making it more accessible.
When John says things I agree with, I upvote them and add positive comments. I read each of his contributions.
I’m frustrated that when I take positions that are the same as yours, you nevertheless dismiss my comments because John so flagrantly distorts what you, the Democratic Party, and I say and write.
NO DEMOCRAT has ever said that working class people don’t “deserve” a living wage or anything else. That’s a favorite phrase of John’s.
John is staking out an extreme position. That’s his choice, but I wish you would be more willing to characterize that choice as his own.
Trade training should be (and often is) something you can get at a community college. Would love to see more kids have a path into being an electrician that doesn’t involve your dad knowing someone.
That’s basically my point. I think Democrats can and should be more visible for the people who don’t go to college as much as they are becoming a party of the people that do. That’s it. I don’t really go as far as John in attacking expanding college funding, I will say Klobuchar and Yang had good points that “free college for all” is an upper middle class entitlement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/free-tuition-is-the-opposite-of-progressive-policymaking/2019/05/03/4767edc8-6c1b-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html
David Leonhardt has a good link to this debate yesterday summarizing the David Autor study. He is an MIT based economist and expert in automation and upward mobility. The short takeaway is shoring up community colleges and targeting students of color and low income students for the free tuition is a more cost effective approach than subsidizing all college tuition which would be an upper middle class entitlement.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/briefing/presidential-debate-california-wildfires-tampa-bay-lightning-your-tuesday-briefing.html
The question I ask is “how can we make sure every high school graduate gets a living wage job?”. I think we can answer that Johns way by pushing for living wages in policy, federal job guarantees, basic income or family income assistance, and an expanded labor movement. AND answer it Toms way by pushing for easier and more affordable access to college. Both/and. I know you favor those other policies Tom, but often this debate gets mired in the question “does college help high school graduates access middle class jobs” rather than the question I ask. I think on average it does, but it also isn’t appropriate for every kid and leaves a lot of kids who fail to graduate without a degree AND saddled with debt that’s now harder to repay on a McJob salary. So we need to do a lot at once. I think we do ourselves a disservice by endlessly focusing on college instead of focusing on expanding the pool of qualified applicants for existing living wage professions.
I agree with everything here, and I’ll add one more important addition in a different comment.
I appreciate the hat-tip. Perhaps you might take another look at the passive voice you used after the “but…” — I think that language obscures what I’ve been attempting to express here for some time.
The debate doesn’t somehow passively “get mired in” anything. The reason that the question you ask is so often obscured is that John so often posts comments that attack the policy of making college more available, then relentlessly attacks any and every person and/or candidate who supports that policy . Whether or not it is intentional, there are two key outcomes from this:
NOBODY ever said that people without college degrees do not “deserve” a middle-class lifestyle, yet that lie has been repeated over and over — at least twice on this thread.
That relentless and relentlessly distorted bashing is why we so often get mired in this useless debate.
I disagree that lies like this should be ignored, at least from those who claim to speak in support of working-class men and women.
I think it’s equally important that we ask something like the following:
“How can we make sure that every American gets a fair share of America’s wealth regardless of their employment status?”
America generates more wealth than any society in human history. I think we do ourselves a disservice by forcing tens of millions of Americans into a lifetime of wage slavery.
We might want to start at the ground level and insure that even lowly “high school grads” working at “essential jobs” get fair and just compensation instead of telling them that the only path we know of is by way of a college degree.
Grinding the same axe again.
In the 2016 election, college graduates backed Clinton by a 9-point margin (52%-43%), while those without a college degree backed Trump 52%-44%.
When the Democratic Party no longer loses the majority of non-college voters, I will stop grinding that axe.
This is a little misleading. It’s whites with non college which is a different demographic than overall non college. I think the number who won’t vote for Democrats is related more to social and racial issues than college attainment policies.
I’m starting to think “college educated” is actually a proxy for one’s background and natural cultural attitudes. It’s not that a college education enlightens you, but rather that those who already have more enlightened cultural attitudes are more inclined to attend college.
This is LOT misleading. It is also not the first time that John has used “working class voters” synonymously with “white male working class voters”.
Talking past each other again. You’re both 100% aligned on the wealth sharing. I do think there’s a neoliberal credentialism begins the meritocracy myth that is a bubble that has to be burst. I think it can be done without attacking expanding higher ed options for poor kids.
Good, because exactly nobody is saying that!
A few thoughts:
Uprated since I respect your positions and agree with some, but not with all of them.
My push on #1 is that so many entitlements around college already benefit the upper middle class more than anyone else. I’ve also noticed more and more upper middle class kids go to state schools because admissions have become thet much more competitive and they want to take advantage of the Commonwealth scholarships and lower tuition costs. Pell, which subsidizes well endowed schools with free government money, and the generous tax break for college savings funds President Obama could not repeal. I think making community college free is the best start as an upward mobility engine, followed by the state schools (Bridgewater, Salem, or Fresno) and then make the top tier flagships part of a national university system funded by the federal government. This would be modeled after the French and German system and end the reliance of these institutions on essentially private sports or dwindling state funding. Ending the in state preferences is a trade off to expanding the number of seats and increasing the acceptance rate. We do not need UMASS competing with BC or Wisconsin for selectivity, we need UMASS and Wisconsin pooling their resources to attract the most high need/high talent students.
My push on #2 is John engages in that either/or framing not merely. But he does so since so many guidance counselors and principals and school administrators frame it the other way. So did President Obama. The reality is there are more openings than qualified kids in the trades right now, precisely because kids are not being steered towards these jobs and because of the stigma against them. I think we have to affirmatively push back against that and actually prioritize the trades equally. My principal has started to do that and invited some great unions to the college and career fair to recruit some kids. A few of my seniors last year got on the union and are making living wages at 18 well before I did with a BA. They will hit a ceiling, again possibly a higher ceiling than I will with a masters and a cags, but a ceiling compared to a doctor or lawyer. But high enough to support a family. They should be our goal, getting every child to be able to raise their own without poverty wages.
#3 This has been the promise of Clinton and Obama that John pushes back against. Even Tom agreed with me and Andrew Yang that automation will come after the white collar jobs too. In some cases, these trade jobs as David Autor points out are safer from automation than some of the white collar work. So we should focus on the top 20-40 jobs that won’t be automated and steer kids towards them. Not all of them require college, but we should fully fund college for the kids who want to do the ones they do. And fully fund the alternative and treat them both the same. Not to mention most tech firms are busy creating in house training programs they will educate their workforce in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost. A Launch Academy certification is worth more to Kendall Square than a liberal arts BA from Hampshire, which is going under since its educational model was totally divorced from the modern workforce reality.
On this top ten list 7/10 require a degree. We should stop lying and say it’s 10/10. The 3/10 that don’t require a degree are also better jobs higher at risk for automation jobs that do. That’s the new framework. I think it’s very different from the existing system that is designed to maximize college acceptance rather than college completion or good job acquisition.
We should start with good job acquisition and work our way backwards to cater the level of education to the students path on how to get them.
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/10-jobs-that-are-safe-from-the-robots-4586404
.
Also colleges that don’t meet a certain graduation requirement or minimum salary requirement should lose federal aid. The sole focus of our higher ed policy should be on helping first gen and working class kids get a good job. Whether it’s via a traditional four year college or an alternative pathway, the means don’t matter as much as that end. I think we made college the end for far too long without recognizing the free ride subpar places like Newberry and Hampshire were getting off the tax payer while providing inferior workforce benefits to their students than advertised.
I appreciate your thoughts. Where I split, and it’s a fairly hard split, is tying education to job acquisition. It’s too mechanized a mindset for what’s going to be an increasingly DIY world. Humans aren’t great cogs to begin with and over-specialization creates inflexibility. You need to be prepared for a weird career. My sister graduated with a music degree and has worked as a political campaign coordinator assistant chef, nonprofit administrator and is now an RN on her way to becoming a nurse practitioner.
Getting a choice job out of school frankly isn’t that important. It’s 10, 20, 30 years down the road where that base education pays off. Almost none of my close friends I graduated with (from BU) had a serious job for five years. Yet we’ve all ended in executive positions. Part of that is it’s good being born on second base, but another part is the analytical portions of our brains got a serious workout. When the time came to expand beyond our job profiles and tackle the unforeseen stuff, we were able to do it. The one of us whose had the trickiest go is the one with the computer programming degree, because he’s had to constantly re-learn his core competency.
So I don’t think a programed birth-school-work-death cycle is the model we should be pursuing. Too many moving parts in this world, and there’s an adaptability that comes from being well-educated.