Over the last 30 years the mantra has been - a degree will get you a high paying job. That might have been true. It was for me! But it has not been true for a long time.
30 years ago also most universities paid their own way. But, since then, Governments have become the main payer - they too believed that degrees = well paying jobs. Universities depend on this mantra.
Well the public and the governments are starting to see that this mantra is now false.
This mantra has meant that millions of kids are now no more than indentured slaves.
Governments will pull back. Their prioirty will be healthcare. So will millions of students. Many universities will fail as a result. It will be like newspapers all over again.
Here is a neat piece by Gwyn Morgan in the Globe that nails the situation:
"A recent report commissioned by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives said Canada is falling behind in the global skills race.
The answer, according to many university presidents, is more money to produce more graduates. But what if Canadian universities were the root cause of the skills gap, rather than the solution? There’s considerable evidence to support this conclusion.
Universities like to trot out statistics showing that their graduates have higher rates of employment than people without postsecondary education, but they fail to report what portion of their graduates find work that requires a university education. A 2010 report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development noted that 40 per cent of Canadian university graduates aged 25 to 29 were employed in “low-skill” jobs, the second-worst rating out of the 11 countries surveyed. That BA in history or philosophy isn’t of much use in a fast-food outlet.
The fact that their university degrees aren’t translating into jobs has sparked an increase in Canadian graduates turning to jobs-focused colleges for further training. This means taxpayers are contributing to their education not once, but twice. For students, it likely means adding to the debt incurred in university. Those debts, combined with lost earning years, mean that many will be in their fourth decade before they begin building tangible net worth.
And for companies unable to find people to do skilled work, it means stymied growth that reduces Canadian productivity and prosperity. Such is the sad toll when publicly financed universities put “academic freedom” to teach whatever they choose ahead of the interests of their students, and the national economy.
Imagine a company that sees some of its products in high demand while others languish on warehouse shelves. Imagine that its employees have veto power over the allocation of production resources, forcing the company to turn out more surplus products while failing to satisfy growing demand for other items. That business would soon be bankrupt.
But universities don’t go bankrupt; they just keep spending public money to produce graduates with few job prospects, and keep seeking more money to expand enrolment in skills-short fields."
So what to do?
In the early new year, I will publish my 4th book - You Don't Need a teacher - To Get an Education. In it we will look at what are your best choices. My main focus will be on students and their parents. But I will also look at the new opportunities to be an educator both as an individual and as an organization.
We will look at University and also at school itself. For school today is a deep programming agency that shapes our children into industrial workers and so sets them up to struggle in the world that is unfolding.
With 3 grandkids of my own, this is no small matter for me.
