EDUCATION AND JOB REALITIES

2011

Education must be coupled with job realities:

The world we live in today has one leading characteristic that will increase exponentially into the future…and that is change! Evolving technology and globalized economic principles are leading this tidal wave of continuous change. Our future generations will be competing for jobs with workers from all over the globe.

Increasing global competition will mean that labor will be increasingly sought at lower costs. Today and for the foreseeable future the least educated will likely have an increasingly difficult time finding work. The U.S. government can and should take every possible action to create an environment that will help create new jobs and to slow down the rate of job losses, but will never stop the inevitable result that most work that can be automated or outsourced for lower costs will. The U.S. is simply caught in an economic reality in which we represent less than 5% of the world’s population and have been producing and consuming almost 25% of the world’s goods and services for the past several decades. On the consumer side of that equation our political leaders have done everything possible over the years to stretch out that consumption pattern by allowing and even encouraging our citizens to buy more and more goods and services than they could possibly afford long term. This was accomplished by encouraging debt via credit cards, consumer borrowing, mortgages for homes, auto financing, etc., until the majority of consumers could no longer add the additional personal debt necessary for continuously increased consumption. Our government has done the same thing by borrowing funds to allow spending intended to further stimulate our economy. The net result is that our government and U.S. consumers will never be able to maintain the level of borrowing led consumption or the overall living standards that have existed since the end of WWII. In order for the producers of goods and services to compete in the global environment, costs have to be reduced to allow sales to our own less-wealthy consumers and the 95% of the rest of the world’s population at competitive prices. Since labor is typically one of the most expensive cost components…the least skilled US jobs will be fewer and will pay less for the foreseeable future.

Historically low-skill, labor intensive manufacturing industries were the first to send jobs off-shore. Jobs that could be conducted via phone or computer followed. Technology skilled jobs are following. Indeed entire industries are now leaving the U.S. in seeking lower labor costs and more favorable federal income taxes offered in other countries.

The main implication for all of this is that our children who fail to obtain a really solid education will be doomed to the reality that the jobs that similar previous generations ended up with will no longer exist. It seems clear that a high school diploma alone will be grossly insufficient to assure meaningful employment. What will happen to those who end with this or an even lower category of education? Unable to find jobs…how will they provide for themselves and their families?

We must immediately massively change to educational programs that are based on realistic future job requirements and opportunities. As parents, we fail our children unless we force them to understand the critical need to obtain the best education possible and to do so in conjunction with an understanding that the end point objective is to be able to obtain and maintain gainful employment through a lifetime of change. Each student should have the opportunity to have their own skills and interests evaluated as they relate to future job opportunities (these are the things you are good at and interested in and these are the types of jobs that will utilize these skills).

Clearly everyone should not go to college. College admittance should be limited to our very best and brightest as they are in many other countries. The rest of our young, based on skills, interests, and job opportunities, will need to attend technical or trade schools, or even serve apprenticeships in order to develop marketable skills.

As for college curriculums; I think that the best and brightest students should start with an undergraduate education in liberal arts. This would allow these students to learn effective communication skills, history, art, critical thinking, philosophy, technology, foreign languages (likely Chinese), etc. This would serve two purposes; first, it would develop a cadre of workers who have a broad basis to learn and adapt in a new world characterized by constant change. Second, it will develop a great starting point for more effective advanced education in other specialized fields. While I am on the topic of college education; if we are going to maintain such restrictive legal immigration policies, why don’t we severely limit access to our best educational institutions for foreign students? Many obtain a great education and then must return home.

It also seems to me that we have our schools so focused on teaching to pass mandated tests that we have completely lost sight of the main objective which is effective adult life preparation. Teaching to tests certainly proves the ability to memorize and regurgitate information, but without the context of future work implications…it means very little. Education for our future generations will never stop as the world’s rate of change only accelerates. A proven ability to learn will be a highly valued skill.

As usual, these are my opinions. What do you think?

Mike Tower

Hendersonville, NC

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