Crazy Times

Literally. Being away for a couple of days gave me a break from the news but then immediately I had a lot to catch up on. So this is a brief review of some of the insanity or is that inanity that defines the American way.

First up: The Kentucky Millionaire who built a bunker and it failed to do what he built to do – keep his family safe. One dead and the family now lives in an expensive RV for reasons unclear, but it is clear that being crazy is not defined to the unhoused. Oh wait…..

Next: Sex Ed is Grooming. Okay this is now Q’Anon on steroids. I was sure that the original basis of much of this Q person was in fact a woman as she worked for the group behind the “chan” sites and then as the male personas picked up on the bizarre messaging and in turn grew their business from it, the Q thing sort of blossomed into this monolith that fueled much of the Trumptards. The fear of sex and information is a commonality in the South thanks to the Church. And that is the real reason behind the push to end abortion, there has never been a predominant interest in the life of children or these same whack jobs would be advocates for child care, maternity leave, health care and other post natal programs that promote life. It is about sex and the idea if you are fucking you will confine it to marriage and keep your sinning filth in the home. These are people who hate sex, and yes even I am bored with it but hey don’t let me stop you fucking! And with that fear that sex and intimacy is an effort, which they want no part of. Note that they are either breeding maniacs or have two kids which means they fucked themselves out. And I have never met a religious crackpot group that were not one or the other. Birth Control is sex control and sex is the predominant reason behind marriage. Trust me this is the real issue, fucking.

I have always found it interesting that many States take the forefront with regards to these issues, but Tennessee was always just ahead of the curve; however, they don’t get the news coverage on these culture firebrands as does Texas or Florida and I suspect it is because of Nashville. The state is very tied to that city for its income and with that the powers inside that city, while they may share their values fear the loss of money more, so with that much of the oppressive crazy shit is buried. When I lived there the issues surrounding sex abuse, largely in the schools was a major issue and with that the City Prosecutor rarely prosecuted said cases, blaming the Police for their poor investigation skills. But Nashville Schools were dumps and many times focus of investigation after investigation and little was ever done. Look at the timeline of the great reporter, Phil Williams, and his endless investigations in the school district and realize the problems there are serious and they do little more than cover it up. That is the South, hide, obscure and lie if you have to. Do as little as possible take as much credit as possible, that is their mantra. Mine is – What.ever.

Rounding to Third: Guns and more guns. After seeing Damon Wayans at Carolines a week ago where he brought a baseball bat to the stage with him a day later a comedy club in North Carolina found themselves closing early when a patron showed up with a shotgun; then a shooting at a mall in Indiana food court where the mythical good guy with a gun shot and killed the bad guy with a gun. (Some of this needs further investigation and I suspect as in all of these mass shootings, the truth is buried there) A shooting in Houston at an Apartment Complex left four dead; a shooting in a campground left three dead, one being only six; a woman dead after an altercation in a parking lot in Oklahoma; and more heinous facts regarding Uvalde continue to be released that again demonstrate how all of these shootings do not have the full information until investigations are completed. There is nothing in that particular story that has any good element in what.so.ever. And with that one of the few survivors of the Parkland shooting, meaning the shooter himself, is undergoing a sentencing trial which led one of the victims parents to scream out STOP and leave the courtroom. What is Justice in this case? That is not a decision anyone can make easily.

And lastly: I am exhausted with America right now. The endless one upmanship, the belittling and condescension that passes as an arrogant way of telling someone you are smarter and better than they are. I sat in Saratoga listening to the most boring people and I said little other than to remind them as I am on my own I have only myself to be responsible for and be concerned with. I am out to enjoy as a much of life as I can and with that do it as safely and as easily as I can. My conversations that once were as interesting as they were random have been relegated to largely message posts and those who serve me… the coffee person, the Front Desk Clerk, the Concierge at my building. These are not conversations they are more monologues and lectures where I either inform and attempt to have a teachable moment or be funny and witty without much of challenge or intellect. Even podcasts I am finding deeply redundant. Listen to Marc Maron WTF and it is him discussing his anxiety and frustrations about food and his family. In the beginning of the pandemic he lost his partner and his grief and pain coupled with the fear of the future were fascinating studies in how one copes and evolves when you are alone and working through it. I connected to that and much of his pain resonated, his humor not lost on one who feels much the same way, being over 55, being alone, having no kids and facing this odd future did make me laugh and cry. Today I get through maybe the first 5 minutes and unless he is speaking to someone I know and care about I wipe it out. The show with Nikki Glaser was both sad and funny as it was two neurotic comics who are successful and have good lives wax on about their eating disorders, their sexual confusion and fear of relationships. It should be a must listen for anyone going into the therapy business.

I had not known Ms. Glaser until FB Island where that thankfully is a delight of idiocy and moron supremacy that I need right now. So to listen to her comedy and in turn her own personal struggles I got much of what she said about sex and connection and how women view their sexuality and their intimacy tied to sex itself and men do not, they in fact disconnect from the two and immediately disengage once the act is complete. She insisted and I agree that women should not have sex until they are friends and familiar with the man and then have sex as they will find it by far more satisfying. She even feels girls should resort strictly to giving blow jobs or hand jobs if they feel compelled to offer sex to a boy as a means of building attraction. There is a big no from me on the sucking dick and fine with the hand job as it is utterly disease free and safe sex in every way. I am sorry but not getting oral cancer to suck a dick and the same goes for men, just finger bang or hand jobs or mutually masturbate. The era of sex is over and clearly we are going to have to start at square one to educate and inform and if you cannot love yourself you cannot love anyone else.

And with that Marc shared that he was in a friendship with a woman, and I recall this discussion at Red Bank when I saw him there, about wanting a “girl” friend who fucked him, had dinner with him (maybe not in that order) and then left and did not stay over, see him every day and remain monogamous in that type of arrangement. He is now in that that type of arrangement and he acknowledged that she is younger, he did not say how young but if she stays over she sleeps in another room. She has to be 30 as no woman over 35 would put up with that bullshit. Again it is challenging when you have no kids, no real baggage to find partners on the same page but even that would be stretch for me. I might do the dinner part, maybe even the fucking and would leave but I doubt that. I did that and hated it so I am over it. The reality is that while I was hit on by a man that night at the restaurant I and oddly Marc ate at after the show (although given his food issues that must have been interesting) I felt nothing, kissing this man, nothing. I wanted to go to my hotel room and sleep. I am not sure I will ever feel anything for a man again. So there you go folks note that again most of the Pro Life/Anti sex crew are all well into their 60s and cling to the past as a part of the problem. They still blame the Hippies! The observations I made at Saratoga with these couples in their 50s only made me feel relieved that I was not a part of this. I recall my ex husband and his theory that the Moon landing was a Conspiracy, the fame obsession aka the asspirational (intentional misspelling) that he carried with him. He is like many I meet, toting their fake or real Vuitton bags or wearing their Gucci shoes and the insatiable need to be “famous” be that on social media or just someone who matters. I have all of those things but rarely use them and feel compelled to let everyone know I have them, I get it. I really do. With that I seek respect and dignity and to speak and be spoken to in a manner that reflects that. And with that I am so grateful to not be married as I suspect I would be like one of the couples, parroting my Husband’s idiotic viewpoints and beliefs. I recall when I realized I had married a jerk I began to spend less time at home, and when he was there I wasn’t and so forth. My dog was the one thing that I truly loved during that time.

In my conversation with my Concierge yesterday he was shocked how few people actually speak to people professionally and they have college degrees! He is from Africa and migrated here years ago and was educated in his country but like many many Immigrants his degrees could not be substantiated as he was designated a refugee and this led him to working here. His story is not different than many despite the shortages of medical professionals, they are forced to return to school to get an American degree. Or what I call the most expensive piece of paper you will ever buy. I am sure that most if not many who possess a degree, myself included, have found it utterly useless and utterly a waste of time and money. Others and those are largely the graduates of “elite” Universities who are not any smarter but are better connected and in turn have better opportunities in which to work. The endless studies that profess that those with a degree earn more in a lifetime needs a little more detail there as it is based on Social Security data. And again women are fucked right there as many take time away from the workforce and may end up in work that will often pay less. This does not paint the full picture as it is frankly all theory as we know that flows in economics and trends dictate the pursuit of a degree but that degree may not be what the field you end up in and with that make even more so does degree and type matter? What school? What was the base salary? What profession? What was the network connection that enabled the gig, and so forth. The reality is that connections matter more and the doors are open via an alumni association or through a friend and family. So say Bob goes to University of Illinois and gets a Business Degree, with that where does he go to work out of school? What was his base salary? (Cause it ain’t what you think) If Bob was named Jane was that the same salary? How did he find said job? Recruited or applied? But that fact is shoved down our throats to the detriment of many who have expensive degrees and are Barista’s at Starbucks. Hence the union drive. We often equate worth with one’s financial stability. They are not the same.

We have no way of knowing details about anything unless we ask and we dig and we do neither. We talk at each other and not to or with each other. We are busy drawing our dividing lines and that seems to be with regards to how one votes. Funny I don’t have a problem with whom you vote for, I do if you do not read, listen to music, watch a movie, go on a trip and have a thought that isn’t your own.

So it appears that my story may be like this one. A tragic tale of someone at the brink of his life found dead and alone. At least I will have lived one.

Gadot are you there?

 Much was made from the Drive to 55 called the Tennessee Promise, the plan that enabled Tennessee high schoolers free community college for the first two years to encourage career readiness and long term financial success.  And of course when it comes to Education this is one state that likes to stay in the bottom five as without a firm commitment to income inequity the red state may turn a paler shade even pink possibly and we cannot have that.  As then here in Tennessee the issues of segregation, income inequality, nativism and other classifications that enable the moral majority to remain in place or said majority might collapse. That cannot happen.  Change is only for the pocket and gentrification is great for white people.

Nashville has a love hate relationship with gentrification. On the plus side it is pushing the poor and largely minority groups out to the periphery.   By having a swelling and growing population it enables them to have a larger workforce in which to choose and in turn maintain wages at low rates. The Chamber of Commerce has confirmed that and today they actually grade the schools.  As if any of them have ever set foot in any of them.  Laughable as this is ground zero for school choice and in turn no one who is white and/or can afford to enroll elsewhere do.  I have never seen nor actually heard of K-12 schools, all non-secular, before  and look as if they are taken from the yards at Harvard.   Funny, however, with all these grand institutions that individuals possessing higher degrees has hovered at 33-35% for decades.  Again the better to maintain the status quo my dear.

The next two weeks means I am happy as hell and I am not back to work until the 5th of January and that first gig is at the “better” school so it means a good day for all and all a good year.  Well that is until I walk into one of the “others” which I have made a resolution to avoid at all costs. I cannot take anymore of what I experienced last week at three different schools.  Not one, none were stable, safe learning environments and it showed from the lessons left to the  lack of decent food, support or any kind of dignity left by those in the front of the classroom as well as those in the back of the school.  Even Administrators and others have given up and they are just waiting for whom or what I don’t know? Gadot perhaps? And by Gadot I mean Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman.

Dropout rates remain high at Tennessee colleges, especially among black students, report says
Jason Gonzales, USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee Published Dec. 13, 2017

Even as Tennessee is being praised for opening college doors through Tennessee Promise and other programs, there are signs that some of higher education’s biggest and most persistent hurdles still keep many students from succeeding.

Enrollment and retention have ticked up at community colleges, according to a report released Wednesday by the education advocacy group Complete Tennessee. But dropout rates remain alarmingly high, especially for poor and minority students.

“While we have seen some improvements in postsecondary attainment, our most vulnerable citizens are still struggling to earn the credentials necessary to compete for in-demand, local jobs,” said Kenyatta Lovett, Complete Tennessee executive director.

Among the findings in the “Beneath the Surface: State of Higher Education in Tennessee” report:

Community college enrollment has grown by 2 percent from 2016-2017, but enrollment trends across other institutions are relatively flat.
Despite efforts to increase adult participation in higher education, adult enrollment has dropped 25 percent since 2011.
Student retention rates have increased, but black students are more likely to drop out than their peers.
Despite Tennessee’s historically low unemployment rates, black residents experience higher levels of unemployment despite many earning similar degrees or credentials.

The report says the state must focus on these issues, especially as the state seeks to get more Tennesseans a college education through its Drive to 55 initiative.

“Current achievement gaps raise questions about the possibility or the moral standard of achieving the Drive to 55 goal if certain groups of Tennesseans are left behind,” according to the report.

Tennessee’s struggles aren’t unique. Colleges nationwide have faced similar challenges.

But Lovett said there are examples Tennessee can pull from to push for improvements here, especially in retaining low-income and minority students.

“There are monetary returns on investment,” Lovett said. “And it is beneficial for communities.”

The report highlights practices from around the country that Tennessee colleges can look toward. It also calls for action in enacting solutions.

One such best practice Lovett said is schools can begin to look toward making a student’s education more hands-on, especially through internships. That creates relevance and helps build student networks with jobs, he said.

“For low-income students and students of color, their networks aren’t as advanced or as broad as some of their peers,” Lovett said. “Employers and colleges should ensure that students have robust experiences and understanding of the work, as well as how to enter into career fields.”

Gov. Bill Haslam has said his priorities and budget in 2018 will put a spotlight on low graduation rates, although it is unclear exactly what he will do.

Reading is Good

I have mocked the lack of education and intelligence I find here in Nashville but I grew up in an area that is not unlike many places in the country, a major city that is urban and forward thinking, usually a college town and/or capital city which draws a perceived liberal contingent. Have you been to Boston? It seems the antithesis of that. But the city that I think personifies it best is Madison, Wisconsin. We think of Wisconsin ground zero for right wing kookery but in fact it is the island in the red sea of a state with an amazing history of progressive politics. So what goes around comes around. I hope.

But in Tennessee that has never been the case. Neither Nashville nor Memphis were ever known for progressiveness unless you mean in the music industry and yes, yes it was. Cash and Dylan were quite influential with each other and from others in the country music field  that brought immense significant change in both sound and tone of contemporary music be it country or that of another genre.

But what makes the difference between Washington and Tennessee is the overwhelming amount of Western Washingtonians that acquire a degree.  True the bulk live in Seattle where there are 3 Colleges, it has always been a base of industry that included jobs that required college or not yet it did not discourage nor limit those who chose to work in one or the other from attaining a higher education.  So yes you meet all kinds of individuals who at one point or another have attended some form of higher education regardless of their job.  And in turn we are the most isolated City in the United States but being close to Canada and access to Asia via shipping many individuals have been influenced, informed and if not traveled somewhere out of the State at some point.  I laugh as I think I am the only native Northwestern who has spent zero time in Mexico of which I had no interest in going in my youth and today still don’t.  And yet I speak Spanish, love Spain but I have never liked Mexican food but love history of which there is plenty,  so why I don’t go is even to me odd but it is not on my bucket list.

That said, I knew many Seattle residents just as angry and stupid as I meet here but they are pale in comparison as they possessed some common sense. I don’t know what it is here but I do believe it is the Christian under belt and the Martyr complex I have written about that seems to put residents here in a constant denial.  Seattle has dramatically changed with the growth of the tech center and the stereotype of the Amazonian has been well documented and discussed in the articles about the city in the New York Times and others that talk of a loss of soul and the growth of income inequity that has divided a once naturally diverse and eclectic city.  It is why I left as I knew I was of the past and that I wanted to escape it.  So irony that I come to a place that is obsessed with history in a way that transcends respect it crosses to again a type of resonance that we see played out across the media as both racist and dated.

And with that we have here this absurd push to get 55% of the population educated with college degrees.  We have 2 years free community college for both teenagers and adults and the emphasis on STEM is shoved down our throat with Sweet Tea and false smiles, the standard greeting at any Southern home.

So when I read that a town in Eastern Washington realized they barely had any of the kids pursue higher education they changed the approach and are working towards moving that number higher.  And my Father grew up in Yakima and I spent a lot of time there as a kid.  There are Colleges and Universities there and there is an extensive Agricultural emphasis.  And yet when Washington State wanted to add a Medical school there a couple of years ago, the University of Washington rather than support the idea of having home grown students study in a needed field, they went out of their way to block it.  But instead partnered with another University to have a competing program. There is your free market.      Note, however they never did until the new program was finally financed  but however and whatever it means more potential for everyone.  Education in this case does work.

However I don’t know what jobs are the future here?  Music and hospitality and some manufacturing which none of them require more than some college to actually compensate the crap public education that they are getting.  I do believe that is the real push to at least get the residents here the ability to communicate and be flexible in the working place.

I would like to see 95% of everyone having the opportunity to go to College.  Regardless of your degree there is something about being able to read, study and analyze subject that in everyday life you may not have the same opportunity, such as Philosophy or Archeology.  But the costs to pursue this are utterly untenable.  And with that it further pushes people away from the idea that learning is for the rich and that a bus driver doesn’t need to know about books to drive the bus.  No but he can have a life off the bus and it doesn’t all have to revolve around sports, the only acceptable cross class pursuit apparently.   Just as long as we don’t have to sit together.

Just 20% of kids got 4-year degrees, so Chehalis schools changed everything 

The Chehalis School District is revamping its culture in an effort to get more kids to go to college.

 With the help of a foundation and philanthropists who grew up there, it’s partnering with the local community college, Centralia College, to get more students to attend and finish higher education. The philanthropists behind it think it could be a model for the stat

Originally published June 2, 2017 The Seattle Times
By Katherine Long 
 

In Washington state, only about a third of students ever earn a bachelor’s degree. In rural counties, it’s even lower. But in Chehalis, a Lewis County town in the southwest part of the state, educators are trying to build college fever.

On a recent Wednesday in Chehalis, where people once made their living mining coal and felling timber, Principal Bob Hunt paced across his front office and told a story he hoped would inspire his 400 elementary-school students to think about college.

With his singsong voice echoing through the school’s P.A. system, Hunt talked about Jody Bradley, a first-grade teacher who had grown up in Chehalis and, at first, hadn’t considered higher education.
Bradley worked at Burger King after graduating from high school, he said, then at a toy store, before she decided to go to college so she could become a teacher.

Lewis County, the southwest Washington county where Chehalis is located, has one of the lowest college-going rates in the state. It’s symptomatic of a big disconnect in Washington state — where there’s a boom in high-paying, mostly high-tech jobs, yet two-thirds of students don’t earn the two- or four-year degrees they need to apply for them.

Statewide, just 26 percent of the high-school graduating class of 2007 had earned a bachelor’s degree six years after graduation, well below the national rate for even rural schools, which is 32 percent.
In rural and semirural parts of Washington (including Chehalis), the rate is even lower.

Only about 15 percent of adults in Lewis County have a bachelor’s degree, the third- lowest of any county in Washington.

That was just fine a generation ago, before the coal mine shut down and the timber industry contracted. But mining, logging and construction now account for less than 10 percent of all Lewis County jobs.

Now, almost all of the jobs that pay well require at least some college-level training.

Until recently, Chehalis School District staff didn’t realize that only 20 percent of their students went on to earn a four-year degree. That wake-up call came when the district commissioned a study, paid by the district’s foundation.

The surprisingly low figures shocked district officials into a slew of changes. That included talking frequently to students about the importance of college, as well as fundamental fixes in how teachers teach

The district also has joined forces with the region’s community college to help make sure Chehalis students who go there finish their degrees.

The early results are promising, and some Chehalis officials believe the district can become a model for other Washington school districts, especially in rural areas — and that native Washingtonians don’t miss out on the best jobs here.

College just didn’t come up

It’s almost impossible to overstate how difficult it is to finish a college degree for a student whose parents didn’t attend, whose school doesn’t make it a priority, and who has come to believe only rich kids go to college.

On paper, for example, Andrew Ulrich looked like a prime college football recruit when he graduated from Chehalis’s W.F. West High in 2007 — seven years before the changes started at Chehalis schools.

At 6-foot-8 and 290 pounds, Ulrich was a standout on the high-school football team, and Division I college recruiters were watching him. But Ulrich didn’t know the first thing about how to prepare for college. His GPA was low. He didn’t realize there was a difference between the state-required standardized test (then known as the WASL), and the tests that students take to be considered for college admission, such as the SAT.

He knew of no college recruiters visiting W.F. West, although military recruiters always came.
He doesn’t remember teachers ever talking to him about college: “They were there to get you through high school, and that’s it.”

He’d grown up believing the words of his father, a mechanic — words that described college kids as snobby, overeducated, rich.

And there was no money for college anyway. Ulrich was the fourth of six children in a family that made ends meet by growing vegetables in the summer, chopping wood to heat the home in the winter and shopping for clothes at a secondhand store.

So after high school, he worked for his father for a few years, got married and then did a variety of jobs around Lewis County.

It’s now been 10 years since Ulrich graduated, and Chehalis looks and feels like a different district.
In the schools, every teacher’s door is decorated with the name of his or her alma mater. The high school devotes 25 minutes a day for seniors to explore careers, work on college planning, meet with advisers and set goals.

To seed students’ interests in the hot fields of science and engineering, the district has purchased equipment more commonly found in colleges, including an electron scanning microscope that, at $175,000, costs about as much as a small Centralia house.

And it spent three years retraining all of its teachers on how to add rigor to their lessons and get students to explain their reasoning behind an answer, show them how to find alternative ways to solve a problem and work together in pairs or teams.

The catalyst for all this work is the Chehalis Foundation, a private nonprofit that raises money for the local schools. In 2014, three native sons — Jim Lintott and brothers Orin and Kevin Smith — boosted the foundation’s coffers by giving $1 million to help the foundation’s efforts. (Orin Smith was president and chief executive officer of Starbucks from 2000 to 2005; Kevin Smith owns a wealth-management firm. Lintott is the chairman of Sterling Foundation Management.)

At first, the foundation wanted to fund college scholarships. But its members asked a simple question: Is that the best use of the money?

They looked at one of the longest-running efforts to boost college-going through scholarships, the Michigan’s Kalamazoo Promise program. But Kalamazoo has found that tuition help only goes so far: Students need better academic support if they’re going to be successful in college.

So the Chehalis Foundation helped the district hire a consultant, the Bothell-based BERC Group, to help figure out how to get the most bang for its buck. BERC did a far-reaching analysis of how the district was preparing students for college.

Among its discoveries: Only 38 percent of high-schoolers were taking the classes they needed to apply to most four-year colleges. Only 38 percent of Chehalis grads were finishing a degree six years after high school. And only 20 percent were getting a bachelor’s degree.

That was in sharp contrast to what the district had always assumed, admitted Superintendent Ed Rothlin. Its pride in its college-preparation efforts unraveled.

In dissecting how Chehalis teachers did their work, BERC also found that many employed a top-down style, telling students what they were going to be doing that day and then instructing them how to do it.

So far, that has been the most challenging pattern to change. Over three years, the district has done districtwide training, given all of its teachers opportunities to observe one another in the classroom, and provided them with time to reflect on what is working, and what is not.

Changing minds, guiding students

Not all Chehalis parents immediately embraced the changes the district proposed.

Though district leaders could show that college led to the better jobs, some parents still viewed a college degree as a waste of money.

As Lewis County’s timber and mining industries have shrunk or disappeared, “the culture hasn’t necessarily shifted,” said Liisa Preslan, the Centralia College director of a federal program that helps first-generation students go to college.

“There’s a lot of misunderstanding about college and what it means, what it costs,” Preslan said.
In talking to parents, the district made sure to underscore that it was also talking about two-year degrees and job training — not just getting a degree from a four-year school.

It also formed a strong partnership with Centralia College, a state community college, because that’s where half of all W.F. West High graduates go, if they go to college at all.

The foundation pays for extra counseling help in that college, as well as in middle and high school.
At Centralia College, for example, it pays half the salary of assistant professor and counselor Lisa Wilson, who personally watches over the 80-plus Chehalis graduates.

Wilson visits W.F. West often, building relationships. When West grads arrive at the college, she gets them together for social events throughout the year. Last year, students formed a pep band — a notable step, because many community college students never make the kind of strong bond with their colleges that four-year-college students do.

At the end of every quarter, Wilson looks for signs that students may be on the verge of dropping out.

This past quarter, one was Yulisa Gomez-Reyes, a 2016 grad who wants to be a physical therapist. Gomez-Reyes planned to get an associate degree at Centralia, then transfer to Eastern Washington University. She would be the first in her family to earn a college degree.

But this spring, Gomez-Reyes was falling perilously close to a 2.0 GPA, and if she hit that number, her financial aid would be canceled unless she appealed.

Wilson knew that the automatically generated letters warning about a financial-aid cutoff cause many students to drop out, so she called Gomez-Reyes into her office to help her strategize. She saw that Gomez-Reyes was pursuing an associate in science degree, but was having the most difficulty in science classes.

She suggested another path: Gomez-Reyes could get an associate in arts degree, and still transfer to Eastern. Gomez-Reyes made the switch and, also on Wilson’s advice, wrote an appeal on her financial aid.

At W.F. West High, college-prep adviser Kerri Chaput, who’s also partly paid by the foundation, invites recent grads to talk about what college is like. Every month, career specialists also give tips on how to get into specific fields — or win apprenticeships. Last summer, with financial help from the foundation, 34 juniors got a taste of college through free classes at Centralia.

The students still have their regular high-school counselors, too, but Chaput has a special, college-focused mission. “I follow them around and remind them, ‘Your scholarship is due,’ ” she said.

And it’s not as easy as it may sound. Just six miles away, in Centralia, counselors struggle to get students to fill out financial-aid forms, even when they qualify for a state scholarship that would give them four years of free college tuition.

Progress, and big plans

All the changes in Chehalis started just in 2014. Yet in the three years since, the number of eighth-graders taking algebra has doubled. High-school students are taking harder, college-prep-level classes. And there’s been an 8 percentage-point increase in kids going directly to college after graduation.

The goal is to go from 20 percent of students earning a bachelor’s degree to 60 percent by 2024.

That’s an ambitious goal, but one that Chehalis educators think is necessary for Lewis County — and Washington state — to catch up to the demands of the 21st century.

They hope the changes they’ve put in place will not just help the kids, but also the county, by drawing more and higher-paying jobs to an area where the unemployment rate, at 8 percent, is one of the highest in the state.

It’s not the only district in the county working to make changes: so is tiny, nearby Onalaska, for example. But no other district has done as much. And while some nearby districts are vexed that Chehalis, which is economically better off than many of its neighbors, is benefiting from its foundation’s largesse, business and school leaders hope it can be a model.

If the effort works, it could be an example of how to turn around a school district without some of the drastic measures that have been promoted in recent years, especially under the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act.

“This whole thing is occurring within this public school system,” said J. Vander Stoep, an attorney and Chehalis Foundation member who served in the state Legislature for three terms in the 1980s.
“It doesn’t involve firings of people,” he said. “It doesn’t involve the things people usually argue about in public education … It’s happening in the system. Which gets you to believing it could be replicated somewhere else.”

Now he’s a role model

In his mid-20s, Ulrich — the football player who graduated before all the changes began — realized he’d never get far without a college education.

Four years ago, he started at Central Washington University as a 24-year-old freshman.

He’ll graduate June 10 with a bachelor’s degree in occupational safety and health management, and with a spot on the college honor roll; he expects to earn a 4.0 in his last quarter of college. And he has a good job lined up after graduation: working for the international construction firm Kiewit as a safety manager on projects in Colorado.

Ulrich wishes Chehalis had done something to direct him toward college, but he’s also proud of the way the district is transforming itself. Recently, his first-grade nephew Max took a photo of Ulrich to class for show-and-tell: His Uncle Andrew, the football player and college graduate.

“It’s awesome to give them something to strive for,” he said.

I Have a B.S for you.

When I read the below article the light bulb went on as to why Tennessee is suddenly shoving college down the throats of kids who are starving, both literally and metaphorically for knowledge. The push to educate a population in a state that is 47th when it comes to funding for public education is again that Southern dish they serve so well – an oddity. I have never seen such bizarre world when it comes to what defines K-12 schooling in a city that literally is ringed in by Universities, both public and private. Then to have a state that has less that 40% of its populace graduates with higher degrees or any certification beyond 12th grade, a city that is the center of State and Federal Government while having less than 30% of the residents possessing higher education degrees is well another conundrum.

Yesterday I was at an acclaimed (okay they all are for some reason yet to be made clear) middle “prep” that is a STEM school. For a school “prepping” kids for a digital workplace they are sorely lacking in digital training, equipment and well qualified staff. My personal favorite is the unbelievably slow if not stagnant internet service. Nashville has contracted with Google to become one of the Google cities and like everything here it is mired in complication. Perhaps Google can install sidewalks when they lay down high speed internet wires.

As for high schools they are rechristened “academies” with a focus on voc-tech and the confusion that surrounds those two industries unless you are creating a driverless car or a robot to drive them as I am avoiding those schools like the plague. They are fraught with gang problems, homicides, violence and even a counterfeit ring. Well the FBI has time on its hands now they are not investigating the Clinton e-mails.

And then there is cost. The reality is that if you do graduate the jobs that require advanced degrees are not as plentiful as promised and the reality is that they are located in expensive dense urban cities. So you go to your local University or College, get the “right” kind of degree, move across country and whatever salary you are earning is paying living expenses, then the degree dip and well the disposable income that is promised to the new hire is less disposable and more necessary to live. Hence we are seeing less housing being purchased and cars being purchased by the new class of 2016 and are delaying the whole idea of family and what that encompasses. I also see very little recreational travel or pursuit of knowledge outside that of what defines work, planes are crowded but few are actually exploring, simply traveling and seeking new frontiers. Today’s travelers are business or bust and when I get on a plane today I shudder at what asshole white man will be sitting next to me with his laptop, phone and his busy busy bullshit. It is as if we cannot have one moment of silence or conviviality of any kind. And the whole moment of silence thing is my private joke as under Tennessee state law all schools are required to have a moment of silence. Why I have no clue? Do many abide by it? No. I work and live in the South, I used to think I talked a lot then I came here. I speak less and even less loudly so something good came out of it.

Colleges should move to work with their local high schools, all of them should have running start or some type of advanced placement for those kids who fall into highly capable so that the local public schools could use that time and those resources to help those in greater need – English Language Learner, Special Ed and kids who are just falling through cracks. By allowing Colleges to assume some actual teaching and learning they could better prepare kids to enter college at the appropriate age and hit the ground running, without having to add years and in turn costs to attain that degree. It would be a win win for everyone. But wait as they say here, “Who’s going to pay for it.” Ah yes that proverbial age old question that means we don’t want the Government to do anything except war and stuff, private industry can do the rest. Funny they aren’t paying for Education or training staff anymore as they used to so who is going to? Ask the retiring Howard Schultz of Starbucks how is that bogus degree plan working out?

Supply of U.S. high school graduates is stagnating, posing challenge for colleges

Nick Anderson
The Washington Post
December 6 at 12:01 AM 

The nation’s total output of high school graduates peaked in 2013 at nearly 3.5 million and is projected to stagnate for most of the next decade, but the Hispanic share is expected to boom, according to a new report.

The demographic shifts point to major recruiting challenges for colleges following an era of steady growth in high school graduates that started in the late 1990s. While that growth had provided a solid pipeline for schools focused on serving traditional students between the ages of 18 to 22, the supply of these students appears to be dwindling or leveling off in Maryland, Virginia and elsewhere.

As a result, many colleges have been forced to rethink how to fill seats and educate incoming students who are more likely than their predecessors to be the first in their families to pursue a bachelor’s degree.

The report from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, released Tuesday, illuminates potential mismatches in supply and demand for higher education. Some states, particularly in the Midwest and Northeast, have lots of colleges and a declining number of high school graduates. Other states in the South and West have the opposite problem. The South, in particular, is an engine of growth: The output of high school graduates from Texas alone is projected to rise 19 percent from 2013 to 2025.

Overall, the report shows that the U.S. high school class of 2013, public and private, was about 3.47 million; the nation’s graduating class is not expected to reach that level again until 2024. The report also found that the number of Hispanic graduates from public schools is projected to rise 43 percent from 2013 to 2025, while the number of white graduates is expected to decline 6 percent. The number of private high school graduates is expected to fall 18 percent in that time.

Joseph Garcia, the commission’s president, said the trends could imperil schools that fall short of recruiting targets, especially small colleges.

“It puts some of these institutions at risk,” Garcia said Monday. With the number of private school graduates and white students ebbing in many places, he said, colleges that relied for generations on certain “feeder schools” could be forced to get creative.

“You can’t use your same old techniques,” he said. “You need to change your approach.”

Virginia high schools next spring are on track to produce about 87,900 graduates. That’s 2 percent fewer than five years earlier. By contrast, the total in the previous five-year period had grown 11 percent. The number of Hispanic graduates in the commonwealth’s public schools is surging and is expected to top 10,100 next spring, up 34 percent over five years.

Peter Blake, director of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, said the state’s colleges are increasingly focused on helping students finish their degrees. The push for retention and completion helps with enrollment and is also “the right thing to do,” Blake said.

Maryland’s high school class of 2017 is projected to have about 62,000 graduates, down 9 percent compared to the class of 2012. But the number of Hispanic graduates is expected to be about 6,800, up 35 percent.

Robert Caret, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, said the state’s public universities are well positioned to capi­tal­ize on the changing market because they offer quality education at a moderate price. “We just play that huge access role, particularly for first-generation students,” Caret said. “We’re in pretty good shape.”

The 15-state commission has studied the demographics of high school graduates for decades. Its report, “Knocking at the College Door,” is the first update to that research in four years.

Jeff Strohl, director of research for Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, said colleges face major recruiting hurdles. One is persuading students to apply. He cited federal data showing that the share of recent high school graduates enrolled in college fell from 70.1 percent in 2009 to 65.9 percent in 2013.

“The disheartening part is that fewer students are trying to go to college,” he said. Strohl said colleges must resist the urge to keep “fishing in the same pond” of potential students. “They’re going to need to spread their enrollment and recruiting activities outside of the places they’ve already gone,” he said.

The Ladder

I have long believed that each generation has the obligation if not the necessity to see that the subsequent generations get a leg up. And that goes beyond one’s familial obligations but to the larger community as a whole to ensure that the whole is a sum of its parts and the parts are in good shape to the keep the whole running.

That to me is the fundamental concept of sustainability, keeping things moving and going along with minimum destruction or interruptions. Then came the “disrupter’s” who were the product of the first generation that were utterly failed by a system that despite its failings was working and enabling many to climb the ladder of meritocracy.

Meritocracy has now become the mythical unicorn that if you “work hard” and do the right things you will be successful, have a home, a job and family. And for some that may be higher up the rung than the other but the sum of the parts keeps the wheel going. And each rung has the ability and if not obligation to ensure that all can reach it if so inclined.

Today the wheel is a massive machine with complex parts and yet there are few that ride in the car in which it is attached. I do think of the movie Snowpiercer as perhaps the most salient metaphor for our current climate (pun intended if you have familiarity with either the Graphic Novel or film on which I am referring). And if you see it you will fully understand the nature of how the train runs and why it runs. And a train to nowhere is not a train anyone wants to ride.

I read this op ed piece today in the New York Times and perhaps the author gets it better than most as we have often viewed Vegas in both mythical and metaphorical concepts. It is the land of gambling and in fact that is what many are doing now as they gamble it all to find someway up the mythical ladder held by the unicorn.

Long Odds in the Game of Life
By Brittany Bronson
MAY 26, 2015

LAS VEGAS — THE first essay assignment I give to my freshman composition students is to answer the question, “Why are you pursuing a university education?”

Many respond generally. To obtain a good job. Some refer to specific careers. A few reference learning. Mostly, my students mention money.

My students are very concerned with money, for good reason. They’ve spent their adolescence watching their parents survive or crumble under the Las Vegas housing crisis and endure the nation’s highest unemployment rate.

Most are from Nevada, and they attend my university for the in-state tuition. In fact, 95 percent of the students still live at home or off campus to save money. Many work part time to avoid crippling student loans, despite the scheduling conflicts it creates with their course work and additional years it often adds to obtaining their degree.

When I ask my students about the doors they hope their education will open, they have rather modest answers. To help run a father’s ramen noodle factory. To take over a family business that manufactures uniforms for hotels. Many students mention entry-level positions at local companies like Wynn Resorts or Zappos. Occasionally some have more robust dreams, like becoming a chief executive. Over all, their goals are fairly reasonable for anyone investing money and time at the university level.

But are they realistic?

Probably not, according to Richard Vedder, the director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. “There are too many college graduates for the kinds of jobs they expect to hold,” he said.
The problem is exacerbated in Nevada, which has not traditionally relied on college-educated workers. The 2015 Assets and Opportunities Scorecard ranked Nevada 47th in business and jobs and 51st — worst, behind even Washington, D.C. — in underemployment.

I personally meet several definitions for being underemployed. I have an advanced degree but work part-time in a low-skill job as a waitress. Also, my high-skill job at the university pays little and can’t guarantee me full-time work. Like most Las Vegans, I’m required to work multiple jobs to patch together a comfortably middle-class income.

So how do Nevada’s graduates avoid underemployment? Stephen Brown, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has a simple answer: They leave. “There is a strong desire to stay where one grew up, but part of the U.S. experience is moving,” he said. “Those students who do best are those who will relocate to cities demanding educated workers.”

Yet underemployment is a national phenomenon; as many as 22 million Americans fall into the category. Once considered a rite of passage, it now extends later into the average graduate’s working life, and the longer it lasts, the greater threat it poses. The more low-skill work we compile on our résumés, the less likely we are to convince employers we’re qualified for something else. Much ink has been spilled over how choosing the right major is crucial to avoiding underemployment. Talk to sociology majors graduating this month; I doubt they’re expecting to go straight into high-paying jobs. And it’s no secret that graduates of elite universities, whether they studied astrophysics or English, have better career trajectories than those from lower-tier schools.

But when it comes to students like mine, pursuing a humanities degree or maxing out student loans for the best available education are not options. They don’t always have the luxury to prioritize the intellectual experiences offered on a college campus over the monetary ones that demand their attention away from it. Their choices are shaped by immediate economic concerns more than their hoped-for, dreamed-of careers.

Even many career-building options are out. During a résumé-drafting project, a student approached me in tears, explaining that he could not afford to forgo his minimum-wage job to take an unpaid summer internship or semester abroad, even though it would bolster his résumé and foster professional connections.

Others have worked jobs they’d rather forget. A colleague’s student worked five years at a Vegas strip club. Including the job on her résumé risked being disregarded. Not including it painted the picture of another business major with no work experience, who took six years to finish her degree.

A student who was an undocumented immigrant had worked as a nanny and a landscaper, but had not done what he described to me as “legal” work. He could advertise his soft skills like multitasking and customer service, but lacked the “hard” skills that our STEM-obsessed job market favors. And yet, from what I’ve seen, many of my students would make excellent employees, wherever they worked. It might not show on their résumés, but their childhoods in a struggling yet diverse city like Vegas make them highly empathetic and capable of thinking beyond their own experiences. More than half of them can articulate complex ideas in a language that isn’t their first, an intellectual accomplishment unreached by many students at more prestigious schools.

For today’s college graduates, the path to underemployment begins early, and those with certain levels of financial privilege will have an easier time avoiding it. Despite my students’ practical choices of less expensive educational paths, they are still some of the most likely to struggle. As you learn quickly here in Vegas, the game isn’t rigged, but the odds don’t work in your favor.

Run Long for the Short of It

I think that might be some type of sports metaphor or close enough but when it comes to education we are running in all directions.

We have the push for STEM education, science technology engineering and math, the idea that this is an all encompassing curriculum that will turn all students into graduates into fields that they will find long term work and income. And we have the struggle to attract women into the field which lends to the further isolation and male hierarchy that dominates a profession, hey but GM finally put a chick behind the wheel.

And then we have the idea that education online will solve that dilemma twofold – by offering degrees at affordable rates. And then we have this little caveat today that online colleges are really holding or producing many students let alone graduates.

Then we have the idea that just having a degree is the magic key to suddenly long term wages and growth and occupation. And we have degreed people with six figure debt making our coffees, which will soon be replaced by robots.

Below is a breakdown of how college pays or not. The facts speak for themselves. Numbers don’t lie they do when they are manipulated in ways that make it so. Hard to know. There is no one answer, no one solution but there is however a need for some type of measurement and control so those who need to know can do so in a manner that allows them full knowledge and acknowledgement that the road well or even less traveled is one done with a GPS.

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December 9, 2013, 12:01

College Pays, Sort OfBy NANCY FOLBRE

Here’s the good news: Young adults who have finished college continue to earn significantly more than mere high school graduates.

.The gap between the median earnings of high school graduates and those with a bachelor’s degree or higher – the red versus the purple lines in the graphs here – remains wide. The difference, over a lifetime, is more than enough to justify the expense of attaining a bachelor’s degree.

Here’s the bad news: Adjusted for inflation, median earnings for young men with a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2011 were significantly lower than they were in 1971. Young women have slightly improved their position (by $630) since 1971. But as a comparison between the two graphs shows, their median is still lower than that of male high school graduates in 1971.

The College Board report that provides the basis for the charts above shows that the trend in real earnings of young college graduates is worse if restricted to those with a bachelor’s degree alone, but the historical time series for that category doesn’t go back as far.

Since 2000, the real average earnings of college graduates ages 25 to 34 with a bachelor’s degree alone have declined by about 15 percent. Does anyone seriously believe that college graduates today are less skilled or less productive than they were in 1971? Most of them are handy with hardware and software (not to mention “cloudware”) that didn’t even exist back then.

A large percentage of them are majoring in business in hopes of finding a job. Today, they are often instructed to head for majors in science, technology, engineering and math (the STEM disciplines), where they will almost certainly fare better than other graduates. But they still have a hard time finding jobs in their field of study.

Mal-employment – a more descriptive term than “underemployment,” which also includes involuntary part-time work – is growing, with more than a third of recent college graduates in jobs that don’t require a college degree.

Many college graduates are simply displacing less-educated workers from the jobs they once held, scrambling up the attic stairs to the roof of a bungalow whose first floor, inhabited by mere high school graduates, is now largely underwater.

The good news is that the stairs are still in place, and educators and policy makers should be urging young people toward them. But the finish-your-degree exhortations of reports like the College Board’s “Education Pays” and a Georgetown University report, “The Undereducated American,” should be tempered by the warning that college-educated workers in the United States are now subject to a combination of global market forces and public policies that are reducing their economic prospects.

Much recent debate over the causes of economic inequality has focused on the extent to which technological change (robots in particular) can take the blame. But whatever the causes, the political consequences of a continuing decline in the real average wages of young college-educated workers will be momentous.

It will undermine faith that a market economy always rewards effort, intelligence and skill, increasing awareness that most working people, not just those who didn’t go to college, are vulnerable to impersonal forces of supply and demand.

It might also increase appreciation of public policies that value both students and workers as something more than short-run inputs into a global market machine.

Ladders to Climb

I have no way of actually saying with certainty that apples are good for your health the same way college is good for your life.

I have met many College degreed people serving me lattes. I have met many college degreed people who need to serve me lattes. In all honesty I have no way of saying that either apples or college is good for you.

I recall dropping out of the Masters/Doctorate program years ago as I made more money remodeling houses.  True I gave up the “dream” of being called Doctor and that dream was up there with winning the lotto. Okay I have never played the lotto.  But I have also met many “Doctors” of the M.D., J.D. and Ph.D kind and frankly many of them need to learn I like a rich foam.

The numbers of letters following ones name may be actually added by “K’s” as in the denomination of them.  When you leave an ivy hall with a piece of paper that you just spent 6 figures for I would hope that is akin to owning a house – deed or degree – you need to be able to vest it as an investment that rises in value over time. Well that clearly is an analogy that I need to work on as it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

Eduardo Porter below discusses the diminishing but still clear value in what education offers for those who do pursue an advanced degree. But what he fails to mention that degrees are like cars, what is in fad today may not have the longevity and in turn value of the future.   He states that it adds over 365K in a lifetime.  OK in what professions? And from where were the degrees issued? The gender and income of the family and color as well should also figure into this historical “average”  Just a blanket statement seems vague and misleading.  Or as they say in law “heresay”   Ah don’t you miss the Mustang?

Rethinking the Rise of Inequality

By EDUARDO PORTER
Published: November 12, 2013

Many Americans have come to doubt the proposition that college delivers a path to prosperity.

In a poll conducted last month by the College Board and National Journal, 46 percent of respondents — including more than half of 18- to 29-year-olds — said a college degree was not needed to be successful. Only 40 percent of Americans think college is a good investment, according to a 2011 poll by the Pew Research Center.

On a pure dollars-and-cents basis, the doubters are wrong. Despite a weak job market for recent graduates, workers with a bachelor’s degree still earn almost twice as much as high school graduates. College might be more expensive than ever, but a degree is worth about $365,000 over a lifetime, after defraying all the direct and indirect costs of going to school. This is a higher payoff than in any other advanced nation, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Still, the growing skepticism about the value of a degree has fed into a deeper unease among some economists about the ironclad trust that policy makers, alongside many academics, have vested in higher education as the weapon of choice to battle widening income disparities and improve the prospects of the middle class in the United States.

It has given new vigor to a critique, mostly by thinkers on the left of the political spectrum, that challenges the idea that educational disparities are a main driver of economic inequality.

“It is absolutely clear that educational wage differentials have not driven wage inequality over the last 15 years,” said Lawrence Mishel, who heads the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning center for economic policy analysis. “Wage inequality has grown a lot over the last 15 years and the educational wage premium has changed little.”

The standard analysis of the interplay between technology and education, developed by economists like Lawrence Katz and Claudia Goldin of Harvard, and David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is based on a simple proposition: Technological progress increased the demand for highly educated workers who could deploy it profitably, increasing their incomes. Like trade, it rendered many less-skilled occupations obsolete, eliminating what used to be solid, middle-class jobs.

This rendition of history suggests that improvements in technology — coupled with a college graduation rate that slowed sharply in the 1980s — have been principal drivers of the nation’s widening income gap, leaving workers with less education behind.

But critics like Mr. Mishel point out that this theory has important blind spots.

For instance, why have wages for college graduates stagnated over the last decade, even as innovation continues at a breathtaking pace? Between 2000 and 2008 the typical earnings of men with at least a bachelor’s degree fell by more than $2,000, after inflation, to $70,332 a year. Between 2008 and last year they fell a further $3,500. Though somewhat less pronounced, the pattern is similar for women.

Both sides agree that the overall weakness of the job market since the turn of the millennium is a prime culprit. As Professor Katz noted: “The only moments we’ve had of broadly shared prosperity have been in tight labor markets.”

Still, the sluggish job growth of the last decade — following the rapid expansion during the second half of the 1990s — demands an explanation, which the interplay between technology and skill does not provide.

“We have no handle on what happened in the 2000s,” Professor Autor told me. “That is a mystery that nobody I know understands, and I can’t point to a single policy lever or a single external force that would explain it.” ‘

Most notably, the skills-and-tech story leaves aside one of the most perplexing and important dynamics of the last 30 years: the rise of the 1 percent, a tiny sliver of the population that last year took in almost a dollar out of every $4 generated by the American economy.

“I don’t think the college to noncollege wage premium gives you any insight into why such a large share of the economic gains has accrued to such a tiny share of the population,” said David Card, a noted labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Mishel’s preferred explanation of inequality’s rise is institutional: a shrinking minimum wage cut into the earnings of the nation’s least-skilled workers while falling trade barriers, deregulation and the decline of labor unions eroded the income of the middle class. The rise of the top 1 percent, he believes, is mostly about executive pay and the growing footprint of finance.

In coming weeks, Mr. Mishel and two co-authors, Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, expect to publish a study called “Don’t Blame the Robots: Assessing the Job Polarization Explanation of Growing Wage Inequality.”

In a conversation, Mr. Mishel argued that while education would improve workers’ economic mobility, if the ever-deepening concentration of income has little to do with the education gap, more education is unlikely to close it.

“Kids should still go to college, and when a whole lot more do we’ll have more opportunity,” he said. “But college wages will fall,” he added, as the supply of graduates increases. “This won’t really bring us broad-based wage growth, which is the central challenge to getting improved social mobility and expanding/rebuilding the middle class.”

When it comes to policy, however, the debate about the specific role that education and other factors play in deepening income inequality may contribute less light than heat.

Professors Katz and Autor agree that an array of policies is needed to address the labor market’s lopsided distribution of economic rewards. They range from a higher minimum wage to help lift the income of service workers at the bottom of the market to a larger earned-income tax credit.

More technical training could help upgrade the skills of high school graduates. Steeper income taxes on the very rich could curb the accumulation of income at the top. Perhaps most important, the design of macroeconomic policies might give more weight to maintaining low unemployment.

“Education is certainly part of the answer, but it is certainly not a complete answer,” Professor Katz said.

There is good reason to resist the proposition that education and technology are solely responsible for growing inequality. It provides political leaders an excuse to cast the problem as beyond the reach of policy.

“It can suck all the air out of the conversation,” Professor Autor acknowledged. “All economists should be pushing back against this simplistic view.”

Still, education plays a crucial role. A study a few years ago by Thomas Lemieux at the University of British Columbia concluded that increases in the returns on a college education accounted for almost 60 percent of the change in wage inequality between 1973 and 2005.

While Professor Lemieux’s data excluded the top few percent of earners, there is a lot of room for improvement left over.

Professor Katz illustrates this with a nifty calculation. Between 1979 and 2012 the share of national income captured by the richest 1 percent of taxpayers increased from 10 percent to 22.5 percent. Had their share instead remained at 10 percent and the rest been distributed equitably among taxpayers in the bottom 99 percent, each would have $7,105 more to spend.

By contrast, between 1979 and 2012 the gap between the annual wages of a typical family of two full-time workers with college degrees and one made up of two high school graduates grew by $30,000, after inflation.

“Nothing we do with the education supply will have a big impact among the top 1 percent,” Professor Katz said. But “could it improve the upward mobility and the prospects of a better job for Americans born in the bottom half of the income distribution? Yes.”

Stale Bread Stale Degree

Apparently degrees are the equivalent to bread, the fresher the better. After a day or two it goes stale and no one likes to eat stale bread right?

As we struggle to find work for all ages the intra class warfare is now among the degreed.  Those with fresh minty degrees are clean and lovely and employable, those with stale breath not so much. Regardless of the cost, the ambition, the desire to work, those with degrees over a couple of years old apparently suffer from what the long term unemployed have – skill set or knowledge set atrophy.

This atrophy is fascinating as I think it is something akin to the acronym NIMBY (not in my backyard) or as I call it UIHTY – “until it happens to you”-  you don’t think that there is anything wrong with that.

I will let you read the below article and MYOC.. make your own conclusions.  As I have written about and shared many times, these are more bullshit excuses or justifications to avoid hiring and paying people decent wages. Stockholders are people too my friends.

The New York Times interviewed President Obama who discussed the fraying social fabric of the disintegrating middle class but as before no plans or actions are in place to actually ensure and change that in the near or even distant future. As for Congress they have to repeal Obamacare and work on reproductive rights issues which are far more important that actually putting people to work which is how you build an economy. 

Frayed Prospects Despite a Degree  

Add caption

By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: July 19, 2013

At a time when many job seekers complain that their résumés vanish into a black hole, Charles Wells managed to get a high-level recruiter at Ernst & Young to meet with him in person, twice.

But the end result was disheartening: Mr. Wells was told, he said, that company policy required him to have at least two years of experience in the field before he could be hired.

If Mr. Wells were a newly minted college graduate, he would not have had that problem. Ernst & Young recruits heavily on college campuses for entry-level positions, no experience required.

But Mr. Wells graduated in 2011, during one of the worst job markets in history, and his work record since then — like countless numbers of his peers — doesn’t measure up to what employers like Ernst & Young demand for “experienced” applicants. Even as the jobs picture slowly improves, the disadvantage of bad timing follows those who graduated during the worst years. Applicants like Mr. Wells have neither the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed appeal of the class of 2013, nor the benefit of relevant work experience that might give them an edge.

“I’m competing against people that are graduating now,” said Mr. Wells, 27, who worked in construction and other jobs before starting college in 2007. “It’s easier to grab them up, because they’re fresh.”

His problems stem from the fact that companies typically divide their hiring into two pools: entry-level jobs, which are overwhelmingly filled by campus recruits, and experienced workers. Some allow recent graduates to stay in the first category for a year or two after getting their diploma. But recruiters say those applicants may find themselves at a disadvantage, especially if they have not been bolstering their résumés with classes, internships or volunteer work.

“If you’re a 2011 or a 2012 grad, the competition just got fierce — even more fierce — with the let-out of the 2013 class,” said Alexa Hamill, the United States campus recruiting leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers. “It’s like you’re in overtime, and they brought in the fresh team The impact of this is difficult to measure because government statistics do not allow for a comparison of the fate of this year’s graduates with their immediate predecessors, instead lumping all college graduates under 25 into one group. And certainly college graduates as a whole are doing vastly better than those with only a high school degree (young college graduates have an unemployment rate of just over 8 percent, while the unemployment rate for high school graduates within the same age group is close to 20 percent).

But everything that is known about the job market points to the fact that Mr. Wells and his cohort are feeling the pinch. Many of the country’s largest companies make most of their entry level hires on campus, meaning there are no slots for the hapless person who had the misfortune of graduating in 2011. And historically, those who graduate during a recession earn far less than their peers who do not, and it can take a decade or more for them to catch up. Many have been forced to settle for lower-wage, lower-skill jobs, which has in turn helped increase joblessness among the high school graduates who previously held those jobs.

In 2000, about 60 percent of employed college graduates were working in jobs that required a degree, said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Now fewer than half are.

Campus recruiters at a variety of institutions said that those who graduated in 2013 have had a relatively easy time finding jobs, in part because the prolonged economic downturn has made them more focused on preparing themselves for the workplace. Alumni who graduated in the previous few years continue to trickle in, asking for help.

“The class of 2009 just got royally screwed, because their first four years in the labor market were this horrible thing,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor specialist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research organization in Washington. “This year’s first four years won’t be that bad.”

Dan Black, the Americas director of recruiting for Ernst & Young, said that young applicants who were not current students needn’t bother sending a résumé without some connection to the firm through a friend, mentor or acquaintance. “You will not find entry-level jobs listed on our Web site,” he said.

For those with a job history marred by the recession, “we want to see that you have made productive use of your time since graduation — the Peace Corps, Teach for America, course-work, a C.P.A. exam,” he said. “I don’t think it’s bad to be a barista at Starbucks, but we need some evidence that you are continuing to move toward that goal of entering the field.”

Another challenge for the recent graduate is that companies have increasingly been hiring workers from their own pool of interns. Williams, an energy company based in Tulsa, Okla., started its internship program in 2005 and now makes 85 percent of its entry-level hires from the intern pool, said Paige Cole, the senior recruiter at Williams. Interns must be current college students.

Such practices mean students’ early choices are increasingly important.

“You actually could be making your first career choice decision when you accept that internship,” Ms. Cole said.

Even as the financial crisis hit, Mr. Wells, who received a degree in geography from Kennesaw State University outside Atlanta and is now teaching English as a second language, remained confident in his prospects, believing that he could set himself apart from his peers. “I figured right away I was going to have a job, but I’m learning a large lesson right now,” he said.

Mr. Wells said his skills had already become outdated. New graduates in his major are required to learn technological skills that he missed out on. He has had no luck applying at smaller companies where he could get the experience he needs for a job at Ernst & Young.

Unlike those who were blindsided by the recession after they started school, the class of 2013 knew even as first-year students that their competitiveness depended on getting internships, studying abroad and choosing their majors carefully. Mr. Wells, who is now heading to business school, said he wished he had chosen a more marketable major.

Karen Andrews, the executive director of career services at Kennesaw State, said that because so many newer alumni were unemployed or working in basic service industry jobs, she formed an alumni job club and ultimately hired a full-time alumni career adviser. “When the economy tanked, their lack of preparation became very obvious,” she said.

Still, many have tried to make the best of their situation, portraying their disappointing experience in the work force as real-world seasoning that might appeal to employers.

Ariana Wharton, 26, graduated from Kennesaw in 2011 with a degree in communications and public relations after switching majors from pre-med. When she did not find a job right away, she volunteered for the Red Cross and started her own business delivering fast food. She joined Ms. Andrews’s job club, where she fine-tuned her résumé. When she went to a job fair earlier this year, armed with a new elevator pitch, she landed a job in customer service for an international phone company, making $35,000 a year.

“I definitely felt like I had an edge over the students,” she said.

Sympathy for the Devil

I wrote about Luddites in an early blog and upon the announcement that more Americans are enrolling and in turn completing college that should be a good thing, right? Well in better days that may be true but in reality the truth is that many degrees are already obsolete, useless and expensive for what the economy offers in way of compensation for the effort and expense.

The saving world sector claims (as do others) that current Americans lack the skill set to do the jobs available. They are however quite vague as to what those skill sets are, unless you mean work for less wages and benefits without complaint, then it is quite clear.

 I do agree that we have a serious problem in communication skills, basic writing, reading and in turn cognitively connecting to those disciplines are rising. But to point out it was a 29 year old high school dropout that has shaken the world to its core with his PRISM revelations and ironically only a week or two before another high school dropout was acclaimed for selling his utterly over hyped dot.com/bomb/app or whatever to Yahoo. Ah yes the tech industry is awash in tales of the famous for dropping out, Gates, Jobs and Zuckerberg, who made it, yet they claim that without that same degree Americans are useless to do the jobs they outsource, in source or tech out to.

Paul Krugman’s column discusses the hypocrisy and in turn bullshit that the idea that a degree is what will save us from ourselves.

Sympathy for the Luddites

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: June 13, 2013
In 1786, the cloth workers of Leeds, a wool-industry center in northern England, issued a protest against the growing use of “scribbling” machines, which were taking over a task formerly performed by skilled labor. “How are those men, thus thrown out of employ to provide for their families?” asked the petitioners. “And what are they to put their children apprentice to?”

Those weren’t foolish questions. Mechanization eventually — that is, after a couple of generations — led to a broad rise in British living standards. But it’s far from clear whether typical workers reaped any benefits during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution; many workers were clearly hurt. And often the workers hurt most were those who had, with effort, acquired valuable skills — only to find those skills suddenly devalued.

So are we living in another such era? And, if we are, what are we going to do about it?

Until recently, the conventional wisdom about the effects of technology on workers was, in a way, comforting. Clearly, many workers weren’t sharing fully — or, in many cases, at all — in the benefits of rising productivity; instead, the bulk of the gains were going to a minority of the work force. But this, the story went, was because modern technology was raising the demand for highly educated workers while reducing the demand for less educated workers. And the solution was more education.

Now, there were always problems with this story. Notably, while it could account for a rising gap in wages between those with college degrees and those without, it couldn’t explain why a small group — the famous “one percent” — was experiencing much bigger gains than highly educated workers in general. Still, there may have been something to this story a decade ago.

Today, however, a much darker picture of the effects of technology on labor is emerging. In this picture, highly educated workers are as likely as less educated workers to find themselves displaced and devalued, and pushing for more education may create as many problems as it solves.

I’ve noted before that the nature of rising inequality in America changed around 2000. Until then, it was all about worker versus worker; the distribution of income between labor and capital — between wages and profits, if you like — had been stable for decades. Since then, however, labor’s share of the pie has fallen sharply. As it turns out, this is not a uniquely American phenomenon. A new report from the International Labor Organization points out that the same thing has been happening in many other countries, which is what you’d expect to see if global technological trends were turning against workers.

And some of those turns may well be sudden. The McKinsey Global Institute recently released a report on a dozen major new technologies that it considers likely to be “disruptive,” upsetting existing market and social arrangements. Even a quick scan of the report’s list suggests that some of the victims of disruption will be workers who are currently considered highly skilled, and who invested a lot of time and money in acquiring those skills. For example, the report suggests that we’re going to be seeing a lot of “automation of knowledge work,” with software doing things that used to require college graduates. Advanced robotics could further diminish employment in manufacturing, but it could also replace some medical professionals.

So should workers simply be prepared to acquire new skills? The woolworkers of 18th-century Leeds addressed this issue back in 1786: “Who will maintain our families, whilst we undertake the arduous task” of learning a new trade? Also, they asked, what will happen if the new trade, in turn, gets devalued by further technological advance?

And the modern counterparts of those woolworkers might well ask further, what will happen to us if, like so many students, we go deep into debt to acquire the skills we’re told we need, only to learn that the economy no longer wants those skills?

Education, then, is no longer the answer to rising inequality, if it ever was (which I doubt).

So what is the answer? If the picture I’ve drawn is at all right, the only way we could have anything resembling a middle-class society — a society in which ordinary citizens have a reasonable assurance of maintaining a decent life as long as they work hard and play by the rules — would be by having a strong social safety net, one that guarantees not just health care but a minimum income, too. And with an ever-rising share of income going to capital rather than labor, that safety net would have to be paid for to an important extent via taxes on profits and/or investment income.

I can already hear conservatives shouting about the evils of “redistribution.” But what, exactly, would they propose instead?

The 100K Receptionist

The article below demonstrates that the arrogance of the Job Creators is in full gear. No irony lost that this happens to be a law firm, one of the few growing in an industry that is taking a hit but not so much in ensuring that they get the best for the least.  If that is one trait I find common among most Attorneys, the ability to get as much as they can while extending as little effort as they can in every case they can.

But I do not believe that this trend is exclusive to the legal industry, it is everywhere. When you have people with immense debt and the need to work why not get the best for the least. But what is disturbing as you can see it again is that homogeneity that accompanies this process.  I am putting the link to the article because a picture speaks a thousand words and the accompanying photos speak volumes.  This firm looks akin to an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog, young white and highly educated. I do think a Receptionist with a 100K college debt is an impressive greeter at any company, right? What happened to the idea of working your way up and really in a law firm where are you going on that ladder?  The “poor” mail room boy is now going to take on another 6 figure debt with the belief that having a law degree will be the golden ticket.  He really needs to start reading the memos he distributes – hey kid it’s a worthless degree like the 100K Art Institute one the Receptionist has.

Its also ironic that this is Atlanta, a very Chocolate city and this place screams Vanilla. Why am I not surprised. Like hire like hire like.  Again that is very clear by the arrogant and smug remarks at the end of the article. And to think I was having trouble finding Attorney’s I could simply communicate with let alone like, I think this might be why.

It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job as a File Clerk 

By Catherine Rampell
Published: February 19,

ATLANTA —The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one, for getting even the lowest-level job.

Consider the 45-person law firm of Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh here in Atlanta, a place that has seen tremendous growth in the college-educated population. Like other employers across the country, the firm hires only people with a bachelor’s degree, even for jobs that do not require college-level skills.

This prerequisite applies to everyone, including the receptionist, paralegals, administrative assistants and file clerks. Even the office “runner” — the in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and the office — went to a four-year school.

“College graduates are just more career-oriented,” said Adam Slipakoff, the firm’s managing partner. “Going to college means they are making a real commitment to their futures. They’re not just looking for a paycheck.”

Economists have referred to this phenomenon as “degree inflation,” and it has been steadily infiltrating America’s job market. Across industries and geographic areas, many other jobs that didn’t used to require a diploma — positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters — are increasingly requiring one, according to Burning Glass, a company that analyzes job ads from more than 20,000 online sources, including major job boards and small- to midsize-employer sites.

This up-credentialing is pushing the less educated even further down the food chain, and it helps explain why the unemployment rate for workers with no more than a high school diploma is more than twice that for workers with a bachelor’s degree: 8.1 percent versus 3.7 percent.

Some jobs, like those in supply chain management and logistics, have become more technical, and so require more advanced skills today than they did in the past. But more broadly, because so many people are going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less capable.

Plus, it’s a buyer’s market for employers.

“When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out somehow,” said Suzanne Manzagol, executive recruiter at Cardinal Recruiting Group, which does headhunting for administrative positions at Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh and other firms in the Atlanta area.

Of all the metropolitan areas in the United States, Atlanta has had one of the largest inflows of college graduates in the last five years, according to an analysis of census data by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. In 2012, 39 percent of job postings for secretaries and administrative assistants in the Atlanta metro area requested a bachelor’s degree, up from 28 percent in 2007, according to Burning Glass.

“When I started recruiting in ’06, you didn’t need a college degree, but there weren’t that many candidates,” Ms. Manzagol said.

Even if they are not exactly applying the knowledge they gained in their political science, finance and fashion marketing classes, the young graduates employed by Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh say they are grateful for even the rotest of rote office work they have been given.

“It sure beats washing cars,” said Landon Crider, 24, the firm’s soft-spoken runner.

He would know: he spent several years, while at Georgia State and in the months after graduation, scrubbing sedans at Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Before joining the law firm, he was turned down for a promotion to rental agent at Enterprise — a position that also required a bachelor’s degree — because the company said he didn’t have enough sales experience.

His college-educated colleagues had similarly limited opportunities, working at Ruby Tuesday or behind a retail counter while waiting for a better job to open up.

“I am over $100,000 in student loan debt right now,” said Megan Parker, who earns $37,000 as the firm’s receptionist. She graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 2011 with a degree in fashion and retail management, and spent months waiting on “bridezillas” at a couture boutique, among other stores, while churning out office-job applications.

“I will probably never see the end of that bill, but I’m not really thinking about it right now,” she said. “You know, this is a really great place to work.”

The risk with hiring college graduates for jobs they are supremely overqualified for is, of course, that they will leave as soon as they find something better, particularly as the economy improves.

Mr. Slipakoff said his firm had little turnover, though, largely because of its rapid expansion. The company has grown to more than 30 lawyers from five in 2008, plus a support staff of about 15, and promotions have abounded.

“They expect you to grow, and they want you to grow,” said Ashley Atkinson, who graduated from Georgia Southern University in 2009 with a general studies degree. “You’re not stuck here under some glass ceiling.”

Within a year of being hired as a file clerk, around Halloween 2011, Ms. Atkinson was promoted twice to positions in marketing and office management. Mr. Crider, the runner, was given additional work last month, helping with copying and billing claims. He said he was taking the opportunity to learn more about the legal industry, since he plans to apply to law school next year.

The firm’s greatest success story is Laura Burnett, who in less than a year went from being a file clerk to being the firm’s paralegal for the litigation group. The partners were so impressed with her filing wizardry that they figured she could handle it.

“They gave me a raise, too,” said Ms. Burnett, a 2011 graduate of the University of West Georgia.

The typical paralegal position, which has traditionally offered a path to a well-paying job for less educated workers, requires no more than an associate degree, according to the Labor Department’s occupational handbook, but the job is still a step up from filing. Of the three daughters in her family, Ms. Burnett reckons that she has the best job. One sister, a fellow West Georgia graduate, is processing insurance claims; another, who dropped out of college, is one of the many degree-less young people who still cannot find work. <

Besides the promotional pipelines it creates, setting a floor of college attainment also creates more office camaraderie, said Mr. Slipakoff, who handles most of the firm’s hiring and is especially partial to his fellow University of Florida graduates. There is a lot of trash-talking of each other’s college football teams, for example. And this year the office’s Christmas tree ornaments were a colorful menagerie of college mascots — Gators, Blue Devils, Yellow Jackets, Wolves, Eagles, Tigers, Panthers — in which just about every staffer’s school was represented.

“You know, if we had someone here with just a G.E.D. or something, I can see how they might feel slighted by the social atmosphere here,” he says. “There really is something sort of cohesive or binding about the fact that all of us went to college.”