Educated countries: Good or bad?

[aggle-rithm]

Here is an article about which countries are most educated:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html

Seems to be a bit of a cultural trend here...six of the top ten are the UK or former British colonies.

At any rate, is higher tertiary education level necessarily a good thing? I can't speak for the other countries, but here in the US there is a severe shortage of skilled blue-collar workers, possibly because going to college and getting a white-collar job is expected of most Americans. Doing something like welding or auto repair is somehow beneath us, even though it is potentially more lucrative than a typical office job.

Any thoughts?

 

[Naddig74]

Back in the 70s the student grant changed everything. People who could never have gone to university before had the opportunity to do so. This placed a severe strain on the economy, paying for tuition, accommodation and living expenses with no expectation that it be paid back by the student at any time. Students could even claim the dole in their holidays.

So, everyone who could meet the academic requirements applied for a university place, and Universities began expanding their range of subjects offered in order to suck in as much of the free cash as possible.

Before long, a culture existed in which it was assumed that _everyone_ who had gained a couple of A-levels would progress to tertiary education. I was in the minority of my school year in that I didn't go to University.

After a couple of decades, the wholesale paying for University educations gave way to student loans, which then became means tested, and now don't even cover tuition fees.

Most graduates come away from University some 20 grand or more in debt.

A-level students are still told that a degree allows you to walk in to well paid employment, but many find this simply isn't true...I know a marine biologist who works in burger king.

Regardless, the 'everyone must go to University' culture persists; the quality of the degree (many of which are decidedly Mickey Mouse) plays second fiddle to the 'experience' of the university years.

It's tantamount to wasting three years, in which you could be earning and giving something to society, sitting on your sofa watching Jeremy Kyle building up an enormous debt burden and gaining some meaningless qualification in 'surf science' or similar.

 

[joesixpack]

Vocational education in the US has all but disappeared from the public high schools. I agree that there has been an erosion of respect for the dignity of "blue collar" work over the past few decades. I have to wonder what would have precipitated that decline? Is it an innate class-sim? Some sort of built in bourgeois bias against the "working class?" Is it a natural prejudice among the people who make education their career?

Either way, it's been a giant failure. Why waste educational resources teaching HS students English Literature when they could be learning how to fix a car or operate a lathe? Looking at my own past, I can say with confidence that I learned a lot more about mathematics while attending vocational training than I ever did in HS. If a young man finds that he yearns for more knowledge of Chaucer and Shakespeare after spending a few years as a plumber, there is always the option of the junior college system here in the states.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Back in the 70s the student grant changed everything. People who could never have gone to university before had the opportunity to do so. This placed a severe strain on the economy, paying for tuition, accommodation and living expenses with no expectation that it be paid back by the student at any time. Students could even claim the dole in their holidays.

Wait, which country are we talking about?

 

[aggle-rithm]

A-level students are still told that a degree allows you to walk in to well paid employment, but many find this simply isn't true...I know a marine biologist who works in burger king.

Bet he makes a hell of a fish sandwich.

 

[aggle-rithm]

I agree that there has been an erosion of respect for the dignity of "blue collar" work over the past few decades. I have to wonder what would have precipitated that decline? Is it an innate class-sim? Some sort of built in bourgeois bias against the "working class?" Is it a natural prejudice among the people who make education their career?

I think there are a certain number of indicators that say "lower class" to casual observers, such as:

1. Working nights, weekends, and holidays
2. Wearing a uniform
3. Doing physical labor, even if it requires more skill than most pencil-pushing jobs
4. Doing service-oriented work

None of this necessarily has anything to do with earning potential or the importance of the work, it's just a set of heuristics that we often employ to tell us someone is likely to be less worthy of a person than we are.

 

[joesixpack]

I think there are a certain number of indicators that say "lower class" to casual observers, such as:

1. Working nights, weekends, and holidays
2. Wearing a uniform
3. Doing physical labor, even if it requires more skill than most pencil-pushing jobs
4. Doing service-oriented work

None of this necessarily has anything to do with earning potential or the importance of the work, it's just a set of heuristics that we often employ to tell us someone is likely to be less worthy of a person than we are.

Would or could this be considered a "caste system", sociologically speaking?

 

[angrysoba]

Here is an article about which countries are most educated:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html

Seems to be a bit of a cultural trend here...six of the top ten are the UK or former British colonies.

At any rate, is higher tertiary education level necessarily a good thing? I can't speak for the other countries, but here in the US there is a severe shortage of skilled blue-collar workers, possibly because going to college and getting a white-collar job is expected of most Americans. Doing something like welding or auto repair is somehow beneath us, even though it is potentially more lucrative than a typical office job.

Any thoughts?

Heh-heh-heh!

When you say white collar jobs are "expected" of most Americans and beneath "us" do you mean middle-class white Americans?

As for most of those jobs, they've gone to China and they are never coming back.

 

[godless dave]

Vocational education in the US has all but disappeared from the public high schools. I agree that there has been an erosion of respect for the dignity of "blue collar" work over the past few decades. I have to wonder what would have precipitated that decline? Is it an innate class-sim? Some sort of built in bourgeois bias against the "working class?" Is it a natural prejudice among the people who make education their career?

I think those are all factors, but there was also an assumption for a long time that manufacturing jobs were inevitably going overseas so there was no point in teaching those skills.

 

[Naddig74]

Wait, which country are we talking about?

Oh, I'm referring to the very Greatest of Britains.

Bet he makes a hell of a fish sandwich.

The machines do all the work...it's cooking without skill

Something that's exercising me right now is the school's focus on training kids to pass exams rather than teaching them to think. Since the dockyard has been closed down bit by bit, my city is pretty much a university town (it used to be a polytechnic), and the freshers have arrived over the last couple of weeks. There is little that makes me despair for the future more than watching a person who is ostensibly bright enough to study for a degree completely fail to negotiate the self service check out in Tesco...

 

[Dinwar]

Here is an article about which countries are most educated:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html

Seems to be a bit of a cultural trend here...six of the top ten are the UK or former British colonies.

At any rate, is higher tertiary education level necessarily a good thing? I can't speak for the other countries, but here in the US there is a severe shortage of skilled blue-collar workers, possibly because going to college and getting a white-collar job is expected of most Americans. Doing something like welding or auto repair is somehow beneath us, even though it is potentially more lucrative than a typical office job.

Any thoughts?

There was a guy in my home town the generation before mine that always wanted to be a garbage man. It's what he decided he wanted to do at age 5, and what he worked his entire life towards. After high school he started a garbage route, and worked his way up the chain of command. Now he's one of the richest people in my home town.

The key factor in work isn't having the letters behind your name, or the certifications, or the rest--it's being able to do the bloody work. The certifications and letters are nothing more than a short-hand for one's ability to do it. The USA (I can only speak for my own country) has forgotten that, and we're suffering the consequences of it. It's stupid, irrational, and suicidal. It causes kids to waste 4 to 8 years of their lives without any real return on investment. For those of us who DO require a university education (some jobs simply require too broad a knowledge base to be easily obtained any other way) this sort of thing cheapens our degrees. I busted my butt, but my degree is worth precisely as much as the guy who partied every weekend and slept through his classes and got Ds because Mommy and Daddy told him he was going to college.

The purpose of education is, fundamentally, to prepare you for some job. Most jobs do not require four years of random classes that have little or nothing to do with the job itself. Some do--and those should be what universities are for. The rest? We really need to find a better way to prepare people for them. It would save time, effort, money, and countless person-hours that are currently wasted for no good cause.

 

[GlennB]

Wait, which country are we talking about?

UK by the sounds of it.

I have to doubt the value of a UK degree vs.(say) a S Korean degree in computer science when with 2 crappy 'A' levels UKians can major in "Air guitar studies" at the University of Middling-Wiggle-on-the-Cotswolds. And then go out into the world and be totally qualified to flip burgers.

In retrospect, I kinda wish that my 3 years in the early 70's studying (i.e. partying wildy) Biological Sciences had been replaced with a 2-week study into clearing blocked sewer pipes at £100 per hour (adjusted for inflation of course)

 

[Naddig74]

I have to doubt the value of a UK degree vs.(say) a S Korean degree in computer science when with 2 crappy 'A' levels UKians can major in "Air guitar studies" at the University of Middling-Wiggle-on-the-Cotswolds. And then go out into the world and be totally qualified to flip burgers.

Sigh. It's true.

 

[WildCat]

here in the US there is a severe shortage of skilled blue-collar workers

I've not seen any evidence of that.

If there is a company that can;t find a skilled blue collar worker it's either because the wage and benefits package is a joke or they want someone who has 5 years experience in the same exact niche (same equipment, same product, same process, etc) and don't want to do even the most minimal training.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here is an article about which countries are most educated:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html

Seems to be a bit of a cultural trend here...six of the top ten are the UK or former British colonies.

At any rate, is higher tertiary education level necessarily a good thing? I can't speak for the other countries, but here in the US there is a severe shortage of skilled blue-collar workers, possibly because going to college and getting a white-collar job is expected of most Americans. Doing something like welding or auto repair is somehow beneath us, even though it is potentially more lucrative than a typical office job.

Any thoughts?

A shortage of blue collar workers? How do you figure?

 

[Hutch]

I've not seen any evidence of that.

If there is a company that can't find a skilled blue collar worker it's either because the wage and benefits package is a joke or they want someone who has 5 years experience in the same exact niche (same equipment, same product, same process, etc) and don't want to do even the most minimal training.

Which is, of course, Obama's fault (sorry Wildcat; couldn't resist )

From a U.S. perspective, there has always been an American belief that higher education would lead to better jobs and that upward mobility was not only something to strive for, but could be accomplished (see Alger, Horatio).

A couple of ancedotes:

Most notable example is the G.I. Bill, especially right after WW II. Literally hundreds of thousands of working-class young men came off the front line and went to Universities that before they could never have dreamed off and did, indeed, improve their life--and fostered the dream of higher education for their descendents.

I graduated college in 1975; I was the first of my Dad's family to do so. Dad either drove trucks or worked for trucking companies all his working life, and while he never pushed my brother (who ended up with a PhD) or I, he did want us to do better than he had and was as proud as anything that his sons' would go on to better lives than he had due to college education.

Educated countries are not bad per se: Thinking countries are even better.

IMHO as always. YMMV

 

[aggle-rithm]

When you say white collar jobs are "expected" of most Americans and beneath "us" do you mean middle-class white Americans?

I suppose so. The average American, whatever the demographic may be.

As for most of those jobs, they've gone to China and they are never coming back.

Some of them are already coming back. As China's economy booms, it's inevitable that costs to manufacture overseas will go up, and eventually it will be cheaper to bring it back.

 

[aggle-rithm]

I've not seen any evidence of that.

If there is a company that can;t find a skilled blue collar worker it's either because the wage and benefits package is a joke or they want someone who has 5 years experience in the same exact niche (same equipment, same product, same process, etc) and don't want to do even the most minimal training.

Here's one article about it.

http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_4_skilled-labor.html

A shortage of blue collar workers? How do you figure?

It's SKILLED blue-collar workers. The ones working now tend to be pretty old, as they were trained in the old days before education was geared towards College for All. When they retire, the problem will likely get worse.

 

[Childlike Empress]

It's SKILLED blue-collar workers. The ones working now tend to be pretty old, as they were trained in the old days before education was geared towards College for All. When they retire, the problem will likely get worse.

And that might be the "cultural trend" you noticed in the OP. The guys who wrote that article merely picked one indicator which favours the current anglo system of education. The same table that shows Canada at 51% (attained tertiary education) shows Austria at 19%. I doubt that says much about the general level of education in those countries, given that access in Austria is more difficult and the levels of those education programs not directly comparable to bachelor/master (but higher). While they and countries like Germany have a much higher rate at vocational or dual education than f.e. Canada, and looking at the table for "at least upper secondary education", you have Canada, the US, Germany, Russia et al at high 8x% levels, while some Eastern European countries like the Czech Republic even crack the 90% mark, but the greatest of all Britains, while in the top 10 of that article, has only 75%, meaning a quarter of the population has only basic education.

So the headline "Most Educated Countries in the World" might say more about the authors than about the (interesting) study or the countries.

 

[Scoobmaster]

Mike Rowe (yeah - THAT Mike Rowe from "Dirty Jobs") touched on that in a letter he sent to Presidential candidate Romney (He sent a similar letter to President Obama previously):

http://www.mikeroweworks.com/2012/09/the-first-four-years-are-the-hardest/

I agree with him and several posts here. I work in a U.S. K-12 public school (in IT, not as an educator) and there is a noticeable heavy push for ALL students toward higher education and away from any vocational careers.