Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by rafiki6 on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @11:01AM (#18969203)

Sure, I'm not sure anyone actually denies this. College education was something only upper class folks could receive (especially a liberal arts degree with dubious value in society) due to it's expense. With the emergence of things like state schools, the barrier became lower. But the fact of the matter is higher paying jobs required college degrees, and the best chance for most people at a middle class lifestyle are those jobs. Well now, wages have stagnated for most jobs, the true value of a non-STEM college degree has becoming glaringly obvious, and opportunities for people to maintain a middle-class lifestyle are rapidly declining. The MBA has been serving as that proxy for how upper class you are especially from expensive prestigious universities. When the highest value of a degree is "the opportunity to network" that should tell you something. Now with the pressures of off-shoring manufacturing, automation, and growing immigrant populations willing to do low-skilled labor to survive, is it really at all surprising that many people are being shut out of the economy? It all comes down to a fundamentally broken economic model that values growth above all. Our population grew in tandem with our economy. Once automation of manufacturing processes took hold, we quickly started to need less people. The reality is we probably don't need 7 billion humans anymore, and we need to transition to a more efficient sustainable economic model that isn't aiming for growth above all.

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by robhunter on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @11:15AM (#18969323)

> College education was something only upper class folks could receive (especially a liberal arts degree with dubious value in society) due to it's expense. With the emergence of things like state schools, the barrier became lower.

This is not factually correct - tuition at non-state schools increased 10X in the last 30 years, way ahead of the pace of inflation. College education is significantly much less affordable than it was years ago.

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by shams93 on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @11:34AM (#18969485)

Its even more stark when you look at University of California. My first year at UCI in 1990 tuition was $80, 5 years later my last year of tuition had leaped to $10,000. By the time all my student loans were paid I had paid off $750,000, there's a lot a person could do with that money. Baby Boomers with their $80 a year tuition were able to buy homes, invest in the market. There was a decision made in the 90s to transform education from an investment in society from the top down to a system of indentured servitude.

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by ahakki on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @12:07PM (#18969886)

Wait, how do five years of University at a price of $80 - $10000 a year add up to 750'000. Because that is a huge number.

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by ams6110 on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @02:50PM (#18971742)

Really, UC tuition was essentially free before 1990? I had no idea. Is that true?

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by rsync on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @11:28AM (#18969430)

>> "College education was something only upper class folks could receive ... due to it's expense."

> "This is not factually correct - tuition at non-state schools increased 10X in the last 30 years, way ahead of the pace of inflation."

You are only considering the monetary cost of college which has, indeed, skyrocketed.

However a more significant cost in the era you are both speaking of was the cost of not working immediately after high school - especially when that same social class very likely had started a family, or had a family they were coming from that needed support.

People coming from a high SES background could afford four years of non-earning, etc.

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Re:Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers by mattnewton on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @11:29AM (#18969450)

Part of the reason it exploded though is there seems to be a bottomless supply of student loans, I am guessing because of how hard they are to forgive unlike regular debt. So many teenagers are encouraged to borrow whatever the schools ask by virtually everyone they know so that they can get their degree, and lenders will gladly give them 30k a year to study zoology or some other field with a rough job market.

The result is college is more attainable to people across the social stratum. And then degrees are less rare, commanding a lower premium while the people holding them have more debt.

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