29 thoughts on “SL 618”

  2. Yeah, send your kids to technical school (but not mine) seems to be the message of the elite. Unfortunately it might not be bad (yes, I can’t help myself with the double negative, because I can’t emotionally actually say this statement in the positive) practical advice, in the short term, even though it leads us even further into the dual-class society that hollows out the middle.

    The career trajectories of his children are no doubt influenced by the backstopping of fairly wealthy and influential parents and the social, monetary, and skills capital they bring to the family (in addition to being as well prepared as high SES can buy and any natural talent that they had). A student who doesn’t start with those benefits takes more of a risk in reaching for the brass ring.

    Can rich kids can afford to have dreams? Maybe.

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    1. Well, there are certain risks that you can afford to take when your family is materially comfortable.

      For instance, my 12-year-old is fantastic at Latin and might very well study classics and make a cracker jack high school Latin teacher some day. I’m OK with that because I think that if she followed that path, we could get her through with no student loans, and she’d have her entire (small) salary available to live a genteel spinster existence of teaching at a private classical school. (It would be considerably grimmer to support a growing family on a private school salary.) However, that calculation would look very different for somebody who couldn’t get through college without at least low five figure loans.

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      1. That depends on the private school. My sister’s ex was a Latin HS teacher at an elite prep school, and he was making a salary that would very comfortably support a family.

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      2. Assuming that people are still teaching latin at “classical” schools 20, 30, 40 years from now. Or, if they are, that they aren’t doing it with Great Courses videos and e-tech (ala “Big History”).

        I am very pessimistic about “non-risky” paths in our children’s futures. We give them a variety of kinds of advice, follow your passions, get technical skills, . . . but the common theme I’m seeing in their futures is be prepared for risk and reinvention. So, though I’m wary of the follow your passion advice that has kids investing 100K in culinary academies, I’m also wary of get technical skills and certificates advice that leaves them wondering where the jobs were, as the skill set required keeps moving and the tech capital colludes to keep salaries as low as they can.

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      3. How many elite prep school Latin teachers are there? This is a discussion we’ve recently been having with our little kiddo recently, when he asks “why would someone who was on the US national water polo team coach in the rec program at the local swimming pool?” We’ve been pointing out that there aren’t that many coaching jobs available, and, in order for someone to get the job the person who had it before has to be leaving. So, only one person might have the water polo job at USC in 40 years. So, flexibility is the key.

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      4. bj said:

        “How many elite prep school Latin teachers are there?”

        Yeah.

        I’ve seen one of our local classics guys feeding the turtles at the children’s museum as his day job and I understand that our local classical school does not pay fat salaries, so I have some concerns about classics.

        If my 12-year-old became enamored of classics and wanted to major in it, I hope I would not be too negative about that choice, but I think I’d probably encourage some “practical” courses or a “practical” minor. Maybe encourage her to work on educational software?

        I know she’d be a fantastic Arabist, but there are substantial occupational hazards there. And she could easily do well in some technical field.

        I think I ought to encourage the children to be entrepreneurial, if only as a sideline. We definitely find that life is more fun when the odd $500 turns up in the mailbox unexpectedly. Even a lower paid private teaching job plus a side gig might be OK. (Our C does not envision having a family, which would simplify the economic side of this considerably.)

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    2. I feel like I’m sounding too pessimistic, but I’m not, ultimately. But, I think that it is actually being entrepreneurial, flexible about what we’re willing to change, and deeply thinking about what is most important is what we need to teach our children. I’ve come to believe all promises of particular training or jobs as being unpredictably oversure.

      Now that’s not to say that certain kinds of training don’t prepare the mind more rigorously, and my own bias is to believe that it is science and math that prepare you to think rigorously. But, as I’ve become older and wiser, I’ve realized that it’s the hard thinking that matters most (though I’m not letting go of the notion that most everyone should be learning more math than people do in the US).

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      1. “I feel like I’m sounding too pessimistic, but I’m not, ultimately. But, I think that it is actually being entrepreneurial, flexible about what we’re willing to change, and deeply thinking about what is most important is what we need to teach our children. I’ve come to believe all promises of particular training or jobs as being unpredictably oversure.”

        I definitely agree. Nobody knows what the workplace will look like 40 years from now, and there’s no possible educational program offered now that will equip our kids to be employable 40 years ago.

        I’ve often mentioned here my multiply employed entrepreneurial relatives. If they have 4 or 5 income streams (and they generally do), they are never in danger of losing 100% of income in one fell swoop. They can walk away whistling from job losses that would destroy other people, because it’s not their only gig and they are financially conservative. (One of the relatives is currently under the shadow of Microsoft’s 18,000 person layoff, but it really honestly doesn’t matter to him–he has a paid off house in a very nice suburb and he can do OK without his day job.)

        “Now that’s not to say that certain kinds of training don’t prepare the mind more rigorously, and my own bias is to believe that it is science and math that prepare you to think rigorously. But, as I’ve become older and wiser, I’ve realized that it’s the hard thinking that matters most (though I’m not letting go of the notion that most everyone should be learning more math than people do in the US).”

        I think once you’ve learned the math, you know that you can learn it again, even if you forget it the first time. I went the liberal arts path in college, but as my life has developed and I’ve gotten interested in personal finance, I’ve gotten interested in the idea of doing taxes and perhaps training to be a CPA, something my 18-year-old self would have thought incredibly boring. It’s been 24 years since I’ve had a math class, but I’m not scared of the math, because I got through it successfully 24 years ago, so I’m pretty sure I can do it again with enough time.

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      2. There’s a joke curse from an old Soviet comedy that I like to quote: May you live on just your salary. (Chtob ty zhyl na odnu zarplatu!)

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  3. But, I think the article is actually worse than that. He’s suggesting people prepare themselves by acquiring technical skills for “middle class” jobs that don’t actually exist, or if they exist, will only exist until the next technical knowledge changes. Part of this new economy is at will employment only when people have the skills you need at the moment. When the company doesn’t need that skill (Python programming, say, or knowledge of a particular widget in a car being built in South Carolina, or whatever), you are “let go” and a new crop of pre-trained individuals hired in your place.

    The advice might be less than useless if acquiring that technical knowledge was a path to employment (in which case the company doing the hiring should be willing to pay for the investment in skills) and if employment was continuing as long as you continued to acquire skills. Without those backstops, it is only logical to presume that we will all be freelance employees, constantly reinventing ourselves to fit the current employment needs of organizations. If that’s the new work world, everyone needs to learn to learn constantly changing sets of skills and to sell themselves, not any particular set of technical skills.

    I think Reich has reasonable economic and ideological creds, so I am either really disappointed, or this is a first foray into building the structures that would make the tech/voc track a reasonable one: job protections, on the job training, and better minimum wages.

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  5. Here’s the thing with Reich’s advice. In one part of our state, the voc/tech schools are doing very well. Their graduates are well prepared, test scores are fine, yada yada. The schools are regularly cited by education writers are examples of the advantages of voc/tech education.

    What’s left out of the story is the larger picture. In that particular region of the state, the local schools offer less than the voc/tech programs. The parents in the area are more middle/working class than the immediate big city suburbs; they know the value of voc/tech training in the workplace. Voc/tech schools are the parents’ first choice, and the students’ first choice.

    So the admissions process into the voc/tech schools is competitive. The kids chosen to attend the voc/techs often go on to 4 year colleges, which is not a surprise. If they lived in other parts of the state, they’d be on the college/honors track. It’s an artifact of the local value system.

    Sure, the technical skills can be, will be, very useful, and valued in the workplace of the future. That doesn’t mean that all students should aim to be technicians. Students who want to be technicians should opt for the training. Even if they want to complete an associates’ or bachelors’ degree beforehand. Very often, though, the kids who could complete a technician’s degree could complete other degrees.

    It would be very welcome if the schools would provide good college and career services to students. Not, “everyone should go to college–give it a try!” Rather, informed advice about 1) finances, and the consequences of debt, scholarship opportunities, and 2) different career paths. In my dreams, such advice would include advice for a kid who wants to write for and shoot video for web college humor sites.

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    1. There are students whose verbal skills are iffy, but can deal beautifully with technical problems.

      They’re the ones who will go splat when dealing with general education requirements, but sail through their subject area classes.

      That’s who is well-served by a technical education. (I believe Wendy may encounter this kind of student pretty often.)

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  6. I don’t think “so where did he send his kids?” is a useful question. We aren’t talking about the top 50% of students. We are talking about students who have no real interest in higher education plowing through the nearest program to get the necessary credential, because now you have to have a degree to make a latte or run a cash register.

    Until very recently, I oversaw an operation that included a call center with approximately 120 people on the phone. We paid $14 an hour and no shortage of applicants. Most were immigrants or the children of immigrants. At least half had degrees of some sort – mostly some kind of business degree from University of Phoenix (there were tons who had gone to for-profits) or a local (expensive but non-competitive) private school or a remote branch of the state system. A bunch had Associates in Criminal Justice from the local community college. We also hired people with no college. So 120 people at any given time, smart enough to be able to explain a number of complex programs to callers and work three or four systems online. Half with or pursuing degrees, half without.

    Guess what – at that level of education, a degree makes absolutely NO difference to job performance. It makes no difference in promotions – we moved people up based entirely on job performance. They would have to be promoted four or five levels before it made any difference and that never happened – never.

    So what I saw over my four years there were hundreds of young, smart, ambitious, hard-working people who were not academically inclined who were completely screwed over, ridden with debt and no closer to a living wage than ever. We are once again preying on our most vulnerable. It’s disgusting.

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    1. The New York Fed just published a paper pointing out that a colleges degree does not universally lead to higher wages: http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/college-may-not-pay-off-for-everyone.html#.VAtR02K9KSP.

      The question, though, of “where does he send his kids?” is a very important one, especially when the pundit in question is pontificating about higher education. The vast gulf between politicians and the rest of the population in educational choices is at the root of many of the problems in public education. Many things which sound reasonable in theory have unintended consequences when put into practice.

      I bet if you tracked it down, you’d find that the students actually completing the technical degrees Reich praises are not drawn from the bottom 50%. I’d suspect they’d be more likely to be smart video-gamers with little patience for compliance with college resume-building. A fair number are probably on the spectrum to some degree.

      Is it proper for an upper class person to recommend that a working class family set their sights on a technician’s degree for their bright child, rather than, say, a computer science degree? The college financing system is not universally disadvantageous.

      Why should a family choose to educate a computer-inclined child to be a computer network support specialist ($64,000 mean annual wage) rather than a computer programmer ($80,000 mean annual wage)? Over a lifetime, a difference of $16,000 per year adds up. Yes, two more years of education to finance–but it makes more sense to aim for the higher-paid job.

      Supply and demand. One reason the technical jobs are well paid is that the supply of people who can do them is limited. No, your average business B.A. is not going to be able to go back to school to become a computer network support specialist.

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  7. I disagree. Just because your children aren’t being preyed upon doesn’t mean you can point out that other people’s children are. It’s only elitist if you believe that sending unprepared, non-academically inclined people to college with loans they will struggle to repay does them any favor. I don’t.

    I know in Germany technical schools attract people from middle class families as well as blue collar. But who cares? It should be a matter of fit and interest, not socioeconomic tracking.

    Technical schools aren’t a attractive option for anyone that is academically-oriented. But low level schools and community colleges are flooded with people who simply aren’t going to get much out of college with their criminal justice or business administration majors. Many are, however, smart and hard-working and would contribute much more (and earn more) with technical skills.

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    1. “Smart” in conversation with coworkers, and hard-working do not necessarily correlate with the ability to do math. Technical schools are not havens for the unprepared, no matter how hard working they may be.

      The guy running an organization’s IT network may be smarter and possess better quantitative skills than the college-educated people using the network.

      It would be better to recommend people who wouldn’t place out of remedial math courses at community colleges spend time online on Khan Academy to learn the math, rather than embark on a course of study which won’t improve their prospects, because they can’t do the math.

      We can’t reschool waiters into technical workers. College-educated people may look down on technical degrees, but that does not mean that they could complete those degrees. It does not mean that someone who couldn’t complete a 4 year degree could complete a technician’s degree. There are many more students switching out of B.S. STEM programs than switching IN to such programs.

      Germany is not a good example. Traditionally, only 1/3 of the students were permitted to follow a course of study which would lead to university. That means they selected onto the technical track people who would have been able to complete a 4 year STEM degree in this country. They decreased the educational opportunities for 2/3 of their population. The entire system is changing now in Germany; I believe about 1/2 are now studying in Gymnasium.

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      1. “It would be better to recommend people who wouldn’t place out of remedial math courses at community colleges spend time online on Khan Academy to learn the math, rather than embark on a course of study which won’t improve their prospects, because they can’t do the math.”

        I would suggest that those people do the remedial community college classes (with help from Khan as necessary). Math is an awful thing to try to teach yourself if it’s something you struggle with.

        My dad and a very conscientious colleague teach those CC remedial classes and they put in hours of help desk time for whoever will come. Khan, for all its merits, does not do that.

        “Germany is not a good example. Traditionally, only 1/3 of the students were permitted to follow a course of study which would lead to university. That means they selected onto the technical track people who would have been able to complete a 4 year STEM degree in this country.”

        Yes.

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      2. ” Traditionally, only 1/3 of the students were permitted to follow a course of study which would lead to university.”

        Depending on what time frame you have in mind for “traditionally,” e.g., pre-1968 or so, the figure may be much, much lower than 1/3.

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    2. “I know in Germany technical schools attract people from middle class families as well as blue collar. But who cares? It should be a matter of fit and interest, not socioeconomic tracking.”

      Most German states track kids into college/not-college after fourth grade. Yes, you read that right. Fourth grade.

      The last time I took a good look at the statistics, which to be fair was 5-8 years ago, Germany had the closest correlation between parents’ university attendance and their children’s university attendance of any EU member state.

      The causality is left as an exercise to the interested reader.

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      1. But at least in the past, it hasn’t been a huge life-wrecking tragedy to be a German not on the university track. (And correct me if I’m wrong, but a lot of entities in the US that call themselves universities would not be considered universities in Germany.)

        I forget the details, but I believe my nephew may have gotten derailed from the college track during 4th grade. The family has since moved more or less permanently to the US and he’s doing great in a ritzy suburban public school. Oh, and they’re undoubtedly paying buckets of taxes in the US.

        Germany 0
        USA 3

        (Not totally sure about the scoring, but so far Germany is losing out on their taxes, the employment they provide others, and of course has possibly lost my nephew forever, which is kind of a big deal, considering that nephew is (as far as I know) the only grandchild ever produced in that German family that had four kids.)

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      2. “it hasn’t been a huge life-wrecking tragedy to be a German not on the university track”

        It hasn’t been, but looked at from the other direction, the present tracking system makes the rather heroic assumption that nearly all of the human potential that should be developed by university education can be found — surprise!! — in the offspring of previous university graduates. That’s no way to run a 21st-century democracy.

        “And correct me if I’m wrong, but a lot of entities in the US that call themselves universities would not be considered universities in Germany.”

        That’s actually changed a lot in the last 20-25 years. The dividing line between universities on the one hand and Fachhochschulen/Technische Hochschulen on the other has been seen for what it was, and the artificial barrier largely taken down.

        Anyway, newspaper opinion articles about how great the non-university track is and how people can do well without a university education are always about how great those options are for other people. And that gives the whole game away. The upper ranks of any German organization are not merely the province of the university-educated but also of people with a second degree, which for historic reasons is a doctoral degree. That’s almost entirely closed off if you get tracked wrong in fourth grade.

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      3. “It hasn’t been, but looked at from the other direction, the present tracking system makes the rather heroic assumption that nearly all of the human potential that should be developed by university education can be found — surprise!! — in the offspring of previous university graduates. That’s no way to run a 21st-century democracy.”

        Eh, my German in-law is from an upper middle class Bavarian family, worked blue collar jobs (truck driving, etc.), went to a non-university German business school in his later 20s (I forget the German terminology), took a programming course afterward, and has been minting money ever since as a corporate consultant.

        I feel like we shouldn’t get too hung up on the word “university,” because the words don’t mean quite the same thing in the US and Germany and I think the German system can be surprisingly forgiving.

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      4. “That’s actually changed a lot in the last 20-25 years. The dividing line between universities on the one hand and Fachhochschulen/Technische Hochschulen on the other has been seen for what it was, and the artificial barrier largely taken down.”

        I think my in-law graduated from the Fachhochschule about 15 years ago, so perhaps things have changed in the meanwhile?

        Around that time as I recall, the Fachhochschule would only accept two years of American college (!!!!) as equivalent to a German high school diploma.

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      5. Yeah, a Fachhochschule is a lot like a Directional State or a Public Tech that isn’t Cal-, Georgia or Massachusetts Institute of. Some of them are working on differentiating themselves so that they can compete with the really serious technical universities like Munich. I haven’t paid enough attention in the last decade to be able to say how well that is going.

        Anyway, it is *possible* to get into a university of a Fachhochschule — they seem to use “University of Applied Sciences” as their English equivalent — without an Abitur, the college-bound school diploma. But that’s not the way the system is set up.

        As for years of US college being equivalent to an Abitur, I have heard it a lot and called it bullshit every time, because that’s precisely what it is. Just one of many things that I will change about the educational system when I am King.

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