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9486 in the collection
College Not Necessary for Many New Careers
Ohanian Comment: An article by Phyllis Schlafly has hot links to an article in US News & World Report which is worth checking out. Actually, the Schlafly article makes more sense. You will recall that I have been presenting evidence for years about the fact that "B.A. diploma holders 'are having trouble finding jobs that require college-graduate skills.'" That said, the job descriptions for "best careers" in the US News & World Report article are truly pathetic (or a hoot, depending on your mood). Simplistic beyond belief. I am really shocked that such stuff could get into print.
For example, they list "Ghostwriting" as a top career, suggesting this to the wannabe ghostwriter: "Contact a famous person you respect and ask if he or she would like you to ghostwrite an autobiography. If so, you develop an outline together and submit the proposal to publishers, usually through an agent. . . "
(Ohmygod, I've made my living, sort of, by freelance writing for the past 15 years. Clearly, the US News and World staffer who wrote this has no idea how difficult it is to get an agent, never mind making contact with famous people. Maybe what I need to do is contact Paris Hilton.)
Here are the criteria they say they used to choose "best careers":
Job satisfaction, defined as spending a high percentage of time on activities that many people would consider rewarding or pleasant.
Training difficulty, defined by the length of training typically required, adjusted by the amount of science and/or math involved.
Prestige, based on an informal survey of college-educated adults.
Job market outlook, based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor and professional organizations, with the career's resistance to being offshored considered.
Pay, with data provided by payscale.com, which has an extensive database of individual employee compensation profiles.
It is altogether good to get young people thinking about a broad array of careers and especially careers that are not college dependent. It is just unfortunate that the US News and World Reportcareer descriptions seem entirely loosey-goosey. There is no information as to whether these occupations are in short supply--just some odd descriptions of what might be fun about them.
Here's why they chose Hairdresser: "People tend to be loyal to their haircutter, so if you're at all pleasant, you can develop plenty of long-term friends or at least acquaintances. After all, there's a lot of time to chat while shampooing, cutting, and torturing hair so it curls or straightens."
Clergy: "Religion anchors millions of Americans' lives, and their clergyperson is their ship's captain."
Engineer: "How'd you like to design the next-generation iPhone? A better pollution control device? Or a machine that would more quickly decode a person's genome? If you're an inveterate tinkerer, with enough math and science ability to survive a five-to-six-year bachelor's degree, engineering could be your calling."
And so on. Schlafly makes more sense than US News. It's interesting that she offers information that should give one pause about choosing engineering as a career, one chosen "best" by the magazine.
by Phyllis Schlafly
U.S. News & World Report, which has made a name for itself by ranking and announcing the Best Colleges every year, is now ranking and listing the Best Careers for young people. A comparison of the latest lists shows a shocking disconnect and makes for dispiriting holiday reading.
While the price of a college education has skyrocketed far faster than inflation, many careers for which colleges prepare their graduates are disappearing. U.S. News' Best Careers guide concludes that "college grads might want to consider blue-collar careers" because B.A. diploma holders "are having trouble finding jobs that require college-graduate skills."
Incredibly, U.S. News is telling college graduates to look for jobs that do not require a college diploma. Among the 31 best opportunities for 2008 are the careers of firefighter, hairstylist, cosmetologist, locksmith, and security system technician.
Where did the higher-skill jobs go? Both large and small companies are "quietly increasing offshoring efforts."
Ten years ago we were told we really didn't need manufacturing because it can be done more cheaply elsewhere, that auto workers and others should move to Information Age jobs. But now the information jobs are moving offshore, too, as well as marketing research and even many varieties of innovation.
The flight overseas includes professional as well as low-wage jobs, with engineering jobs offshored to India and China. Thousands of bright Asian engineers are willing to work for a fraction of American wages, which is why Boeing just signed a 10-year, $1-billion-a-year deal with an Indian government-run company.
Society has been telling high school students that college is the ticket to get a life, and politicians are pandering to parents' desire for their children to be better educated and so have a higher standard of living. John Edwards wants the taxpayers to guarantee every kid a college education, and Mitt Romney says more education is the means for Americans to compete in a global economy.
But it doesn't make sense for parents to mortgage their homes, or for students to saddle themselves with long-term debt, in order to pay overpriced college tuition to prepare for jobs that no longer exist. Tuition at public universities has risen an unprecedented 51 percent over the past five years.
President Bush calls the loss of U.S. jobs "the pinch some of you folks are feeling." I guess his words are designed to show his "compassionate conservatism," but the reality is far more than a pinch.
U.S. News offers this advice for the nerds who still spend five to six years earning an engineering degree despite increasingly grim prospects of a well-paid engineering career: "Look for government work." Or maybe you can be an "Offshoring Manager" and be part of the process of shipping your fellow graduates' jobs overseas.
A Duke University spokesman said that 40 percent of Duke's engineering graduates cannot get engineering jobs. A Duke University publication suggests that the best prospect for good engineering jobs is for the U.S. government to start another major project like going to the moon.
U.S. News warns us that "government is becoming an employer of choice." Corporations are getting leaner, but government can continue to pay good salaries, with lots of vacation days, sick leave, health insurance and retirement benefits, because government rakes in more tax revenue in good times and can raise taxes in bad times; and if the Democrats win in 2008, we can expect government to expand even more.
Presidential candidates have gotten the message from grassroots Americans that we want our borders closed to illegal aliens. Headlines now proclaim "Immigration Moves to Front and Center of G.O.P. Race" and "G.O.P. Candidates Hold Fast on Immigration at Debate."
But G.O.P. candidates haven't yet gotten the message that jobs are just as big a gut issue as immigration. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey conducted December 14-17 reports that, by 58 to 28 percent, Americans believe globalization is bad because it subjects U.S. companies and employees to unfair competition and cheap labor.
Where are the limited-government fiscal-conservatives when we need them to refute the notion that the best an engineering graduate can hope for is a job with the government? Are the fiscal-conservatives too busy chanting the failed mantra of "free trade" even though it has resulted in millions of good American jobs being shipped overseas?
When are we going to call a halt to the way globalism is destroying U.S. jobs by foreign currency manipulation, theft of our intellectual property, shipping us poisonous seafood and toys, and unfair trade agreements that allow foreign subsidies (through the so-called Value Added Tax) to massively discriminate against U.S. producers and workers?
Read this column online.
Eagle Forum
www.eagleforum.org
PO Box 618
Alton, IL 62002
Phone: 618-462-5415
Fax: 618-462-8909
E-mail: eagle@eagleforum.org
— Phyllis Schlafly
Eagle Forum & U. S. News and Worldl Report
2008-01-02
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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