Educating College Graduates So They Can be Unemployed

That is the title of this post at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. 

if young people with college degrees can’t survive in the post-recession era, nobody can. And this explodes the idea that education alone, instead of monetary and fiscal policy, is the way out of our current high unemployment rate.
I’ve been on a kick of watching the employment rates of 20-24 year olds with college degrees as a barometer for our economy’s health for some time. Some people on the right get that this is going to kill a generation – David Frum in particular has done great work. But in general everyone on the right is screaming about the Europeanization of the U.S. economy. Ironically, they have been screaming about the part where we could get universal health care and some decent trains and not the part where the young generation that is supposed to start building their careers, innovating and creating the future of the economy, is sitting idle. The part where a generation becomes permanently detached from the formal labor markets. An economy of insiders and outsiders.

I simply cannot understand why we fail to even acknowledge this growing and urgent problem of the idling of the youth.  For their own personal and professional growth, and for society as a whole, the youth need to be actively involved in the economy.  Yet, that is not happening.  And, we are hell bent on making it worse for them by forcing higher education down their throats and then idling them.

Colleges and universities are having a great time as a result--record enrollments.  Don't listen to the faculty or administration talk about not having enough money.  Of course that is what ponzi schemers will try to convince you.  After all, if they don't have money, how come they build multimillion dollar buildings with rock-climbing-walls, right?

I wish we would stop telling students in high school that a college degree is their passport to successful middle class lives.  Allow them to pursue their own interests, and don't put down their vocational curiosities.  If they want to learn about Socrates, awesome. But let us also make sure they understand that understanding Socrates will not necessarily lead to dollars; perhaps cents, yes.  And if they still want to learn, terrific!