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After Dinner Speech

When trying to come up with a topic for my ADS I ran into some problems. To be honest, I ran into _one_ problem: my roommate- whom we'll call Leslie, because he deserves it. Between the constant sounds of his X-Box and the faint haze of Cheetos dust that seemed to build up around him, I couldn't think. Now, don't get me wrong, Leslie,dear Lord,heart of Gold, love the man like a brother, and he really did try his best to be helpful. I had already decided to talk about college because, well, I'm a middle class white male from the suburbs. I'm pretty boring. And fat. Anyway, Leslie, he suggested things like "Tell them about the time I let the Delta Phi guys defecate in my closet for initiation," not only doesn't he get the concept of a speech, he doesn't really get the concept of an initiation... he wasn't actually rushing the frat at the time. But, as his suggestions grew more and more inane, it dawned on me. I dramatically stood, and, while dramatically pointing,  I dramatically said "You are too dumb to be in college!"

Now, that may be a controversial opinion, but it bears thinking about. The Millennial Generation is the first to go into the world with the idea that a college education should be as universal as a high school diploma, and that sounds really good! It isn't. There are real issues arising from over-education, and not just for the individual currently enrolled. The trend is hurting our economy and if it continues, will make a recovery all the more difficult.

So, today, we'll enroll ourselves in the causes of over-education, sleep through the effects, and finally, overdose on caffeine while studying for the solutions.

Like the number of times I've actually been to my Management class, there are two primary causes of over-education. The first is a the idea that college equals higher earnings, the second is the employers waiting to gobble up college grads as soon as they've dry cleaned their caps and gowns. Everyone who's ever spoken to a High School counselor has heard that college graduates earn a billion times more than those that just get a High School diploma- there's no data on if that includes people who major in Window Licking or Philosophy. However, what if you flip the cliche on its head; what if college isn't a magic jillionaire-creation factory, but the people who would likely be jillionaires in their own right are the type of people who would be in college. According to Christopher Jencks's report "Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effects of Family and Schooling in America," that may well be the case. He finds that students from high earning families tend to earn more than their less fortunate counterparts, _even when they receive the same amount of schooling_. In fact, the report finds that higher education only increases the earning potential of poorer graduates by a fraction of that of wealthier students of comparable attainment. The system is more obviously damaged than Penn State day care alumni, but encouraging people to go to college is the solution to a problem that doesn't exist. In fact, by encouraging more spending towards a system that isn't helping their earning potential, the poor are more adversely effected than anyone else.

And that's just half of the fun! Because I'm gonna let you in on a secret. Businesses love hiring educated people, but businesses hate paying for shit! You see, hiring people is hard, usually. They want money, they want "sick leave" and "not to be sexual harassed at my McDonald's job when I was 16" -long story, and probably explains the Penn State joke- so that a good employee is expensive. Usually. But, when employment is down, good employees go on clearance. According to U.S. Census Data,  educational attainment dipped in the late 70s and early 80s; not surprisingly, these numbers coincide with high unemployment rates; as high as 10 per cent. What is interesting, though is that afterward, when employment rose back to it's original level, educational attainment rose up to seven percent above the former levels, with no rise in employment or average income. During the recession, people saw that those with degrees had jobs, and they wanted jobs. So they got degrees. Suddenly, employers could take their pick because everyone's got a degree. Which meant that employers could look at your resume and say "you can have the job, for half the salary, none of these benefits, sign over your first-born son, and no you don't get a company car." It's the law of supply and demand, with demand very much in the lead. So we've seen that over education has its roots in the erroneous idea that college equals higher earnings and businesses that want to get grads on the cheap.

Now that I've got you terminally depressed with the causes, I'm just going to hammer home the despair with the effects of the situation, which are- if you can believe it- worse. Like the number of sober students in my Thursday night Economics class, there are two of these. The first is that you can't get a job, but that's okay because the second is that your University didn't prepare you for one anyway. You see, the glut of well educated folks has led to this thing called "mal-employment." The term refers to the phenomena where people aren't employed in the fields they got expensive degrees for. According to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, as many as 40 per cent of college grads are mal-employed, six years after graduation. Degrees aren't just an excuse to learn things, or to smoke copious amounts of pot and waste four years of your parent's money. Degrees are an investment. This is especially a problem when you consider that according to President Barack Obama on January 27th, while speaking at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, student loan debt now exceeds total credit card debt in America.

So a market full of graduates screws the grads coming and going, is there anyone not getting screwed? Oh, right, the universities, with all of the extra enrollment, they've got to be doing okay, right? Not really. Because, you see, when everyone wants a degree it becomes a factory process, like high school. This is where places like ITT Tech, the University of Phoenix and other for-profit universities flourish. These places give up degrees like Charlie Sheen gives up reality. In fact, ITT Tech, in 2005, paid the State of California for just such an offense, to the tune of $750,000.00 according to Doug Lederman of InsideHigherEd in October of 2005.

So, now that we see how terrible the situation is- worse than Whitney Houston's February horoscope (too soon? I don't care; I was using that joke in January)- we can finally turn to some solutions. There are two, the first lies in education and discussion, and the second in the cold machinations of big business. The first order of business is that there needs to be frank dialogue about whether college is a good idea, not only in the community at large, but in the counseling offices, in the classrooms and over dinner tables. According to the October fifth, 2010 Huffington Post, Americans still view community colleges and vocational training as inherently less successful than a four year degree. The next step is to hold businesses accountable for their hiring practices. Enforce transparency about hiring practices, and reward companies that hire based on merit rather than education. Above all, emphasize that businesses that hire smarter, not easier, will pay less for a better employee.

Today, we looked at the problem of over-education, its causes, the effects on students, universities and businesses, and some possible solutions. It's hard to discuss the problem without coming across as a classist or an elitist, but this isn't a problem of rich versus poor or smart versus dumb. It's a problem with our culture and our economy that punishes those that shouldn't be in college with crippling debt, and punishes those that should be with degrees that don't return on the investment they represent. To return to our first scenario, it turns out my friend Leslie dropped out recently. But he took a job with a Fortune 50 company  and is making more every year than his total education would have cost. Leslie is better off for not going to school, who else could be?

The Consolations of Philosophy

There is a reason I try to stay busy and caffeinated, mostly because if I don't, I have an irrepressible knack for getting myself down. If you couple this with an overall disappointing night, and worrisome outlook, it can be quite a funk. Tonight the culprit- aside from things that actually happened, which are inconsequential and not worth dwelling on- was Jean-Paul Sartre and his works. A French philosopher, he was a noted opponent of determinism (I think). This is itself isn't bad, because determinism is one of the most depressing outlooks a rational being can assume. No, the problem is not limited to M. Sartre's particular philosophy, but is, I think, intrinsic to all philosophy.

Take, for example, determinism. Broadly speaking, it's the idea that your choices, either by fate or chemistry, are predetermined, and that no conscious effort can even be attempted to alter the choices you will make. At first the good and bad (comforting and not comforting) aspects seem obvious. On the one hand, you can't be blamed for anything you do. On the other, you have no free will. But then you try to comfort yourself in the first point again, only to realize that no one else can be blamed for anything that they do, and anyone that's ever harmed you isn't a viable target for vitriol.

I could go on and on down this rabbit hole, but you see my point. For every comfort philosophy offers, it presents two wounds. This is true of all branches of philosophy; you'll never find one that leads to a comforting or "happy" place. Religions are somewhat better, but always promise happiness after unhappiness. Philosophies, religions, and any other attempts to answer "The Big Questions", seem to only show us that no matter what, we are unhappy in the here and now.

This might also be because happy people have better things to do than ponder philosophy and start religions.

Practicing in Chicago

Today I'm using a writing prompt from The Write Practice, in which the topic is Chicago; again, comments and critiques are welcome, as are your own efforts. Here's the prompt:

PRACTICE Write about Chicago. Write for fifteen minutes. When you’re finished, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, make sure to give some other Practitioners some feedback.

Two and a half hours out of Michigan, I was feeling a little sane again. I don't know why I came, I just had to get the fuck out. Out of the state, out of my hometown, out of my mind. I knew I was in Chicagoland when traffic started to slow, and the city proper sort of crept up on me. I parked in a lot that seemed well lit, and well traveled, and locked the car. I stepped out into the weather and looked around. I left in the early afternoon hoping to get to Chicago in time for a sunset, but it was hidden behind a slate of clouds, the flat no-color gray of radio static. The wind buffeted me like an errant passerby and I smiled. In my mind, this is how I always pictured Chicago, cold and stark and just a little bit dangerous. Geographically, it was the closest of the Great Old Cities, a moniker I used in my head for New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle. I guess Detroit is old as well, and Grand Rapids is prettier, but there was something not quite the same about those. Sinatra said it best, "Chicago is my kind of razzmatazz and it has all that jazz."

I'd been working for six years straight, coming out of college, and I had an apartment and a mountain of debt to show for it. Dammit, I deserved some razzmatazz, some magic. I hadn't planned a trip, really. It was Saturday, I was going to have my late breakfast, read my e-mail and go to the gym. I was reading an e-mail from my direct supervisor, telling me in no uncertain terms that my work was unsatisfactory, my job resting on how I handled our newest client, and I felt a twinge of pain low in my abdomen. I wasn't good at my job, and they should have fired me a while ago. But they knew as well as I how badly I needed the money. So I suffered without complaint and they suffered me.

I shut my laptop and grabbed my keys. Left my phone on the table, left my breakfast on my plate. I got into the car I'd owned outright since high school and made south, then east. A voice that sounded unlike mine, yet still intimate, still familiar, was urgently whispering that Chicago would be something, and anything at all was better than reading the rest of my e-mail then going to work out with people I didn't particularly care for.

Now, I was walking in the city, and I felt better. There was no one here that knew me, no one here that considered me a poster child for bland, desperate mediocrity. Chicago is one of those cities that really is a melting pot, every human desire and regret and triumph and failure blending and fading into each other in ways that were somehow alchemical, and the result was a whole entirely different than the sum of its parts. I walked in silent rapture, savoring my anonymity and the feeling of surrender. Somehow in this, I was more alive than ever before. I think it might have been me; it wasn't anything special about Chicago, it was a joy to just be anywhere different. The stone gray sidewalks and black/brown-gray buildings under that cold, steel gray sky were more real than the plastic technicolor I'd left behind.

I walked to the cheapest motel I could, asking directions from other nameless, faceless people, as interchangeable as I was. I payed with a credit card and used the room's phone to call up a buddy. He had a truck. I told him to go to my apartment, and pack up everything, I'd pay him five hundred dollars plus gas to bring out here. I had enough saved to live for a while, but I made a note to see about some jobs in the city after renting some storage space in the morning.