Do you feel "the system" is working more or less as it should?

[DC Al Fine]

I came across this posted in the Good Post Gallery.

Most students are studying under the pall of five-figure debt, marginal job prospects at graduation, and parents whose retirement remains totally unsecured. Nearly half of them won't finish their degrees, and increasingly large shares attend "schools" that we wouldn't recognize as institutions of higher learning in the first place. Many are "non-traditional" students, which usually entails balancing one's studies with menial service sector work, child care, or elder care.

snip

across most walks of life in the United States, "higher education" has come to resemble nothing so much as Saturn devouring his young.

Lately I've been finding this rhetoric ringing hollow. That's not to pick on Maddy or Averroes. This sort of argument about economic decline can be found all across the internet from both left and right.

I won't bore you with some tedious story about how hard I worked and how I did everything right, but to make a long story short, my wife and I both graduated without too much student debt and make reasonable incomes. Our parents are both set to retire in the next few years and will have comfortable if somewhat modest retirements. There is also economic data out there, that would suggest that while things are not booming, the middle class is not on the major decline some make it out to be.

Am I completely in the wrong here? Or do others feel similar to me? Is "the system" working?

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Our education system, you mean? I would say yes for the most part, but it has a lot of flaws that waste time and resources unnecessarily and is too "one size fits all".

I have been incredibly unimpressed with the quality of education I received in both high school (3rd in state, top 300 in the country) and the college level (after 3 semesters, all I have learned is that Enron = literally worse than Hitler). I'm not surprised so many people drop out of college and that your economic prospects are significantly reduced with only a high school degree.

Though I would say that a lot of our generation's prospects are hurt in the short term by the Great Recession and the fact that we are transitioning with globalization, and our government has been overly optimistic and slow to recognize and react to this reality. I think things will correct themselves in the long run, but there's a lot of unnecessary, self-inflicted pain.

[dead0man]

For the most part, yes.  It could always be better, but that's true of pretty much everything everywhere....nevermind that what's "better" to one person might be "much much worse" to another.

[muon2]

I've cross-posted this on other boards, but it has bearing here, too. The lower half of household have stagnant income, and correlate to those lacking college education. For those in the upper half there has been steady income growth, and that group tends to have the households with college degrees. For those who are careful about the amount of college debt acquired, the economy rewards that investment.

Here's a better chart in response to Ernest. This is also from the historical household income data at the US Census. I found that the top of the second quintile (40%) was the most stable in real dollars, only increasing 5% from 1969 to 2014, so I used that to compare the other quintiles. The bottom quintile remained almost unchanged compared to the second quintile during that span of years and is very close to half the second quintile.

The growth is in the upper three quintiles. The middle quintile grew about 17% compared to the bottom two quintiles. Since the bottom two quintiles had little growth in real dollars, that 17% is close to the growth in real dollars since 1967.  The fourth quintile grew at 35% compared to the bottom two quintiles, or about double the rate of the middle. The limit for the upper 5% grew at 54% compared to the bottom two quintiles, or about triple the rate of the middle. My apologies for the year sequence which looked fine until the software rendered it to a bitmap.

[DC Al Fine]

Our education system, you mean? I would say yes for the most part, but it has a lot of flaws that waste time and resources unnecessarily and is too "one size fits all".

I have been incredibly unimpressed with the quality of education I received in both high school (3rd in state, top 300 in the country) and the college level (after 3 semesters, all I have learned is that Enron = literally worse than Hitler). I'm not surprised so many people drop out of college and that your economic prospects are significantly reduced with only a high school degree.

Though I would say that a lot of our generation's prospects are hurt in the short term by the Great Recession and the fact that we are transitioning with globalization, and our government has been overly optimistic and slow to recognize and react to this reality. I think things will correct themselves in the long run, but there's a lot of unnecessary, self-inflicted pain.

I'm thinking a bit broader. By system I mean "work hard, go to school, get middle class job, buy house, pay mortgage, retire". The stereotype of American dream.

[Simfan34]

I increasingly believe that the problem is that too many people are going to college.

[Mr. Smith]

I increasingly believe that the problem is that too many people are going to college.

Only because more people are not hiring unless you have a Bachelor's

Bachelor's is the new High School, Masters is the new Bachelors, PHD is the new Masters

This is why I'm applying for Masters programs soon

[afleitch]

I increasingly believe that the problem is that too many people are going to college.

Too many people who went to college decided that the only profession or vocation worth having was one tied to a college degree. They then proceeded in both business and politics, to gut and restructure industry, employment and education on that basis. So everyone got a college degree, with promises that it would mean something. Only it doesn't, you have the debt, you work to make ends meet, your degree might count for nothing in relation to the job/jobs you're actually and you're in debt.

If you're lucky, then of course you're going to think 'the system' works, of course you'll start to believe that you earned it and worked hard despite people like you, who studied as you did, who educated themselves, and are as smart as you and as in debt as you are not making it as you have done. And somehow that's their problem as you settle down to your house and your job and your family and your security.

So no. The system doesn't work.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I increasingly believe that the problem is that too many people are going to college.

I agree, and I think this is part of the larger problem of so many institutions existing that really should not be operating in the first place which Averroes described in the comment in question. I'm not sure that's the solution he was going for (perhaps it was a proposal of free college?), but it's quite clear that many schools aren't doing their job. If you go to a legitimate school, you should be fine so long as you are not woefully underprepared, are willing to work (i.e., go to class), and also importantly, able to learn any degree of social skills. We may worry along the way, but if you put yourself out there with that line of accomplishments, you'll do well enough.

Only because more people are not hiring unless you have a Bachelor's

Bachelor's is the new High School, Masters is the new Bachelors, PHD is the new Masters

The cliche (particularly its extension) always seemed a bit dishonest to me, and I'm not exactly sure why. Is it just something old people like to say to think of the good old days? The portion of US adults with a Bachelor's has remained quite steady for decades - a very mild increase over a couple generations - according to one survey I had seen (compared to many European countries that had been rising, and in fact Norway and the UK had passed us by a significant margin). I would think that my family experience would lead me to your conclusion, but I just don't see it outside of some recall bias trick where those examples come to mind. I'm almost sure in due time the same examples will rise for my own generation.

Is the problem more that some of the jobs requiring only high school have disappeared and not been replaced with anything better? Manufacturing to some degree?

[dead0man]

You don't need a degree to succeed in IT and there are lots of those jobs.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

The portion of US adults with a Bachelor's has remained quite steady for decades - a very mild increase over a couple generations - according to one survey I had seen (compared to many European countries that had been rising, and in fact Norway and the UK had passed us by a significant margin).

I may have this statistic phrased incorrectly which affects the argument. the 25-34 range was effectively the same as all other age groups currently alive, which they are directly competing with for jobs (unlike previous generations where the older people did not have degrees). It comes down to a battle of cliches in that sense where all these older workers are being laid off to get the younger ones.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Our education system, you mean? I would say yes for the most part, but it has a lot of flaws that waste time and resources unnecessarily and is too "one size fits all".

I have been incredibly unimpressed with the quality of education I received in both high school (3rd in state, top 300 in the country) and the college level (after 3 semesters, all I have learned is that Enron = literally worse than Hitler). I'm not surprised so many people drop out of college and that your economic prospects are significantly reduced with only a high school degree.

Though I would say that a lot of our generation's prospects are hurt in the short term by the Great Recession and the fact that we are transitioning with globalization, and our government has been overly optimistic and slow to recognize and react to this reality. I think things will correct themselves in the long run, but there's a lot of unnecessary, self-inflicted pain.

I'm thinking a bit broader. By system I mean "work hard, go to school, get middle class job, buy house, pay mortgage, retire". The stereotype of American dream.

Ah, okay. I would say yes, but only for a section that is actually prepared for it. So it works for about 1/3 of the country who were raised by parents that had that, give or take people who fall out and those who move up. Educational attainment and a secure lifestyle *generally* beget said attainment and security.

The problem is people who are below, who were not raised by parents who were college educated professionals but were still economically secure in some other no-degree-needed middle class job who are now suffering as the economy changes. In many areas (like here in NW Indiana) the school system is still based on giving students a well-rounded primary/secondary education but nothing more as they are then expected to work in industry. Despite this being a problem for 30+ years, schools still haven't changed, so when students are told to go to college, they don't have parents capable of advising them in applications and financial aid, and when they get to college they crash and burn. IIRC some 60% of adults have attended college at some point but only 35%-40% actually graduate with at least a Bachelors. So the education system still hasn't properly adjusted to the post-industrial economy but rather thinks the solution is dump kids in a 4 year college and hope they become professionals.

I increasingly believe that the problem is that too many people are going to college.

So on the surface this sentence is true, but this should be expounded upon in that people DO need some kind of post-secondary training/education, not a 4 year degree, to get by in the world. That's where I think our education system fails a lot of people. I think it was Simfan (?) who said areas like computer programming should be reclassified as trades and be separated from 4 year universities where serious academic research should be conducted, and I would wholeheartedly agree.

I don't think that everyone can or should be expected to be at least "satisfactory" in all areas of a well-rounded education at the college level. Well-rounded primary education should be finished by the time you are 16, and after that career exploration should begin.


So in summary, the American Dream of being a college-educated professional is alive for about 30-40% of the country, but for the remainder it is becoming a lot harder, so the system fails them.

[courts]

yes clark, i agree with a lot of your points here. i've also made the point that people spend *too much* time in school for what they actually learn. i'd actually support abolishing grade 12 entirely at minimum. a lot of places have actually done that in the us. instead of mindlessly saying things like 'extend school hours' and/or 'everyone should go to college' we should be moving in the opposite direction.

which is not to say i'm endorsing some sort of weird anti-intellectualism or 'un-schooling' or whatever

[Torie]

Yes, the system works reasonably well for those of reasonable intelligence and considerable self discipline, who can overcome various environmental challenges and obstacles. Pity that there are more obstacles and sand traps then there should be, thus culling down the number who really make it through the gauntlet, and thus a considerably lower percentage for whom the system "works" than it reasonably could be. We need to do better, much better.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

No. Despite having the technological ability end such ailments, poverty, malnutrution, repression, premature mortality, disgusting working conditions, war, inequality, illiteracy and deprivation are endemic, and even treated as "just part of the natural order". I'm increasingly convinced that one of the enemies of human progress is the nation-state, but petty nationalism continues to shackle us, and most every other internationalist I've met sounds like a hippy-dippy moron. Even in my first world country, we are led by a small clique from a handful of public schools; yet any attempt to challenge the supremacy of these institutions is met with a screech. The idle rich get away with murder while the poor get sucked dry. There is no solidarity between oppressed persons, despite the fevered dreams of trots. Abuse of children and women by those in powerful goes on unabated. Despite the grave strain the World is under, the system is only achingly slowly moving or even conceiving the thought that will give arise to such a shift.

I mean liberal capitalism is the best solution that has been tried out at the moment. But to say such a system is the best humanity can come up with would basically border on misanthropy...

[Ban my account ffs!]

I came across this posted in the Good Post Gallery.

Most students are studying under the pall of five-figure debt, marginal job prospects at graduation, and parents whose retirement remains totally unsecured. Nearly half of them won't finish their degrees, and increasingly large shares attend "schools" that we wouldn't recognize as institutions of higher learning in the first place. Many are "non-traditional" students, which usually entails balancing one's studies with menial service sector work, child care, or elder care.

snip

across most walks of life in the United States, "higher education" has come to resemble nothing so much as Saturn devouring his young.

Lately I've been finding this rhetoric ringing hollow. That's not to pick on Maddy or Averroes. This sort of argument about economic decline can be found all across the internet from both left and right.

I won't bore you with some tedious story about how hard I worked and how I did everything right, but to make a long story short, my wife and I both graduated without too much student debt and make reasonable incomes. Our parents are both set to retire in the next few years and will have comfortable if somewhat modest retirements. There is also economic data out there, that would suggest that while things are not booming, the middle class is not on the major decline some make it out to be.

Am I completely in the wrong here? Or do others feel similar to me? Is "the system" working?

This sounds more or less like

"I got mine Jack, now root, hog, or die!"

You are part of what used to be rather normal.  Most people could expect that... but the trend/momentum is really what drives peoples' feelings about the state of things.  The fact is, is that it is getting harder and harder to achieve normal middle class life (the blue collar route shut long ago... the white collar route has red flags and flashing lights all over it indicating it, too, is shrinking).

We could be doing so much better.  We could be using technology and our resources, as crabcake said, to really provide hope and meaningful changes to peoples lives (like, you know... adequate medical and dental benefits for everyone, adequate access to nutritious food (ie not processed simple sugars mixed with cheap vegetable fat) and a basic income security that means everyone can achieve a good work/life balance that allows them to be with their families).

[Potus]

I think part of what has changed about "the system" is that our perceptions of it have shifted. The expectation seems to be that we can all pick up where our parents left off and have the middle class dream just by checking off box of education.

My father was born in 1965. He's a smart guy and very good at school. He's good at picking up skills and learning things without a lot of efforts. Dad started working at Pizza Hut in high school and requested a transfer to the Pizza Hut in Morgantown, where was going to college, upon graduating from high school. He was a good worker so he was promoted to assistant manager when they accepted his transfer. Dad worked all four years of college, getting promoted to manager at some point. He graduated with no debt because of some help from his parents(mostly in the form of car repairs or groceries, bills not tuition), his job with Pizza Hut, and some decent scholarships.

This part doesn't really sound all that out of place from the modern situation Nix is talking about with "being forced to work menial service jobs."

To take the example further, my father even did college wrong. He changed his major around a bunch, remained unsure of what he wanted to be. He graduated in four years, through taking meaningful class loads unlike a lot of people, with a degree in "interdepartmental studies." That is about as qualifying as it sounds. So he wasn't really particularly skilled in a field through his college education.

My father took a job for $12,000 a year right out of college with a bank. To make the situation worse, two grand of that was "expected commission." He moved back in with his parents and commuted to work from there. Eventually, he got a promotion or two, met mother, married her, and bought a small apartment. They lived that modest life for years. To make matters worse, my mother had gone to school but not gotten a degree leaving her with the debt but not a significant earnings increase. She found a job she excelled at, since she's a people person, selling shoes to department stores. It was altogether a modest paying job, too.

My parents had the "middle class dream" by their early thirties despite making plenty of questionable decisions in terms of education, location of where to live, and some things like that. They bought a big house that was my first home, had me, and Dad got a job at a bank making something like $35,000. Mom became a stay at home mom for the next around 10 years.

This hardly sounds like something that couldn't happen today. These are the lives of people who are generally headed in the right direction but trip up along the way. I think everything is still generally working out for those people in our time. The numbers get very, very harsh when we start to include the people who make bad decisions.

One major inhibition in my hometown alone is that getting on the payroll for work experience is difficult. Lack of jobs for older people have pushed them into the food service and counter working industry, jobs traditionally reserved for high school and early college students. Alongside the rising cost of employment in terms of wages, healthcare, and possibly "paid time off" in the near future, we're looking at a whole subset of last generation's adults working in the jobs that typically lend themselves to upward mobility.

However, I'm very skeptical of the idea of a dead end job. I've talked with a lot of these workers locally and there seems to be a pervading pessimism that applying elsewhere isn't going to do them any good. They don't want to aim higher, they don't want to start clawing up the food chain. These are a lot of the same people who complain about the system being rigged against them.

There are three things about work and you can choose two out of the three: live where you want, do what you want, or make how much you want. People don't want to accept that reality and it holds them back. They want a middle class house on a hill, in their hometown in West Virginia, making the money to be comfortable, doing whatever their degree is in or whatever they think they want to do. We've raised a generation who believes they can have everything and their perceptions of "the system working" is that they get all three of these things without much sacrifice and they get them very quickly after leaving college.

This post ran very long, but I hope it's decent and not too rambling.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Hell no! A modest house around here is now 7 digits. Rents are up something like 20% in the last year

[Ban my account ffs!]

Hell no! A modest house around here is now 7 digits. Rents are up something like 20% in the last year

Not to worry Jfern... the bubble will burst. 

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Hell no! A modest house around here is now 7 digits. Rents are up something like 20% in the last year

Not to worry Jfern... the bubble will burst. 

Yeah, I can't wait for that day because it will only hurt those greedy rich people and not the rest of us [/Atlas circa 2007ish]

[dead0man]

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking rarely bothers to consider that the trades also require aptitude. Most of this analysis is under-girded by the classist assumption that while only a real genius can, say, write a legal brief, interpret a financial statement, or analyze an argument, any idiot can repair an engine, sow a field, or wire a building. This is ridiculous.

Is it though?  By any measure it's easier to learn how to sow a field than it is to learn how to write a legal brief.  Can just anybody do it?  Of course not, but most healthy people of working age can.  Repairing an engine or wiring a building are more challenging, and a little aptitude in that direction would certainly make it easier, but still, at least in my experience, much easier than learning Trig.  Troubleshooting can be taught, but some people are naturals and some have to work at it.  Just like nearly every other skill humans deal with.

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You're probably right, the problem is, High School kids with any sign of intelligence or drive are told "you have to go to college".  Welding would never be mentioned by most counselors or teachers.  That's a problem

[Ban my account ffs!]

Hell no! A modest house around here is now 7 digits. Rents are up something like 20% in the last year

Not to worry Jfern... the bubble will burst. 

Yeah, I can't wait for that day because it will only hurt those greedy rich people and not the rest of us [/Atlas circa 2007ish]

They'll make sure we feel it first.  And they'll claw back their losses early and often.

[Ebsy]

The good news is that if a housing bubble were to burst, the damage would be much more contained than in 2007-2008. The banks are way less leveraged than they were and there aren't billions and billions in toxic assets on their books(at least yet).

[dead0man]

The good news is that if a housing bubble were to burst, the damage would be much more contained than in 2007-2008. The banks are way less leveraged than they were and there aren't billions and billions in toxic assets on their books(at least yet).

Oddly caused by the same problem of the "experts" telling the lay people that the smart thing to do is buy a house (or go to college), and the govt's fault for trying to make it easy for people that probably shouldn't be buying a house (or going to college) to do it.  And then those people that shouldn't have bought a house (or went to school) are the ones that end up screwed over the hardest.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The good news is that if a housing bubble were to burst, the damage would be much more contained than in 2007-2008. The banks are way less leveraged than they were and there aren't billions and billions in toxic assets on their books(at least yet).

yeah, but it would still be leveraged onto the average joe's back anyway.

@Simmy et al. I think the one of the main problems with saying "too many in college" is that reinforces that higher education is for a upper, upper-middle and middle-middle classes, while working-class people are wrong (even a drag on the economy) for thinking above their station. The treatment of university as a right for all persons (if they chose to do so) has undoubtedly improved many areas of the country, especially the small towns in Wales and the West Country that my family are originally from. My grandparent's generation would never have dreamed of going to university (When one of my grandparents got into uni, the entire village went to the celebration party) because it was not an option for people like them.