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[methodsman]

Discuss.

(I posted this in my corner of the sandbox because there is no board on CHE for academic/intellectual discussion about higher education.)

mm

[dale1]

Well I could go either way on this one.

On the one hand, higher education serves as a diversion force of many hundreds of thousands of otherwise somewhat-employable people who would be looking for work, thus dramatically increasing the unemployment rolls.  On the other hand, the state and federal government is subsidizing what one scholar has called the four year vacation, so the cost is probably higher than it would be if all these students were on unemployment.  Certainly unemployment doesn't also put you into debt for the privilege.

On the third hand, without robust higher education and advancing skills, we won't have the number of graduates we need to attract and sustain economic development and entrepreneurship, which will hopefully decrease the amount of unemployment (though technology can substitute for people in certain industries). 

It's notable that many of the leading speakers on the issue (I hesitate to say thinkers, since I am not qualified to evaluate their perspectives) are university professors or former professors with PhDs. 

I doubt the people who have been blamed for this mess (Wall Street bankers et al.) have earned their graduate degrees in economics and have a broader view of what they were doing.

[voxprincipalis]

Discuss.

(I posted this in my corner of the sandbox because there is no board on CHE for academic/intellectual discussion about higher education.)

mm

????

Um...

VP

[methodsman]

VP,

How about "...there is no board on CHE for academic/intellectual discussion about higher education as a topic."

mm

[zharkov]

I have to suspect that you must not have a background in economics.  The key to economic growth and development is productivity.  (Which is the theme of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, that is, the answer to the question: What makes some nations more wealthy?)

To surefire ways to increase productivity are (a) increasing technology and (b) increasing the skills (human capital) that people bring to the workforce.  Education does both.

[methodsman]

I posted this because I have become increasingly frustrated with the yawning gap which is opening up between the political and journalistic rhetoric about the economic crisis, the obdurate truth about a country which has been so completely hijacked by deregulated corporate interests, and the rhetoric being spewed by higher education representatives about their relevance to the crisis.  The most significant and glaring hypocrisy is that creating a more educated population will not create jobs.  Only capitalists can create the numbers of jobs needed to "restart" the economy, and they have decided to sit on their historically unprecedented profits because they taking a "wait and see" attitude.  Even if dispensing greater numbers of college degrees could create jobs, it would take years to turn out students who are educated in such a way as to create jobs suitable for a rapidly changing economy and labor market.  Yes, a college education is important and necessary both at the individual and aggregate level for many reasons (same as it ever was), but not in a way which matters for a rapid economic turn around.  Everyone is doing their little dance and nodding and winking for the camera but nothing is really being accomplished because they do not have a comprehensive view on the topic.

May I remind the reader that the massive amounts of green and info-tech jobs did not materialize.  Adam Smith could not have predicted the extent to which selfish and short-sighted corporate interests have come to so completely dominate both government and the economy.

mm

[zharkov]

May I remind the reader that the massive amounts of green and info-tech jobs did not materialize.  Adam Smith could not have predicted the extent to which selfish and short-sighted corporate interests have come to so completely dominate both government and the economy.

Perhaps he'd be surprised by their power, but not their motives:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

In a nutshell, juicing up the economy is a matter of (a) reducing interest rates, (b) reducing taxes, (c) increasing federal government spending, or (d) some mix of the above.  The problem is that interest rates are already low, taxes were already reduced during the Bush recovery, and beyond the point where new reductions would matter, and increasing government spending is impossible owing to the deficit hawks.  The problem is compounded by the real estate market and with some homeowners being under water.  So they can't sell and are not in the position to get a home equity loan for home improvements.   



 

[methodsman]

Zarkov,

How are those things and the increased "juice" they are alleged to produce connected to jobs production?  Who creates jobs/How are jobs created?  They are created by capitalists who take risks with their capital to make more capital.  Innovation and "productivity" do play a role for sure, but you have to have a shop floor first, dude.  Jobs certainly aren't created by higher education so I wish the muckety-mucks would shaddap about the "vital" role they are playing in the nation's "recovery".  We are just warehousing the unemployed.  In the meanwhile we are desperately trying to suppress our schadenfreude as due compensation for all of the crap we had to put up from bullies in school, years and years of abject poverty in graduate school and the insultingly low salaries earned for 55 hour work weeks.

Economics is not a science because you have to accept ridiculous and untenable leaps to get from cause and effect in its models.  Please, s h o w  m e  t h e  d a t a.  Baring that, the fact that only one economist predicted an economic meltdown pretty much ruins it for me.

mm

[sciencephd]

I agree with the OP.  The idea that more education, especially when 'more education' = 'sending more people to college' will produce jobs is nuts, and the result of wishful and sloppy thinking at best.

[zharkov]

How are those things and the increased "juice" they are alleged to produce connected to jobs production? 

Yes forumites, your own Dr. Hans Zharkov calls it right the first time:

I have to suspect that you must not have a background in economics.

ECON 101 details omitted to preserve the patience of the economically savvy.

[csguy]

Education is not a short term fix.

I believe the argument for education relates more to the global competition for jobs. We cannot beat third world countries in the race to the bottom on wages. We perhaps can compete by having a more qualified workforce for high-tech jobs. The downsides of this are that there are just not enough high-tech jobs to replace all the low-skilled and semi-skilled manufacturing jobs that are being lost.

The push for green jobs can be justified as an attempt to build "green industry" and make the US a dominant player. Ideally the US would be the chief supplier for things like solar cells and windmills. How many jobs this would result in is not something I would try to estimate.

[charlesr]

Education is a component of a long term fix along with fixing the tax code and reducing gov't spending.

Why do you think there is a short term solution? 

[csguy]

Education is a component of a long term fix along with fixing the tax code and reducing gov't spending.

Why do you think there is a short term solution? 

I don't know that there is.  Zharkov's list of proposed short term fixes look like the best bet but may not be practical.

Contrary to methodsman's view capitalists are not the only ones that create jobs. So do governments. There is room for disagreement on what proportion of the jobs should be government jobs but unless one is a radical anarchist libertarian that's not none.

If we believe the current recession is due to a lack of demands for products (produced by capitalist producers) then putting money in the hands of those who will spend it on such products should help. This could include reducing the tax burden on working people and even hiring them for short term positions. Once demand is stimulated corporations should hire and the stimulus should be phased out.

Throwing money at banks and big business seems to be largely ineffective. Helping smaller businesses (largely the capitalist job creators) might.

I'm not optimistic (note all the "shoulds" above rather than "wills").

[zharkov]

I'm not optimistic (note all the "shoulds" above rather than "wills").

Chime.  Seventy five years ago, Keynes compared economics to dentistry.  What he meant, in a contemporary context, is even though one does good self care, visits the dentist regularly, has fluoridated water, and so on, one can still get cavities.  These things help a lot, but they do not guarantee perfect results.  Since the economy is a  complex system, we can do things that are directionally correct, but fine tuning is out.

Chime too about the size of the government.  Total federal spending is less than 10 pct of GDP, so it is unrealistic to think that cutting the size of the government will make a huge impact.  That said, I'd say that reallocation of spending would help.  Fewer guns, more butter, to put it simply.

[methodsman]

csguy- I'd just like to point out that my supposition was that only capitalists could produce enough jobs to get us out of the economic crater we are in.  I do understand the role that the government should play in creating some jobs to help us out of this jam, but it's only spending money it doesn't have. (I also understand that, in general, many many people work for one type of government or another, either directly or indirectly. But, again, same as it ever was.)  I believe that the $5 billion stimulus Obama is proposing for the community college sector, while heartwarming and perhaps just, will not actually amount to a hill of beans in terms of the economy.

The fat cats who stuck their money sucking tentacles into every facet of our economy have the deepest pockets and the moral imperative to turn things around.  But, they'd hate to risk their summer house in Aspen and gold plated bath fixtures to actually put people to work.  I would like to provide an example of the type of capitalist we need more of: Elon Musk.  And, I believe that all US corporations should be required to employ a certain majority percentage of their workforce in the US. 

zarkov-you still don't tell us how a-d actually produces jobs.  Is such an ECON 101 explanation beneath you?

mm