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talkpoliticsA few months back, I posted about the Occupy Wall Street movement and all of the negative trends that are impacting today's twenty-something generation. While I was writing that, I was also thinking about some of what I want to write now. Call it an overdue companion post.
While I stand by what I wrote back in October, I think there is an important set of "on the other hand" points to consider regarding the negative demographic and economic trends that America's young people are facing as the leave college and enter the foundational phase of their careers. I am, vaguely, hopeful that America is ready for a national conversation on what it would mean to hit a "reset" button on some issues and change some fundamental assumptions about what success SHOULD look like in 2012 and to move on from either denouncing or defending the solutions of the mid-twentieth century as we approach the one fifth point of the twenty-first century.
Issue Number One - Education:
I wrote about this previously as well, but I think it is worth rehashing as student debt and worse job prospects for college graduates is a major topic of conversation today. For most of the past century, the assumption has been that an ever increasing number of people going on to higher education is an unquestioned public and private good. According to the National Center for Education Statistics the number of 23 year olds in possession of a bachelors degree rose from 25 per 1000 in 1910 to nearly 300 per 1000 in 1991. With the help of the GI bill after World War II, total enrollments in college skyrocketed from a mere 2 million in 1950 to over 14 million by the end the Cold War.
At the same time that enrollees and access to college has expanded, the COST of college has risen dramatically, far outpacing the rate of inflation. The cost of college education since 1981 has risen SIX fold while the consumer price index has only risen two and half times. There are many reasons for this, as noted in the Forbes article, but the consequence has been an increasing number of college graduates beginning their work lives saddled with burdonsome debt. Some have asked "whose fault is that?" but I honestly have trouble blaming a 17 year-old who is told by parents, teachers, counselors and college admissions officers that a college degree is an absolute necessity and a prestigious degree even more desirable for listening that advice.
Perhaps this would not be such a problem if the financial gains of a college degree were more readily apparent. The oft-cited 1 million dollars in lifetime earnings figure for a college degree has serious flaws, and given the number of college educated in the workforce today versus 50 years ago, it is not hard to predict that the net gain will continue to devalue over time, and yet, those dwindling gains are still concentrated in the college educated population, pressure for earning degrees will only continue to mount.
This isn't sustainable -- it points towards seriously dysfunctional trends that need a "reset" button or, at least, more credible solutions than simply telling everyone they need to fight harder for the existing seats in college and continue to drive prices ever higher.
We could seriously reconsider the need for college education for many career trajectories. Obviously, many fields will always require higher education, but it is worth considering why a well-educated high school graduate could not perform many jobs that are today kept in reserve for college graduates. I honestly do not know what would incentivize business to accept this as a college degree can be used to discern applicants who have conformed to large organizational expectations and demonstrated an ability to manage their own work.
Colleges could cut their labor costs dramatically and drop tuition to levels more aligned with the value of the degree in the workforce. As the Forbes article demonstrates, labor costs are high in universities in part due to the fact that almost all full time professors are in possession of degrees that require highly specialized knowledge. At prestigious institutions, this is even harder because they compete fiercely to attract top names in the scholarly community. But it is worth considering whether or not it is necessary for all or even most college professors to be actively engaged in scholarship and publication in order for them to keep themselves current and of value to their students. For starters, there is a demonstrable flood of low quality research in the Academy. If the Chronicle article bothers you, remember that this is just in science and social science fields. Robert Grudin's satirical novel Book proposed splitting status obsessed universities into research-only think tanks and liberal arts oriented teaching faculty who publish but are mainly judged on their efforts to educate.
However it is acheived, if college enrollment numbers remain high or continue to grow, the cost of the education has to start trending in a direction that accurately reflects the value of the degree.
Education consumers begin to boycott higher education altogether. It would mean bucking an enormous trend with decades of momentum behind it. It would mean some combination with the first "reform" in that industry and business would have fewer college educated applicants, but costs cannot be justified if there are many fewer consumers seeking degrees.
Issue Number Two -- Social Democracy
I favor arguments that say that social democracy has been a great force for good since the first quarter of the last century. We, not just the United States, have instituted publically financed programs that have slashed poverty among the elderly and helped people afford medical care in their retirement years. We have blunted the harsher edges of poverty for millions. Public works projects have helped build infrastructure worth trillions in economic activity while bringing basic services to communities across the country. I count that as an unqualified good.
But there is also a reality. Many, if not most, programs in America's social democracy portfolio that are vigorously defended by liberals like myself are also solutions that were devised as far back as the 1930s. It is 80 years later and many circumstances have changed. Population statistics show some marked changes from 1930 to today. The percentage of males in the U.S. in 1940 who survived from 21 to 65 was 53.9 and in 1990 it was 72.3. Of those males who lived to 65, in 1940, they could expect to live 12.7 more years and in 1990, they could expect to live 15.3 years. Gains for women appear more dramatic. That means a much larger portion of the population surviving to offical retirement drawing on benefits for additional years.
Similar issues impact publically financed medical insurance and are complicated by America's politically heated relationship with medical services. The recent Avastin controversy is a good example of a problem we have -- despite continued evidence that Avastin has no benefits for breast cancer patients, several insurance companies recently bowed to public relations pressure to keep convering the drug for treatment of breast cancer, keeply a costly but ineffective treatment in use.
I personally believe in publically-financed pension and medical care services -- but I also think we need to look at long term cost projections and recognize that continuing to defend programs as they have existed for 8 decades is not the way forward in 2012. New ideas that are cognizant of current circumstances are needed -- and were probably needed 20 years ago.
Issue Number Three -- Organized Labor
I'm pro-union. I'm so pro-union that I went door to door as a member of the steering committee to help unionize a collective bargaining unit of over 1200. But labor in this country, for all of the good it has done in the past 100 years to improve work conditions, salary and benefits of millions, has to come into the 21st century. That does not, to my mind, mean rolling over and taking the anti-union actions of many Republican governors, but it has to include recognizing the entire world of labor is fundamentally different in 2012 than it was when the biggest victories were realized in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
Labor and capital are international now. Period. That genie cannot and almost certainly should not go back in the bottle. If the workforce of today looks fundamentally different than the workforce of 1950 it is not an argument that unions have to go away, but it is an argument that they need to think of ways of organizing and bargaining that meet today's challenges. I know that in public education finance, many communities are working with pension and lifetime health benefit plans that mean they support almost an entire "shadow" faculty in retirement while the try to meet obligations to working teachers. Many public sector unions directly negotiate contracts for members with politicans to whom the union donated in the election, leading to obvious conflict of interests. The service sector is obviously a very different workforce than the manufacturing sector that has largely gone offshore, and union models of negotiation have to take that into account.
Issue Number Four -- Family Life
For much of the twentieth century, the American "nuclear family" was held up as an ideal. The single family home in the suburbs was supported by our culture, partially financed by housing programs within the GI bill and stitched together with the modern interstate highway system that made living further and further apart from work and other family members convenient. Increasing financial and physical health among the elderly also made it more possible for children to live far away from their parents.
According to the Pew Center, in the 1940s almost a quarter of families lived in multi-generation housing, and that number fell to 12% in 1980 and is now rising again. It will take a while to see if this is solely due to the current economy or a long term trend, but part of me thinks it would be healthy if this were another "reset" button moment. While the Pew research sees contributing factors like many more unmarried people in their 20s and rising immigration of groups more likely to live in multigenerational families, there are some definite positives for the families that do so. Working parents can see part time child care from their parents, income coming into a household even the form of fixed sources increases, care for the elderly is less likely to be spent in the most expensive manners possible. On the affective side of the coin, I cannot frown at a trend that can potentially mean the youngest generation has genuine and sustained contact with their grandparents.
None of these changes are remotely easy. It would mean seriously altered assumptions. It would mean thinking of new ways to approach issues that are more in line with the realities of today's world than the world of the 1930s. It would mean reversing some assumptions about consumption and success that have had very strong pull for more than half a century.
But maybe they might be better for the long haul.
While I stand by what I wrote back in October, I think there is an important set of "on the other hand" points to consider regarding the negative demographic and economic trends that America's young people are facing as the leave college and enter the foundational phase of their careers. I am, vaguely, hopeful that America is ready for a national conversation on what it would mean to hit a "reset" button on some issues and change some fundamental assumptions about what success SHOULD look like in 2012 and to move on from either denouncing or defending the solutions of the mid-twentieth century as we approach the one fifth point of the twenty-first century.
Issue Number One - Education:
I wrote about this previously as well, but I think it is worth rehashing as student debt and worse job prospects for college graduates is a major topic of conversation today. For most of the past century, the assumption has been that an ever increasing number of people going on to higher education is an unquestioned public and private good. According to the National Center for Education Statistics the number of 23 year olds in possession of a bachelors degree rose from 25 per 1000 in 1910 to nearly 300 per 1000 in 1991. With the help of the GI bill after World War II, total enrollments in college skyrocketed from a mere 2 million in 1950 to over 14 million by the end the Cold War.
At the same time that enrollees and access to college has expanded, the COST of college has risen dramatically, far outpacing the rate of inflation. The cost of college education since 1981 has risen SIX fold while the consumer price index has only risen two and half times. There are many reasons for this, as noted in the Forbes article, but the consequence has been an increasing number of college graduates beginning their work lives saddled with burdonsome debt. Some have asked "whose fault is that?" but I honestly have trouble blaming a 17 year-old who is told by parents, teachers, counselors and college admissions officers that a college degree is an absolute necessity and a prestigious degree even more desirable for listening that advice.
Perhaps this would not be such a problem if the financial gains of a college degree were more readily apparent. The oft-cited 1 million dollars in lifetime earnings figure for a college degree has serious flaws, and given the number of college educated in the workforce today versus 50 years ago, it is not hard to predict that the net gain will continue to devalue over time, and yet, those dwindling gains are still concentrated in the college educated population, pressure for earning degrees will only continue to mount.
This isn't sustainable -- it points towards seriously dysfunctional trends that need a "reset" button or, at least, more credible solutions than simply telling everyone they need to fight harder for the existing seats in college and continue to drive prices ever higher.
We could seriously reconsider the need for college education for many career trajectories. Obviously, many fields will always require higher education, but it is worth considering why a well-educated high school graduate could not perform many jobs that are today kept in reserve for college graduates. I honestly do not know what would incentivize business to accept this as a college degree can be used to discern applicants who have conformed to large organizational expectations and demonstrated an ability to manage their own work.
Colleges could cut their labor costs dramatically and drop tuition to levels more aligned with the value of the degree in the workforce. As the Forbes article demonstrates, labor costs are high in universities in part due to the fact that almost all full time professors are in possession of degrees that require highly specialized knowledge. At prestigious institutions, this is even harder because they compete fiercely to attract top names in the scholarly community. But it is worth considering whether or not it is necessary for all or even most college professors to be actively engaged in scholarship and publication in order for them to keep themselves current and of value to their students. For starters, there is a demonstrable flood of low quality research in the Academy. If the Chronicle article bothers you, remember that this is just in science and social science fields. Robert Grudin's satirical novel Book proposed splitting status obsessed universities into research-only think tanks and liberal arts oriented teaching faculty who publish but are mainly judged on their efforts to educate.
However it is acheived, if college enrollment numbers remain high or continue to grow, the cost of the education has to start trending in a direction that accurately reflects the value of the degree.
Education consumers begin to boycott higher education altogether. It would mean bucking an enormous trend with decades of momentum behind it. It would mean some combination with the first "reform" in that industry and business would have fewer college educated applicants, but costs cannot be justified if there are many fewer consumers seeking degrees.
Issue Number Two -- Social Democracy
I favor arguments that say that social democracy has been a great force for good since the first quarter of the last century. We, not just the United States, have instituted publically financed programs that have slashed poverty among the elderly and helped people afford medical care in their retirement years. We have blunted the harsher edges of poverty for millions. Public works projects have helped build infrastructure worth trillions in economic activity while bringing basic services to communities across the country. I count that as an unqualified good.
But there is also a reality. Many, if not most, programs in America's social democracy portfolio that are vigorously defended by liberals like myself are also solutions that were devised as far back as the 1930s. It is 80 years later and many circumstances have changed. Population statistics show some marked changes from 1930 to today. The percentage of males in the U.S. in 1940 who survived from 21 to 65 was 53.9 and in 1990 it was 72.3. Of those males who lived to 65, in 1940, they could expect to live 12.7 more years and in 1990, they could expect to live 15.3 years. Gains for women appear more dramatic. That means a much larger portion of the population surviving to offical retirement drawing on benefits for additional years.
Similar issues impact publically financed medical insurance and are complicated by America's politically heated relationship with medical services. The recent Avastin controversy is a good example of a problem we have -- despite continued evidence that Avastin has no benefits for breast cancer patients, several insurance companies recently bowed to public relations pressure to keep convering the drug for treatment of breast cancer, keeply a costly but ineffective treatment in use.
I personally believe in publically-financed pension and medical care services -- but I also think we need to look at long term cost projections and recognize that continuing to defend programs as they have existed for 8 decades is not the way forward in 2012. New ideas that are cognizant of current circumstances are needed -- and were probably needed 20 years ago.
Issue Number Three -- Organized Labor
I'm pro-union. I'm so pro-union that I went door to door as a member of the steering committee to help unionize a collective bargaining unit of over 1200. But labor in this country, for all of the good it has done in the past 100 years to improve work conditions, salary and benefits of millions, has to come into the 21st century. That does not, to my mind, mean rolling over and taking the anti-union actions of many Republican governors, but it has to include recognizing the entire world of labor is fundamentally different in 2012 than it was when the biggest victories were realized in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
Labor and capital are international now. Period. That genie cannot and almost certainly should not go back in the bottle. If the workforce of today looks fundamentally different than the workforce of 1950 it is not an argument that unions have to go away, but it is an argument that they need to think of ways of organizing and bargaining that meet today's challenges. I know that in public education finance, many communities are working with pension and lifetime health benefit plans that mean they support almost an entire "shadow" faculty in retirement while the try to meet obligations to working teachers. Many public sector unions directly negotiate contracts for members with politicans to whom the union donated in the election, leading to obvious conflict of interests. The service sector is obviously a very different workforce than the manufacturing sector that has largely gone offshore, and union models of negotiation have to take that into account.
Issue Number Four -- Family Life
For much of the twentieth century, the American "nuclear family" was held up as an ideal. The single family home in the suburbs was supported by our culture, partially financed by housing programs within the GI bill and stitched together with the modern interstate highway system that made living further and further apart from work and other family members convenient. Increasing financial and physical health among the elderly also made it more possible for children to live far away from their parents.
According to the Pew Center, in the 1940s almost a quarter of families lived in multi-generation housing, and that number fell to 12% in 1980 and is now rising again. It will take a while to see if this is solely due to the current economy or a long term trend, but part of me thinks it would be healthy if this were another "reset" button moment. While the Pew research sees contributing factors like many more unmarried people in their 20s and rising immigration of groups more likely to live in multigenerational families, there are some definite positives for the families that do so. Working parents can see part time child care from their parents, income coming into a household even the form of fixed sources increases, care for the elderly is less likely to be spent in the most expensive manners possible. On the affective side of the coin, I cannot frown at a trend that can potentially mean the youngest generation has genuine and sustained contact with their grandparents.
None of these changes are remotely easy. It would mean seriously altered assumptions. It would mean thinking of new ways to approach issues that are more in line with the realities of today's world than the world of the 1930s. It would mean reversing some assumptions about consumption and success that have had very strong pull for more than half a century.
But maybe they might be better for the long haul.
