Yes, it has come to this. Increasingly, college
graduates are trading their mortarboards for hard hats. Why?
Because that is where the jobs are. Plus, there is a looming
wave of retirements, as most current coal miners are in their 50's.
The story is at
href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1031/p01s05-usgn.html">Christian
Science Monitor.
Note: it is not as gloomy as it sounds.
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Interesting article. Maybe the world is getting back to some sense.
I am reminded of the cargo cults that appeared in the South Pacific. During the war, locals, seeing airports and roads associated with the arrival of goods, people and money in the form of military personnel decided to build wooden airports, complete with planes and control towers, expecting the goods to arrive shortly.
In the 50-70s, it was obvious that, overall, the college educated people made a lot more money than people with less education (what seems to have been overlooked were that these were generally the exceptional people). So the answer seemed to be, get more people college educated. But, as with the cultists building their airports, the expectation that printing more diplomas would make everyone wealthy simply did not wash. True, the most educated were still the top wage earners, but only a limited number of jobs in society pay that well, and their percentage will not be automatically made bigger just by educating more people.
So what has happened, unfortunately, is that the expectation of a degree has been spread to many jobs that simply do not require it. Hence now, the person who cannot get a college degree because of finances or personal issues is at much more of disadvantage than before. A new, very expensive (in time and money) hurdle has been placed in front of even mid level jobs.
one more thing...
get into mining and you might get to drive one of these:
http://members.fortunecity.es/100pies/colosos/fotoscolosos/Caterpillar-…
try cutting and pasting the URL, doesn't work as a link
link.
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