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Let's shaft the next generation!


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#21 diogenes227

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Posted 05 January 2012 - 09:05 PM

Wanted: Blue-Collar Workers

Across the heartland, even in high-unemployment areas, one hears the same concern: a shortage of skilled workers capable of running increasingly sophisticated, globally competitive factories


The shortage of industrial skills points to a wide gap between the American education system and the demands of the world economy. For decades, Americans have been told that the future lies in high-end services, such as law, and “creative” professions, such as software-writing and systems design. This has led many pundits to think that the only real way to improve opportunities for the country’s middle class is to increase its access to higher education.

That attitude is a relic of the post–World War II era, a time when a college education almost guaranteed you a good job. These days, the returns on higher education, particularly on higher education gained outside the elite schools, are declining, as they have been for about a decade. Earnings for holders of four-year degrees have actually dropped over the past decade, according to the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute, which also predicts that the pattern will persist for the foreseeable future. In 2008, more than one-third of college graduates worked at occupations such as waiting tables and manning cash registers, traditionally held by non–college graduates.

The reason for the low rewards is that many of the skills learned in college are now in oversupply. Through 2016, EMSI estimates, the number of new graduates in the information field will be three times the number of job openings.

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Really interesting article. This has been a problem for a long time given that so many jobs have been shipped out of the US so the finance boys who have been given preference for the past 30 years could squeeze a few more bucks into their own pockets.

But it's good to see Industry also is finally getting the message: if you're not willing to provide the tax support for the schools, you're going to have to train the new workers yourself:

Funded by industry sources, the Houston Independent School District’s Academy for Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology trains working-class, mostly minority high school students in the skills they’ll need to perform high-wage industrial jobs. Tennessee—like Texas, a growth-oriented state—has developed 27 publicly funded “technical centers” that teach skills in just months and carry a far lower price tag than a conventional college does.

Two-year colleges will be crucial to the effort to train skilled workers. One of these schools, Central Ohio Technical College, has recently expanded by 70 welding students and 50 aspiring machinists per year. Many of the college’s certificate programs are designed and partly funded by companies, which figure that they’re making a wise investment. “You have a lot of people sitting in the city doing nothing. They did not succeed in college. But this way, they can find a way up,” says Kelly Wallace, who runs the college’s Career and Technology Education Center.

Such shorter educational alternatives will become ever more important as industrial workers retire. The average skilled worker in the industries supplying the gas boom is in his mid-fifties. “At our plant, you have lots of people with 20 to 30 years’ experience,” says Kirk, who has three high-skill openings that he can’t fill. “But there’s no apprenticeship program—no way to fill the future growth. We are simply running out of people.”


That last paragraph in the above quote raises another issue: we're going to probably need something like 35 million new immigrants just to keep the infrastructure going as the baby boom ages and retires, and those immigrants going to have be trained too. What's that -- the dummies in Washington are trying to restrict immigration? :o

"If you've heard this story before, don't stop me because I'd like to hear it again," Groucho Marx (on market history?).

“I've learned in options trading simple is best and the obvious is often the most elusive to recognize.”

 

"The god of trading rewards persistence, experience and discipline, and absolutely nothing else."


#22 diogenes227

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Posted 08 January 2012 - 02:27 PM

But it's good to see Industry also is finally getting the message: if you're not willing to provide the tax support for the schools, you're going to have to train the new workers yourself:


Now it's time the public gets the message, if industry wants the public to train their workers, the public needs to bill industry for the training.

PUBLIC GETS THE BILL

"If you've heard this story before, don't stop me because I'd like to hear it again," Groucho Marx (on market history?).

“I've learned in options trading simple is best and the obvious is often the most elusive to recognize.”

 

"The god of trading rewards persistence, experience and discipline, and absolutely nothing else."


#23 Rogerdodger

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Posted 09 January 2012 - 12:22 AM

There's an old saying: "when the student is ready, the teacher will be there."
This saying really is referring to the desire, motivation and attitude of a student.

Likewise with so many who enter the work force.
There is little if any work ethic, desire or motivation.
It might be that the next generation is choosing to shaft itself by playing the victim.
To claim that the problem is a lack of "tax support" for education is a simplistic way to ignore reality:
Posted Image

Here are a few pull quotes from the same problem in the UK:

Jobless Britons 'lack basic skills and work ethic'

The unemployed lack basic skills and a strong work ethic...
...foreign-born workers were often better qualified, equipped and motivated.
'These migrants are skilled, they have a very strong work ethic, and they simply get on with the job.
“After 11 years of formal education, employers say they get kids coming to them who can’t read, who can’t write, who can’t communicate.”
"it is actually a crude political act to scapegoat migrant workers for a lack of jobs.”

Edited by Rogerdodger, 09 January 2012 - 12:30 AM.


#24 Rogerdodger

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Posted 09 January 2012 - 12:40 AM

And on a mock factory floor, they learn to use wrenches, hoses and power tools that they will need to build axles for large mining trucks.
Yet North Carolina is picking up much of the cost. It is paying about $1 million to help nearly 400 workers acquire these skills


WHAT? $1,000,000 in tax money to learn to use wrenches?

If these kids were raised in a home with a father, they might have learned how to use wrenches and power tools as teen-agers.
My 7 year-old grandson loves to help me change the oil in the old truck and you should see him operate the air tools and hydraulic jack to rotate the tires.

I contend that the "Great Society" has made fathers a useless relic of the past, replaced by government programs from a Nanny State.
But we don't want to even consider that do we?

#25 stocks

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Posted 09 January 2012 - 09:00 AM

UC salary criticisms fuel student protests

Behind the angry chanting and acts of civil disobedience is a growing sense that the 10-campus UC system is no longer a public institution accessible to the middle class, but rather a sprawling bureaucracy of hospitals and auxiliary research institutions buffeted by an ever-expanding roster of administrators.

Over the past few months, the University of California has raised undergraduate tuition by 18 percent, awarded raises of as much as 23 percent to a dozen high-ranking administrators and announced a possible 81 percent tuition increase over the next three years.


college
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UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#26 stocks

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Posted 14 April 2012 - 08:02 PM


the more power you give government the more it will discriminate against young people. That is simply because young people haven't had time to organize into special interests like older adults.


Steve Jobs: Teachers Unions Cripple American Education


[Steve] Jobs also criticized America’s education system, saying it was “crippled by union work rules,” noted Isaacson. “Until the teachers’ unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform.”



Governor Christie: I Will Sacrifice My Career To Take On Teachers Unions


http://www.breitbart...Teachers-Unions
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#27 stocks

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Posted 15 April 2012 - 11:10 AM

the more power you give government the more it will discriminate against young people. That is simply because young people haven't had time to organize into special interests like older adults.


Every Age Group Is Getting Poorer In America, Except For One


http://advisorperspe...real-growth.gif
-- -
Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#28 stocks

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Posted 31 January 2016 - 10:54 AM

 

the more power you give government the more it will discriminate against young people. That is simply because young people haven't had time to organize into special interests like older adults.

Compulsory education. What would you do if you wanted to make youngsters tractable and demoralized? You'd lock them up in custodial facilities for their entire childhood and adolescence.

Academic education. Most people, studies show, learn by doing. So let's structure education to benefit kids that learn from listening to teacher and from books.

Child labor. Let's keep kids out of the labor force so they can't learn any practical skills.

Minimum wage. Let's make it really hard for people without skills to get a job. (But unpaid internships for the rich kids are OK).

Regulated labor market. Kill the common law "employment at will" concept, and tangle up the labor market with all kinds of laws to prevent employers from hiring and firing without cause. You wouldn't want an employer to take a risk on hiring some young uncredentialed nobody.

Mandated benefits. One way to keep inexperienced young people from competing in the labor market is to mandate all kinds of benefits from health insurance to unemployment to retirement. These are things that young people don't need and shouldn't have to pay for. They just make it more expensive to hire young people.

http://roadtothemidd...illennials.html


Steve Jobs: Teachers Unions Cripple American Education

[Steve] Jobs also criticized America’s education system, saying it was “crippled by union work rules,” noted Isaacson. “Until the teachers’ unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform.”

 

 

The Self-Serving Apologists for Student Debt-Serfdom

 

Everyone who isn't blinded by self-interest sees that the cost of higher education in America--and the way we pay for it, by turning students into debt-serfs-- is unsustainable. Those benefiting richly from the bloated, ineffective bureaucracy see no alternative, of course; their self-serving handwringing would be laughable if it wasn't so destructive to the nation and the economy.
 
Greg Mankiw, professor at Harvard, recently offered up a typical helping of self-serving handwringing: Three Reasons for Those Hefty College Tuition Bills. Mankiw squeezes out a few insincere (but necessary for PR purposes) alligator tears over the soaring costs of a college degree, and then trots out the usual justifications for maintaining the status quo, which just so happens to reward him so well.
 
Let's dismantle his bogus justifications one by one.
 
 
 

-- -
Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.