January 29, 2013, - 2:38 pm
College Degrees, Illegal Alien Amnesty & Why We Need Far Less of BOTH – Immigration Reform Stars Align for Disaster
At the same time that the Senate GangBang of Eight, including faux-conservative Marco Rubio, unleashed their illegal alien amnesty bill, a study was released revealing that America has twice as many people with college degrees as jobs that require one and that the percentages of janitors, taxi drivers, and sales clerks with college degrees have gone up significantly. As I noted, yesterday, imagine all the jobless Americans–nearly one in ten–having 30 million new people thrust into the competition pool for the few jobs available, which is exactly what will happen under the GangBang of Eight amnesty package. The lead economist who did the study at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity said that this is the “new normal.” In other words, the college degree isn’t worth as much as the paper on which the diploma is printed. At this time when more and more Americans are coming out of college with dark job prospects, do we really want to thrust 30 million more job seekers on them, which is what will happen with this amnesty bill’s “path to citizenship,” giving the aliens immediate permits to work and compete for jobs against Americans?
College Degree Holders & Illegal Aliens: We Need Less, But Are Getting More and More Of Both & They Will Compete Against Each Other For Jobs
Here’s a tip: the 20-30 million aliens officially on “the path to citizenship” won’t be seeking the lettuce picking jobs we’re told “Americans won’t do.” They’ll be seeking the jobs Americans are seeking, and we’ll be told that we need a whole new crop of illegal aliens to do the “back-breaking” work. Then, we’ll be told those aliens, too, need citizenship. It’s a never-ending cycle that will forever add to the devaluation of a college degree.
On Saturday night, I got a flat tire late at night in the middle of a Michigan freeway about a half hour away from my home. Stranded in the middle of nowhere late at night in the dark, I called a 24-hour towing service to come out and change my tire. As luck (or bad luck) would have it, my spare tire was also flat, so I had to be towed all the way home. The towing guy told me he had a college degree from Michigan’s Oakland University. Then, he said, I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Wow, this is the most educated auto wrecker I’ve ever met,” which was exactly what I was thinking. But, in that moment, the service he provided was very important, necessary, and valuable to me, and yet it was something for which any degree, including a Ph.D., would be useless. And, as I’ve noted repeatedly on this site, I think America puts too much emphasis on every single person getting a college degree. It makes the degree worthless–even more so than a high school diploma once was (and that is even more worthless than ever, too).
At the same time, other studies show that those with college degrees today–having studied such important and useful topics as “Sex and Dominatrix Mentality in the Songs, Nudie Picture Books, and Behavior of Madonna” and “Living as a Freegan – Dumpster Diving 101”–are infinitely more stupid, ignorant, and incompetent than those who only had high school degrees in the ’70s. And we now have more high school grads than ever, another meaningless fact, since their high school diplomas mean less and less, with more and more students who must take remedial English and math courses in college. MBAs (I have an MBA and a JD)–once respected degrees–are also not worth what they once were, with many MBA holders jobless or being forced to take jobs that don’t require that education.
It’s always been my position that not everyone in America should be directed toward being doctors, lawyers, software engineers, CEOs etc. While some might call me an elitist, we only need the best and brightest to get those degrees and practice in those fields. And we need janitors and plumbers and welders and housekeepers–all jobs for which a college degree has zero use or relevance. Somebody has to do those jobs. We also need factory workers and people to man the assembly lines (and the sense of entitlement and refusal to take those jobs, along with union demands, is part of the reason we’ve lost those jobs to China and elsewhere and become a consumer society that can’t sustain itself rather than a country that makes and produces things). And we need Americans–not illegal aliens–to fill those jobs.
The move toward pushing everyone to get a college degree leads to a sense of entitlement, as in I earned a college degree. I’m not gonna change someone’s tire or dig ditches. I’m too good for that. And we see that happening with college grads living at home and playing video games or spending all day on Facebook, rather than taking a job that doesn’t require a college degree that is “beneath me,” in their minds, as studies show that the current crop of college grads are a big part of the most narcissistic generation ever. Expect more and more of these narcissistic home-bound slackers, as we thrust 30 million aliens into the marketplace to compete against the college-“educated” slackers.
More:
Nearly half of working Americans with college degrees are in jobs for which they’re overqualified, a new study out Monday suggests.
The study, released by the non-profit Center for College Affordability and Productivity, says the trend is likely to continue for newly minted college graduates over the next decade.
“It is almost the new normal,” says lead author Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist and founder of the center, based in Washington.
The number of Americans whose highest academic degree was a bachelor’s grew 25% to 41 million from 2002 to 2012, statistics released last week from the U.S. Census Bureau show.
The number with associate’s degrees increased 31%, while the number of Americans for whom the highest level of education attainment was a master’s or doctorate degree grew fastest of all — 45% and 43%, respectively.
Earnings in 2011 averaged $59,415 for people with any earnings ages 25 and older whose highest degree was a bachelor’s degree, and $32,493 for people with a high school diploma but no college, the Census data show.
Vedder, whose study is based on 2010 Labor Department data, says the problem is the stock of college graduates in the workforce (41.7 million) in 2010 was larger than the number of jobs requiring a college degree (28.6 million).
That, he says, helps explain why 15% of taxi drivers in 2010 had bachelor’s degrees vs. 1% in 1970. Among retail sales clerks, 25% had a bachelor’s degree in 2010. Less than 5% did in 1970.
“There are going to be an awful lot of disappointed people because a lot of them are going to end up as janitors,” Vedder says. In 2010, 5% of janitors, 115,520 workers, had bachelor’s degrees, his data show.
Matt Moberg, who provides training for the Cleaning Management Institute in Latham, N.Y., says the percentage of degree-holding janitors was probably smaller before the recession, but those with four-year degrees likely are business owners or workers in online degree programs.
Wanna be an over-educated janitor, sales clerk, or taxi driver? Go to college. Those and slackerville are among your best job prospects because we devalued the college degree by insisting that everyone get one and providing the financial aid and tax-funded, self-perpetuating, ever-growing college bureaucratic machines to make sure that happens even more.
And with the tidal wave of 30 million immediately given work permits to compete with all of these college grads, it’s an alignment of the stars for disaster in the job market and the U.S. economy.
Tags: amnesty, Center for College Affordability and Productivity, Cleaning Management Institute, college degrees, college degrees worthless, devaluation of college degrees, Immigration, janitors with college degrees, Matt Moberg, Richard Vedder
Insisting that everyone have a college degree has effectively turned those four years into high school…and allowed the teachers’ unions, in public high schools, to socially promote ignoramuses.
The college education my daughter received (at an “excellent” school) was about on par with the (public) high school education I received 40+ years ago.
louie louie on January 29, 2013 at 3:15 pm