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I was reading in the NYT that 60% of Americans do not have a four-year degree. And it's those people that are the swing votes. And it's those people that are starting to lean RED. They go on to discuss what has to happen to swing the election one way or the other. Candidates who were teachers, etc...blah blah blah.

But I think there is a more fundamental problem here. Most of the time, if you don't have a degree in 2023, you're screwed. Blue-collar jobs go where labor is cheap, and that isn't here. Textiles are virtually gone. So is steel. We make very few ships that aren't military. Etc. There is still construction, of course (can't really off-shore that). The US economy appears to be a more technical economy. What assembly/factory jobs there are increasingly are being performed by robots. Software is making office jobs more efficient, so you can hire less people to do the same work. So the non-college middle class is shrinking.

In that landscape, it is difficult to promise "more jobs, better jobs" without just lying. IMHO, that's why Team Red has pivoted to -for example- "them feriners are taking your jobs". Side-step the problem, and blame "the other". Team Blue can't really do that. So they are losing the working class, even though Team Red isn't actually going to make anything better for them (Team Blue is more likely to approve job training, financial support, SNAP, etc). They just distract them with "floods of illegals", etc. (Not that illegal immigration isn't a problem, but it isn't the problem with respect to the shrinking middle class and lack of jobs.)

The answer seems clear to me: make college more affordable, and get more STEM grads out there. A few on Team Blue seem to support that. Almost no one on Team Red does. As we've seen, neither seems to be making that a priority. Which seems foolish to me given the realities of our evolving economy.

There is an alternative, and that is protectionism. But that seldom (if ever) works out well. And what's sorta sad is that we likely can never get some industries back because the people that knew how to do them have retired and are dying out. The people with the know-how are in China, or Bangladesh, or Thailand, or wherever. They aren't here anymore.

The answer seems clear to me: make college more affordable, and get more STEM grads out there.

The other alternative - make the economy more accessible to people who don't have college degrees. Many jobs that are filtered based on whether the applicant holds a college degree simply don't require a college degree:

"One of the researchers' most revealing findings was that millions of job postings listed college degree requirements for positions that were currently held by workers without them. For example, in 2015, 67 percent of production supervisor job postings asked for a four-year college degree, even though just 16 percent of employed production supervisors had graduated from college. Many of these so-called 'middle-skill' jobs, like sales representatives, inspectors, truckers, administrative assistants, and plumbers, were facing unprecedented 'degree inflation.'"

https://www.vox.com/policy/23628627/degree-inflati...

The reason people without a degree are "screwed" in today's economy is largely because people who have degrees have decided to screw them. It's a symptom of opportunity hoarding. The social cohort that has four-year degrees is more comfortable being with other people that have four-year degrees, is far more likely to over-value having a four-year degree even for jobs that don't actually require them, and is more likely to believe that vast segments of the economy should be gated only for people who have those degrees. There's also (sadly) a pretty high likelihood that the folks who are setting hiring requirements for certain jobs are going to be of a different racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic background many of the folks who lack four-year degrees but who could do that job - while the people who have four-year degrees are far more likely to share the same demographic characteristics that they do.

There is some of that. You don't need a college degree to be -for example- an admin (assistant), but college grads may be given priority because they have shown they can complete a degree program (which is not trivial). Not a necessary qualification for the job, but why wouldn't you choose someone who has demonstrated "more"? 1poorkid doesn't yet have her degree, but she has a job dealing with state government rules and completing various paperwork. So those jobs are out there, and in her case she got it without a degree.

My point was that with the blue collar jobs diminishing, you need at least a four-year degree (often a grad degree) to get anything other than a food-service job. Can't get your job (lawyer) without a degree. My former profession required technical knowledge that could be acquired independently, but would more reasonably come from formal education**.

And even then, a lot of those jobs are starting to travel overseas. There are highly-educated populations that, through remote working, can do technical jobs just as well as Americans, and do it cheaper because they are in India (for example). The US used to have an education advantage, but that's not assured anymore. My former employer had design centers in India, Romania, Norway, and probably some others.

Construction, trades that come to your house (e.g. plumber), service jobs, can never be off-shored. But the muscle jobs have been, and continue to be, moving away. We only need so many skilled trades, like plumbers. All that's left after that is brain jobs. At least for a while, until remote working takes those also. And brain jobs usually require some specialized education.


**And I still had to learn my job because they don't teach "failure analysis" in school. They give you the tools, but you have to figure out how to apply them to that specific idiosyncratic job.

Not a necessary qualification for the job, but why wouldn't you choose someone who has demonstrated "more"?

Because then you're excluding economic opportunity from people who don't have that "more," even though the "more" is utterly unrelated to the job skill. Only people who have the socio-cultural background and access to financial resources that allow getting a college degree are able to get that "more." It's exclusionary and unnecessary and hoards participation in the economy to a specific type of person. It's like requiring a job candidate to be able to read and write in Latin, back in the day - utterly unnecessary, but it made sure that only a certain class of people got that job.

All that's left after that is brain jobs. At least for a while, until remote working takes those also. And brain jobs usually require some specialized education.

No, they don't. To be sure, a certain number of "brain jobs" do - like you said, a lawyer or an engineer. But most "brain jobs" don't require specialized education. Most of them have traditionally been held by people without college degrees. In 1980, only 17% of the population had graduated from college. That was the point of the study - there were millions of jobs that were being held back only for people who had college degrees, even though their current holders didn't have a college degree. It's just not true that there are only two types of jobs in a modern economy - those that require a college education and those that are purely muscle jobs.

It's just not true that there are only two types of jobs in a modern economy - those that require a college education and those that are purely muscle jobs.

I didn't mean to imply that. What I'm trying to say -evidently poorly- is that in our increasingly technical world, it is increasingly important to have technical education. Because the jobs that don't require it are disappearing from our shores. And some of the technical jobs, too, since you can now employ an Indian engineer to design your microchip from Mumbai. We have few muscle jobs, we have tools that make rooms full of paper-pushers redundant...what's left? Engineers, doctors, lawyers, skilled trades (carpenters, plumbers), construction, and service industry. Which creates a wealth disparity, which has its own problems (a lot of service industry is minimum wage, or maybe 2x minimum). This isn't 1980. In 1980 a computer had a green screen, and would run VisiCalc and a word processor. Today it replaces an entire room full of clerical workers with just one person with an Intel i7 core.

Only people who have the socio-cultural background and access to financial resources that allow getting a college degree are able to get that "more."

I think I said in my original post that we need to make education more affordable and accessible. Hard to deal with the cultural aspect, but we certainly can deal with the socio-economic part. And we should. I've said before, free education (state university) up to a BS/BA for anyone who can pass an entrance exam. No more burdensome student loans. It was a boon for the US economy when we did that K-12. I predict it will be another boon if we do that for college.**



**We already have some experience with this through the GI bill. Lots of folks able to go to college, and our economy boomed.

But I think there is a more fundamental problem here. Most of the time, if you don't have a degree in 2023, you're screwed. Blue-collar jobs go where labor is cheap, and that isn't here.

Depends on the job. Trade jobs can't be outsourced, for example. We're not bringing crews from somewhere to hang drywall, pave roads or build houses. You can make 6 figures doing things like plumbing, HVAC and electrical work.

You don't need a 4 year degree from some college that makes you pay $100k+.

As for steel, the US shifted to a micromill model and as a result employment has plummeted:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=IPUEN3311W20...,

Production has generally been flat for a few decades
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=IPN3311A2RS,

Team Blue can't really do that. So they are losing the working class,

That's not why Team blue is losing the working class. Team blue is losing the working class for a number of reasons. Here's a very stilted article that manages to raise some points:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/briefing/democr...
And they tend to be more religious, more outwardly patriotic and more culturally conservative than college graduates.

Do the words "religious", "outwardly patriotic" and "culturally conservative" describe the democrats in any way?
Now throw in the issues of
*Crime
*Border security
*Inflation
*COVID restrictions that crushed small businesses and blue collar jobs

...and does it make sense? Sure does.

Over the last 5 decades who wins depends on what's on the ballot.

democrats win when domestic issues are on the ballot.
Republicans win when foreign policy is on the ballot.

Foreign policy writ large hasn't been on the ballot since Bush43 won in 2004. Every single election since then has been about more domestic items and as such the d's have done better...but as the democrats have shifted further to the left, they're leaving more and more folks behind.

I didn't mean to imply that. What I'm trying to say -evidently poorly- is that in our increasingly technical world, it is increasingly important to have technical education. Because the jobs that don't require it are disappearing from our shores.....We have few muscle jobs, we have tools that make rooms full of paper-pushers redundant...what's left?

Like, most of the jobs in our economy. Most jobs don't require a technical education - if you look at the ten largest categories of jobs, only "registered nurse" absolutely requires a degree:

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/area_emp_chart/are...

One of the largest categories of employment in the U.S. is "General and Operations Managers." That's exactly the sort of job that doesn't require a degree to actually do, but which we now typically screen for a degree in order to get. For no purpose.

I think I said in my original post that we need to make education more affordable and accessible. Hard to deal with the cultural aspect, but we certainly can deal with the socio-economic part.

But why? Returning to my Latin example, suppose we see a disturbing trend in the U.S. economy - employers are increasingly insisting that candidates demonstrate a facility with Latin in order to get hired. Latin is, of course, utterly useless in terms of performing a job. But employers like using Latin as a screen - after all, none of the "wrong" type of people know Latin.

The policy response to this situation should not be to make access to Latin "more affordable and accessible." The Latin is useless. It's a waste of resources for everyone to learn Latin in order to get jobs that don't require Latin. What you want to do is get the employers to stop using Latin as a hiring requirement, so that people who don't pursue Latin can still get those jobs.

In your Latin example, I agree.

But as I'm sure you know, college is about more than just the diploma. It exposes you to new ideas, new ways of thinking, hopefully problem-solving, and you get a broad exposure to different fields so you at least have a clue about them (e.g. sociology...not my major, but it revealed things I had never thought of before). I'm not saying that is always necessary for the type of managerial job you had in mind, but a more well-rounded person is easier to deal with than someone who hasn't been exposed to anything except their tiny little world. I suspect that is at least part of the reason behind preferring university grads. Not just the diploma, but the journey to the diploma.

Just like getting a PhD usually just means you know how to do research. Many/most PhDs don't get a job in their field of emphasis. I was a gamma ray astrophysicist. I ended up in semiconductor failure analysis. They hired me for my physics knowledge, and ability to learn. Not because they were interested in MRK421 (a source I participated in identifying).

Drop Protectionism and Xenophobia in the I.T and engineering fields.


1,000,000 High-Tech Visas, now.


Send the displaced Americans back to college. Maybe for "green jobs" or something.

But as I'm sure you know, college is about more than just the diploma. It exposes you to new ideas, new ways of thinking, hopefully problem-solving, and you get a broad exposure to different fields so you at least have a clue about them (e.g. sociology...not my major, but it revealed things I had never thought of before).

Maybe? I mean, you're primarily just screening for people who managed to perform well at academic tasks (particularly sitting for exams) in their teens - even before their brain is fully developed, for goodness' sakes. Spending four years in college may expose you to some new things. But then again, spending four years doing anything after you graduate high school will expose you to some new things as well. Mostly what we're doing is sorting the population between people who are inclined to do well (or tolerate) academics - lots of reading, doing problem sets and essays - and those who aren't.

For a typical college experience (at a non-selective school within their home state) you're mostly just spending more time in an academic environment that has a lot of similarities (both in "ways of thinking" and "problem-solving") as your high school. If that's something your future job actually requires, then your time in school will have contributed to your capabilities in that job. For many jobs that are currently gated behind degree requirements, though, that's not true.

Honestly, I think this is a big reason why Democrats are having trouble at the edges of the working class. If you want to make the economy better/fairer for people who don't go to college, you want to pursue policies that make the economy better/fairer for people who don't go to college. Not try to get an additional 5% of people to enroll in college. It's one thing to try to identify people who would thrive in college and are unable to get there because of obstacles. But increasing the proportion of college graduates for no reason other than because it's a non-essential screening signal employers are using is something different.

My point was that with the blue collar jobs diminishing, you need at least a four-year degree (often a grad degree) to get anything other than a food-service job. - 1pg

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You are being dismissive of the entire class of skilled trade jobs.

An experienced welder, diesel mechanic, plumber, electrician, and many others can make a damn good living and not rely on the government to forgive massive college debt.

It is an elitist mindset to think you need to work in an office or with a computer to have a "good" job. Many of these jobs are in high demand and pay quite well (six figures) and many would say these workers have a better blue collar life that those commuting to a downtown office building every day. We did a huge disservice to our youth by pounding into their heads since nursery school that they MUST get a degree to be successful. No wonder kids today are not motivated to get any job where they might get their hands dirty or carry a lunch box.

Check out the Mike Rowe Foundation

<B<https://mikeroweworks.org/

What's the problem?
We've made work the enemy.

America has become slowly but undeniably disconnected from the most fundamental elements of civilization'food, energy, education, and the very nature of work itself.

Over the last 30 years, America has convinced itself that the best path for the most people is an expensive, four-year degree. Pop culture has glorified the 'corner office job' while unintentionally belittling the jobs that helped build the corner office. As a result, our society has devalued any other path to success and happiness. Community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs are labeled as 'alternative.' Millions of well-intended parents and guidance counselors see apprenticeships and on-the-job training opportunities as 'vocational consolation prizes,' best suited for those not cut out for the brass ring: a four-year degree. The push for higher education has coincided with the removal of vocational arts from high schools nationwide. And the effects of this one-two punch have laid the foundation for a widening skills gap and massive student loan debt.

... more at link

And we should. I've said before, free education (state university) up to a BS/BA for anyone who can pass an entrance exam. - 1pg

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Any thoughts of the colleges themselves, as opposed to who pays them?

In my opinion most are overcharging for their product and have no stake in the outcome that the graduate who purchases their product will in fact be able to find a job using those skills.

So what do you propose? Should companies have to demonstrate a need for a college graduate in a certain position? How would they even do that? I think neither Team can make that happen.

Especially for someone fresh out of school (college or high school), screening is almost arbitrary. You don't know what they can do yet because they have no experience (generally). Which is why many employers ask for experience, which then leads to newbies asking "how can I get experience if no one will hire me?!". When I came out of grad school, I had no semiconductor experience. My future-supervisor was smart, and asked me questions to see how I think (e.g. if you're in a boat with an anchor, and you throw it overboard, does the level of the lake rise, fall, or remain the same) because he knew that I didn't know the job. Getting the diploma indicated I likely could learn it.

It's up to the job seekers to provide what employers are looking for. I think it would be near-impossible to require employers to list only requirements that were "essential". And that's neither the fault of the Dems or the Reps. It's just "what the market will bear".

So what do you propose? Should companies have to demonstrate a need for a college graduate in a certain position? How would they even do that?

There's lots of ideas out there. A big one is cultural - start pounding the bully pulpit against the "death by degrees" creep of requiring college of applicants for jobs that don't need it. Stop sending the message that we're heading towards a world where a college degree is an unavoidable gate to having a good jobs, even though many good jobs don't require it. Leading by example helps as well: Pennsylvania Governor Rob Shapiro just issued an executive order that revised a lot of its hiring standards to eliminate degree requirements for jobs that don't need one:

https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/gov-josh-s...

Another way is by encouraging/subsidizing the sort of programs that allow people and companies to spend their first few post-HS years gaining experience and being screened in other ways. Apprenticeships, trial hires, paid internships, on the job training - these are the types of programs that provide a pathway for companies to identify quality workers instead of paying ~$200K in tuition and opportunity cost to a third-party private institution to perform the same screening functions.

One major obstacle, though, is that Democrats are now increasingly the party of the college-educated. Not only are they a sizable chunk of the party's votes, but college graduates are enormously over-represented in party leadership and positions of power. A world in which college degrees are an essential gate-keeping mechanism for "sorting" the rewards of our economy is one that profoundly benefits them, and their offspring - children of college-educated parents are much more likely to get a degree themselves. It's entirely in the interests of college-educated people to make sure that the status quo remains in place.

You are being dismissive of the entire class of skilled trade jobs.

Actually, if you read all my missives, I did NOT dismiss them. I just said there aren't enough jobs in those areas to employ everyone that will need employment (and, as a side note, skilled trades usually have to go to school also...just not a college). A good crane operator makes more than I ever did as an engineer, but how many crane operators do we need?

I also favor free job/vocational training for those not inclined to go to college. We do need skilled trades.** Though care needs to be exercised there, too. In Appalachia, apparently they tried to train coal miners to be plumbers...so they have a lot of plumbers, but no plumbing jobs. Which is a problem (I saw a news story on that a few years ago).



**And unions, especially if the state isn't going to fund vocational training. The best plumber I have found was union-trained, and he is really good. The company he works for is not a union shop (AZ), but he was union-trained in NYC, and is the principle trainer for his company.

In my opinion most are overcharging for their product and have no stake in the outcome that the graduate who purchases their product will in fact be able to find a job using those skills.

True. Most universities get the lion's share of their money from research their profs do. I think they jack-up tuition just because they can (to build flashy new stadiums, etc). Private schools are a different matter, and I'm not aware of all their inner workings (I went to state universities, not Stanford or Yale). They charge what the market will bear, I suppose. State universities are controlled by the state, at least somewhat. I went to the university where the president of said university once said that the school would run better without students. (He wasn't president much longer after he said that.) They still tried to shut down the music program while they built luxury skyboxes for the stadium.

Be fair, albaby. I just checked. A full 96% of Congress have college degrees. It's not just Dems.

My contention is that off-shoring was/is causing a drain on "good middle class jobs", and now automation is draining more.** How many legal secretaries were required to run an office 30 years ago versus now? I would be surprised if those staffing requirement weren't cut in half by automation (computers, databases, etc...they enable one person to do the work of ten).

The jobs that can be automated, are being automated. And those are mostly muscle jobs and clerical, which is a huge part of the middle class. Skilled trades remain, service industry remains, and (for now) technical/specialists remain (e.g. lawyers, engineers, doctors, accountants, etc). Frankly, a lot of those specialists may be obsolete in another 50 years (your favorite YouTube lawyer did a segment on AI lawyering...it isn't there yet, but may be in the future). Which will leave skilled trades, and service.

But for now, looking only at earning potential, there is substantially more potential with a college degree. Rolled into that would be the "non-essential" screening you mentioned, but also the reality that college does enable one to do specialized/technical jobs that otherwise would be unrealistic to expect.

https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries...




**And I recall reading that there is some on-shoring now, but into automated factories. So even foreign labor is too expensive now.

When I came out of grad school, I had no semiconductor experience. My future-supervisor was smart, and asked me questions to see how I think (e.g. if you're in a boat with an anchor, and you throw it overboard, does the level of the lake rise, fall, or remain the same) - 1pg

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Interesting question.

The effect on lake level while the anchor is in the boat is a function of the anchors weight. The effect on lake level while the anchor is on the bottom is a function of the anchors volume. Netting the two together, the effect of the anchor on lake level is magnified when it is the anchors weight that is displacing water since it is heavier than the volume of water equal to the anchors volume. Therefore, throwing it overboard would cause the lake level to fall. Do I get the job?

Therefore, throwing it overboard would cause the lake level to fall. Do I get the job?

Well, he hired me! He had a few other questions, but that demonstrated how you tore apart the problem to come to a proper conclusion. He would have liked that.

Be fair, albaby. I just checked. A full 96% of Congress have college degrees. It's not just Dems.

Absolutely - federal electeds are almost entirely college-educated.

But up and down the party, there's plenty of other leadership. Other electeds (state Reps and Senators and cabinet folks), various party chairmen and staffers, county and local leaders, even down the folks who hold grass roots leadership roles. Political parties are enormous organizations - actually interlocking networks of affiliated organizations. The Democrats have increasingly become the home of the college-educated, both in terms of voters (college voters make up an enormously larger share of the Democratic base than a few decades ago) and the people who make and shape the party's priorities.

My contention is that off-shoring was/is causing a drain on "good middle class jobs", and now automation is draining more.**

Certainly true - but not entirely relevant to this point. A huge number of "good middle class jobs" that get offshored are also jobs that would are gated behind a degree. Some of the largest categories are accounting, marketing, and IT. Current trends in automation are also coming for jobs that are degree jobs - look for a lot of computer science majors to find it harder to get jobs as AI swallows coding. Meanwhile, plenty of jobs that are getting "artificially" gated behind degrees (like one of the largest categories, general and operations managers) remain onshore - but are unnecessarily hard for non-college grads to get.

There's certainly no easy answers. But I'm not sure getting more people into college - on the whole - is one of them. We're already at the point where more than 60% of people in the U.S. have obtained some college credit; and about half the population has obtained at least an associates degree. Meanwhile, by definition, half of the college-age population will be below-average students (technically, below-median students - but it doesn't scan the same way). We can expect (or at least hope) that there's some correlation there. Which means that it's pretty likely that any material efforts to get more people to go to college will involve, mostly, getting below-average students to enroll in college.

It's hard to see that yielding much benefit. To be sure, there's (sadly) a large population of people who could do well in college that aren't attending - and getting those kids into college would be a great benefit. But if half your population is already getting a college degree, simple math tells you that you're probably at the point where you have to start enrolling below-average students if you want to get that proportion up. And while college might be broadening and valuable for someone who was at least a mediocre student in high school, it doesn't seem very likely to be a major benefit to someone who was a below-average student. It's unlikely to be rewarding for them, it's unlikely to materially improve their suitability for a job, and it's going to eat up years of their life and a ton of money and keep them from getting other experiences that might be more beneficial for someone who just doesn't perform well in an academic setting.

Albaby

Honestly, I think this is a big reason why Democrats are having trouble at the edges of the working class. If you want to make the economy better/fairer for people who don't go to college, you want to pursue policies that make the economy better/fairer for people who don't go to college. Not try to get an additional 5% of people to enroll in college. It's one thing to try to identify people who would thrive in college and are unable to get there because of obstacles. But increasing the proportion of college graduates for no reason other than because it's a non-essential screening signal employers are using is something different.

I've read about this, but not any proposals to help. I really don't think college is needed for everyone, and a lot of people work in a field they didn't study in college and do well. For instance, where I worked there was a level just below mine where no college was required and some people had GEDs. Then they would get the equivalent of 2 yrs college and move up to my level. It worked out very well for half of them, and several of them went on into management. They really didn't need the two years of college. What stood you in good stead was knowing how to play your politics, which some people are adept at and others aren't. The best managers I knew never studied in the area but knew their politics and weren't dumb.

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