Our middle son (29) and daughter (26) are visiting from Seattle this weekend, and last night we ended up in the almost inevitable discussion of how they are going to "manage" their ongoing student loan debt.
Not an unusual conversation, I realize, in a society where the estimated student loan debt is about $1.3 trillion. That's $1,300,000,000,000. Lot of zeros, huh?
Welcome to a Life of Eternally Running Behind?
White desert flower
Obviously, the kids have been out of school for a while... and both have had pretty stable jobs... for a while. And yet, their lives seem to be seriously buckling under the debt load.
Not surprising, I suppose-- the average 2016 graduate left college with $37,172 of debt.
Of course, the numbers nobody (in power) wants you to see is the fact that the cost of education keeps rising at 6-7% a year in a world where inflation is only 1-2% and college educations-- having more or less become "the norm"-- really no longer give you that much of an advantage.
But the part that makes it hardest for today's students and fresh graduates is the fact (and this is just pure statistics) average incomes have increased about 500% since 1970, while the cost of a public university degree increased 950% over the same time.
The Great Deception
When people complain about "not having enough money" and "not affording life," Conservatives are fond of saying "well, get a better job!" and if that's a problem "get some better education!"
Winter flowers
That's a pretty sound argument... except for the fact that the "old metrics" no longer apply. A college education becomes less and less of a guarantee of anything because pretty much everyone has one, and now the cost-benefit ratio is not what it once was.
It's a bit like saying you should "dress up" to impress someone, but when everyone dresses up... then we're all back to being on the same relative footing, only dressed better.
Meanwhile, Liberals insist we should all have FREE college educations to increase opportunities. But whether you pay for it or not, we're straight back to the "everyone has one" situation... so we're really not any better off, relatively speaking.
The underlying idea is noble enough-- based on the proposition that a free higher education is ultimately a societal level investment in more educated workers. The problem is that many employers would just as well not have employees capable of "autonomous thinking." Better to have easily trainable human "robots."
But... speaking of robots...
The Decline of Jobs as we Know Them?
Aside from the widening gap between cost of education (and the burden of educational loans) and the incomes resulting from them, what also makes the whole thing feel like a ripoff is that kids are being sold the fairy tale that there will be "a well paying job" at the end of their personal rainbows. Put up with the bullshit, pay your dues and eventually... things will be OK.
Blooming hawthorn, Denmark
But we live in an age of increasing automation where jobs are vanishing every year. Human jobs.
When I use the term "vanishing," I mean humans are gradually being replaced by automation. Maybe not right now, but in another 25 years-- when those 2017 grads are in their late 40s-- we simply will need fewer humans to do work, and that college degree you spent so much money on and just finished paying off won't be good for much of anything... at least not on the job front.
Jobs like lab technician, machinist, air traffic controller, truck driver, retail clerk, accountant and a myriad others will not even exist by 2040, or they will exist only as a shadow of their former selves. And no amount of education will bring them back.
Of course, the "easy out" for many pundits is to point at the "new fields" that will open up as technology advances. The realistic truth, sadly, is that most "work" on the horizon involves variations of "automation supervising automation," like (for example) a robot (replacing a human) giving instructions to a sophisticated 3D printer (that replaced a skilled machinist).
Meanwhile, kids continue to go to college, incurring loads of debt that will take them a decade (or more) to pay back, in order to get educations that very likely won't do them a bit of good.
What do YOU think? Are the expensive educations in the US a bit of a rip off? Do young people get burdened by a debt before they even get started? Do you feel this is simply "the way things are," or should a new approach be explored? How many jobs do you think will be replaced by automation... simply making the "needed workforce" much smaller than the number of available workers? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 171209 12:38 PDT