...according to this cheery Newsweek piece.
Meanwhile, because the government funding fire hose hasn't quite yet bloated college tuitions to the point where they are completely unaffordable without financial assistance, Barack would like to open the spigot wider to help turn even more unemployed wrench-turners and paper-shufflers into unemployed BA's.
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An Australian gentleman who called into Sean Hannity's radio program this afternoon suggested that the whole "retraining" scam wasn't necessarily to get jobs for the unemployed...just to get them off the unemployment rolls by reclassifying them as students.
Apparently liberal Australian PM Kevin Rudd has already tried this stunt, with precisely the same chicanery, and Hannity's caller was seeing history repeating itself.
--Wes S.
I'm a relict of the Depression - but it's a really nervous time for many of the small businesses my company supplies. Several competitors have folded, so I'm picking up their business. But even at that business has been no better than flat.
The most annoying part has been seeing all the same old mistakes being made yet again.
Stranger
BA's in plumbing, welding, and auto repair would be much more useful.
Why not do what Heinlein suggested; give each graduating high school senior a bachelor's degree?
If a person can't make a living doing something practical, what good is a BA?
Jim
We will always need wrench-turners, we will always need ditch-diggers. Which would you rather have in your home, the corporate CEO with the sparkling personality and an MBA, or the sullen plumber with a GED, who knows how to get the overflowing toilet working again? It's all in the perspective.
I have a feeling we're about to get a hard lesson in perspective.
Fifty years of psuedo-educational, lefty feel good fluff in [m]acadamia, has come home to roost.
When the draft dodgers of the sixties went into the education business, as a war-time refuge, they and their Marxist cant stuck like sewage in a rough drain pipe.
That crapulous brain clog haunts us now, and seemingly for forever, as it's assumptions about society and their relationship to actual reality, are so appealing to the dumbed down masses.
Now we all benefit from that clog in the public thinking process, as witness the wonderfulness of .50 cents of every government dollar budgeted, being borrowed.
What'll kick out the jams? I dunno. My vote is for a good world wide pandemic. Failing that, mebbe an old fashioned redo of the Seven Plagues of the Pharaohs.
Not that I'm a pessimist, this morning. In lieu of hope, I'll go for a good grin.
"Bene, bene, bene --
y'r all Catholics now."
Firesign Theatre circa 1972
John, the Grumpy
Why not do what Heinlein suggested; give each graduating high school senior a bachelor's degree?I see where RAH was heading, but today's high school diplomas are worth about what a sixth-grade education was 50 years ago. That's why universities have Bonehead English and Bonehead Math -- and why those classes are packed.
University diplomas are -maybe- high-school equivalency. (But if they are, why are so many people in master's programs?)
wv: gratemi. Yeah, it does grate on me.
Two things to take into account when sending people to college.
One, is that older people have more trouble finding work. Two, is that many supervisors will *not* hire a college grad, or even someone that has been to college.
The purpose of college is only peripherally to gain background for employment. The reason to attend college is to change the way you think, the way you look at the world. Your assumptions about who to trust, what references apply to which problem change. And you explore options, ask questions.
This annoys many that haven't been to college, and make a work group harder to manage. A college background emphasizes taking the time to find a thorough answer, while many craft jobs rely on getting standard materials assembled into standard configurations in a standard amount of time.
Yes, the world would be better if your mechanic diagnosed a common failing in the type of engine you use, and devised an improved system to avoid the problem in the future. But you don't want to have to pay for the time to get the research and development done, and you want your engine left in a standard configuration so the next mechanic can also fix something broken at some time in the future.
Same with building a house, laying in pipelines, and building roads and bridges.
And beware the dark side of Oh! Bummer! sending "legal assistance" to colleges - this lets him tie in college acceptance to his middle-school draft program. Kids that don't go to schools that implement the community service (and pledge of allegiance/uniform, etc.) don't get accepted to college. This lets Oh! Bummer! back-end his public school program into home schooling and private schools. Slick, eh?
I was listening to this tripe on the radio on my way home from the office (cube farm) last night.
As I've worked in surgical oncology and nursing, economics, IT, and the janitorial arts, it caused me to think through my cynicism and consider that this program probably wouldn't open avenues in the gunsmithing trade, but might in horology. Or buggy-whip production.
Oddly, scrubbing floors while working on another degree gave me the most time for introspection and self-examination. It also kept me sane through a divorce.
Regards,
Rabbit.
Maybe I can finally go to gunsmith school after I retire
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