The Death Of Shop Class And America's Skilled Workforce

[Richard Cranium]

I was tearable in school, always just making a barely passing grade.

I find that very hard to believe.

 

[Richard Cranium]

The problem is kids go to college and by there third year they still have no clue as to what they want to do with there lives after they graduate. They lack direction. Y

And people are starting to figure out that college may not be worth the price...

Tuition spikes send higher education enrollment tumbling

A startling decline in U.S. college enrollment reflects growing doubts about the value of a degree at a time when tuition is surging, grads are strapped with crushing student loan debt and financial aid awards are shrinking.

The number of Americans enrolled in colleges and universities has dropped every year since 2011, to a low of 19.1 million in 2015, the most recent year tallied, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The slide came after years of steady increases. The Census Bureau took note, calling the fall between 2011 and 2013 “larger than any college enrollment drop before the recent recession.”

The trend is “unique in American history,” said Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and an economics professor at Ohio University.

“Even in the Great Depression, enrollments went up,” Vedder said. “There’s an increasing skepticism on the part of the public that college produces the bang for the buck that it claims to.”

Attorney General Maura Healey, who opened a unit in her office dedicated to assisting debt-addled students, said college’s traditional bargain is in question.

“It’s not the case anymore that a four-year, liberal arts education is going to be the ticket to economic mobility in today’s economy,” Healey said. “As I talk to employers in this state, I know there are certain jobs that are open, but they’re looking for a certain skill set that I don’t think we have done as good a job filling.”

Graduates with bachelor’s degrees still earn appreciably more than high school graduates, a median weekly pay of $1,156 compared to $692 for high school grads, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the sizable debt many students have to take on — and the real chance it will take them more than four years to finish school — is altering the calculus as the cost of college has gone up.

Tuition at four-year public schools jumped an average of 7.2 percent nationally last year, according to the U.S. Department of Education, while net prices — factoring in average financial aid, fees, supplies and room and board — increased 4.7 percent.

That sticker shock comes as the bump in salary a college grad can expect over a high school counterpart remains unchanged, Vedder said.

“If you have the costs going up and the benefits roughly staying constant, you’re going to have a lower rate of return on your investment,” Vedder said. “There’s a growing realization that there are risks associated with going to college. Not everyone gets a good job.”

And colleges are feeling the change in public sentiment.

Earlier this summer, the National Association of College and University Business Officers issued a memo to its members urging they communicate the value of college as being “more critical now than ever before.”

The memo stated “the media landscape has changed, policymakers are scrutinizing the higher education sector, and public pushback continues — on rising college costs, student debt loads, and workforce challenges, to name a few.”

The guidance suggests stressing that while recent grads owe about $30,000 on average at graduation, people with bachelor’s degrees earn an average of $1 million more over their lifetimes than high school graduates do.

Another influencing factor in enrollment declines is the high rate of unemployment and underemployment among degree-holders, experts said. A college grad is considered underemployed if he or she is working in a job that doesn’t traditionally require a degree.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which tracks underemployment, reports that recent college grads hit a high of 46.2 percent underemployment in November 2013; the rate was 37.7 percent in April 2001.

And the number of unemployed recent college grads hit a high of 7.1 percent in March 2011, according to bank data.

“Typically, that number is 2 to 3 percent,” said Andrew Hanson, senior analyst at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “The Great Recession was the first time in history, really, that we’ve seen college graduates struggle to a certain extent in the labor markets. People were really surprised by that.”

The decline in enrollments also came as employers shifted to hiring philosophies that value experience over pedigree.

A 2013 Gallup poll of business leaders saw only 9 percent say it’s “very important” where a job candidate got his or her degree. The amount of knowledge a candidate has in the relevant field was the top factor, with 84 percent saying it’s very important, and the next most important was a candidate’s applied skills in the field.

The trend particularly affects liberal arts colleges that have small enrollments and endowments, and who’ve had to dig into operating budgets to offer the financial aid needed to attract a student body of more than just rich kids.

Wheelock College, for example, expects 630 undergrad students this fall, down from 729 in 2016, 822 in 2015, and 857 in 2014. The college, which recently put its president’s house in Brookline on the market, has entered formal merger talks with Boston University, with the schools noting that small private colleges are pressured by declining enrollment, tightening budgets and increasing tuition costs.

The merger talk comes after the Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music merged — both schools had among the top 10 highest net costs in the country last year, at $42,338 and $45,272 annual tuitions — and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts merged with Tufts University.

Emerson College President Lee Pelton said the merger activity is a result of colleges offering tuition discounts as high as 60 percent to attract first-year students. With small endowments, that money has to come out of operations, compromising the core enterprise.

“That’s not a sustainable model going forward — that’s been what I call the ‘death spiral,’ ” Pelton said. “We’re now reaching a point where we’re going to see a lot of (merger and acquisition) activity in higher education.”

Alan Benson, an MIT-trained economist and management professor at the University of Minnesota, said uncertain outcomes for grads have disrupted bedrock notions about the value of a college education.

“I am not saying that young people should not go to college,” he said. “What I am saying is we need to be more realistic as a society about why it is that so many people don’t go to college, or start and don’t finish.”



http://www.bostonherald.com/news/lo...kes_send_higher_education_enrollment_tumbling

 

[miller]

All real interesting...and pretty sad.
But, sure hits home. My HS days, guess I was pretty much a shithead, since I didn't really care for all the mess. Only time I gave any effort, was in the many shop classes I took. One year, 4 different shop classes.
But, I managed to survive. Good hands, and a little common sense, then to the usual job working at various gas stations, for years.

Then, got married, and had three sons, on with life. Oldest son worked his way through college, 8 years of it, and is a college professor...and not much common sense...can't work with his hands.
The other two, reminded me of me! (Sorry little shits!) Both surprised the heck out of me. Had a little sit-down with them, one day. The older of the two, who I had kicked out of the house, had quit HS (later got his GED), the youngest still in HS. Both were asking me, what they were going to do, for a living!
Flat told 'em, unless you get a college education, LOL, few choices. 'Good' paying jobs, meant being a plumber, construction, or electrical work...both are now electricians! The older a master, with his own business! Proud of 'em!
It's all out of survival. I didn't give them a choice! 'They' were the one's, who had to put food on their table, roof over their heads...blah, blah. I damn sure wasn't going to, at their ages.

Too much of the 'give me everything I want' crap, these days.

 

[Auggie56]

I find that very hard to believe.

A little sideways meaning Richard? ;p I admit it, no problem but I prospered where others have failed.

 

[Donny]

I can't find anyone worth an Class 1 download to work for me doing metalwork! A great disservice is going on right now, BIG TIME! We're doomed folks, the kids today are driven to school by mommy and daddy missing the opportunities of kicking *** or getting your *** kicked! Cell phones are a menace, no more riding bicycles, no riding dirt bikes, no wrenching because the Liberals have regulated and ensnared everyone with this or that rule, so, swapping your 318 for a 360 in the driveway now violates this or that rule. Kiss the opportunity to find more shops to restore your car as when the shop grows they encounter quality control issues -- all inevitable!

This article is a few years old, but Mike Rowe (from Dirty Jobs) is a big proponent of learning trades and trade schools. People in the trades that are our age are nearing retirement and there just aren't enough young people to take their places. Middle & high schools are doing a major disservice by making their curriculum all about college prep as not everyone is college material.







During my freshman year of high school I was required to take home economics and shop class where I learned basics skills in sewing, cooking, woodwork and metal work. Regrettably the cooking never made an impression, but I fondly remember learning along with a class full of boys and girls how to sew a pair of shorts, punch holes into metal to create a hook to hang my bathrobe, cut and bend metal to make a box that still holds my pens to this day and use a rotary saw to make a hot plate that was used on the kitchen table at home.

Twenty years later I can still recall that sense of pride when I finished the blue metal box with only minimal guidance from my shop teacher. I remember him fondly, he wore a dark blue lab coat, coke bottle glasses and was missing the tip of one finger. It astonished me how the noisy, formidable equipment permitted me to have a taste of what it must feel like to be an artist, as opposed to an envious seemingly untalented observer hanging outside art class watching the creative students' imaginations explode onto the canvas with every brush stroke. I have continued to use those skills throughout my life both professionally and when needed around the house.

Shop classes are being eliminated from California schools due to the University of California/California State 'a-g' requirements. 'The intent of the 'a-g' subject requirements is to ensure that students can participate fully in the first-year program at the University in a wide variety of fields of study.' (a) History/Social Science (b) English © Mathematics (d) Laboratory Science (e) Language other than English (f) Visual and Performing Arts (g) College Preparatory Elective Courses. High school administrators are graded on their effectiveness to administer those classes through the Western Association of Schools and Colleges accreditation. Shop class is not included in the requirements, thereby not valued and schools consider the class a burden to support. Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) with 660,000 students in K-12 has already eliminated 90% of shop classes and it looks like the rest will be gone by the end of the 2013.


The UC/CA State system focuses on theory and not applied skills; a belief that learning how to swing a hammer or understand the difference between a good joint from a bad joint is part of a by-gone era, and as a society these skills are not something to strive for - something people resort to when they are out of options. Looking at shop class in this light is short-sighted and detrimental to America's future.

From The Return of Shop to City Schools

[Shop] acquaints students with its ties to mathematics and the sciences. It could point toward possibilities in the arts, which arise in one degree or another from craftsmanship. Through discussions of its materials – wood, metal, rubber, plastic – it could point toward history classes, and through the materials those classes could draw the student into study of the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, conquest of native peoples, systems of government, and on and on. The shop class could even give practical lessons in English; imagine, for example, an exercise in which a student is handed an incomplete specification for some required task and to complete it is made to write an RFI. On finishing the shop class a student should have some idea of how to answer the question, 'What use is x in my life?' – and we could substitute for x any of the litany of usually detested classes.


75% of the students in California are not going to attend university yet they are taking classes that will help them get into UC and CA State schools. Just like there are people who are not inclined to become welders or machinists, not everyone can be a rocket scientist or a football star.

Students take physical education class in elementary school and with that opportunity they discover their abilities and their like or dislike for various sports. The schools breed our pro football and basketball stars. What would it be like if as adults we didn't have exposure to sports in school? Would the NFL and NBA be as popular? What about the Olympics? With all the money that is poured into high school sports teams you would think that every kid was going to turn into a professional player. Without early exposure to shop class many kids are going to lose out on the opportunity to discover whether or not they like making things, and the inclination to pursue a career as a drafter, carpenter, welder or auto mechanic. Statistically speaking there is a greater chance that a kid will become employed as a tradesperson than ever becoming a professional sports player. Skilled laborers are essential and are not limited to stereotypical jobs as plumbers (although that is critical profession). Companies such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman are struggling to find skilled laborers and that trend is going to continue.

From A Critical Review of Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft

...the skilled trades are undervalued in America. They are undervalued in the American educational system that has systematically eliminated shop class. They are undervalued in the collective consciousness that views them as lowly, “blue collar”, dirty, unprofessional. But, the funny thing is that there is one place where they are actually not undervalued at all, and that is in the marketplace, which has seen a greater and greater demand for the skilled craftsman, be he a carpenter, electrician, machinist, mechanic, and so on. On account of his being in demand, the skilled tradesman has his choice of jobs, needs answer to no one, and earns a living wage, perks that are not to be scoffed at in this economic environment.

As shop teachers around California retire, high schools aren't replacing them and shop classes are closing. There is no training for teachers going through university to learn how to teach shop. This trend isn't limited to California, according to John Chocholak who has testified in front of California State Assembly and Congress on the subject of shop class, he is seeing shop class killed in Florida, Wisconsin, Texas and many other states. Shop class is dead and so are the potential trades people that would be born out of that early exposure to a tool or machine.

What is America going to do without skilled workers who can build and fix things?


https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarabr...americas-high-skilled-workforce/#2ea1ca12541f

 

[mopar 3 B]

One can place blame in lots of places. But learning starts at home.

 

[Kern Dog]

Yeah, but....
My Dad liked cars but was NOT very mechanically inclined. He sold cars, new and used. I can maybe credit him for showing me what cars were which... (What a Chevy was, a Dodge was, etc) but I took a different path than he did. I was more interested in how they ran, how to fix them, modify them, etc.
Now he is dead. We don't hang out like we used to.

 

[Slap Stick]

Just what is a Liberal Arts degree and what kind of job will it get you?

 

[Sonny Black]

Just what is a Liberal Arts degree and what kind of job will it get you?

Answer; Another high school diploma

 

[Richard Cranium]

Just what is a Liberal Arts degree and what kind of job will it get you?

Walmart greeter, cashier at 7-11, night watchman, supermarket stock boy, etc.

 

[ws23jrt]

I quit my senior year in HS (mid year) because I was making a .08 GPA.
Got permission to take the GED test ahead of my graduating class so I could get a job. (rules at the time 1969).
My GED test score was high enough that I could have entered any college of my choice in my state.---**** that---I wanted a job to pay my way right then. And needed it because I was on my own and hungry.
By far it was the best single move of my life.--(getting out of everlasting classes).

Looking back on all of this --I have a better handle on how precious the early years of working are for the long haul.
Found my place where I fit. I worked for nearly 50 years --and still counting --at a fun trade and made hundreds of friends. Saved money and paid off the mortgage years ago. Have a fat pension and the bonus of SS plus an investment account that could carry me till I reach 200.

My question for those that are nearing their early forties and looking forward to the bliss of the effort in "learning" to be able to work. (how is that working out for you?)
What did the last twenty years of learning give you that you can look back on and feel warm about? Did it help your future or just hold you in place until the next semester?

IMO working and living happen at the same time. Time passes relentlessly. No back up/do over there.

 

[mopar 3 B]

I quit my senior year in HS (mid year) because I was making a .08 GPA.
Got permission to take the GED test ahead of my graduating class so I could get a job. (rules at the time 1969).
My GED test score was high enough that I could have entered any college of my choice in my state.---**** that---I wanted a job to pay my way right then. And needed it because I was on my own and hungry.
By far it was the best single move of my life.--(getting out of everlasting classes).

Looking back on all of this --I have a better handle on how precious the early years of working are for the long haul.
Found my place where I fit. I worked for nearly 50 years --and still counting --at a fun trade and made hundreds of friends. Saved money and paid off the mortgage years ago. Have a fat pension and the bonus of SS plus an investment account that could carry me till I reach 200.

My question for those that are nearing their early forties and looking forward to the bliss of the effort in "learning" to be able to work. (how is that working out for you?)
What did the last twenty years of learning give you that you can look back on and feel warm about? Did it help your future or just hold you in place until the next semester?

IMO working and living happen at the same time. Time passes relentlessly. No back up/do over there.

Working, living and learning happen at the same time.
If you do not learn something each day have you really done anything?

The AGC which is a heavy contractors group has started funding trades programs in many high schools across the country to fill the gap in skilled labor.
These are jobs that need filling the hireing illegal labor cost them dearly.
I do not feel real sorry for many of these contractor. Treating your empoyees as a disposable commodity may look good on the books but no way to retain loyal employees. Many simply retired others such as myself found different occupations and will not go back.

 

[Jcharger]

Enrollment is an interesting point. In my state, the newspaper also says the smaller schools have declined, but the larger and more prestigious ones have grown. It basically boils down to value. My son enrolled last year and the competition is tough. He's the one who also does machining, design, and building in the SAE programs and he says the placement of engineers is very high. I work there and our placement also remains high. For what it is worth, liberal arts covers a lot of subjects, but generates people who think. Nothing wrong with them, but they are different from more applied schools. I've known a lot of business people and bankers who came through those schools.

 

[Richard Cranium]

And then there's this....

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/01/colleges-struggle-over-defending-or-curbing-free-speech.html

College enrollments are going down because people are realizing that for many, the costs are not worth the worthless diploma and debt. Add to that, parents are not going to send their kids to schools where these dumbass protests and insane policies are.

 

[Jcharger]

The generalization about people fleeing lower quality colleges because of cost is just market forces. The top schools continue to have well below 100% acceptance rates and there is clear value added but we have to make sacrifices to pay.

Costs have gone up, but a big part of that has been determined by the politicians who in the past 30 years (give or take) have made the point that the people using the schools need to foot the bills rather than the taxpayers. I am sure people here like that money. If someone is complaining because they cannot get handouts in the form of financial aid, they should think carefully about what they want from the state and about their taxes.

We saw it coming and set up college accounts for our kids and have no issues. My son chose a lower cost (in state) option because he gets to keep what he doesn't spend - a life lesson for him. He also has continuously held a job through college and pays for any extras. He says they have upwards of 90% placement in jobs from his engineering program. Right now his program is likely to net him a job with a good salary and is a place where he can live and grow up in a relatively safe environment. And on top of that, he gets to learn machining, welding, driving, and other skills through SAE (society of automotive engineers) programs at the school.