Straight Platform Politics

College Education – Part 2

College Education: its potential

The debt accrued by college students, the decrease in job availability, and the unattained earning potential that so many new grads are experiencing are causing many to question the value of a college education.  See Part 1  With more corporations hiring H-1B visa workers, some college grads are finding their earning potential and their dreams evaporating.

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa and is a means by which corporations may hire foreign workers for specialty jobs. Congress has capped the number of H-1B visas that are available, but since there are so many loopholes, the actual number of foreign workers working under these visas is unknown.

Phyllis Schlafly noted in her column, How Young Engineers and Our Economy Are Betrayed (5-1-09), that according to a recent study, those hit hardest by H-1B visas are recent college grads and those who want to change jobs.

She also stated, “Large corporations prefer to use H-1B visas to hire foreign engineers and computer technicians” because “they work for lower wages with fewer rights.”

Hadley Gamble observed in his article, As Economy Slumps, Firms Line Up to Hire Skilled Foreign Workers (3-19-09), “At a time when high-tech corporations like Microsoft, Cisco and IBM are laying off American workers by the thousands, some of those very same companies will begin applying for the right to hire foreign workers on April 1.”

“Microsoft Corporation led U.S. companies receiving H-1B visas last year with a total of 1,037. Microsoft’s announcement in January that the company would shed up to 3,000 jobs over the next 18 months does not seem to be putting a damper on its search for foreign talent.”

Too often college grads find out too late that their degrees do not have the earning potential promised by college recruiters.

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College Education – Part 1

College Education: its worth

More and more people are reevaluating whether a college degree is worth the expense, the time, and the effort. The debt accrued by college students, the decrease in job availability, and the unattained earning potential that so many new grads are experiencing are causing many to question the value of a college education.

Megan Twohey writes in Is college worth it? (10-14-08), “Money is only one of the reasons to go to college, of course. But with college costs skyrocketing and the economy worsening, the question of whether higher education is a worthy financial investment is no longer a no-brainer. For decades, the earnings gap between college graduates and high school graduates grew and grew. Get a bachelor’s degree, and you were almost guaranteed to be a lot better off.”

The title of Kathy Kristof’s article in Forbes (2-2-09) is The Great College Hoax. She observed: “While the premium that college grads earn over high schoolers has remained relatively constant over the past five years, the cost of acquiring a degree has risen at twice the rate of inflation, dramatically undermining any value a sheepskin adds.”

However, while more and more people are questionimg the value of a college education, President Obama wants more students to attend college. A part of his education strategy for America is to ‘provide every American with a quality higher education, whether college or technical training.’

Richard Vedder, a professor at Ohio Universtiy, was asked by the Associated Press (2-28-09) whether this was realistic. He answered, “Not everyone can or should go to college…. Fulfillment of President Obama’s goal would lead to many students failing, resources being squandered and the quality of post-secondary education being diluted.”

But the same thing can be said about universal healthcare, universal pre-school, or universal anything: money is squandered and worth decreases. For future college students, this is not good news.

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