What Good Is "College And Career Ready" When There Are No Jobs For College Graduates?

I'm so sick of hearing Common Core proponents issue the boilerplate jive about how the CCSS are helping to make students college and career ready to compete in a global 21st century economy.

The truth is, there are few jobs out there for college graduates and the prospects aren't getting better:

While members of the class of 2014 have some cause to celebrate, they also know they are a few short months away from starting to pay down their share of the $1 trillion-plus student-loan debt.

The most shocking number of all is that only 17 percent of these soon-to-be grads have a job lined up, according to AfterCollege Inc., which crunches these numbers and also tries to help match employers with recent graduates.

Despite our being a year further along on the road to economic recovery, this year’s 17 percent is actually down from the class of 2013’s 20 percent who had a job lined up before graduating.

Most kids who go to college do so to get skills for work after graduation. It’s never going to be 100 percent or even 90 percent of graduates who have job offers waiting, but it shouldn’t be that 83 percent of seniors have nothing lined up, either — especially when 73 percent say they were actively looking for work.

Oddly, even 82 percent of supposedly more “marketable” majors (engineering, technology, math) were still empty-handed.

Some think the job situation will get better for college graduates as the economy gradually improves, but we're already five years post-recession and the economy still hasn't improved for many in the job market.

The reality is, the economy has changed such that fewer jobs for college graduates exist and that number is dwindling every year and greatly diminishing the value of a college degree:

Large numbers of college graduates can only find employment in jobs paying the minimum wage. Currently, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 260,000 people with college or even professional degrees are so employed. Moreover, the percentage of college graduates who work in jobs that don’t require any advanced academic preparation (the “mal-employed”) has been rising for years, and now stands at 36 percent. If college degrees are becoming more valuable, why are so many graduates either unemployed or employed at low-paying jobs?

What jobs are being created these days?

The kind that don't - or shouldn't - require college degrees:

The BLS has a handy chart of the fastest-growing jobs in America (h/t Erica Grieder), and the vast majority are not the “knowledge economy” jobs we usually think of. In fact, this chart seems to prove things that we already know: the rising importance of the healthcare sector to the economy (especially with an aging population) and the transition of the economy to services, where “services” is not a euphemism for “computers” but, like, actual services.

So the list has your odd “Biomedical Engineers” (fancy!) and, at the bottom, your “Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists” (sorry epidemiologists!), but the vast majority of jobs are jobs like “Home Health Aides” and “Reinforcing Iron and Rebar Workers.”

A key point here: The jobs of the future are only “low skilled” if you define “low skilled” as not requiring college. Being a good carpenter (56% growth, Jesus is still with us) or, for that matter, a good medical secretary (41% growth), takes smarts (actual smarts, not just book smarts), hard work, and dedication.

Relatedly, the jobs of the future will be high-paying. It’s simply not true that all high-paying jobs require a college degree. It’s very very possible to make a very good living as a tradesman, because good tradesmen are–and always will be, unlike Fortran programmers and data entry clerks–in high demand.

“Helpers–Brickmasons, Blockmasons, Stonemasons, and Tile and Marble Setters” sounds like bottom-of-the-barrel work, but follow someone like Samuel-James Wilson, an award-winning bricklayer, on Twitter, or visit Guédelon Castle where contemporary tradesmen are building a 13th century castle with 13th century tools, to see that being a good bricklayer is as hard as being a good lawyer. Obviously I’ve been influenced by Shop Class as Soulcraft, which should be required reading for any discussion of the future of work and education.

And finally–and this is perhaps the most important thing–some jobs of the future only “require” college because we’re very dumb. Very few of those occupations require college in the sense that 90+% of people who pursue that occupation will benefit from having learned about it in college. But my guess would be that more than a few of these occupations “require” college in the sense that employers expect that applicants will have a BA. And this is our problem.  A “Diagnostic Medical Sonographer” is a highly-skilled job that doesn’t require college training in the sense that you can learn everything you need to do the job in a manner of months. But many colleges offer programs to help you become a Diagnostic Medical Sonographer. And when you compare unemployment rates for college graduates and non-college graduates, you see why someone might want to go to college to become a Diagnostic Medical Sonographer even if it means taking on huge, unnecessary debt. And once there are enough college graduates who can become Diagnostic Medical Sonographers, you can see why employers would rationally toss out of the pile any resumes that don’t have a college degree on them.

This is something that we urgently need to fix, because we’re wasting ginormous amounts of money, time, and resources. The first step is to recognize what the actual jobs of the future are.

One problem is, college is a huge money-making industry - for the college themselves, of course, but also for the ancillary industries like the testing companies, the test prep companies, the banks (via the loans) and even the government (which also makes money from student loans.)

These entities all help to push college for all because they make a ton of money off of it.

Second problem is, we live in a culture that denigrates occupations that require people to work with their hands (farming, construction, etc.) and denigrates service occupations that are necessary to make things work right (medical secretaries, doormen, etc.)

What I think we are going to need to do in this so-called 21st Century global economy is re-order how we think about work, stop privileging finance and tech over everything else, start to re-think how we handle compensation for all jobs (both the overpaid ones, like finance and tech, as well as the underpaid ones, like service jobs) and re-do how we handle training so that apprenticeships and on-the-job training replace some of the so-called college programs out there.

Oh, and there are way too many colleges - especially these expensive second and third tier private schools that load students up with debt for diplomas that are barely worth the paper they're printed on  (I'm looking at you, College of New Rochelle!)

Time to see these things go out of business and stop saddling students every year with debt.

I'm under no illusion that this will happen easily, without a fight or even, in the end, happen at all.

There's too much money to be made selling the "college dream" to as many as are willing to buy it.

But as more and more graduates find themselves slinging coffee at Starbuck's or working retail, there might be a natural movement away from reflexively saying every kid must go to college or else.

Let's hope.

Will Hiring David Coleman Backfire On College Board?

From FOX News:

The man known as the "architect" of Common Core has used his new job running the College Board to deal a devastating blow to critics of the national education standards.

The SAT was revamped to align with the Common Core Standards Initiative, the broad language and math standards adopted by 45 states despite growing complaints that it will result in nationalized control of K-12 curriculum. The announcement on Tuesday was made by College Board President David Coleman, who before taking the post in 2012, played a key role in designing Common Core.

Common Core supporters insist the program will ensure through testing a baseline level of learning throughout the nation, but critics say those tests will ensure a uniform curriculum springs up to prepare kids for the tests. Now, with the leading college entrance exam aligned with Common Core, critics acknowledge fighting Common Core could hurt students' chances of getting into universities and even property values.

“It’s a roundabout way to put pressure on states that opted out of Common Core,” said Whitney Neal, director of Grassroots at Freedom Works. “If you are legislator from Virginia let’s say, this will put pressure on you obtain material to make your district more appealing especially to homebuyers. SAT averages are often included in realtor information and high school success rate is always a selling point.” 

On the same day the SAT changes were announced, the Arizona senate voted down a bill that would have repealed that state's participation in Common Core. Although Arizona voted to participate in the program in 2010, its increasing unpopularity prompted the vote as well as Gov. Jan Brewer's move to rename the standards the "Arizona College and Career Ready Standards."

I'm going to posit a different theory for how the SAT/Coleman/CCSS alignment could play out.

The SAT has been hemorrhaging marketshare to the ACT for years and the hiring of CCSS architect Coleman was meant to staunch that bleeding.

By aligning the SAT with the Common Core, the edu-entrepreneurs running the College Board are thinking that students will decide to take the SAT over the ACT because the College Board test will more accurately reflect what they learned in school.

Thus the SAT will regain marketshare and put some distance between it and the ACT in terms of numbers of students taking the test - or so the thinking goes.

But here's the problem with that theory - the CCSS is under heavy assault all across the country and it won't be long before we start to see some states drop the standards completely.

Yes it's true that so far, CCSS supporters have managed to turn aside challenges to Common Core in various states that have seen rebellions over the standards (the most recent being Arizona last week.)

But no matter how many times proponents knock down challenges to CCSS, they're going to continue unabated because opponents to the CCSS look to be in it for the long haul.

What happens to the Common Core aligned-SAT when we go from 44 states + DC using the Core to, I dunno, say 37 states + DC using the Core?

Is the alignment of the SAT with the CCSS such a great selling point then?

Here's something else to think about.

It's just eight short years since the last SAT revamp, when they added the essay component and substituted grammar for the word analogies on the verbal section.

Here's how Peterson's described those changes:

As an example of some specific changes that have been made to the test, in 2005, the test was changed to better reflect the value of clear and effective writing. An essay was added to the test as a separate section, distinct from the verbal and mathematical reasoning sections. Students are presented with a thesis, which they may defend or reject, and are asked to complete the essay in 25 minutes. Students are free to structure their writing in any style that best conveys their point (expository, compare and contrast, or other techniques). Students may draw on any and all areas of their knowledge and experience in completing the essay portion of the test.

In the 2005 update, analogies were eliminated from the test because it was determined that they did not adequately reflect today's high school curriculum. It was also felt that the analogies encouraged memorization of vocabulary rather than reasoning skills.

Furthermore, in 2005 the math section was expanded to embrace concepts covered by most high school "Algebra II" courses. Again, the change represents an attempt to keep the SAT in step with the modern high school curriculum, and to emphasize the skills most desired by top colleges and universities.

Since those last changes to the SAT in 2005, College Board has seen the ACT overtake the SAT in marketshare and colleges largely ignore the writing component they added.

It is no slam dunk that the changes Coleman and the College Board announced last week will be any more successful than the changes College Board made to the SAT back in 2005.

Frankly, I think it's better than even money that College Board's hiring of Coleman comes back to bite College Board in the end.

The Common Core State (sic) Standards are already under widespread attack from right, middle and left and they've really only been fully adopted by a couple of states.

As more and more students and parents come into contact with the standards, we're going to see more hostility toward the CCSS and the tests and other reforms that go with the standards, like we've seen in New York State this past year.

Coleman and College Board could be changing the SAT to align with CCSS and rolling out those changes at the very same time that some states across the country start dropping out of Common Core and going on to different standards.

We'll see - boy genius/new historicist David Coleman has navigated difficult political waters before and won his way on things.

Still, we're starting to see a perfect storm of hostility arise over CCSS and I can easily see both Coleman and the SAT sinking under that storm.