Pictures Tell a Million Words

These maps shown here demonstrate how big a jump the percentage of people with a bachelor's degree or more has been over the past 44 years.

However, back then few students were in debt. Now they are up to their eyeballs in it, some of them already hitting retirement age and are at risk of default.

Like yours truly.

It Should Be Considered a Scandal

that new college graduates, who were told the path to riches, or at least the path to a decent living, was to go into thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree and cannot get jobs or have jobs that have nothing to do with their studies. Of course the elites who run the show think this is okay. After all, the business class keeps upping the requirements for jobs that grade school dropouts could do and then pay 10 dollars an hour with no benefits for those jobs.

This is all so the parasites at the top can have more.

The student loan "bubble" is going to burst:

Of the 1.5 million people in this category, about half are unemployed and the other half are working for low wages at retail stores, coffee shops, restaurants, etc. The report also noted that only three of the 30 jobs with the largest projected number of openings in the next eight years will require a bachelor's degree or higher.

Overall youth unemployment in the US is over 23 percent, and after three years of official economic “recovery,” the rates of underemployment and unemployment for this group are still rising. The dire employment situation for young people is being used to pit them against older workers. In many cases, companies have laid off workers with decades of experience and replaced them with better-educated workers at half the pay.

The same students who cannot find decent-paying jobs that offer the prospect of economic security and advancement are saddled with huge college debts. The average student debt level topped $25,000 this year and the total amount surpassed $1 trillion.

Obama gives a lot of lip service to college students and graduates, but he doesn't mean one word he says.

College for All?

I have long said we are overemphasizing college for everybody to better themselves financially when in fact very few jobs require ANY education beyond high school.

Glutting the market with people who cannot get jobs but are in tons of debt is not the answer.

What is the answer is bettering the wages and salaries of those jobs that currently exist, not to mention repealing all of the trade agreements that have sent manufacturing jobs overseas.

Meanwhile, student loan debt surpasses $1 trillion.

Education Bits

I get so sick of the nonsense about this degree or that degree is any kind of guarantee of a job. There certainly isn't any low unemployment for teachers because the market so oversaturated and there are layoffs galore.

A degree in order to get a job is a waste of time and money.
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Because the Obama administration is anti-public education, it feels it is perfectly all right to circumvent state officials who rejected an application for a charter school:

The application says that the families served by the New Brunswick schools, which are predominantly black and Hispanic, support the Hebrew charter, even though school leaders and the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter do not.

Since March 2010, community volunteers from Highland Park, Edison and New Brunswick have been battling to stop the school from opening, arguing that it would drain resources from traditional public schools in order to provide a free Jewish education that should be the responsibility of private schools.

For each child who leaves a district to attend a charter, the charter receives 90 percent of the district’s per-pupil spending allotment. In modest-size communities like Highland Park, with a district of 1,500 students, that can take a substantial bite out of a school budget.

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The WSWS has a commentary about the Mary Thorson suicide. She was the teacher who killed herself after going through administrator abuse:

At a December district school board meeting, it became clear Thorson was not alone in feeling threatened by the school administration. Teachers admitted that they are intimidated by school officials, afraid for their jobs and dare not speak openly about the conditions they face. More than one teacher spoke about being harassed for taking sick days. Another teacher noted the irony of having an anti-bullying campaign in the school while the teachers are being bullied.

At the meeting, school administrators pushed back, blaming teachers for not speaking up or citing specifics. School board President Joe Sherman said, “If you guys would have come and brought allegations and we didn’t address it, then you would have every right to say what you need to say.”

Intimidation is a tactic in a nationwide strategy to de-professionalize teaching, as a precondition for the dismantling of public education and the selling off or leasing of its related assets. The so-called educational reforms, begun under the Bush administration and expanded by President Obama, have largely been couched in the highly confrontational language of “accountability,” which implies that teachers are overpaid and undeserving of professional status. This has accompanied a frontal assault on the workplace gains teachers struggled to win throughout the 20th century.

The Idiocy of College for All

was always apparent when in fact few jobs have ever required much more than a high school diploma.  Because more and more people were going to college, businesses merely used that as a screening device.  A degree, however, is a piss-poor substitute for a union card.

Even when college degrees are required, more and more businesses are trying to "outsource" jobs to other countries, even some medical  and legal work.  Eventually education will go that way too once the privatizers are allowed to put through online schools for K-12 without restrictions.

One of the greatest changes is that a college degree is no longer the guarantor of a middle-class existence. Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from nonelite schools. A bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability. To get a good job, you have to have some special skill — charm, by the way, counts — that employers value. But there’s also a pretty good chance that by some point in the next few years, your boss will find that some new technology or some worker overseas can replace you.

Our worthless and corrupt Congress, in love with the debunked and discredited theory of neoliberalism--will see to it that it happens.

Lots of Outrages to Note

Our administration, with the Republicans it so often supports, wants to end the subsidized loan program for graduate students, thus making it more difficult for anybody to pursue any advanced degree.

In the end, of course, college will be so expensive only the rich will have access. State education systems will eventually be done away with.
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This president might just as well change political affiliation because he surrendered on just about everything when it came to this phony "debt crisis."

Obama is what he is. Weak or incompetent is the last thing he is. He is merely doing the bidding of neoliberal backers, and he believes exactly as they do.
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Another public school superintendent bites the dust:

The El Paso School Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia was arrested by federal agents Monday on corruption charges, authorities said.

The district has suffered from a number of corruption allegations.

More details:

García, 55, took the helm of the city's largest school district five years ago. He has served as its leader during an FBI public corruption investigation into elected officials and public employees that began before his tenure.

He is now the focus of an investigation that alleges he and others conspired to defraud the school district from Feb. 1, 2006 to March 11, 2007.

García allegedly directed a $450,000 contract to a company run by a person with whom he had a personal relationship and in which he had a personal financial interest, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. The nature of García's relationship with the person was not provided.

Holy crap.

As I Have Said Many, Many Times,

college is a colossal waste of money and a piss-poor substitute for a union when there are few jobs existing for college graduates.

The overwhelming majority of jobs, historically and now, require little education beyond high school and can't be "outsourced." Sales clerks, janitors, nurses aides, and other "entry-level" jobs are still there in the millions.

There needs to be more unionization, not less. There needs to be a complete reversal of economic policies of the last thirty years.

More from Krugman

I Have Written Time and Again

a college degree is a piss-poor substitute for a union card. The vast majority of jobs don't require a degree but either some vocational training or prior experience in the field. Most jobs are low-paid, "entry-level" occupations.

The value of a college degree has always been overhyped, but things are beginning to change, and not for the better. The multinationals know this, and that's why there is such a push to deskill teaching, up the ante of "requirements" for students beginning in preschool so as to keep them away from higher education.

more

The ONLY Reasons "Reformers" are Pushing College

for all high school students are two-fold: to create a huge labor pool of highly educated people in order to depress wages and salaries in occupations requiring a college degree, and to create an underclass of dropouts and pushouts, who then can be exploited for cheap labor.

A college education isn't the right thing for everybody or even most people. Vocational training in high school is what is needed for those not inclined to go to college but can work in jobs which provide a good standard of living.

Long before President Obama vowed last year that
America will "have the highest proportion of college
graduates in the world" by 2020, the premium
placed on going to college was firmly embedded in
the American psyche.

The case is compelling: As good jobs increasingly
require more education, college is widely seen as
the ticket to personal economic security and to
global competitiveness. And the message has gotten
through: The percentage of students who went on to
college or trade school within a year of high school
climbed from 47% in 1973 to 67% in 2007, Census
data show.

And yet, there's an undercurrent of concern about a
group of students — sometimes called "the forgotten
half," a phrase coined 22 years ago by social
scientists studying at-risk young people — who, for
whatever reason, do not think college is for them.
It's expressed by soul-searching parents such as
Crave, whose son doesn't thrive in the classroom.
It's also expressed increasingly by educators,
economists and policy analysts, who question
whether it's realistic and responsible to push
students into college even if the odds of academic
success seem low.

They're swimming against a powerful tide. A small but growing number of states now require all high-schoolers to take a college entrance exam. Philadelphia's mayor opened an office in City Hall last month to help residents get information about how to attain a college degree. Bill Gates, perhaps the world's most famous college dropout, has poured more than $2 billion into programs and scholarships to help more students complete college.

Again, our president is so on the take from the billionaire boys' club he can't even fathom the reality few jobs even require any education beyond high school.

It's a Shame Liberal Arts

is on the way out, but that's what happens when the mission of college education shifts from developing educated, cultured citizens to being nothing more than vocational training.

A college degree turned into little more than a very expensive union card and actually not worth the extreme expense.

The Education Wars

One of the worst messages being sent by our administration and the media is everyone should go to college, despite that even in good times a minority of jobs require ANY education beyond high school, and now the problem is worse with the high rate of unemployment.

As is the Case When the Economy Goes in the Tank,

college enrollment goes up. People of all ages try and ride out the recession (or depression, in this case), hoping after spending tens of thousands of dollars or going in debt for tens of thousands of dollars there will be something by the time they graduate.

I Have Been Saying This for Years

about college not being the answer for everybody or even for most people; JOBS are the answer, including bringing back manufacturing jobs to the United States.

The reason for the push to force people to "retrain" for jobs that don't exist is obvious: a huge supply of workers forces wages and salaries downward. A secondary reason to push for retraining is to provide jobs for those who do the retraining.

But there is nothing left for the masses. Not everybody can sell shit, and you have to have be a good liar to be a good seller. I am not good enough for that, and I am not one who can stand rejection day in and day out. Not everybody can do specialized jobs. And forget teaching because that has turned to shit thanks to the privatization mantra and No Child Left Behind.

There is NO substitute for a vital, vibrant manufacturing base, and there is no substitute for vital, EFFECTIVE unions to ensure a decent standard of living for people.

The Education Wars

I agree Obama's idea of providing a year of college for all is a complete waste of money and time.

Relatively few jobs require any education beyond high school; what is needed is far more emphasis on vocational training in high school.
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