Fmr. US Labor Secretary Robert Reich: College Is a Ludicrous Waste Of Money

[big_dog]

We can do far better than we’re doing now. One option: Combine the last year of high school with the first year of community college into a curriculum to train technicians for the new economy.

Affected industries would help design the courses and promise jobs to students who finish successfully. Late bloomers can go on to get their associate degrees and even transfer to four-year liberal arts universities.

This way we’d provide many young people who cannot or don’t want to pursue a four-year degree with the fundamentals they need to succeed, creating another gateway to the middle class.

Too often in modern America, we equate “equal opportunity” with an opportunity to get a four-year liberal arts degree. It should mean an opportunity to learn what’s necessary to get a good job. http://www.salon.com/2014/09/03/robert_reich_college_is_a_ludicrous_waste_of_money_partner/

[pipoman]

1. And Reich is a traitor to US labor..

[closeupready]

7. Correct. But few here want to hear it, lol.

It is ironic to me that the same one who helped Bill Clinton get NAFTA passed through a reluctant 103rd US Congress is here saying higher education is a waste of money - when higher education was touted as the primary means for factory workers displaced by NAFTA's implementation to find new jobs in order to keep themselves working gainfully.

[mythology]

2. If college is a waste of money

Then he should explain why people who have a four year degree have higher incomes, lower unemployment and do better on a host of other socio-economic measurements.

Yes sure it would be great if that wasn't the case. But the world is what it is. Our society has decided that a four year degree matters. So telling people to not get one is telling them to make less money, to be more likely to be unemployed etc.

Those technician jobs he talks about are currently providing a middle to lower middle class lifestyle. But over the course of a career and raising a family it won't be enough to keep that lifestyle.

Yes getting a college degree is expensive. I'm still paying on my grad school loans. But doing so got me a job making above the national median wage and I'm not in an especially high demand field. Does my job actively "require" a master's degree? No, but it helped me get the job.

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. He should also explain why he cashes his paycheck from Berkeley!

It's interesting: Reich seems to see nothing wrong with, you know, HIS alma maters (I can't fuss with the Latin plural): y'know, Dartmouth, Yale, Oxford, or his workplaces, er, Harvard, Brandeis, Berkeley.

They're real colleges after all. Not like all these fake degree schools everywhere, like a so-called "University of Minnesota," or "Central Florida University," supposing there is such a place. those are, like, total bullshit.

[big_dog]

5. i kinda like the high school senior 'in training' aspect of this

Last edited Thu Sep 4, 2014, 04:15 PM - Edit history (1)

whats wrong with a year long internship to a career?

[Mass]

4. So, he will recommend his kids (if he has any) and his friends'kids to do this?

Or is it only for us non intellectual families.

Note : I agree that college is not necessarily the best option, but whenever some big wig says that, this is rarely what their kids did.

[brentspeak]

6. This coming from Bill Clinton's Secretary of NAFTA

and China's MFN Status.

Many of Reich's progressive economic ideas and criticisms of the 1% sound good, but one has to remember that Reich "free trade" policies were themselves a gigantic reason why today's middle class is crumbling. Today, Reich tries to run away from the damage he did by lamely claiming that technology would have done with manufacturing jobs anyway -- bull$hit when you see so many Chinese workers on the assembly line.

[JCMach1]

8. We are wasting so much testing in this country that real HS Vocational

classes have mostly been scuttled...

Not everyone wants, or needs to go to university.

[jwirr]

10. European countries use the vocational angle in their highschools and have for years. They train

techs in high school thus saving the money to send them to college. College is not meant for eveyone. My grandson is the manager of a department in a Ford agency and he got a GED. He also managed a liquor store before that. His wife is going to college to work in a day care center. She could have had half of this finished if they would have had the classes in high school. I agree with him on this issue.

[JCMach1]

13. Exactly, nor is everyone ready to go to college at 18... I have also noticed the over-credentialing

that is going on in America right now... For profit colleges selling what are simply vocational programs.

Why not an apprenticeship in cosmetology? Do you really need a degree for that? Same with many other programs...

[jwirr]

15. There is another way that we are convinved to stay in college too long. I have an MSW and most of

the jobs available in the field were for lower degrees when I was working. I would have been much better off not getting the last two years.

[JCMach1]

16. yeah, some just do not help you out much...

I remember making more teaching HS in Florida than teaching university in Texas... go figure.

[alarimer]

9. I disagree with him.

College is about more than "getting a job". Liberal arts education is important in becoming well-rounded, I think. If all you do is study what you need to learn in your career field, then you are limiting yourself.

Still, college is way, way too expensive. I think higher ed needs to be free, at least on the undergraduate level.

A BS in biology or other science only prepares you to be a technician. You will not EVER be a biologist (in my case) for a federal/state agency without a MS. Of course you won't get an academic position without a PhD. But maybe we're talking apples and oranges here anyway.

Technical work is often repetitive and monotonous and you don't really get to use your intellect all that much. Personally, I find that demoralizing even now that I am nominally a "biologist."

So that part of the article immediately raised a red flag for me.

But that's my opinion. It's likely to be different in other fields.

[jwirr]

11. This is true but there are a lot of people who cannot afford to go for that reason.

[FLPanhandle]

12. Basically saying the jobs are gone and they aren't coming back

and College costs have gotten out of control.

[Samantha]

14. I think the future success of being employed in these United States

lies squarely with starting one's own business and slowly building it into a profitable company. One cannot count on the corporations, the government or anyone else really to make jobs available.

Bill Gates dropped out of college his first year. That didn't seem to hurt him....

Sam

[Arkana]

17. He's right, it is.

But that doesn't mean people shouldn't go--it means that college should be fucking cheaper. Everyone who wants to go should be allowed to go--no exceptions.

[jtuck004]

18. Where do they learn to own so they don't always have to ask? It ain't school. n/t