"I feel the need to explain something to the generation that does not remember, or never saw, a world where one person with a high school education could support a family of 5 comfortably.
"This was real. For millions of US families. It was *normal.*
"It was stolen from you."
@IAmDannyBoling Hm, so families headed by well-paid, uneducated parents are now considered a good thing? I don't know... I think it's the OP who doesn't remember, or never saw, that world.
@josemanuel @IAmDannyBoling Yes. It is a good thing. A family shouldn’t need to work multiple jobs to be able to survive.
Requiring higher education to have a living wage:
a. rules a lot of folks out of the living wage pool - I would say that is bad.
b. severely devalues higher education. At the time that the family OP spoke of how do you think the engineer with the degree was living? How about now?
See, a robust middle class makes everyone better. Except the really really really rich people who don’t get to hoard the massive piece of wealth that would fund such a thing.
@bleakfuture No, it is not a good thing, and I'll tell you why. The key word was not ‘well-paid,’ as you seemed to believe, but ‘uneducated.’
When uneducated people have children, they usually don't have anything to offer to satisfy their kids' natural thirst for knowledge. They don't have books in the house, or good records they can share with them. They have nothing at all to teach them (after all, they only know about their jobs), so they will be forced to learn elsewhere.
This means that, at some point, the world view of the parents and that of the children will diverge, and that will bring communication problems that the parents will blame on puberty and teenage rebellion. If they're also dumb, they will try to control them, straining the relationship even more.
What will happen if, on top of being uneducated, they are also well-paid? Well, the parents, then, will think they are _not_ failures, and that will create an even greater divide, because now they won't have a low opinion of themselves. (On the contrary. They earn good money. They are clearly not the losers people thought they would become.)
So, when the kids inevitably find out their parents are not the role models they hoped they would be, they will try to keep their distance, but the parents, still seeing themselves as the greatest thing since sliced bread, will start feeling resentment towards their children: “Why won't they talk to me? Why won't they admire me? I've given them everything money could buy! (And whenever we argue, I'm right, because I'm the one who's well-paid and self-made.)”
In short, higher education should be the standard, with high school being just the minimum needed to survive in the woods. That doesn't devalue higher education at all. How can knowledge be devalued just by being the rule? Even in economic terms, everybody chooses their own studies, right? There should be no flood of graduates waiting for the exact same job.
Problem has always been to think of higher education as a thing for the rich to get the good jobs. It is not. It is for everyone, as human beings.
tl; dr: I was not talking about economics (of course I support a living wage for everyone), but about children's welfare and their prospects in life. (BTW, of course there are exceptions to the examples I gave, but they are just that: exceptions.)
You raised interesting points. Sorry I could not address all of them for fear of spreading too thin.
@josemanuel @IAmDannyBoling yeah I can’t follow you on this one.
In the examples you stated there seems to be some metamorphosis that occurs upon receipt of a BA that completely transforms one from worthless loser who is a shame to themselves and their children into a shining pillar of modern civility.
I want to be respectful about this but it seems like it’s coming from a place of not really experiencing much of the world and life yet. Maybe age, maybe circumstances, maybe I’m just wrong…
Let me be clear.
You do not need to be smart to graduate college.
You do not need to be particularly skilled or even disciplined to graduate college.
You are not required to go to college for a wide variety of excellent careers.
I guarantee you that I could tell more about a candidate that I hire from the details of their student loans than their transcripts. That’s a much better measure of a persons common sense and decision making.
Cool, you have a degree - what did you pay for it?