America's obsession with COLLEGE is dangerous. In the states with the highest percent of college grads, one out of three people have a four year degree or better. That means that 2 out of three don't. Do these people matter? We've converted the US K-12 education system as a way to turn kids into college students and that is not very sustainable in the long term. So if the schools are pushing kids to go to college and 2/3 of them don't, hell no wonder kids hate school and drop out. I've posted before about the need for an "Apollo Program" style boot camp to fix the US's core infrastructure, to the tune where the US Conference on Engineers are quoting $4 TRILLION just to fix and modernize what we have, not add more. The Electrical grid is a laughing stock, the surface roads are holding together with hope, duct tape and prayer, the median age of our bridges is 30, and this is before we talk about the insanity of our last mile data connections that make out internet the most expensive in the west as well as one of the slowest. Then you get into the water and sewage delivery systems and how they need to be modernized to save water. We don't treat blue collar work as critical in this country, almost like that work does not exist. Someone has to drive the trucks, pour the concrete, build the houses and offices, fix electrical systems, repair the cars etc. And that work is being ignored. But hey, we got people with degrees who can't find jobs and are working retail to pay of student loans so it's all good.
The problem with the infrastructure in this country is the same one with our education system. Corruption is causing large amounts of money to be diverted from their goals. Look at the construction bidding system in this country and you will find a broken pattern of rules designed to give people like Soros financial padding. Obama's orignal stimulus bill is a perfect example of this. Soros benefitted from both the Education and Construction contracts that were handed out during that time. AS far as stem degrees go... those are what make the money and turn the economy over. OF course they mean nothing if you don't give those young scientists money to do research with. The problem is the military absorbing a ridiculous amount of money from education and infrastructure in this country. We have more air craft carriers than our biggest thirteen military competitors combined... Telling people not to study science is absurd. We are still making money off the education investments of the 80's and 90's. It used to be that the Department of Energy had the biggest chunk of the world's best scientists and they drove american business to the top. The parasite that has absorbed all money in this country is war. Nothing else. Stop beating on education and pretending that is the unsustainable bit. I just see this argument as ludicrous.
A modern-day CCC equivalent could be pretty great. But we'd either have to cut back military spending or raise taxes to make it happen. So it'll never happen.
Yea I'm a Poli Sci major, and the only question I get is "What law school are you going to after you graduate?" When I tell people that I'm not going to be a lawyer they give me this look, and then follow up with "Well then what are you going to be?" I usually don't have an answer for the question because I'm not sure what I want to do exactly. The issue I have is a lot of people assume if I'm not going to be a lawyer, that I've just wasted my time in college.
These are likely people who decided on their degrees after googling how much their major was "worth." Fuck em.
Thomas Friedman had some weaker points in The World is Flat, but I believe him about the future of America lying in creative enterprises. STEM can be creative though, and without a solid understanding of the base processes, innovation cannot take place. I've been disappointed at many of the liberal arts curriculums I've seen looking at colleges, the education system in the US has really failed to update itself. I think the push towards STEM is a misplaced attempt to update the system.