
College-educated workers are taking over the American factory floor - vo2maxer
https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-factories-demand-white-collar-education-for-blue-collar-work-11575907185
======
romaaeterna
37% of the American population between 25 to 34 has a Bachelor's degree now.
The subset of people who are literate and conscientious, but do not have a
degree has become vanishingly small in recent decades.

This is a horrible and vicious feedback loop, but it's hard to blame the
employers, who are actually being fairly rational about their use of a BS
degree as a filter (it's the new HS diploma). The blame lies at the feet of an
uncontrolled government loan policy that has given the BS this new status.

College is eating years of our lives and is transferring vast amounts of
middle class wealth to the education sector of the economy. In the US, it's
probably the greatest misallocation of resources outside of our health
industry.

~~~
snowwrestler
This only makes sense if you think that bachelors degrees contribute no value
during the entire lifetimes of the people who receive them, which seems like a
pretty huge assumption that should not pass unexamined.

I agree that college financing is out of control, but that doesn’t mean a
college education is a waste of time. Secondary education was once the domain
of rich kids too, but we changed that and the long term value to the world is
obvious. Financing public goods is a solvable problem.

It seems pretty reasonable to me that as human society grows more complex and
specialized, humans would benefit from more education.

~~~
oceanplexian
I know you said this with some degree of sarcasm, but for the vast majority of
people, you are right on the money. A bachelors degree does not only
“contribute no value” but in fact leaches value from the economy. I work at a
FAANG with no degree, and the reason I did so (In my 20s) was because instead
of wasting my time in a classroom, I was out in the workforce working on real
business problems at a telecom since I was 16, in a field where educators are
10-15 years behind reality. Most of the cutting edge work at Google or
Facebook or Amazon is not public information, so how the hell would a college
even teach that? It’s under NDA. Same as Ma Bell and the extraordinary
innovations that came out of the telecommunications industry.

A degree doesn’t just steal value in terms of money, which puts you tens or
hundreds of thousands of dollars of compounding debt, but it also steals your
time, and indoctrinates you into a top-down style of learning. Your time, the
most valuable asset in the world, could be spent solving real problems in the
real world. The whole system is a scam, and I’m truly sorry for those who have
fallen for it.

My advice would be to cut your losses and get into entrepreneurship or work
for a company that interests you ASAP. Life is too short to participate in
someone else’s profit centered system of learning (Doctors and Lawyers
excepted, but only because the level of gatekeeping in those fields is so high
and perverted, and backed by government, that learning only via apprenticeship
has literally been outlawed)

~~~
MaximumYComb
For a lot of people, going to college is going to be a great opportunity. Not
many people can simply leave school at 16 for a meaningful job that gives top
tier work experience. You need to live in the right area and either get really
lucky or know the right people. A lot of things need to line up well for you.
A bachelor's degree is guaranteed if you can pay for it and pass the units,
something that doesn't need as much of life to line up perfectly for.

Within a couple of years of starting my CS degree, I was far better at
programming than every hobbyist programmer I've met. I didn't have many
opportunities out of school. I was from a poor country town that topped the
state crime statistics. I know my mum hadn't finished high school and I don't
think my father did either. I joined the military, got a trade and went to
university at 30 as a single father working full time. University changed my
life for the better, gave me a lot of tools and made me much more valuable.

~~~
wallacoloo
For real. The information you learn on-the-job v.s. the information you learn
in academia is a Venn diagram where _maybe_ 50% overlaps, but that doesn’t
mean the non-overlapping bits were useless. Having a broad background gives
you tools to draw on and helps you see ways of framing things that could
massively simplify the problem you’re facing.

I can’t imagine I would have developed the concept of LTI systems outside of
academia (EE), nor realized how much of signal processing tasks can be
deconstructed to just convolutions or correlations, but these modes of
thinking have proved powerful in my early career and especially as a hobbyist.

~~~
PretzelFisch
I am not sure this is true. Maybe 25% overlap. Going to college allowed one to
build a network. This network is what provided most of the value over time.

When in the workforce one can pick up a skill/s, from a technical institutes
or college extension programs. These programs focus directly on educating for
an area focus with relevant industry experience and problem sets.

------
habosa
This mentality keeps on going right up through high-paid white collar work.
All job postings inflate the minimum requirements and everybody wants someone
else to train their employees.

All junior software engineering jobs that could be filled by recent CS grads
or bootcamp grads want 2-3 years of professional experience. The next level up
that should require 2-3 years wants 5-10.

The unemployment numbers are crap. Ask anyone who has a middle of the road
white-collar job how confident they'd be in quitting and getting a new one and
they will laugh at you. Nobody is really hiring on fair terms. Everybody wants
a new senior employee for the price of a junior one.

~~~
jobu
My company does a good job of recruiting college students as interns, and then
converting them to junior engineers when they graduate. Unfortunately they all
leave within a couple years and generally double their salaries when they do.

This has been happening for the five years I've worked here and likely longer.
For whatever reason no one can convince HR and senior management that we need
to give significant raises (%10-20) each year for the first couple years after
they graduate in order to keep decent engineers. The last time I brought it up
I got some bullshit response about loyalty.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
There are a few possibilities in that situation:

(1) The engineers are not actually all leaving - it may feel like that, but
maybe it's cheaper to hire a bunch of junior devs and filter out anyone that
doesn't buy the loyalty bullshit and isn't content with 3% annual raises

(2) They don't need decent or senior engineers, hiring and managing cheaper
juniors is effective enough and cheaper

(1) HR/Management are incompetent and the business is doomed to failure

~~~
Aeolun
Management doesn’t care, because they don’t spend day in day out training
these engineers only to see them leave.

I mean, that’s an achievement in itself I guess, but ultimately you are mostly
training them because you hope they will help you out later.

------
iooi
Speaking as a college dropout, the grass is always greener.

On the one hand, I've never had my lack of a degree be an issue in tech,
especially startups. Some founders even place a weird bonus on being a dropout
and see you as more of a hustler than degree-holding employees.

On the other hand, there are some opportunities that are closed off to me
unless I decide to finish my degree. For example, I would have liked to get an
MBA or go to law school for fun, but those options are completely closed off.
You absolutely must have a four-year degree.

Another one that came up recently, I've been thinking of taking a break from
tech and going into public service, all the jobs I saw in the three-letter
agency I was interested in also had a hard requirement on a four-year degree.

A degree isn't necessary for everyone, it certainly wasn't for me and it's
nice that I had almost two years as a head start on my career in tech.
However, I wouldn't encourage people to drop out.

Having a degree gives you options. You're better off with those options than
without. You don't _have_ to take out 200k in loans. There's fantastic public
education systems like CUNY that you can take advantage of.

~~~
WalterBright
> You don't _have_ to take out 200k in loans.

The University of Washington is a well-regarded school, and it costs about
$30K/year including room, board, and books. Although it isn't an elite school,
you can get an elite education there with careful selection of courses.

~~~
malvosenior
$120K (for a BS) is still a lot of money to owe straight out of university. I
think it would be hard to justify getting that in debt for most degrees.

~~~
joncrane
The point is that UW offers degrees that are easily worth it at that price.

~~~
malvosenior
I don’t think a good CS degree is “easily” worth $120k.

~~~
WalterBright
You'd be right if you got the CS degree by taking the easiest classes, doing
as little as possible, and partying.

On the other hand, if you carefully select the courses, work to get the most
out of the opportunities there, etc., you can get a very valuable education at
UW. I've seen it too many times for that to be a fluke.

UW isn't going to hold your hand, it's up to you. There are a very large
number of local UW graduates who became wealthy.

~~~
malvosenior
The same can be said about any education (even self taught). My point is 120k
is _a lot_ of debt.

As a hiring manager I don’t even care if you have a degree, I just want to see
you can ship. There are a lot of viable alternatives to that 120k, as you say
you just have to work hard to succeed, regardless of chosen path.

------
Cougher
Old guy trying to put things together ahead: I think that this mentality may
have started as a result of the Griggs vs Duke Power Co case from 1970. Griggs
was a black man who was turned down a promotion because he failed a company
aptitude test, which was later determined to be racially biased against him .
. . something to that effect. Companies were hesitant to continue using such
tests, so they started requiring college degrees instead. Higher demand for
higher education led to higher costs.

~~~
alfromspace
Important to note it was only determined to be biased on the basis of
disparate impact, which I think is a baloney concept. In other words, if one
group of people doesn't do as well on something as another group on average,
the thing can be considered a violation of the 14th amendment.

The NY City fire department recently had to shell out millions to people who
weren't hired because of a similar ruling. No discrimination found other than
that black people didn't do as well on a test as white people.

~~~
Infinitesimus
> which I think is a baloney concept

Understandable but we cannot ignore how history plays into these decisions you
know?

> No discrimination found other than that black people didn't do as well on a
> test as white people.

I don't know the details of this case but there are a lot of systemic effects
if the history of racism in the US that have lingering effects in society
today.

Consider how practices like redlining significantly affected finance and
education access. Jail sentence time disparity and a lot of other often
invisible ripples of what happened in the early years of this country.

It's very hard to know what causes some of these disparities and sometimes a
society tries to deal with it by using equal/similar outcomes as an admittedly
flawed proxy for equal treatment while we try to address the underlying
factors ( better schools, representation, access, etc.)

------
moosey
IMO, the failure in the US here is the fact that money can no longer flow
towards innovation because far too much of it is trapped in the hands of a
very small elite that are fearful of taking _real_ risk. Freeing up those cash
flows, some of which would flow into government (which can take huge risks
that the free market simply can't, since the profit motive doesn't exist:
example: educating _everyone_), and also would put more money into the hands
of recent college graduates, who are definitely more in touch with the current
technological trends of the day than I am with my 20 yo comp sci degree, and
probably more so than those who have captured the vast majority of wealth and
power and are now just sitting on it, or use it to prevent advancements in
society, energy, and scientific endeavors.

The inertia that this has created frustrates me deeply. Of course there is
value to a broad liberal education that includes STEM, philosophy and art.
That should be obvious. The fact that our economic system cannot reward the
great effort that people go through to get them is a failure of the economic
system, not of the education system (edit: there is plenty to condemn in the
education system, for instance the cost, and the fact that many college
degrees are only job preparation programs now, and the general free
market/business take over of education).

The "employers" are at fault. Until we can release the stagnation of monetary
flows in the US, we are going to have these issues. Unfortunately, based on
the current state of regulation, I imagine that the monetary flows that are
most likely to occur will be the allowance of those already wealthy to take
their money elsewhere. Reading Foreign Policy magazine has made me aware of
what it will mean to live in a waning US, and this is obviously a symptom.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
>a very small elite that are fearful of taking _real_ risk.

Shouldn't it be the opposite? If I was worth a gajillion dollars, I could
spread it over many many bets. That diversification would let me take higher
risk bets compare to if that gajillion was spread over a larger number of
people.

~~~
octokatt
Once you have enough wealth, you can find better, less risky bets which, while
they might not move the cultural needle, will be able to make a guaranteed
profit.

A bit like the House of Mouse making sequels and remakes, rather than taking a
risk on a newcomer or interesting (and therefore risky) concept film.

------
rosseloh
I haven't yet read the article, but just from the name it brings to mind
something I've been seriously considering lately:

I've been thinking about leaving my job fixing computers, networks, and
servers at an MSP-like business, and getting a basic factory job.

Why? Because in my town, factory workers are making more per hour than I do,
they get overtime, and they get full benefits and good vacation packages.
Meanwhile I'm overtime exempt for a _decent_ wage (but compared to what these
"simple" factory jobs are paying, it's peanuts), no benefits at all except a
small stipend to help with health insurance, and a shitty vacation policy
(normal-ish by american standards, however).

Sure, they work 12 hour shifts, yeah that sounds hard. But: I work 10 hour
shifts so it's not that big of a difference.... _and_ they also work four days
a week where I work my ten hours M-F plus an extra 5 every other Saturday
(running a storefront with a small number of employees sucks). The exception
is when they're in crunch mode and working overtime, but they're getting
beaucoup bucks for those overtime hours where I get zilch extra.

The kicker here is that this is all something I could do without leaving where
I live. To get a better paying IT job, I'd have to move, which at this exact
moment, I'm not able to do.

~~~
ladberg
Would you mind letting us know where you are? I just curious what area has
that level of imbalance between factory and IT workers.

~~~
rosseloh
Rural South Dakota; not one of the small farming towns but not a huge city,
either (one of the larger ones in the state, but that doesn't mean much).
That's about as detailed as I'd like to go at the moment.

------
Ididntdothis
Stuff like this is why I have a problem questioning the value of a college
degree. Even if you never need what you learned during college the degree is
still an entrance ticket to a lot of jobs. If you don’t go to college you are
handicapping yourself. It’s just bad advice not to go to college.

~~~
EpicEng
Or you could fix the real problem and stop the lunacy of requiring four year
degrees for positions that can be taught while on the job.

~~~
AWildC182
Or we could just not make getting such an education financially burdensome and
we can go forward as a universally highly educated and thoughtful society?

~~~
moduspol
Even if it were free, the idea that it would take someone with an existing
career four years as a full-time student to pursue a different career is too
much.

We need to start questioning bad assumptions about education. Shuffling money
around isn't going to do it.

~~~
AWildC182
You're talking about career changes as opposed to initial schooling but I'll
bite, what assumptions do you think need to change?

~~~
moduspol
> You're talking about career changes as opposed to initial schooling

Yes, but it's the same question. Initial schooling is implicitly accepting a
working age adult contributing no income for four years. We're just accustomed
to it.

> what assumptions do you think need to change?

* 18 year olds are capable of making decisions about what career they will want for the rest of their lives

* Leaving (or pushing back entering) the work force for four years in pursuit of a degree is a nigh-universal good

* Taking four years of time / 120 credit hours is a reasonable and good target around which to structure degrees, regardless of what amount of knowledge must / should be imparted

* Training on the job cannot replace any meaningful amount of what four year degrees can offer

* Anyone can get a degree, and should be encouraged to do so regardless of whether or not they actually can or will

I mean, there are more, but that's a good start.

------
jvanderbot
TFA mentions associate degrees as "white collar" which is a bit off. To be a
machinist often requires a 2 year cert.

I think some of this should be a certification/licensure process rather than a
degree.

------
duxup
I always wonder about qualifications and if anyone is paying attention what is
really required to do a job.

I worked for a tech company that was acquired by some big valley tech company.
They couldn't find any of the fancy CS degree folks they were looking for in
the valley so they decided to "try" bringing a few of us over from this nobody
company (that they had picked up just to absorb customers, we were just the
folks left over after the layoffs because they didn't want to deal with
supporting those customers themselves).

I didn't finish college, and I was warned that this was high tech stuff and
they usually hire some pretty smart people to do it.

So out to the valley they fly me and some others and first day i'm absolutely
overwhelmed ... by how simple a job it was they were doing, and some pretty
poorly.

They were so invested in their resumes and being in the valley I don't think
they really understood that day to day the job was basic troubleshooting. At
one point one of them showing me how things worked asked "What do people do in
Minnesota for work?" I told him "The same thing you're doing..." He found that
hard to belive.

In about 6 months a handful of us from nobody company were churning through
work at twice the rate of the other folks and with higher customer
satisfaction scores (it was basically technical support)... and engineering
was asking that critical cases be transferred to us "for efficiency".

Ultimately the job was customer support some mild technical skills / ability
to learn / take good notes / ask good questions / the ability to formulate a
theory, test it, and so on.

I knew dozens of people who could do that job at a third the cost, but they'd
never hire them.

Years later I change careers and I sit through interviews where they hum and
haw about my lack of CS degree again ... for a job maintaining their wonky
CRUD app.

~~~
vecter
IIUC you were doing technical customer support. I'd be surprised if companies
have a CS degree requirement for that job.

~~~
myu701
> I'd be surprised if companies have a CS degree requirement for that job.

I wouldn't be as there are not a lot of 'technical support' degrees.

Someone once told me something to the effect of "the two people groups that
understand a program the most are the developers and application support",
which I interpreted to mean that just because you didn't write the program
doesn't mean you don't gain close familiarity with its problem domain, inputs,
outputs, behavior under adverse conditions etc.

~~~
beardbound
I worked tech support for years and completely agree with that statement. I
work in test automation these days and try to meet regularly with support to
figure out what usage patterns are like and what pain points people are
actually having in the field. My current company is too small to have a
dedicated support team so I just get all the emails for the engineering team,
but as we grow I plan on implementing something similar. Good support people
are worth their weight in gold and I feel like they get dismissed too often in
the field. It seems like that's starting to change though as I see better pay
at startups for support positions.

~~~
duxup
It's good to hear startups care, although my experience from company to
company is support is largely seen / treated as an expense. Lots of talk about
support, but the quality of leadership and resources tell another story in my
experience.

That is partly why I changed careers.

------
JimboOmega
College is only partially about getting educated directly - it's also about
proving you can adult on some level. Can you get to classes on time and manage
a schedule that's more complex than "be at this building for 6 hours a day"?

Of course that's a very poor proxy (some people live at home while getting 4
year degrees, etc), and often times college becomes more about signaling
you're part of a certain socioeconomic background (with all the subtle
discrimination that entails).

Either way, even if the things you learned are entirely irrelevant to the
actual job, a lot of employers look to it as a very rough signal for "had
things together", and have a set of beliefs about people who have them.

~~~
TrackerFF
Tbh, there's so much variance between colleges / unis - hell, even between
classes at those school - to use it as any meaningful predictor for such
things.

At my Uni (my major, that is), there were exactly zero classes with compulsory
attendance. What would happen was this: First 2-3 weeks were packed with
students, then it would thin out, and two thirds into the semester you'd
sometimes have only a dozen of students.

Come last lectures and class review, lectures would be packed.

That is even more relevant today, with video / streamed lectures.

~~~
tedajax
To echo this sentiment, I probably only attended ~45% of my classes throughout
all of college.

With some notable exceptions the classroom experience was pretty poor and all
of the information and resources were readily available on the internet. And
if you're not the best autodidact there were plenty of study groups were
students got together and figured things out just fine.

That said, I still think self-directing yourself through that kind of
environment takes a lot of agency and skill, agency and skill that companies
require for jobs where neither ageny or skill of that magnitude will be
required.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Thing is, a single of those "notable exceptions" might completely change your
life...

------
djinnandtonic
[http://archive.ph/cRZSn](http://archive.ph/cRZSn)

------
TimTheTinker
I think homeschooling is an excellent hack given the current constraints of
the system. Homeschooled students can move at their own pace (which can be
much quicker than the standard curriculum schedule) and take courses at
community colleges that double as high school and college credit (or just
college credit - but that’s still time and money saved). I’ve seen smart
homeschool students graduate high school years early with GE college credits
already earned.

Another interesting hack is to go to Europe for college/grad school. My wife
got a Master’s degree in 1 year in England, and could have spent only 2 more
for a Ph.D. (And college there is often only 2 years.)

Modern university-as-business institutions try to keep students enrolled for
as long/late as possible, so any approach that potentially counters that is
interesting.

~~~
fossuser
Is the socialization problem for homeschooling solved?

Every kid I knew in University that had been homeschooled had pretty serious
issues with social skills, something I suspect is just lack of exposure to
enough peer social interaction to learn how to get good at them. To be fair
this is a pretty small sample to draw conclusions from.

I suppose there could also be a pretty strong selection bias at play where the
only kids homeschooled in the current environment either have pre-existing
issues or messed up family dynamics.

~~~
TimTheTinker
> Every kid I knew in University that had been homeschooled had pretty serious
> issues with social skills

I’ve heard this narrative before but have yet to see it in real life. All the
homeschooled kids I’ve met were _years_ ahead of their peers in every respect,
especially in social development. They carry themselves like adults and
interact with adults as a peer at 16 or even younger.

I suspect those who homeschool because they think their family and community
has something much better to offer than the standard fare often do.

Healthy families beget healthy children, regardless of schooling option
chosen. I’d argue that unhealthy/unstable families are the ones whose kids
would benefit from being educated outside the home.

~~~
_lacroix
> They carry themselves like adults and interact with adults as a peer at 16
> or even younger.

This is exactly the problem. They can relate to adults but not to their
teenage peers. I'd bet they feel terribly uncomfortable at social events with
only kids their age present.

~~~
kody
You're absolutely right. I was homeschooled K-12 and grew up hearing praise
because I was good at "carrying myself like an adult" and socializing with
adults, but I had no idea how to make friends or socialize with PEERS.
Homeschool kids don't have the opportunity to have "cringe" moments that other
posters here seem to regret and feel are unimportant to kids (or should
avoided altogether) because they're often admonished to act like small adults.

~~~
_lacroix
Which, I'm guessing, just leads to cringe moments as adults? Sounds like
you've turned it around nicely though! Do you feel like you caught up
eventually?

~~~
kody
It can lead to cringe moments as an adult, but more crucially I think it leads
to fear of cringe moments, so you never really get the chance to fail, look
like a goober, and reorient and try again. It also makes it easier to
constantly judge other people for social slip ups or for not having a
perfectly predictable personality.

I think I've mostly caught up. I moved to NYC for college, which was sort of
my socialization boot camp. I learned how to start and maintain relationships
VERY quickly. If you don't learn to like (or at least tolerate) just about any
kind of human, the city can become very lonely and difficult.

A very stubborn part of my brain still judges Very Extroverted people and,
weirdly, athletes. I'm working on it.

Thanks for asking!

------
baked_ziti
I have seen nearly zero job postings for positions that could be filled by new
college grads.

There are numerous postings seeking interns. There are quite a few require 1-3
years experience. There are many seeking qualified professionals. I have seen
almost nothing that would permit a new college grad to gain a position.

This leaves me wondering several things. One, how did business manage to
offload the cost of absorbing the educated but inexperienced into the
profession back onto the people. You can listen to people in hiring or
executive positions bemoan the costs of training new software engineers, but
how did we get to a point where literally everyone other than business is
expected to bear every cost of doing business.

And two, how do new college graduates find work without either creatively
interpreting the meaning of "experience" (that is, lying), or just ignoring
the requirements portion of the job postings to which they reply.

~~~
esoterica
Every big software company hires thousands of new grads every year. The caveat
is that they recruit almost entirely from the pool of current college seniors,
not people who have already graduated. Most competent grads have a job lined
up well before they graduate so hunting for your first job AFTER you graduate
is a giant red flag and most companies are going to be very skeptical about
you. You aren’t seeing those postings on public job boards because they do
most of their recruiting on campus.

The company I work for classifies all candidates as “campus” or “experienced
hire”. There’s no category for non-experienced hires who are out of college,
the company won’t even acknowledge that these people even exist because
there’s no interest in recruiting from that pool.

~~~
baked_ziti
I actually don't believe this. The idea that the army of webdevs that find
employment for the first time were recruited out of school strikes me as
silly. In addition, your response directly contradicts the other responses, so
someone is definitely exactly wrong. This answer sounds less plausible than
the others.

------
supernova87a
The issue here is just like how when a country gets older and wealthier,
everything starts to cost more. It's not surprising.

We created a country where education started to be widely available and
financially supported for a large fraction of the people. What do you expect
would happen as more people get educated then? Companies wouldn't use a
commonly available criterion to weed out who they want? Or develop technology
that takes advantage of large numbers of educated workers?

In the evolution of our demography and economic history too, this is no
surprise. We're no longer in a post-war growth phase where any warm body was
suitable for filling the basic jobs necessary to fuel our growing economy.
Other countries are in that phase, we are not. We have low growth, and for
someone to stand out and get hired is now a higher bar. Our labor is
expensive, so complicated equipment and automation gets used. And there's an
educated workforce to operate it.

What company wouldn't use some available criterion to choose people of with
more productive/reliable attributes? College degree is available, it's a not
unreasonable proxy.

It's inevitable.

~~~
twoflower9
You're only addressing a few variables in a complex equation here. One of the
big problems is the economic model that demands constant growth. A part of the
problem with this model is that it requires constant population growth,
especially to support the retirement of the baby boomers. This population
growth comes at a cost to the proletariat. More competition for jobs means
downward pressure on wage growth. More consumers means upwards pressure on
cost of living. This creates a general movement of wealth in an upward
direction. Sure the whole economy would collapse if we tried to move off this
model, but perhaps this is what needs to happen. It's an unhealthy
unsustainable model anyway.

Another issue is that employees jump around companies these days making
companies less likely to invest in employees. People used to be lifetime
employees and thus companies were more willing to invest in them with training
and education.

~~~
rando_cal
> This population growth comes at a cost to the proletariat. More competition
> for jobs means downward pressure on wage growth. More consumers means
> upwards pressure on cost of living.

This is only true if the population growth accelerates (as in: the per-year
percentage goes up every year. So 3% this year, 4% the next, 5% the next, and
so on). If population growth is stable at a given percentage, then so too will
be the proportion of the old to the young.

To give an exaggerated illustration, consider a population that doubles every
day. Every day, half of the population is one day old, a quarter is two days
old, an eighth is three days old, and so on. While I admit I may misunderstand
the statistics, a quick look at the median age suggests that exactly the
opposite is happening: The median age has been steadily rising since the 60s.

While constant growth is indeed unsustainable, an overpopulation of youth does
not appear to be a part of that unsustainability.

(edit: formatting)

------
littlestymaar
Related: in my town in France, I once saw a job offer at a temporary
employment agency with the following requirements:

\- undergraduate degree

\- ability to carry heavy weights

Which struck me as antithetical, but it looks like it's now the norm.

~~~
chrisseaton
Why do you think a job can't legitimately require both?

For example an infantry officer needs to be able to carry heavy weights and
typically an undergraduate degree.

~~~
sp332
I think the idea is that if you don't want to carry heavy weights as your day
job, you get a college degree. If you don't mind, it's easy enough to find
work doing that without getting a degree.

~~~
chrisseaton
> I think the idea is that if you don't want to carry heavy weights as your
> day job, you get a college degree.

Right - and I disagree and think that doesn't match up to reality - plenty of
jobs legitimately and have always required both.

------
chx
My father was the lead of the chemical safety lab of one of the largest
pharmaceutical companies in Hungary. He told me and it stuck with me, how at
the start (meaning 1990) he was able to hire from trade schools but by the end
(early 2010s) he needed everyone to have a university degree because that's
how complex every instrument became.

------
viburnum
Workers need a broad labor movement to stand up to this nonsense.

~~~
duelingjello
Exactly. Like IG Metal instead of AFL-CIO. Organized labor pushback is the
_only_ way to get fair pay, benefits and conditions. Furthermore, workers need
to be members on the Board of Directors, as in most advanced economies.
Finally, if you want to have a really good company where people care about
their job, quality and the company, make it a co-op to where workers attain
ownership and profits too.

~~~
walshemj
Um sorry to play devils advocate ver.di isn't exactly doing a lot in Germany -
not that recruiting in tech is easy.

~~~
duelingjello
Okay, if you have first-hand knowledge.

The universal problem might be most tech workers stereotypically can't see the
"big picture" of the value/power of solidarity, especially when many assume
they're being well-compensated, when if fact they're being cheated along with
everyone else except the owners and the extremely rich.

Most people will normalize and accept their current situation, including
slavery, and keep doing the same thing while believing nothing can be done
about it (learned helplessness).

------
Animats
_" On a recent morning, Pioneer workers inspected parts that the automated
equipment had made on their own overnight."_

That's why.

~~~
frockington1
I really liked the graph at the end showing output rising as total numbers of
employees decreases. To me it was a good logical illustration of why you would
need more specialized/educated workers

------
username90
> Now, we need workers who can manage the machines.

Is managing a machine harder than driving a car? If not a few weeks similar to
how long it takes to learn to drive should be enough education.

~~~
jdnenej
It doesn't take a few weeks to learn to drive a car safely. In Australia it
takes 3 years and 100 hours of driving with someone else to get a license.

~~~
hnick
And, based on what I see every day, a license still doesn't always mean
"drive[s] a car safely".

FWIW in NSW it's 120 hours logged as a learner and nearly everyone I've asked
admits to lying a bit. It was only 50 hours when I did it, and most lied back
then - mostly due to just driving until they felt ready for a test without
really logging, then adding it later.

~~~
jdnenej
I think the license acquisition process is mostly sufficient. What is think is
missing is re testing after. There are 80 year Olds who can hardly see anymore
who are still driving. As well disqualifying people from driving for offences
like using a phone.

------
Merrill
60 years ago you could hire plenty of bright, talented high school graduates,
especially those with poor English/History grades but good Math/Shop grades.
Now the high school counselors push all of the bright, talented students and
then some to go on to college. So you have to wait a few years and hire then
after college.

It's a result of a much higher proportion of HS graduating classes going on to
college.

~~~
walshemj
Yes its the cohort like me who a generation ago would have gone the vocational
route now jump to University.

------
t0ddbonzalez
It's funny reading comments from Americans on the perceived lack of value of a
college degree. I've never heard this nonsense repeated in any other country
on the planet.

Then again, I don't think any other country on the planet shackles its young
to such huge levels of debt in the name of education. Is there a 'fox and the
grapes'-type situation going on, where people are hating on something they
can't have?

Having a Bachelor's degree or higher means that you're less likely to be
unemployed, you earn more money, you have better health outcomes, you're more
involved in your children's education, and perhaps most importantly, society
benefits from your education.

And the people who say "I don't have a degree and I make $150k per year at
Google"? You're a statistical anomaly. The average salary for a high school
graduate is $37k per year. ([https://smartschoolsusa.org/blog/the-average-
salary-by-educa...](https://smartschoolsusa.org/blog/the-average-salary-by-
education-level-2019-2020))

~~~
AngryData
It is probably because of the immense costs of many US colleges. I wouldn't
consider my college years wasted if I wasn't saddled with tens of thousands of
dollars of debt from it, and im not even one of the worst off.

~~~
t0ddbonzalez
Using the figures in the link I posted, a graduate with a Bachelor's degree
will make $61k per year on average. So yeah, you may need to get into debt to
get a degree, but you also earn more money with which to pay off the debt.

Being a naive European, I think education should be free just like universal
healthcare - both of these things benefit society immensely. The sad thing is
that those who have paid (or are currently paying) for the privilege of
education or healthcare seems to be determined to maintain the status quo.
Free stuff for other people is tantamount to communism in some people's eyes.

~~~
ryanmercer
>Using the figures in the link I posted, a graduate with a Bachelor's degree
will make $61k per year on average

Ha! Here in Indy a 4-year degree will get you 13-16$ an hour to start.

~~~
t0ddbonzalez
>>$61k per year _on average_

>Here in Indy a 4-year degree will get you 13-16$ an hour to start.

Doing what?

~~~
ryanmercer
Most of the stuff a random bachelors degree will get you, office work.

~~~
t0ddbonzalez
lol...if you say so. Five minutes on Indeed.com shows that you can get a $24k
per year office job with a GED, so maybe you need to set you sights a bit
higher.

Maybe the statistics are wrong and you're right, but I doubt it

~~~
ryanmercer
You can _apply_ to some with a GED. Applying does not mean you'll get hired or
that you'll be able to move past that entry level position.

------
troughway
What was once a blue-collar education is now undergraduate white-collar
education.

~~~
moksly
Maybe in factories, but we’re seeing a real need for craftsmen in Denmark
after three decades of university being the only “cool” education path. Mean
while white collar students with less attractive degrees struggle to find
work.

I’m not sure if it’s really blue-collar if you’re a plumber, nurse or an
electrician, because my English is lacking, but we need those a whole lot
more, even compared to people who studied the soft-IT educations.

~~~
alistairSH
"Blue collar" refers to the blue chambray or denim shirts often worn by
factory workers and other laborers in the early 20th century.

These days, it's mostly "laborer" vs "office dweller". But, there are a lot of
jobs in the middle.

A plumber who works for somebody else would be considered blue collar. A
licensed plumber who works for themselves and can bill at high rates is in
that awkward middle - they still have to do some labor, but can be highly
compensated (by middle-class standards). Same for electrician.

Nurses are sometimes called "pink collar" \- those jobs that are traditionally
held by women. Teachers, clerical, hair dressers, too. But, like electricians,
they are highly trained and, in the right position, highly compensated.

~~~
mywittyname
> and, in the right position, highly compensated.

Nursing is the only field on there that could be considered well compensated.
There's this mystique around nursing that it's some crazy well-paying
position, but it's really not. When you consider the education requirements
and the work involved, it's alright. $35/hr is pretty good, except you have to
maintain a license, clean up peoples' shit, be nice to assholes, and get
berated by doctors. Or you can take a huge pay cut to go work in a doctors
office. (source: married a nurse that couldn't make it 10 years before
changing careers)

Teachers make a bit more than the median wage, but most jobs require a masters
degree to progress beyond a certain point. Hair dressers require licensing and
a surprising amount of education (up to 1,500 hours) to work in mostly flat-
rate jobs, sometimes without benefits. And clerical work is basically the
lowest tier work in an office.

Not listed: dental hygienists. Also a traditionally female job which has crazy
education requirements for mediocre pay.

~~~
rcurry
Depending on your entrepreneurial skills, being a hairdresser can be a lot
more profitable than you’d think. My wife’s hair dresser does exemplary work
and has a terrific reputation in our area. She earns about $165 for an hour
and a half worth of work, works ten hours a day, and is booked solid every day
of the week three months out. This is in Texas, where the cost of living is
not that high and I would guess she easily grossed around $200k+ last year
alone. Yeah, if you just want to clock in and out at Great Clips and not be
the best you can be, then it’s not a high paying profession, but for people
that invest in their skills and learn how to market and build a solid client
base, it’s actually crazy how much money some of them can make. I was very
surprised by it.

~~~
mywittyname
Sounds like this lady is the equivalent of a developer with a popular App that
pulls down millions. If $50k puts a person in the 90th percentile, then $200k
is maybe the 99.99th percentile?

[https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes395012.htm](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes395012.htm)

    
    
        Percentile          10%  25%  50%(Median)  75%  90%
        Hourly Wage  $8.65  $9.68  $11.89  $16.79  $24.09
        Annual Wage (2)  $17,980  $20,130  $24,730  $34,910  $50,110

------
ryanmercer
Just about _everything_ is require a 4-year degree or 5-10 years of experience
for entry level work anymore. As someone without a degree, it sucks.

I saw an administrative assistant at a medical practice wanting 10-15 years of
experience AND a 4 year degree and it was like 15$ an hour, similarly I've
seen jobs requesting a phd AND experience with a starting hourly pay of 15-16$
an hour.

The world has gone insane.

~~~
frockington1
When you have a dime a dozen ______ Studies majors it makes it pretty easy to
find. And having a _____ Studies degree is a good indicator of someone who is
willing to sit and do administrative level work for at least 4 years without
getting bores

------
DoreenMichele
Off the top of my head, when Lincoln was president, most women were homemakers
and had a second to fourth grade education. His wife had a twelfth grade
education and was considered "difficult" and her own son stuck her in an
asylum.

An eighth grade education used to be very normal. In the Deep South, Blacks
used to be essentially unable to attend high school. A lot of Black families
moved to northern cities -- or sent children to stay with relatives -- so they
could attend high school.

The US military invented the GED to give credit to literate members because it
used to be very common for people to grow up on a farm and not finish high
school. Now even the military treats GED holders like second-class citizens.

If the world doesn't have some kind of serious crash, demographically or in
other ways, I imagine it will become increasingly common for people to have
advanced degrees and "ordinary" jobs. With 7 billion people on the planet,
more information is how you stretch limited physical resources and also how
you constructively occupy the masses.

~~~
nradov
There are a surprisingly high number of military enlisted personnel with
Master's degrees.

~~~
DoreenMichele
My dad was career army. He was born in the 1920s and fought in WW2. He was a
high school drop out who taught ROTC at a college as one of his duty
assignments.

It actually got him out of fighting in the front lines of the Korean conflict.
He was the only guy in the battalion with all the necessary military schools.
His bags were packed. He was supposed to ship out to Korea the next day when
he got the call.

My ex was also career army. He was a high school graduate taking college
classes while enlisted to try to stay competitive.

------
swiley
We should just give up and do the UBS thing.

The people who actually want to learn would congregate around something that
could be used as a decent measure for that and the party people could party
and everyone would be happy. We’re near this (if not, we’ve reached it.) if
you look at our GDP and what most people are doing for work it makes sense.

------
HocusLocus
I am a "high school graduate" (GED) on paper. But owing to a life of
experience and a early start in reading and general awareness of surroundings,
I'd gladly go toe to toe with anyone with a paper college diploma for
essential skills. And in any reasonable work situation, such as one where I
could have several weeks or a month of lead time to get up to speed on the
specific requirements of the job... I could score even on their own turf.

The current trend in HR seems to be using the Internet to remove human
judgement and "the interview" from the front line of the hiring process. In
its place, a machine-like contact involving websites, a sterile distillation
process that relegates people like me to the "no callback, not even
interested" queue.

It's Evolution in Action. For they not I.

~~~
bumby
What positions are you envisioning in this statement? I'm curious mostly about
your statement that "several weeks or a month of lead time" is sufficient for
requisite skills (unless, of course, you are implying it's a position that's
substantially related to your existing skill set).

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/cRZSn](http://archive.is/cRZSn)

------
aaron695
The premise of the article is simple, due to the evolution of factories, to
get factory work you now require a degree unlike the past where the work was
more repetitive and unthinking. They are not making the case there are to many
college degrees etc.

It also raises the interesting case women (who get more degrees but have less
physic strength) now have factory work opened to them.

The implication I read is the massive amounts of men who can't get degrees are
in trouble and so are their families, since people marry at similar levels
their wives will not have high paid jobs if any at all. New double income
families now will become even richer, single income families poorer.

------
m0zg
Take this from a hiring manager: college degree alone is not worth the paper
it's written on. What counts is what you've actually learned. Easily 8 out of
10 people who nominally have "CS degrees" can't implement fizzbuzz on a sheet
of paper. It's nuts. I don't get how they even graduated.

------
notlukesky
It’s also a legal way of screening out certain ethnicities.

Many Police and Fire Departments famously used testing as a legal screening
method -against black applicants at the times- for what is a purely physical
blue collar job.

------
arduinomancer
Could some of this be due to increased amount of automation meaning the
factory floor jobs are actually more technical because you're
fixing/troubleshooting robots, rather than doing manual labour?

------
myu701
The confluence of lots of degree-holders looking for work and the decline in
companies investing in internal training programs has (IMO) rendered the 'firm
handshake and a job for 40 years working your way up the ladder' boomer story
just about a fantasy on par with a Disney film at this point.

Cynical view / hyperbolic not researched opinion ahead -> Many companies see
The Perfect Employee as someone who is overqualified and will burn both ends
of the candle, drink the company kool-aid wholesale, do all of their training
on their own time and never ask for raises or move to another company on their
own, all while doing so for peanuts.

Each particular company adjusts that spectrum back towards reality just enough
to hire people to meet their own staffing needs. That's why the particularly
grueling companies like restaurants or entertainment venues have such trouble
hiring people when the economy is doing well.

~~~
alchemism
Its an old American tradition, the Perfect Employee:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude_in_the_Am...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude_in_the_Americas)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartleby,_the_Scrivener](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartleby,_the_Scrivener)

------
mjfl
when will the reverse happen? College seems to have very little value added
these days, so you would expect people with blue-collar educations to be able
to take over white collar jobs.

------
emsign
I came to the conclusion that the USA has become a society which goal it is to
keep every single citizen below a certain annual salary in debt until their
death.

~~~
Gibbon1
The over class doesn't want their mediocre children to have to compete with
smart upper middle class people.

Thus most jobs and situations are engineered so you don't have enough
disposable income to get a head. And if you do manage the tax system punishes
you for it.

------
Cougher
Would I be the first here to say that I like that idea that there even IS such
a thing as an American factory floor in 2019?

------
nimbius
Reading the first few lines of the paywall makes it seem like the WSJ is
trying to have its cake and eat it too.

>New manufacturing jobs that require more advanced skills are driving up the
education level of factory workers who in past generations could get by
without higher education, an analysis of federal data by The Wall Street
Journal found.

Considering the 1.5 trillion dollar student loan crisis, it seems natural to
tap unemployed grads for manufacturing work, however this isnt happening
anytime soon. You dont take 50 years of denigrating trade jobs like ironwork,
machining, and manufacturing and expect to hire a college kid whos been told
tradework is the devils black hand.

It also implies college begets manufacturing education when in most cases it
does not. Statistical Process Control, C(pk) ratios, and center process math
can be learned on the job just as easily as it can be learned in college.
Trade schools teach this stuff, but for fifty years they too have received a
scornful rebuke from boomers pushing collegiate success to every kid, come
hell or high water. It means someone who might have been a damn good welder
wound up with a philosophy degree and enough debt to sink a city council.

And what of apprenticeships? Well if you have a good union (International
Association of Machinists is amazing) you'll get on the job paid training and
a rewarding career. On the other, more common hand, unscrupulous profiteers
running auto body shops and HVAC will often tell you to "wait for a slot to
open" for your apprenticeship. Until then you're mixing paint, buffing wheels,
and basically never intended to advance beyond your hopes and dreams.

This might be the tradesman in me, but perhaps its wishful thinking...perhaps
this is just a generation of older managers and directors hoping against hope
that they can create meaning and worthiness for the college education again if
they just demand it in every single hire. That somehow the blunder of turning
your higher education system into a profit center will smooth out if you just
make sure no one questions the validity of an underwater crochet degree. Or
perhaps this is an increasingly terrified old-guard. Boomers who see what
theyve done, and are willing to sweep an entire class of workers out the door
just to make sure their college graduate kids have something, anything left,
before they shuffle off.

------
davinic
I think that any minimum wage law should take into account the requirement of
a college degree. If minimum wage were $15 nationally, then require at least a
$20/hr or $25/hr minimum if the job posting requires a bachelor's degree --
not if the person has the degree, only if the employer requires it.

~~~
randyrand
Job postings would stop requiring a bachelors degree, but the market wouldn't
change. They'd still go with one of the 10 people that interviewed who
happened to have a degree.

------
rb808
Ironically the managers in the factory are probably baby boomers who started
working their way up from the factory floor straight after high school. Which
is the way it should be today.

------
myu701
Paywall bypass -> [http://archive.ph/cRZSn](http://archive.ph/cRZSn)

