Category Archives: work and earnings

Obama to support community colleges as a path to middle-class jobs

Posted on February 15, 2012 | 1 Comment

Now here’s a sign of progress. As the Center on American Progress reported:

President Barack Obama today [Feb 13] announced a new initiative to boost our nation’s community colleges and help workers attain the skills they need to earn middle-class jobs. President Obama’s Community College to Career Fund would invest $8 billion over the next three years to boost partnerships between community colleges and regional employers. This initiative, jointly administered by the Departments of Education and Labor, aims to train 2 million workers for careers in high-growth industries such as health care and advanced manufacturing.

Loyal readers, you know how I feel about community colleges and a quick path to advanced manufacturing. Win-win. And if employers get on board and help schools tailor their training to fit the local demands, it’s even better. (And “local demands” is important in this equation as young people are often looking for work near home, and employers are looking for local talent).

These advanced manufacturing jobs are high-paying with solid career ladders. I’ve been spending some time out at Austin Polytech, here in Chicago, a high school that is working very hard to train the next generation of manufacturing employees. The school, which serves a largely African American student body, has designed a career track for students that leads directly to advanced manufacturing jobs. The people behind the program are leaders in the city’s manufacturing community, and kids leave high school with a nationally recognized manufacturing credential–if all goes well. They also leave with pre-calculus classes and other advanced math because today’s factory worker isn’t stuffing sausages anymore. He or she is running machines that need computer programming to shave off a piece of metal to an nth degree.

And these jobs pay well. Starting salary for a young person out of high school is in the high $30s (without a college degree mind you), and the career path can take one to earnings of $80,000. Not bad for a day’s work.

The thing I like about the Polytech program is that it works with employers directly to place students in summer jobs first and later full-time jobs. And it urges employers to assign the young person a mentor to make sure both the employer and the employee are having a good experience. And, they also ask that the employers pay for continued training–which many employers willingly do. As one human resources director said of manufacturing jobs today, employees in their company are never done learning; constant training is a part of the job.

I tagged along with a student who was doing a mock interview with one of the employer partners, Arrow Gear, in Downers Grove. In this case, the young woman said upfront that she was going to college for engineering. For her, that’s probably a great decision. She loves math and she’s a sharp kid. But as I sat there, with 30 years of hindsight, I couldn’t help think, are you kidding me? Why not work a couple of years at $40,000 and then go to college? You’d have the money to pay for it instead of taking out loans, and you’d also have something truly valuable to bring an engineering degree: real experience in building things.

I know, I know, college is a great idea too. It truly is. But maybe because I came from a family that saw no shame in a hard day’s work, I don’t see a job in manufacturing as a “second place” prize. I see it as an interesting job that pays well and has a lot of learning potential.

Hopefully, the new funding for community colleges that Obama is promoting will help sharpen the classes that colleges offer, and make them more relevant and viable. If actual employers get involved and help shape the curriculum, that will certainly help. Right now, too many students get lost in a meandering stream of classes with a vague idea of “getting a degree.” Perhaps with a more direct, and clear, path from school to work, whether it be in manufacturing or health care (another booming field), more kids will see the wisdom of spending tuition money on something that will get them a foothold on a middle-class life. And perhaps as more kids meet with success, the second-class status that these routes now have will vanish.

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Do young people have too much time to think about only themselves?

Posted on January 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

I spent the weekend in a skilled nursing center with my 95-year-old father, and I met a young person, James, who at age 26 has done more inspiring work than many of us will do in a lifetime. His story makes me wonder about a couple of things, the first of which is whether this slower path to adulthood might just be giving kids a little too much time to focus on themselves–and how we might transform this slower path into something more. Read the full post over at Psychology Today.

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Posted in delayed adulthood, millennials, politics, work and earnings

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Shocking (and growing) wealth gap between young and old

Posted on November 7, 2011 | 1 Comment

The fallout of this recession on young people just keeps coming. Jump over to Transitions2Adulthood, where I posted a blog on the stark and growing wealth gap between young adults and older Americans. It should give you pause.

What’s so disturbing is how much the gap in net worth has widened over the years. While the median net worth of a household over age 65 grew 42% since 1984, for households under age 35, net worth shrank fully 68%.  Stunning. As I wrote months ago, we must rethink our policies and support young people more as they maneuver these rocky waters.

Some of you out there who have lived through recessions before might pshaw at the prospect that young adults need support. After all, we survived past recessions without any help. Why do they need support?  But the numbers are clear. Trends underway long before the recession– rising college costs, declining wages, eroding benefits, growing inequality– have left us all on shakier ground. A recession as deep and prolonged as this is only piling on risk and hardship, most profoundly for those just starting out in the workforce.

In other words, this one is different because we’re different. Our economy is a much higher-stakes game, and young people relative to retirees have been losing ground. The question is, are the odds of catching up later, in one’s 30s and 40s, shrinking too? The college payoff is declining as wages flatten and college costs rise. Housing values are in the toilet. The things that we count on, in other words, to raise net worth are eroding. Will this gap persist as a result? Only time will tell. Can we as a country afford to wait and see how it turns out? I don’t think so.

 

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Engineering vs Liberal Arts: Updated

Posted on October 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

One of the persistently most popular posts on this site is “Engineering versus Liberal Arts.” It seems time then to update it with new information. And a new report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) offers just that.

In my prior post, I wrote that if a young person were hoping to make a decent living, science and engineering were good bets. While wages had stalled in other more generalist fields, like liberal arts, wages were holding their own, and even increasing, in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Alas, this demise of the generalist made me a little sad. But what can you do?

Well, that still holds. People in white lab coats who play with material things—the STEM worker broadly speaking—are in a perfect position. They actually have employers who come begging. STEM workers include the usual suspects, like biologists and pharmacists, but they also included skilled manufacturing, architects, and many health care positions. Employers clamor for these professional problem-solvers and often can’t find enough workers, even in this recession. And their jobs prospects are projected to only grow.

These jobs require education, but not as much as many people assume. Three in ten STEM workers have only an associate’s degree or some kind of technical certificate. And they make good money.

“If you’re thinking solely about money,” says Carnevale, an economist and author, with Nicole Smith and Michelle Melton, of the report, “it might be smart to get a STEM associates degree, rather than, say, a BA in education. A STEM degree or certificate is also “a line-jumper,” says Carnevale. “You can pass people on the career highway with a STEM degree.”

Indeed, in many cases, even certificate holders with STEM occupations make more than people with BA. “A certificate in engineering earns more than an associate’s degree in business or a BA in education,” he says.

Even if you’re not working in a STEM field directly but have training in STEM—think a biology major in sales— “you’ll make more than people in that occupation.”  Farming, fishing, teaching, you name it, if you have a STEM degree, you’ll make more than people who don’t have STEM, the report finds.

What STEM brings to the table, Carnevale says, are the skills that employers want: problem-solvers and critical thinkers. If you think about it, engineers are just professional problem-solvers.

While starting salaries are higher in STEM fields, an interesting thing happens along the way, which diverts many STEM grads into other occupations. With a general education such as liberal arts, he says, one gets the education and then, on the job, learns what is needed to advance.

“That’s where you confront and work with technology,” he says. “School leverages your access to jobs, and learning on the job powers your income.” Eventually, you begin to earn more.

With STEM careers, that path is different. Instead of a generalist education, STEM graduates have very specific preparation. That preparation is what leverages access to careers, and the money is pretty good right away.

These slightly different career highways mean that engineers’ earnings, for example, begin to slow in their mid-30s while liberal arts majors begin to catch up—except if STEM workers move on to other higher-paying occupations like management or sales and marketing, which they tend to do in droves.

This line-jumping gets to one reason we have a shortage of STEM workers, Carenevale says. “If you look at the number of people with high math scores in U.S. education and the number who get STEM degrees, it looks like we’re producing enough STEM talent to fill the jobs.” However, something happens between high school and the workforce that sheds STEM workers. Of 100 students who get a BA, only 19 will graduate with a STEM major. Of those, only 10 will go on to work in a STEM field. The bleeding continues. Ten years later, only eight of those ten are still in STEM occupations.

Although we’re producing a good number of STEM graduates, they don’t end up in STEM occupations, and even when they do, they have opportunities that allow them to move from STEM to better-paying jobs. For some, the STEMS jobs don’t satisfy their interests. For others, there is more money to be made elsewhere.

This is neither good not bad. As Carnevale says, choices are good. Employers are bidding for these workers, and therefore they must pay higher wages to get them and make the jobs more attractive. “It’s not an unhappy problem,” he says. Also, if we were to persuade everyone with high math skills to stay in STEM, the rest of the economy would starve for these skills. “We won’t have enough teachers who can teach math, or enough talented people with good analytical skills.”

So the bottom line? In this day and age of increasingly high college costs, it might just serve young people well to focus on a career in math, science, engineering, or technology of some sort. Get a biology degree. You can career-flip later and still earn more than your colleague with a marketing degree. Better yet, get a two-year STEM degree or a specific  certificate, like an engineering certificate, and leverage it on down the road for a different job, with higher pay.

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Average is over

Posted on October 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

It’s Friday, so it must be Psychology Today time. A reporter called earlier in the week asking, What’s up with men today? Why are they so slow to get started on this path to adulthood? Is it internet porn? Bad parenting? She happened to be lying awake at night flummoxed as to why her son can’t seem to get it in gear at age 25. So today’s post over at Psych Today tries to answer that question (spoiler alert: it’s not internet porn). What is it like to get started in life today in an age of anxiety, when globalism and technology have fundamentally altered how we live and work, and yet our education remains stuck in an 18th century model of time clocks, standardized tests, and hierarchies.

It’s  inspired by a talk by Thomas Friedman I attended this week (at 7:15 in the morning no less) and an interview I did with Cathy Davidson on her new book, “Now You See It.”

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Young adults remain optimistic, but should they?

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’m being lazy today and directing you to my post at Psychology Today.
After interviewing nearly 100 young actuals ages 22-23, I’m still struck by how optimistic they are, despite the bleak outlook for jobs, the numbers living at home, and the general feeling of being stalled in life. A recent Atlantic article adds to this sense, with hundreds writing in, bewailing their current position. And yet… amid all this, many, if not most, think that in the end, they’ll do fine. While their generation overall may suffer, they’ll somehow be the exception. Is this a case of American individualism, always looking inward instead of outward for blame and solutions? Read on at Psychology Today…

 

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Young adults in poverty–short-changing the future

Posted on September 7, 2011 | 6 Comments

As we continue to struggle to create jobs and prosperity for Americans, I’m increasingly worried about the youngest generation. While they’re a resilient bunch, the long malaise of unemployment — and more likely underemployment–takes its toll. As recent college graduates join the queue in front of the job fairs and send their resumes out by the dozens into the seeming oblivion of human resource departments, their time out of the workforce tick-tocks against them. They may start out with a bit of optimism (remember the “funemployment” tweets of 20-somethings a few years ago), but that optimism quickly curdles. Disappointment becomes the new normal. They settle. They take jobs as bartenders and temps–anything to get them out of the house and doing something.

But as college grads take the jobs that don’t require a degree, they replace those who would normally work those jobs, and the ripple effect continues right down the line. This pressure starts above college grads, of course. It is older workers who are hanging on for dear life to jobs and the laid-off older workers desperate for any job — often jobs that newly minted graduates would take.

At the bottom of the pack is a grim reality: poverty or near poverty. Today’s poverty threshold for a single person in 2009 was $11,161. In 2009, 20.7% of young adults age 18-24 were in poverty. Nearly 15% of those age 25 to 34 were in poverty that year. The official poverty rate for all ages (0-85+) was 14.3% in 2009.

Here’s two charts that show poverty and near poverty (earning income at 150% of the poverty level) by age and gender in 2009.

Share of young adults living in or near poverty, 2009

Share of young adults in poverty, by gender, 2009

[ Source: U.S.Census Bureau, Annual Social Economic Supplement, "POV 34: Single Year of Age Poverty Status," 2009]

What these charts show is that the 20s are a vulnerable time. The poverty rates and near-poverty rates are higher than national averages throughout much of the 20s and early 30s, but particularly in the early years. (These data do not include kids in college dorms or military barracks.) The “all ages” bar on the far left is the national average for those ages 0-85+. You can compare the rates for young adults against that bar to see how they fare against the average U.S. poverty and near-poverty rates.

Age 25 seems to be an age when things start to get a little better. Poverty rates drop rather suddenly between age 24 and 25 and then stay lower throughout the rest of the 20s. That suggests that wages are beginning to grow with time on the job. Perhaps there’s been an advancement on the job, but more likely is that young people have changed jobs one or two times, with a pay bump each time.

However, with the recession holding everyone back, those job changes and pay bumps are not occurring, which likely means that the poverty rates will remain higher further into the 20s going forward. That’s worrisome. Living on $11,000 or $13,000 a year is no picnic. When apartments in major cities cost $700-800 for a one-bedroom (and higher in places like NYC), and with college loans adding a couple hundred dollars to that bottom line each month, not to mention food and utilities, it quickly becomes impossible to make ends meet. Living hand to mouth is a losing battle. Pretty soon, the beater of a  car breaks down, a tire goes flat, or an unexpected doctor’s bill adds to the pile. For those whose parents cannot help out, they can quickly sink.

The charts above also show how much more precarious life is for young women. The poverty rates for women are consistently and significantly higher than rates for men–despite women’s higher rates of college attainment. At age 25, fully one-fourth of women are in poverty. One-fourth! Why the higher rates? It’s complicated, but for starters, women are paid less in the workforce (averaging about 20 cents less on the dollar than men). They also must sometimes support children on their own. Early families are fragile families. They more often than not break up, leaving mom to care for the child.  Add to this trouble landing a job, any job, in today’s climate, and the picture is grim for many.

It all starts with a job. We must do better at creating family-sustaining jobs for all Americans. But for our future, we must turn our attention to the most vulnerable young adults and make sure they don’t get lost in the shuffle.

Poverty has a long reach. Its effects are felt in many ways, and they have a tendency to linger for years. The stress of living hand to mouth eats away at health and mental health. The conditions of poverty for children follow them into the classroom, make it difficult to focus and to pay attention. Their learning begins to lag behind their classmates. Living in low-income neighborhoods comes with its own set of dangers and strains, ranging from a lack of good grocery stores to serious violence and victimization. The long-term costs of NOT attending to poverty on a nation are paid in higher health care bills, greater imprisonment, less worker productivity, and a host of other social effects.

In this country, alleviating poverty begins with jobs. We must take that call seriously. We must demand compromise in this poisoned political environment because without us all at the table, nothing will get done and we will languish in the muck of “me-first” short-sighted politics when we need long-range solutions and above all, vision, if we are to ensure our future via the security of this current generation and the one right behind it.

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Can London Happen Here?

Posted on August 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

The riots in London have made people wonder whether something like that could happen here. After all, the recession is hitting young adults hard, making life look pretty hopeless  for many at this point. The unemployment rate of 16-19 year olds was 25% in July 2011. Among 20-24 year olds, it was 14.6%. That translates into only 45% of people ages 16 to 24 with a job of any kind – lower than at any point since World War II.

While college grads are struggling to get a foot in the door more than any time in recent memory, they aren’t the worst off. It is their peers with just a high school degree or a smattering of community college credits who are hurting bad. Their prospects in the job market have been withering for years, but the recession put the final nail in the coffin for far too many.

Earlier this summer in Chicago, we had a spate of flash mobs, where packs of teens and 20-somethings would roam the city looking for a victim. They’d swarm him (it was only men) and rob him, usually of his smart phone or ipad and some cash. They’d supposedly assemble via text messages, although that’s been debated. While not the burning, looting mobs of young people we saw in London, I suspect the spark that lit both groups was the same: frustration.

Locked out of the workforce, which increasingly requires training after high school, and often marked as “unemployable” because of their history or the color of their skin—a shocking 49% of young black men ages 16 to 19 are unemployed—- this group of high school dropouts (or even those with just a high school degree) is a tinder box. They’re idle, hanging out, bored, and increasingly see their future as going no where.  Nearly half of all 16-19 year old dropouts were neither in school nor working –and that was back in 2007. Overall, some put the number of disconnected youth at about 5 million in the mid-2000s. It is no doubt only higher today.  And the longer this recession lasts, the bigger this group of disconnected youth will grow as the disillusionment inches up the education ladder.  (While I have no idea if the flash mobs in Chicago were high school dropouts, my bet is that many were unemployed.)

Even if they do manage to land a job, their wages are low. After adjusting for inflation, the earnings of young men with no high school diploma as well as the earnings of those with just a high school degree dropped 23% between 1976 and 2006.

Lest you think this is a small problem, consider this. Our high school graduation rate is only about 75%. That’s upwards of 6 million people aged 16-24 who lack a high school degree. That number includes those who go on to get a GED. It’s about 3.5 million if you subtract those with a GED.

Some have little sympathy for those who drop out of high school, especially in this era when more jobs demand higher skills.  But we must care. This is our future. Can we really be so punitive toward a 17 year old? Remember how stupid you were when you were 17, and yet thought you knew it all? In this cold-hearted era of cuts to social programs while refusing to raise taxes on the wealthy, the likelihood of supports to get these kids back on track and into productive society is pretty slim. That’s the epitome of short-sightedness. We’ll pay in the long run, in sacrificed potential and more than likely, the human costs of imprisoning a generation. We can “crack down” on youth as they rage against the machine, as they have been doing in London, but it’s like trying to kill a dandelion by plucking it off at the top. The roots go much deeper.

Solutions abound, including ensuring kids don’t get lost early on in their school careers, focusing more on employable skills and connecting that learning directly to jobs, altering how we fund public schools so the disparities by neighborhood and by city/suburb aren’t so stark, making the path from school to work clearer for everyone, offering more “second chances,” gang interventions, and, the big one: creating more jobs at livable wages. Yet we don’t seem to have the will, or even the willingness to care, to solve this problem. We’re so preoccupied with budget ceilings and grand-standing about big government while screaming “no new taxes,” that we’re essentially sealing our fates. We need to create jobs and we need to re-engage a lost generation with a way to earn a living and make it in America. The American Dream has never been about “just hanging on.” But that’s what we’re coming to, very, very quickly.

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New report on whether college pays, and how much (ladies, we’re getting the shaft)

Posted on August 8, 2011 | 1 Comment

A new report documents  the payoff to college, and it finds the usual story–college pays– with a couple of interesting caveats.

But before getting down to the nitty-gritty….  some things never change. After all these years, you’d think women would have made more progress in the workforce, but alas, it is still the case that women must have a PhD to earn as much as a man with a bachelor’s degree. Yes, you read that right: a Phd = a BA.

A new report by the Heldrich Center on Education and the Workforce  details the lifetime earnings of men and women with different levels of education and finds that women who work full-time, full-year still earn 25% less than men with the same level of education. I was a wee tike in the 1970s with a poster on my bedroom door that read “Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”  And yet, here we are, nearly 40 years later, and it still applies. (I’ll save my rant for the end.)

The larger story of the report, however, is that those with more education earn more. Those with an AA earn more than those with just a high school degree, and those with an MA earn more than those with a BA.

During one’s working life (ages 18-65), a person without a high school degree who works full-time, full-year earns (at the median) just shy of $1 million. Median earnings for a person with a high school degree are $1.3 million, and on up the ladder until you get to those with Phd and professional degrees (like doctors and lawyers) who earn three times that of a only high school graduate. Those with a PhD earn $3.2 million and those with a professional degree earn $3.6 million.

In general, the magic number at the lower levels of education is $200,000. Those who didn’t graduate from high school earn $200,000 less than those with a high school degree, who in turn earns $200,000 less than those with an  associate’s degree, and so on. The gap doubles to $400,000 at a BA. A person with a bachelor’s degree earns $2.2 million over a lifetime, while someone with an associate’s degree earns $1.7 million. That $400,000-$500,000 gap in lifetime earnings is evident through a professional degree.

It’s handy that the authors factored earnings over a lifetime because about the only good thing about aging is that you earn more. So looking at earnings at a point in time doesn’t always show the long-term value of education. For example, among those in their mid 20s, the payoff to college appears to be a lot less. But by age 44, the gains are clear. Earnings rise for those with just a high school degree, for example, by 25% between age 25-29 and 40-44. For those  some college or an AA median earnings grow by 35% between early and mid-career.  For those with a BA, earnings rise 50%. For those with a master’s degre, they rise 57%. Professional (lawyers and doctors and the like) really make out. Their earnings double.

The question is, Is it worth it to incur the costs of two more years of college to get a 7% pay increase over 20 years of working? The answer: it depends. The devil is in the details.

From this simple parsing of the data, it’s clear that education pays. But surprisingly not always. The report’s authors note that since we’re now trained to specialize in an occupation, like phlebotomy, rather than working our way up from a mailroom to a CEO in an industry, like manufacturing, the type of occupation has a bigger effect on wage differentials by education than in the past. In some cases, those with an AA earn more than those with a BA, or the gap between the two is very narrow.

Health support services, for example, have the least gap in earnings by education. Therefore, it doesn’t “pay” much to get a BA in that field when an AA pays just about as much over a lifetime.  A person in this field with only a high school degree earns $1 million over a lifetime, while a person with a master’s degree earns about $1.2 million.

The biggest returns to education are in the managerial and professional fields. There, a person with just some college earns $2 million over a lifetime while a person with a master’s degree earns $3.5 million.

Interestingly, those working in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (called STEM by the education wonks) have relatively narrow gaps in lifetime earnings between education levels after a certain cutoff. A person still earns a lot more if he or she has a BA instead of an AA in that field, but there isn’t much difference among those with an AA, high school, or less than high school, and likewise, there isn’t much difference between those with a BA, MA, or PhD.  There’s differences–don’t get me wrong– but they’re not as sharp as in some other professions.

What I found intriguing was the relatively high share of people with little education who outearn their fellow workers with more education. About 30-40% in a given educational bracket earns more than those in the bracket right above them. So 31% of those with less than high school earn more than those with a high school degree. Likewise, 41% of those with only some college earn more than those with an associate’s degree. Forty percent of those with a BA earn more than those with a master’s degree.  The differences get smaller if you skip up a degree, but even then, one in five with an AA earns more than a person with a master’s degree. (See Table 1 in the report.)

Bottom line: education pays, but given its cost, you still have to be strategic and not overpay for that degree.  If you want to see the most bang for your education buck, become a doctor of some sort (aka “health professional”). If you want to earn a decent living and not spend a lot of time in school, go into STEM professions. There, a person with just a high school degree, some college, or an AA earns $2-2.5 million over a lifetime. (The reason for that, I’d guess, to the incomes of those “in computers” who don’t always follow the traditional path through school–but I’m just guessing).

The appendix of the report offers much more detail on earnings by education for 30 occupations. Worth a look if you’re wondering how much you can afford to spend on that degree.

I started this post with women’s earnings, and I’ll end there. It’s a sad state of affairs that as women outnumber men on college campuses and have made such strides in the workforce, we’re still penalized by about 25%. That means that over a lifetime, a woman with a BA will earn about $650,000 less than a man with a BA.  And this figure accounts for time off for kids.  As the report notes, had they defined lifetime earnings on the basis of all workers (not just full-time, full-year), the gap between men and women would be 20 percentage points higher. That is, if you count the time off for raising kids or other reasons to leave the workforce, a woman with a BA earns a whopping 44% less over a lifetime than a man with a BA (median earnings).

Sisters, wise up. We need to have this conversation, and we need to have it now. We need to start demanding a few things. First off, we need to learn to demand more money at the outset. If you think you’re asking for too much when you negotiate salary (you do negotiate, right?), just think of that guy who sat next to you in Econ 101. He’s making 25% more right out of the gates. So up your asking price by 35% and then bargain down. And at every stage in your career, remind yourself that you’re likely working harder and getting paid less. Some indignation is in order. After all, you have the leverage. You have the skills that today’s workforce needs–teamwork, people skills–you have the education, and you have the work ethic.  Now just demand the salary.  Think we don’t have the power? All women should walk off the job for a week and see what happens.

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Five-year high schools might defray college costs

Posted on July 27, 2011 | 2 Comments

We were temp-parents of two traveling German 20-somethings last week, and it gave me a chance to pump them for information on their high school/college systems– as well as show off the city I love.  I don’t know the details of the German education model in depth, but I’ve always thought, on the surface, it makes more sense than our system. Vanessa and Johannes–both on their way to university this fall– gave me a CliffsNotes version. That’s why the headline this morning that Maine is dipping its toe in the water of a five-year high school plan caught my eye.

The idea behind Maine’s program, which is still in the taskforce stage, is that high school students could take introductory-level college courses (both four-year college and two-year technical courses)  ”so that in five years of high school, they could graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree, or two years of transferable college credits, all for free,” reports the Bangor Daily News .

Now that makes sense. Encouragingly, they’re not ignoring vocational coursework in the planning process. The Times’ David Leonhardt may keep hammering on the point that four-college still pays (“The next time you hear naysayers poormouth college,” he reports, “ask them if they plan to send their own children”), but the reality remains: nearly half of all freshmen in four-colleges do not make it to graduation, and the only reason the payback from college is rising (for now) is because the bottom has dropped out. The wages of those with a BA have been flat since 2002 while the wages of those with only a high school degree are falling like the bottom tearing out of a grocery bag. What Leonhardt skims over in his argument is that the college premium, as it is called, is based largely on comparing the wages of four-year college grads with those with just a high school degree. It doesn’t typically factor in the wages of those with some college or a two-year degree, like in this chart. (And notice how flat the premium since 2002.)

We tend to believe that if we just funnel more kids into four-year college we’ll solve the problem of a declining middle class and a threatened standard of living, ignoring the other option: raising the wages of those with less education. But we’re hanging our hat on an assumption that is in many ways, wishful thinking. The number of available jobs depends not on the number of qualified candidates, but on the size and growth of the economy. The economy grows when consumers demand more things, not when we pass education reforms that encourage more kids to go to college.

There is no shortage of four-year college graduates.  If that were the case, employers would have gobbled up these underemployed (and underpaid) college graduates slinging drinks or working retail, at regular rates of pay. So the question is, how long before the surplus of college grads drags down their wages along with others?  As Econ 101 says, if there’s a surplus, wages for college grads will decline. Since 2002, their wages have been flat, so it won’t take much to push them into negative numbers.

We need, in other words, to talk about this differently. I’m not saying people shouldn’t go to college. I’m just saying that “college” needs to be expanded in these discussions to include viable two-year or even shorter technical/vocational programs. The “college for all” mantra is Wobegonian.  AND, we need to work on wages overall.

The Maine policymakers realize this it looks like.  As one taskforce member told the Bangor paper,  “We have to do more training that is tailored to the jobs that are out there and not just college or two-year degree programs.” Indeed, many needed skills for good-paying jobs can be obtained in a yearlong training program that could flow from a high school diploma, possibly at the same school building.

As one taskforce member put it, “He’s absolutely right and we have to look at that. I just paid $75 an hour to have my lawn tractor fixed. Maybe I am in the wrong line of work.”

Vannessa and Johannes would recognize this five-year high school model. In Germany, youth are slotted by around 4th grade into university tracks, vocational tracks, or a “bottom rung” track.

Before we go all ballistic about tracking, I’m not urging that. But there must be a way to connect kids early to hands-on learning that they engage with and enjoy rather than operating under the delusion that everyone is four-year college material.

In Germany, those with solid skills but less aptitude for “book learning” are required to do 10 years in school and then make a decision: continue on the university track for two more years or bail out and head over to two more years of vocational training. The key here is that the system makes this option visible early in life and there is little stigma to the choice. The kids do split off into separate buildings after tenth grade, which doesn’t make for much mixing between the groups and probably calcifies the class system, but we can work on that. (And even Germany is considering pooling everyone in the same building in the near future.)

Maine is on the right track, along with a similar effort in North Carolina. They are giving their kids more options earlier in life while trimming back the costs of college for those who attend. More innovations like these are needed rather than such a focus on prepping everyone to enroll in college. The door to college should never be shut for those who want to attend. But for those who do not, we need better options.  Let’s face it. We already track in this country: we have the college track and the track right into the State Penitentiary. How’s that working for us?

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