Showing posts with label Michael Hais. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Hais. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

How many college graduates have jobs that don't require a college degree? You might be surprised.

Last April, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released an analysis of labor-market conditions for college graduates. Here is what it found:

  • In 2015, almost 45 percent of recent college graduates (graduates aged 22 through 27) were working in jobs that do not require a college degree.
  • Around 35 percent of all graduates (graduates aged 22 through 65) were holding down jobs that don't require a college education.
  • Wages for recent college graduates have remained relatively flat from 1990 to 2015.
So what do these numbers mean for young Americans?

College is not a good bet for everyone. First, although the college industry and their advocates (Brookings Institution, etc.) like to remind us that people who graduate from college make more money over their lifetimes than people who only have high school diplomas, going to college is not a good bet for everyone.

As the New York Fed has shown us, darn near half of recent college graduates are working in jobs they could have gotten without going to college. Of course many recent graduates will eventually find jobs that require a college degree. But even among the college-educated population as a whole, about one third of college graduates are working in jobs that do not require a college education.

 The payoff for getting a college degree is not as good as it once was. Second, wages for college graduates have remained about the same for the past 25 years--about $45,000 in constant 2015 dollars. But the cost of going to college has tripled over the last quarter of a century. That's why about two thirds of college graduates leave school with college-loan debt.

Thus, you may still need to go to college to earn a decent income, but a larger share of that income is going to go to servicing student loans.  In other words, recent college graduates are not as well off financially as their counterparts were 1990 because a majority of them are graduating with a significant amount of debt.

The case for a free college education gets stronger and stronger. People laughed at Bernie Sanders when he argued for a free college education from a public college for anyone who wants one. But, as I have repeatedly pointed out, Bernie's plan would actually cost less than the current federal loan program, because millions of people aren't paying off their loans.

Now Bernie is gone--swept away in the California primary election, and the higher education community can look at this idea afresh without fear of undermining their favorite presidential candidate--Hillary Clinton.

And lo and behold, the Brookings Institution published a paper today by a couple of croakers named Morley Winograd and Michael Hais that suggests free college might be a good thing.

And it would be a good thing. Certainly offering a free college education would be better than Hilary's scheme to pump billions of dollars more into a higher education system that is corrupt, obsolete, inefficient, and horribly overpriced.

References

The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates. Federal Reserve Bank f New York, 2016. Accessible at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market/index.html

Mathew Boesler. More College Grads Finding Work, But Not in the Best Jobs. Bloomberg.com, April 7, 2016. Accessible at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/more-college-grads-finding-work-but-not-in-the-best-jobs

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais. The Democrats' Generation Gap. Brookings Institution, Jun 3, 2016. Accessible at http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2016/06/03-millennials-democrats-election-2016-winograd-hais?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=30380706&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8kyQSbZyUfxh-t2hnsxhvRRXvUp2j0eORShy09EK-7-HQpeIdEwoZaQ1CXQ3fR5CAxWRHk2cBWPTT6cCkIOO74q4BLUw&_hsmi=30380706

 Morley Winograd and Michael Hais. The Democrats' Generation Gap, Mike and Morley web site, June 6, 2016. http://www.mikeandmorley.com/the_democrats_generation_gap


Morley Winograd and Michael Hais recommend free college in a Brookings paper less than 24 hours after Bernie Sanders lost the California primary


The Brookings Institution is a cowardly, sniffling organization committed to preserving the status quo in higher education. And here is another indication of that.

On June 8, the morning after Hillary beat Bernie in California, Brookings posted an essay by Morley Winograd and Michael Hais about how the Democrats can win back  the young voters who went for Bernie Sanders over Hillary by 3 or 4 to 1. 

In case you haven't heard of them, Morley Winograd and Michael Hais are two old coots who profess to be experts on the millennial generation. Judging by their photos, Winograd and Hais are not millennials themselves, but they have written some books about millennials and that makes them experts.

In their essay for Brookings, Winograd and Hais cooed approvingly about Hillary's stand on the student-loan crisis:  "[Hillary] has already spoken out forcefully on the need to lift the burden of student debt from this generation," the authors wrote. They note that sheendorses the idea of allowing college-loan borrowers to refinance their loans and she favors loan forgiveness for people who were defrauded by "unscrupulous lenders or schools." 

Big friggin' deal. Allowing distressed debtors to refinance their loans will not solve the student loan crisis. There are 43 million people with outstanding college-loan debt, and most have signed multiple promissory notes. There must be at least 200 million individual debt instruments floating around--maybe twice that many.  Is the federal government really going to refinance all those loans at lower interest rates? In your dreams, Mike and Morley.

And as for the notion that defrauded students should have their loans forgiven, I've got news for you, Mike and Morley. The Department of Education already has a debt forgiveness program in place. The problem is that the process is so cumbersome that very few loans have actually been forgiven.

But here's the money quote.  Mike and Morley recommend a free college education for everybody.
 "[M]illennials and the generations that come after them should be able to get their higher education debt free," Winograd and Hais wrote, "because that’s the level of education they—and America—will need to be successful both in today’s economy and in the years ahead."

Hey, that's exactly what Bernie Sanders said at his first debate with Hillary last fall. If this is such a good idea, why didn't Mike and Morley, the so-called millennial experts, suggest it sooner? Why didn't Hillary endorse this idea? And, more to the point of this commentary, why didn't the Brookings Institution publicize this idea before the California primary rather than after the votes were counted and Bernie was defeated?

I'll tell you why--because Hillary, the Brookings Institution, and the Democratic Party are committed to the status quo in higher education. If Americans could get a free college education from a public college in the same way they get a free high school education, the for-profit colleges would shut down almost overnight and the elite private colleges would be forced to slash their tuition rates.

Hillary is not going to let that happen. She and Bill have made too much money off the higher education industry, and so have Democratic Party insiders like Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  That's why Mike and Morley's whispered suggestion about a free college education didn't surface until after Hillary had defeated Bernie. And my prediction is this: the Brookings Institute will never allow this very good idea to be floated again in any of its publications.

Image result for morley winograd and michael hais
Morley Winograd & Mihael Hais: Experts on millennials

 Note: The Winograd and Hais essay is dated June 3, 2016, but it first appeared for public viewing on the Brookings web site on June 8, 2016. The same essay appeared on the Mike and Morley web site on June 6. 

References

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais. The Democrats' Generation Gap. Brookings Institution, Jun 3, 2016. Accessible at http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/fixgov/posts/2016/06/03-millennials-democrats-election-2016-winograd-hais?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=30380706&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8kyQSbZyUfxh-t2hnsxhvRRXvUp2j0eORShy09EK-7-HQpeIdEwoZaQ1CXQ3fR5CAxWRHk2cBWPTT6cCkIOO74q4BLUw&_hsmi=30380706

 Morley Winograd and Michael Hais. The Democrats' Generation Gap, Mike and Morley web site, June 6, 2016. http://www.mikeandmorley.com/the_democrats_generation_gap