Creating jobs for blacksmiths

...funny...this crazy long haired hippy boy (or, I'm sure that's how my older brother in law saw me) was saying the same thing just yesterday, in a rousing discussion of how we're not worse off because "those chinese are taking all of our jobs".

Cafe Hayek: causing gentle but stimulating familial strife.

"Most people go to college."

No they don't. Rather an important point, that.

Jim,

In 2005, the most recent data I can find, 51% of 18-19 year olds were enrolled in college.

My memory was that it was greater than that. It is "most people" but it is very close to half.

In 2006, 66% of all high school graduates were enrolled in college that October.

Russ, the percentages are higher than that.

Some people go to college, later than their 19th year.

-dk

Enrolling is one thing. How many graduate?

I love the podcasts.

I want to be clear that nothing in this post argues against government funding of education. This is especially true if the government creates a nuanced approach with more schools of the "vocational" type, etc..

Could there be a podcast about the economics of immigration/immigration reform?

I wonder how many manufacturing jobs we have lost in America due to environmental policies. While we like breathing clean air, the Clean Air Act has helped increase the price of energy, increasing the costs of energy-intensive manufacturing. We have the highest natural gas prices in the world, in large part because we won't build liquid natural gas terminals to receive overseas natural gas and we keep a lot of our domestic natural gas resources off-limits due to environmental concerns.

I find it ironic that some of the people who are most concerned about the United States losing manufacturing jobs support the policies that drive up energy prices and add to the flight of manufacturing jobs from the United States.

Russ, I stand sort-of corrected: 2005 is the very first time you could say that over 50% of that cohort are in college. Certainly most people in the labour force today did not go to college.

I've done some looking at the stats on college and entry/graduation rates. However, I admit up front that what follows is a cursory analysis. About 51% of the students who go to college complete their four-year degree in five years or less. That sounds good until you take into consideration that only about 63% of high school graduates go to college. At best, then, about a third or so of the population will wind up with a four-year college degree. However, that number is skewed positively because not everyone graduates from high school.

In the past, manufacturing jobs made it possible for people who would not do well in college to still do well in life. If our economic system puts a good chunk of the population behind the eight-ball, then that doesn't make for a stable society. It also bodes ill in the long run for the economy if consumers do not have the disposable income to purchase the goods produced by the economy.

"In 2006, 66% of all high school graduates were enrolled in college that October.

Posted by: Russ Roberts | Jan 21, 2008 9:18:38 PM"

Russ,

You and Don rarely give me anything to quibble about, but once in awhile it happens.

66% of "high school graduates" may indeed go on to higher education (college, etc.) but that is a deceptive way of presenting data to persuade us that the 66% must put your statement of "most people go to college" closer to the truth, when indeed it is barely relevant.

Here in Houston virtually every school in the Houston Independent School Dist. has a drop out rate running between 40% to 60%, and if you are reading correctly you understand that that means many do not even reach high school. The situation is horrendous. I would anticipate that across America many large cities have inner city drop out rates similar.

Across just this state, Texas, the drop out rates in all but a few exceptional school districts have drop out rates in the 40 percentile range.

Thus I think it is deceptive to state that 66% of all high school graduates are enrolled in college as being a meaningful statistic. I know a high number of kids that enroll in a college of some sort after high school and never even complete the first year. While I agree that some education is better than none, I would debate that they even received a meaningful 'some' in that time frame. To nail this down, my informal street level survey of aware objectivity tells me that a very high majority of those never continue their formal education at a later date.

To close, I serously doubt that the constant figure for those Americans who attend college long enough to receive actual benefit even comes close to 50%.

My understanding is that there is a shortage of machinists and skilled welders in the US. Trades workers are still needed; perhaps more effort should be put into creating training programs for such skills, rather than pushing everyone towards college.

No, we don't need a "fix."

We need competition.


We need apprenticeships.


We need anything but the current government/educational complex.


Let's stop extending adolescence.


I'd like to see a degree mean something again, but I can tell it was a cakewalk, primarily because they simplify the classes too much so that everyone can pass.

Your concern about needing more education to succeed in this economy is right on target. I care less that your statistics are challenged…thinking there is a future middle-class living in manual labor-based manufacturing is a myth. Manufacturing where there has been or is about to be investment in high-tech productivity tools has or will require highly skilled workers. This means technical school, junior college and/or college level education.

Most of our manufactures that will remain in America are heavily invested in productivity tools and need highly skilled workforces. Those that are stuck on low-tech seem porn to continue relying heavily on illegal aliens at low wages and part-time labor.

Let me explain my position as it relates to one industry. I worked in the 1960’s in a mid-western beef packing house with high hourly manual labor wages and much overtime. This allowed me to save to later quit and complete college. At the time my fellow workers were family farmers saving to make farm equipment payments, young people working to save for college or start a business and hard core uneducated dead-enders with no transferable skills or educational background for meaningful retraining.

Several years ago I returned to this business after 20 plus years and found that English was not the language spoken in the plant from workers to supervisors. I was told wages are no longer competitively enough to attract many Americans. This is why I was not surprise to hear recently that the Feds busted a packing house in the mid west and arrested over 100 illegal aliens…that’s where your labor intensive middle class manufacturing jobs have gone, at least in this industry. How many other industries, who would hire the uneducated, are likewise hiring illegals? Is the manufacturing, manual labor wage level for the uneducated really in the middle class income levels?

Vidyohs,

1st, If your statistics are correct Texas has a huge problem with graduation rates that needs to be addressed because the national high school dropout rate has been reported using numerous calculations, but all reports put it between 10 and 16 percent, nowhere near the 40% you say is the case in Texas.

2nd, if your point was to disprove the assertion that "most people go to college," then you used some irrelevant statistics because Russ provided a spreadsheet of college enrollment statistics for all persons 18-19 years old, regardless of whether they graduated high school, attended high school, or had heard of high school. Those statistics put the percentage of 18-19 year olds enrolled in college above 50%.

Mike,

I can agree with you if you can tell me that the age group of 18 to 19 year olds constitute the entire sum of the population of America in any given year. Hardly so, eh?

How about 20 to 21 year olds?

How about 19 to 20 year olds?

How about 21 to 22 year olds?

What is the drop out rate for that group of 18 to 19 year olds in the first semester, the first year. Knowing that would probably allow us to understand better, eh?

I believe I mentioned this above, that sure many 18 to 19 year olds were enrolled in college at the beginning of each year, but how many lasted even a semester or a year?

You see, saying most people go to college just ain't so easy to document. And I remain skeptical.

Yes the drop out rate is tremendous here in Texas, it is in California, Arizona, Illinois, Florida, N. Carolina, Louisiana, New Mexico, Utah et. al. but it isn't that bad if you just accept the statistics of the beauracracy. Hey, our officials down here report the same kind of statistics, but the ground level truth resulting from actual evaluation of all drop outs tells the story I did above.

I agree that we should not enable high school graduates without a degree or high school dropouts by protecting manufacturing jobs. As a country, we should try to lower the dropout rate in high school and we should try to encourage more people to go to college and get a degree. This would be a perfect plan if all the people who had manufacturing jobs were just dropouts; however, you are forgetting about a large portion of our population, immigrants.

Considering the lack of education many immigrants have, a manufacturing job is a dream come true. If the African in your example moved to America, he could be more than the carrier of firewood. If his education in that poor country was insufficient though, he might not be able to be more than a worker at some manufacturing plant, but that would be a lot better than a carrier of firewood and chance are, he would be paid a lot better than he was serving his country in Africa and he would be able to join the middle class of America.

The beauty of America is that you can come to America with a mediocre education and have the opportunity to climb up the financial ladder and become rich. Now I'm sure many immigrants do not somehow get over there lack of education and become billionaires, but I am positive that many of them start a family in America and if they were able to get a decent job here, then maybe their children can feed off of that legacy and become those people who find ways "to be more productive and make more money using their brains".

I have to agree with you on the fact that we need to encourage education in our country so that people keep using their brains. Times have changed since the 1970's, and manufacturing jobs are decreasing, but i think this is a good thing. I also believe our country should be moving forward, and the way to do that is through education, therefore, I think it is a good thing that our middle class is no longer assmebly line workers.

At the turn of the 20th century, "most people" in the U.S. worked in agriculture - I've read different articles stating that 80% to 90% of Americans worked on the family farm. This was the middle class.

If there had been protectionists then like those who now want to make time stand still by prohibitng the creative destruction of competition, I'd be putting on my work clothes to go milk the cows and feed the pigs rather than sitting on my couch posting comments on a blog.

.... no thanks.

... most people have found ways to be more productive and make more money using their brains.

Is this true? Or have we entitled ourselves to make more money "using our brains" while profiting from seigniorage as the issuer of the world's reserve currency? I don't pretend to know, but the question interests me, especially since it's so little asked. I'm pretty sure the seigniorage well is running dry. It typically does. Maybe Asian producers will decide to consume all of their laptops themselves. Then how will I write my blog posts?

We want to fix the education system and encourage more people to stay in school so they can have a good living.

Spoken like a true economics professor. Basically, we go to college after high school, because we have nothing better to do at the time and because people in the preceding generation who went to college typically make more money than people who didn't, although Bill Gates is a notable exception.

We believe the degrees are valuable, so they are, for the moment. The Pope lives in a castle too, and he has degrees.