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From the Economist, Time to end the academic arms race - excerpt:
I could not agree more, even though about 55% of Americans do not have a post-secondary degree of any kind. Meaning that there are five-types; the first being "vocational" and the others "Associate", "Bachelors", "Masters" and "Doctorate".
But first you need to get out of high-school.
How much of our kids could do very well indeed with a Vocation-level degree? A great many I should think. Then, let's make sure they can get that degree for nuthin' or next-to-nuthin'*. (That was proposed by both Bernie and Hillary, a Great Idea to which American voters in 2017 mindlessly gave the Index Finger.)
THAT is the sort of investment that will allow more Americans steady-jobs, and reduce our awesome percentage of the population living below the Poverty Threshold (about 46 million men, women and children).
*The European Union gets it right: By sending children to public post-secondary schooling where annual tuition costs less than $1K a year!
THERE are plenty of good reasons for a young person to choose to go to university: intellectual growth, career opportunities, having fun. Around half of school-leavers in the rich world now do so, and the share is rising in poorer countries, too.
Governments are keen on higher education, seeing it as a means to boost social mobility and economic growth. Almost all subsidise tuition—in America, to the tune of $200bn a year. But they tend to overestimate the benefits and ignore the costs of expanding university education (see article). Often, public money just feeds the arms race for qualifications.
Spending on universities is usually justified by the “graduate premium”—the increase in earnings that graduates enjoy over non-graduates. These individual gains, the thinking goes, add up to an economic boost for society as a whole. But the graduate premium is a flawed unit of reckoning. Part of the usefulness of a degree is that it gives a graduate jobseeker an advantage at the expense of non-graduates. It is also a signal to employers of general qualities, such as intelligence and diligence, that someone already has in order to get into a university.
Some professions require qualifications. But a degree is not always the best measure of the skills and knowledge needed for a job. With degrees so common, recruiters are using them as a crude way to screen applicants. Non-graduates are thus increasingly locked out of decent work.
I could not agree more, even though about 55% of Americans do not have a post-secondary degree of any kind. Meaning that there are five-types; the first being "vocational" and the others "Associate", "Bachelors", "Masters" and "Doctorate".
But first you need to get out of high-school.
How much of our kids could do very well indeed with a Vocation-level degree? A great many I should think. Then, let's make sure they can get that degree for nuthin' or next-to-nuthin'*. (That was proposed by both Bernie and Hillary, a Great Idea to which American voters in 2017 mindlessly gave the Index Finger.)
THAT is the sort of investment that will allow more Americans steady-jobs, and reduce our awesome percentage of the population living below the Poverty Threshold (about 46 million men, women and children).
*The European Union gets it right: By sending children to public post-secondary schooling where annual tuition costs less than $1K a year!