I have to pipe in again. The value of a college degree is pretty well established. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...rtunities-are-improving-for-college-graduates http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/24/college-degree-worth-it_n_5526398.html No college graduates don't have to take jobs at uber or the Starbucks. Maybe in 2008 to 2011, but certainly not now. They do need to be inventive and seek opportunities that may be partially or totally unrelated to their fields of study. Yes in some cases the cookie cutter jobs, but they do offer better benefits and compensation than uber. Some anecdotal examples: My youngest daughter's best friend just got her first job. She is a entry Pharmaceutical sales rep for a major American drug company. Her degree was in Physical Therapy. They were looking for attention to detail, and personality so rep can get along with their clients (Doctors). My oldest daughter was a History major (class of 2013) and wanted to become a teacher. She decided to take a job in Korea as an ESL teacher to see if teaching was really her calling before getting her credential. The pay was minimal, but most all of her expenses were paid. While there she used her free time to travel to Japan and Thailand. By the end of her contracted year, she had decided that teaching was not her calling. She used her savings mainly from Korea to take a low cost student trip to China. After she returned, she found an opening in export sales for a major shipping line. The company was more impressed by her willingness to travel on her own to areas where they ship to and her knowledge, however rudimentary of these countries and their culture, then the appropriateness of her degree. Both of these jobs include a company car, an expense account and generous salaries for entry level positions. Trickhog: Some schools (perhaps most) make it easier to get into an impacted major as an incoming freshman, than as a transfer student. Personally, I think this is one of major reasons not go the JC route if money is tight. Be warned, however, that many schools use "weeder" classes to force kids out of a major or area of emphasis (e.g. by requiring a B in a class that is so hard that a large number of students fail, let alone get the required B). Sometimes the weeder class is a junior level class, so the students who don't get the B are left in a very bad position regarding their total units, when forced to pick a new major at such a late date.
(1) You can achieve your educational goals without compromising on your job marketability. I study history in my free time because I'm interested in it, for example. (2) What magical jobs don't exist in the United States that exist in Europe, where a sociology degree is useful? (3) Or are you saying Europeans don't have to make themselves marketable for the job market? They have the freedom to study sociology, gain no skills, and collect government benefits? (And by Europe, you essentially mean Germany/Scandanavia/UK...rest of the continent not doing so hot). To the extent you want to escape from a cookie-cutter corporate job, its easier to do so here than in Europe, where it can be very tough to start your own business.
As somebody who grew up in a place with such benefits, the 11% National Insurance contribution that came out of every paycheque (on top of the 22% income tax and 17.5% VAT (now 20%)), tends to get overlooked when the word "free" is bandied about. It's why I wanted to punch Michael Moore when he went to that NHS hospital and made a very misleading point by repeatedly asking a guy whose wife had just given birth "Where's billing?".
Many Americans today tend to idealize the public payer healthcare system in general. There is no true cost-benefit analysis--its simply assumed that great healthcare falls out of the sky for all like magic. They are not interested in understanding the drawbacks. That's not to say that our healthcare system is great or even superior to a government payer option, but the level of discourse is generally facile and it is frustrating.
1) Not terribly practical for most students, who have both time and money constraints already. More importantly, why isn't there any demand in the market for people that know history? Kids are learning at earlier and earlier ages how to make themselves "marketable" in a job market that is becoming increasingly more concentrated, less dynamic and less diverse. I don't see students choosing unmarketable majors as a problem; I see that schools, starting earlier and earlier, are streamlining their curricula chiefly to prepare students for work, specifically in corporate settings. 2/3) Notice, I never said Europeans. There are industrial nations outside of Europe and the US. And in many of them, there are more jobs available outside the corporate sector that pay livable wages in general, making a college education less of a premium to begin with. We had more of those, too, before massive waves of off-shoring began in the 70s. But this also includes starting and sustaining a small business, which is actually easier in many places outside the US, where markets are less concentrated the govt foots the bill for your employees' healthcare. The % of small business employment in the US is rather small compared to other developed countries. So again what we're talking about is lack of diversity in the market place for jobs. Yet, all I hear in response is that we need to make education less diverse in order to prepare students for it (or encourage students to choose from a select number of majors). This is precisely the track we've been on for 30+ years: reducing education in civics, literature, arts and music yet I always hear about how much time students are wasting if they aren't studying to be an engineer or businessman.
Well, I don't think either Moore or myself were being purposely disingenuous there. The concept of being "forced" to pay directly from your paycheck for healthcare is why most Americans oppose nationalized health care. Instead, they prefer the "choice" of opting in to an insurance plan chosen by their employer, which does not come with a guarantee of actual healthcare. This is also done at a flat rate rather than a progressive tax -- so the guy who cleans the toilets pays the same amount for the same plan as the executive VP.
I made a specific claim about national healthcare systems and similar programs as they relate to labor markets. They tend to make workers better off because the decision about where to work is not tied to their need for basic services, like healthcare. I wasn't necessarily comparing the two types of systems or saying nationalized healthcare is a panacea. TrickHog's been pretty lenient here but I know there's a general rule about discussing "politics", so I won't press the issue further than that. But there have been lots of cost-benefit analyses on the subject and the US tends to be closer to the Toronto FC end of the group when it comes to healthcare.
You complain about economic stagnation, but I don't quite understand your underlying point. Is your solution for larger numbers of people to get liberal arts degrees? You aren't doing them any favors in the real world, nor are you creating demand for any support of product that other people are willing to themselves work for and then pay for. Perhaps you'd prefer to live in some utopian ideal where liberal arts majors (of which I am one) are cherished and loved and subsidized, but that's not reality. Seriously, aside from history books and podcasts (of which I am a large consumer), what would this magical demand for history majors look like? Should there be more history stores? Or should we put history majors on the government dole so they can update wikipedia articles? There is simply no demand for it, because people don't need to pay "historians" (I use that VERY loosely for someone with a B.A.) in large numbers. That's no flaw in some the system--its just the accumulation of preferences. At the end of the day, economics is driven by individuals willing to trade goods and services they consider valuable for goods and services they create. Its a million little transactions that add up the The Economy. You still haven't identified any actual "jobs" that we lack, exist in other coutnries, and that would be tailored for liberal arts majors. Patiently looking forward to that identification.
Actually, there are a host of corporate jobs that liberal arts majors are fairly well prepared for. They are just not tied to the specific degree (e.g. Human Resources, IT Business Analysts, all kinds of Operations Management, etc). Liberal Arts can, and History definitely does, prepare one to compare and contrast multiple distinct viewpoints, identify common points and areas of difference. This type of analysis occurs all the time in IT and various other business fields, where you are dealing with people and their divergent points of view. At best, having a degree in any field only demonstrates a minimal level of competency and ability to get over certain hurdles. Most real job learning occurs on the job, not in the classroom. On an anecdotal basis, I saw numerous cases where qualified people, who knew their subject matter, hit the invisible ceiling where advancement was not possible simply because they lacked a degree. They all pretty much knew about this limitation and that they needed that piece of paper. Most had done their own cost benefit analysis and either decided to go back to school or accept that limitation. While I knew of some businesses that wanted a higher level of paper (an MBA) I don't recall anyone being limited because their undergraduate degree was in the wrong field.
Until recently I supervised a team of about 15 people with highly variable educational backgrounds (from a guy who was homeschooled and then got technical certifications to a guy with a PhD). Of all the employees that worked for me, the ones that were the most successful and made the most money were not necessarily the smartest ones or the best educated ones. They were the dependable ones. There is, more or less, a threshold for intelligence that you have to cross, but after that, drive and ability to meet deadlines is much, much, much more important than high IQ.
As far as getting a degree and making a living goes... There is (obviously) a threshold for financial stability that anyone requires in order to be happy. Dan Gilbert is a Psychologist at Harvard who does research on what happiness really is, and how people achieve it. You should check out his talks on YouTube, as they are entertaining and informative. The point being, my wife and I worked with our kids to try to get them out of school with a minimal amount of debt so that the "happiness threshold" is lower for them. Both of my older kids went to an expensive private liberal arts college and got degrees in history and anthropology. The historian got a job as the director of the on-campus history museum (where she worked as a student), and the anthropologist is providing tech support for a local ISP. Both have minimal debt, and both have a lot of options if they want to try something different. Last week I dropped off my third child at a large state school where his plan is to major in geography and get a GIS certificate: a technical degree with a clear career path. Once again, my major concern for him is that he gets out of school with a small enough debt load that, if he discovers he hates GIS, he can find a job doing something else and not be trapped making X$ to pay off his loans. I, personally, think that the critical thinking skills that you can develop with a liberal arts education provide you with a better framework to critically assess your life and not follow prescriptive pathways that don't lead to happiness. That's not a fact, though. It's an informed opinion.
Ghosting - Best wishes for your children, I think you pretty much summed up what we all wish for our children.