PartyOf5 wrote:BjornP wrote:A healthy, civilized society needs more than engineers, scientists and doctors. It needs to be able to reflect upon itself. Freely. No matter in which way.
Arts and non-technical education is a valuable piece of a society. The problem we're seeing in the US is that too many kids are going into college for degrees in things that do not have many jobs, but they come out of college with a degree and feel that they are automatically owed a high paying job of their choice because of it.
I disagree with STA that there are not enough jobs. There are shortages in jobs like welding, but schools aren't directing kids down those paths. What we have right now are too many kids with degrees that are not needed by our economy. But they feel entitled (I think that is a fitting word) to something the economy/society has determined is not needed. I don't mean that arts aren't need at all, but we don't need as many of them as are getting degrees. The result are events like OWS and BLM where all these unemployed or under employed people with grievances against the rest of society get together and tantrum because they don't want the hard, thankless jobs that are necessary to a society.
Ok. Obviously, there are differences in how higher education is structured and prioritized in the US. We have a higher unemployment rate amongst architects (32.3) than MA's in Humanities (15.7). Doctors, especially specialists, though... we have to import them now.
Yet I believe our universities are also good at teaching how the
methods learned in one discipline, can be applied creatively in others. Sure, a MA in litterature may not sound like a very worthwhile education, but you can apply the methods they learn to other fields, across sectors. I was on the path to an MA as "Information Administration" (the education that makes you an archivist). An education where you need a BA in history to apply, and where most of the focus is on historical records and audiovisual media. That education could certainly be applied beyond simply historical archives.
Aside from the specific classes devoted to becoming an archivist, though, there were guest lectures by people who had gotten the same education you had, with them telling how they could apply the methods in whatever work they now had. Which was usually not the one they pictured. On the more practical level, unions can sort you out with additional, smaller courses that compliment your education.
As for jobs like welding, and government generally over-focusing on academic jobs: We had sewing and crafts in my school from I think it was in 3rd grade, shop class in 5th to 7th grade (mostly just carpentry). Then, in 9th grade, students must pick someplace to apprentice or intern to for two weeks, which could be any place of employment that would have you as, basicly (school and parent had to approve, of course). The workmen/craftsmen sort of educations still earn general respect, but there was a period of about a decade before 2008 where the government kept trying to encourage students to take a higher education. Recession sort of sorted of ended that trend, but what central government wants and what the actual educators do were fortunately two different things, so people weren't pushed into picking academia if they would be better as bricklayers.
If society, or simply just the politicians elected, think non-academic jobs incredibly "low prestige", they may be tempted to believe that that should not be a priority for education at large. Some do, after all, equal prestige to what's actually
important.
Is it really the schools, as in the actual teachers directing the teachers toward academic rather than craftman's paths? Even if students would seem otherwise more suited, or even personally prefer, to become mechanics, bricklayers, carpenters, etc.? In Denmark, that was more the successive governments trying to peddle that story to local municipalities, and local teachers in those municipalities still directing kids who showed desire and skill at non-academic jobs towards the appropriate educations.
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.
