According to the National Center for Education Statistics, humanities majors account for about 12 percent of recent graduates, and art history majors are so rare they’re lost in the noise. They account for less than 0.2 percent of working adults with college degrees, a number that is probably about right for recent graduates, too. Yet somehow art history has become the go-to example for people bemoaning the state of higher education.Ms Postrel goes here for her data.
Read the short article to see what she is saying and why the Instapundit calls her a contrarian, at least on this issue.
Hat tip to the Instapundit.
Regards — Cliff
♠ Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg View columnist. She is the author of The Future and Its Enemies and The Substance of Style, and is writing a book on glamour. This is the first of a two-part series on the economics of higher education. The opinions expressed are her own. To contact the writer of this article: Virginia Postrel in Los Angeles at vp@dynamist.com.
As with all problems or "problems"...there are multiple components and at least an equal number of possible paths for rectification.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, in America, higher education is a huge, and up to now very profitable business. If one doesn't believe it, Google the average salary for the top 10 universities in the country. Look at how much tenured chairs "make" at universities. So, in order to sustain that sort of business, it is necessary to craft and sustain a line of wanted (not necessarily needed) products...ergo...degree programs that are "doable" and "apparently useful." That higher learning occurs is incidental to the business objective of the university. At one time, job placement was a factor in the degree choice and the choice of the degree grantor. That has no largely gone by the wayside as universities have shifted the responsibility for getting employment to the degree holder. But lets be clear....the mission of the American institutions of higher learning is NOT higher learning or any other lofty, abstract goal. Its selling degrees and fielding money making sports teams.
Second, America and Americans largely could care less about "learning." We've become a means end society..the shorter the path and the cheaper and faster the means...the better. The word is, "give me what I need to get a job and (in the words of our current generation of college kids) my guaranteed entry into the middle class."
Third, we are a day late and a dollar short on job getting strategy. Our parents went to college to get "better jobs" and so that is the unquestioned national philosophy today....except that it is no longer valid. You can use only so many folks with a BS in Business Administration, or Marketing, or Finance. Even within more specialized disciplines such as Chemistry, Biology, or Physics, job openings are few. In order to secure good employment, one must labor away in academia through a number of gates. BS in Biology, MS in Molecular Biology, and then a PhD in one of the many existing and emerging sub-specialties such as nanomolecular cell physiology. Few folks have the intellectual acumen to achieve that goal.
There is a current disdain that has existed since the sixties that holds that "occupational" or "technical" training is for dummies....you know...the ones who can't go to "college and get a degree."
Sadly...that is precisely where one can get a "guarantee into the middle class....and almost a guarantee of a good paying job." A massive project to rebuild the SF Bay Bridge has been slowed and periodically stopped..and become a political football because the company doing the work can't find qualified welders and other steel workers. Instead, they have to search in other countries and deal with the complex immigration requirements attendant to hiring them. Why? Well....its "blue collar work"....stuff lower middle class folks do when they can't do something else. Anyone paid a plumber lately. Or a master electrician. But in order to circumvent that national shortage of skill sets....HomeDepot and Lowes are making Bazillions by telling Joe Sixpack that he has the skills to DIY....and if you only attend one of their 30 minute how to sessions in your local store.....you won't need to pay those big plumbing or electric bills....you...Mr. White Collar college grad....
What is the answer? Well...the answer is evolving....slowly...but surely. Even Land Grant colleges are being severely deprived of public funding such that they are being forced to examine their "business model" and focus on "what is important." I suspect that left without a "bailout"...the problem of too many degrees for too many people who don't need them will solve itself....
But we won't live to see it....