This isn’t really how it works or how it has ever worked.
It’s never been the case that an education gives you a guaranteed return. That fact has been molded for various political wills, the latest being that some degrees are “worthless”. But the data (I’m referencing the recent data about degrees no longer eligible for student loans) doesn’t show that overall. For example, a Fine Arts degree from most institutions will still get you a return over a high school education, but not from all institutions. It’s still generally a good investment, but not a guaranteed one.
And to be fair, there are no guaranteed investments, regardless of what the rich want us to believe. Education shouldn’t be singled out there.
What changed is wage theft. This leads to a lot of conflation between the value of a degree and the undervaluing of wages in general. Industries want the skills from an educated workforce, but they don’t want to pay for them. Once enough people were educated so that the uneducated were a small enough part of the labor pool, the same jobs at the same wages were offered again, but with a “bachelors required” fine print.
Hell, there are now even jobs paying $20-25 an hour which require a Masters degree. This is a problem of unfettered capitalism, not education.
If paying for education does not get you a better paying job then it was a ripoff and you should sue them.
This isn’t really how it works or how it has ever worked.
It’s never been the case that an education gives you a guaranteed return. That fact has been molded for various political wills, the latest being that some degrees are “worthless”. But the data (I’m referencing the recent data about degrees no longer eligible for student loans) doesn’t show that overall. For example, a Fine Arts degree from most institutions will still get you a return over a high school education, but not from all institutions. It’s still generally a good investment, but not a guaranteed one.
And to be fair, there are no guaranteed investments, regardless of what the rich want us to believe. Education shouldn’t be singled out there.
What changed is wage theft. This leads to a lot of conflation between the value of a degree and the undervaluing of wages in general. Industries want the skills from an educated workforce, but they don’t want to pay for them. Once enough people were educated so that the uneducated were a small enough part of the labor pool, the same jobs at the same wages were offered again, but with a “bachelors required” fine print.
Hell, there are now even jobs paying $20-25 an hour which require a Masters degree. This is a problem of unfettered capitalism, not education.
I agree with what you are saying but I believe it’s never just one thing.