Reason #3 Why College Is A Lousy Deal
In my last blog, I identified grade inflation as Reason #2 why a college degree doesn’t mean what it used to. I explained that grade inflation started with the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s, when college students were exempt from the military draft and sympathetic professors inflated grades to keep their students from flunking […]
Reason #2 Why College Is A Lousy Deal
A college degree doesn’t mean what it used to. In my last blog I explained that one reason is because so many people have college degrees nowadays (33% of American adults, vs. just 5% in 1940). As a result, some 37% of recent college graduates are working in jobs that don’t require a college degree. […]
Apprenticeships Get A Boost
Last week President Trump took aim at expanding apprenticeship programs for the manual trades, which has been applauded by the Business Roundtable, consisting of major employers. It’s about time apprenticeship has gotten a boost! Apprenticeship is a training system that dates back more than 500 years when European guilds were formed to pass along knowledge […]
Debt Till Death
Do you love your Mom and Dad? There are exceptions, but I suspect most people reading this would answer yes. If you do, do them a favor. Don’t put them in such a hole supporting your college education that they have to struggle in retirement. Unfortunately, millions of America parents are facing a miserable time […]
Bad Driving Is A Killer – Of Careers Too
In recent years road signs have popped up warning against texting while driving. This has become an epidemic among young people in particular. I know many of you reading this are teens and twenty-somethings. To you, I want to say … STOP IT! TEXTING WHILE DRIVING IS MONUMENTALLY STUPID! End of rant. What’s this have […]
The Power of Positive Thinking
April 25, 2017 Are you a grouchy person, always complaining about something? If so, please stay away from me. Not just me. Nobody likes to hang around with a grouch. The Power of Positive Thinking was a best-selling book from the 1960s that is still on sale. Its title pretty much describes what the book […]
Earth Day 2017
April 11, 2017 Something’s missing April 22 has in recent times come into its own as a pseudo-holiday when organizers try to turn the country’s attention to environmental concerns. I’m all for keeping the environment clean – who isn’t? It’s like being for motherhood and apple pie. Yet I take a pass on all the […]
Dummies Need Not Apply
March 28, 2017 A skilled trade requires smarts Pardon my rant, but when something annoys the hell out of me I have trouble keeping quiet. One of the things that sets me off is when college-educated people look down on the trades as something less intelligent people ought to aspire to. Less intelligent than who? […]
My Old High School – Some Things Don’t Change For The Better
March 7, 2017 Way back when we carried slide rules rather than calculators to math classes, I attended and graduated from one of the best urban public high schools in the country – Lane Technical High School in Chicago. It still carries a reputation as one of the only public high schools within Chicago’s city […]
Construction Plagued by Labor Shortages
February 2017 Service firms also cry for trade workers Most of our economy has largely recovered from the devastation of the “Great Recession” that started in 2008. One notable exception is construction. Home building is still at recession levels, and one reason is a lack of workers. This report from Fortune magazine notes that an […]