Education For the Other 80%

Here’s an example of what I’ve been talking about. From Today:

When he decided against going to a traditional high school, Warner Adams got teased. But now he’s getting the last laugh.

“People always make fun of vocational schools, but now they’re like, ‘Oh man, I wish I went there,’” said Adams, now a junior at Pathfinder Regional Vocational Technical High School, where every recent graduate found a job upon graduating.

In Massachusetts, where the school is located, the average starting salary in manufacturing is about $45,000. “I can make as much money as someone going to college, coming straight out of high school, and I don’t have to pay for college loans or anything like that,” Adams said.

Read the whole thing. It’s too bad we don’t have leaders with the guts to say that for most people colleges aren’t job training programs and, unless you’re part of that relatively small percentage who will go on to become docs, dentists, lawyers working for big law firms, or financiers, the primary beneficiaries of the push towards higher education are college deans or bankers. As things look now we’re going to pursue the same inadequate policy we’ve been following for the last 20 years.

Hat tip: Instapundit

18 comments… add one
  • michael reynolds Link

    Man, I so agree. I spent an enormous amount of time trying to find a decent vocational high school for my daughter and I just could not make it work. I was looking particularly at vo-tech that dealt with restaurant work, but it was quite clear that 95% of the programs were b.s. and that the programs were just dumping grounds for underperforming kids, usually minorities.

    When you look at Bernie Sanders’s plan for free college it’s clearly lunacy. We’re raising taxes to get more French Lit and Anthropology majors? Because why exactly? Because then the unemployed French Lit student will be debt free? And this benefits society how? Are we suffering a critical shortage of debt-free college graduates with heads full of stuff they’ll never use? What should we spend on that, a trillion or so?

    This goes back to the Indigo Kids discussion. The last thing we need is more Eloi. What this country critically lacks is basic competence – plumbers who know what they’re doing, mechanics who can actually fix a car, locksmiths who can install a lock. We’ve crawled so far up the ass of academia that we actually think nutritionists are more useful than electricians or masons or cabinet makers. We need fewer chiefs, more Indians, at least in Marin where I’ll be damned if anyone in the trades knows what they’re doing, and if they do then good damn luck living long enough to rise to the top of their waitlist.

    We’d better not be heading for some dystopian future because most of us (me definitely included) will be worth fuck-all. There is an air of wooden boots and silk slippers over all this.

  • Piercello Link

    Michael,

    Spot on, although of course I’ll have to take your word for the California specifics.

    This is part of why there are now metal- and woodworking machines in this cellist’s basement.

  • Gustopher Link

    If we were to gently push more kids into vocational training, would plumbers still make a good wage, or would we simply create so many plumbers that they are all starving for lack of work?

    I think the problem might be that there simply aren’t enough decent paying jobs to go around — we’ve seen the middle class get hollowed out over the past 40 years or so to the point where most people who think they are middle class are really just the working poor.

    Funneling kids into an expensive four year liberal arts degree is clearly not a solution, but I’m not sure funneling half of them into vocational school is going to solve that problem. Way less student debt though, until the Ivy League Vocational Schools pop up.

  • I don’t know if it’s deliberate or accidental but it’s Gramscian. We aren’t preparing people for productive adulthoods. They’re preparing to be agitators and state clients.

    English majors, psychology majors, literature majors, interest group majors, and by and large, social science majors are entertaining but they aren’t career prep. They shouldn’t be touted as such and we shouldn’t subsidize them

  • Read the article. They aren’t training to be plumbers. They’re training for today’s manufacturing jobs which are going begging for a lack of applicants with skills. That’s a subject on which Guarneri could speak authoritatively.

    It’s a multifactorial problem. People aren’t aware of the jobs, they don’t know what skills are required, they don’t train for the skills, and there aren’t enough vocational high schools.

    But you’re right. Either there should be a lot more jobs that ordinary people can do or there should be a lot fewer people who need such jobs.

  • Gustopher Link

    Michael, you are assuming that the French Lit major would be able to become a qualified mechanic, plumber or locksmith.

    I’ll grant you locksmith, but for mechanics and plumbers, they have to be able to understand a complex system, do a root cause analysis, and be good with their hands. It requires a very diligent mindset.

    A few years ago, there were articles everywhere about how software engineers were in demand and it was the hottest career that everyone should go into. The result was a lot of really terrible software engineers (most of whom found jobs anyway, because there really is a shortage).

    I’m not sure your French Lit grads are going to make good mechanics. If you get your wish, you may just be struggling harder to find someone who can solve the electrical problem in your car. (French Lit grads can probably rotate tires or something).

  • Gustopher Link

    Let’s estimate the numbers. There are roughly 3.5M degrees being handed out per year — including close to 1M advanced degrees. So, assume 2.5M new college degrees entering the workforce each year.

    Unless there are about 1M jobs per year being created for which vocational schools would be more appropriate, and we can steer that many kids that way, vocational schools are not going to solve the problem. And, that assumes people are fungible (i.e., French Lit majors can do anything!).

    From the article: “Over the next decade. Massachusetts expects to create 100,000 new advanced manufacturing jobs, the largest growth of any sector.” — 10,000 per year in Massachusetts, which is one of the better states for this work, so a ballpark guess of 200,000 per year across the country. Minus a big chunk for the people who are currently graduating from these programs.

    It’s a start, and it is definitely something we should be doing more of. I would even be willing to believe that if we had more of these workers, more of the jobs would appear.

    But it isn’t the panacea for problems of kids entering the workforce with a boatload of debt and discovering there aren’t jobs these days. The problems with the economy are more structural.

    Also, your ominous suggestion of “or there should be a lot fewer people who need such jobs” intrigues me…

  • steve Link

    Meh. You leave out a large number of occupations for which college prepares you. Engineers, accounting, business and its subcategories, nursing, etc. More on topic, I think we can change our policy a bit, but I still think most of this is driven by parents and the kids themselves. Parents are pushing kids who might be better off in a vocational program to go college hoping the kid will be an engineer, not a welder. Kids hope to make big bucks in an office, not running Romex.

    What we could do is cut off schools from government loans if their grads can’t get jobs and/or pay back those loans. We could emphasize those jobs a bit more.

    michael- Since I have to look for those guys for at home and also for work (we own property) it has also been a bit difficult to find quality workers who actually show up on time. I don’t think that is really related to so many kids going to college. Maybe the apprentice training system has issues. Maybe there needs to better, not more, training available at community colleges. I don’t know the answer.

    Also, we have the same issue with the vo-tech school in our system. We took up our son to look at it since he had some interest in robotics and they supposedly had some training in that area. Turned out to not be true and it was quite clear it was a place where they sent troubled, non-motivated kids.

    Steve

  • steve Link

    OT- Thought you might like this (maybe you saw it). An engineer tackles the Productivity stagnation issue. He makes the case that our technologies are, by and large, progressing just about as fast as they have in the past.

    https://artir.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/no-great-technological-stagnation/

    Steve

  • CStanley Link

    What we could do is cut off schools from government loans if their grads can’t get jobs and/or pay back those loans. We could emphasize those jobs a bit more.

    I think this is a necessary (even if not sufficient) step toward addressing the mismatch.

    I also don’t understand what role high school guidance counselors play, if not to help guide some kids toward votech. I get that the programs might not exist in most areas, but maybe if more kids who fit the right profile were encouraged to attend then the extra demand would spur the creation of decent programs. I also get that parents don’t necessarily want to hear that their child isn’t college material, but if it was presented in a positive manner (your kid could go this route and come out with no debt and good earning potential instead of your family having to come up with tens of thousands of dollars that may not even get him or her anywhere…)

  • Steve, don’t be a fool. That was a synecdoche. Demanding that every list be encyclopedic is itself a fallacy.

    At most a third of people satisfy the standard you’re setting. That’s about how many people should pursue higher education. My concern is with the rest.

  • In reference to the article to which you linked he may be right. Given the reported end of Moore’s Law, it may be a hasty conclusion.

  • steve Link

    Dave- it came across as though you were either a big winner, a doc or financier, or else you got nothing. If that was not your intent my apologies. I didn’t expect it to be encyclopedic.

    Steve

  • Basically, college as pre-professional training makes some sense. We’re not all going to be members of the professions. Some professionals would probably be better off with apprenticeship programs. Within living memory college was just one path. My wife’s grandfather became a lawyer with no formal education past third grade.

  • PD Shaw Link

    “It’s a multifactorial problem. People aren’t aware of the jobs, they don’t know what skills are required, they don’t train for the skills, and there aren’t enough vocational high schools.”

    I’d start earlier, no-child-left-behind favors college prep over other alternatives. Schools defund vocational programs because they’ve been given goals that require more investment in college prep. Obama has given waivers to reduce this problem, but ultimately the schools are still being scored on college prep even if that leads to a life of debt-servitude.

    Manufacturing has been moved out of the traditional urban areas due to higher environmental requirements imposed on non-attainment areas. When California becomes or seeks to become non-industrial, it serves as a large voting block for anti-manufacturing policies, when Chicago follows, it becomes a block against the rest of the state/midwest.

    And then people don’t know what manufacturing is anymore, it becomes alien and unattractive. When I worked at a manufacturing plant, it was an unskilled assembly line, sort of like the one in Laverne & Shirley, but a lot less fun. Today, much of the work is still labor, but integrates more elements of design and computing in individual work stations. The traditional American manufacturing model has been uprooted. We want these jobs not because they are a sponge for unskilled labor, but because they are good jobs and are part of a diverse economy for a diverse people.

  • Guarneri Link

    I don’t know if I can speak authoritatively. But I certainly can speak from extensive real live employer experience for quite some time and quite a broad swath of venues.

    It may be helpful to stylistically split the issue into skilled vs unskilled labor. And note the proviso that some degree of required on the job training almost always comes with the territory. That said, skilled labor is, in many locals and skillsets extremely hard to find. Anyone with any exposure to manufacturing environments is familiar with the dying art of machine tool operating. Mold making is another. It may seem amazing to some, but basic arithmetic facility, drafting/print reading, electrical circuit or engineering material basics are in very short supply, at any price. In the lesser skilled positions you get more into issues of basic functioning (like showing up or how to converse with a customer) and slovenliness, In-N-Out Burger wages or not. It leads to automation solutions. I’m not sure I’d be too worried about Gustopher’s oversupply issue. I can’t really speak to more highly skilled activities that require these H1B visas or whatever they are called because we don’t use such labor.

    Some random thoughts from comments…

    PD makes an interesting point about the changing nature of work. Although there are still plenty of people pulling the proverbial lever every 4 seconds, or placing sheet metal blanks in a press, there definitely has been an attempt to consolidate tasks into small bundles of activity. Not sure I’d call it “design,” but certainly real time decision making on account of the inherent variability in manufacturing unit operations. Decisions need to be made on the fly.

    As for apprenticeships, at the end of the day most jobs have an apprenticeship aspect. College educations serve as a sort of minor league proving ground and impart basic skills and knowledge. This rest is on the job training, usually in progressive steps. Would anyone want a surgeon who hadn’t done a lengthy residency? Very few private equity guys don’t come out of investment banking, or commercial banking, consulting or management first. This one was a practicing factory floor engineer, small business manager, and LBO financier before becoming a principal.

    We have become so elitest and so hell bent on college degrees aimed at the professions that we really have neglected the trades, and to a great degree, entrepreneurship. (although there are other factors at work there) You can hire plenty of accountants, treasury financiers, salesmen or process engineers. Finding managers/leaders/entrepreneurs is a real bitch.

  • PD Shaw Link

    Guarneri: “Not sure I’d call it “design,” but certainly real time decision making on account of the inherent variability in manufacturing unit operations. Decisions need to be made on the fly.”

    Yeah, that’s what I meant. I toured a client’s plant earlier this year, and things there operated more on a work-station model with a single worker primarily assigned to integrate most of the parts to spec for each individual client.

  • steve Link

    “Finding managers/leaders/entrepreneurs is a real bitch.”

    Then you help create them. We actively teach and mentor people to achieve that.

    Steve

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