My op-ed in The Guardian!! Now everyone make like a hipster and learn a trade (like pickling)!
Wow, wow, this feels so gratifying: I wrote an op-ed for The Guardian: “The Case for Blue-Collar: College No Longer Guarantees Success.” I’d love if you could check it out and pass it along…and check out my other post “Anatomy of an Op-Ed,” to see what went on behind the scenes!
Hi! Congrats on your op-ed! Cristiana Baik passed this along to me on facebook, and I thought it was a great article, and really wonderfully written too (i’m appreciative of your super-inefficient writing method; at least the results are good!). having spent a lot of time as a member of the ‘precariat’ myself I am totally sympathetic to your main point. Without denying at all how crappy the labor market is for college grads and advanced degrees, though, I think it’s important not to overestimate blue collar labor conditions. Workers in their 20s with a high school degree make on average 15 or 20,000 less than their counterparts with a BA (depending on if its men or women). And it’s a bit misleading to compare the median salary of all electricians with that of recent college grads, since pay for electricians has been traditionally structured by seniority, and that average salary synthesizes lots of highs and lows at either end of the spectrum (same goes with recent collage grads and ALL high school grads – you should compare recent with recent, or median with median). A more illuminating figure – one that does not compare apples and oranges – would be looking at beginning electricians and recent grads, and I suspect if there would be any wage gap there, it would be the other way around. Also, the median salary figure you cite obscures big wage gaps between unionized and non-union sectors, which can be $10,000 or more. I don’t know the figures on unionization rates for electricians but given the super dramatic decline of unionization rates overall – plus the increasing number of ‘right to work’ states, the end of union preference for public contracts, etc. – I wouldn’t be surprised if a very big portion of that 23% job growth figure represents non-union jobs at the far lower end of the pay spectrum. So I totally agree with you about the job market sucking massively for recent college grads, and that we’d be much better off dropping our biases against blue collar work. But I think the conditions for blue collar work these days have been transformed just as much as, if not more dramatically than, the conditions of white collar work. The world of, say, my grandparents, who worked factory jobs and by the end got to live a solid, middle class life, is really over. The horrible situation of people with huge loans and advanced degrees scraping by on low wages – a condition I’ve shared – shouldn’t obscure the extent to which the labor market has become more stratified than ever for everybody, including by educational attainment. There are lots of reasons for that, but one huge one is the massive decline in the power of unions in American society – something that has helped very few of us, and hurt most of us, blue collar workers most of all. Anyway, there’s my unsolicited two cents, and again, great article!
–Ian Zuckerman
Patricia,
Your Guardian essay is terrific and has parallels with GMU econ professor Bryan Caplan’s views on education. He argues that a college education is primarily used for “signaling” (perseverance/intelligence) to employers and is vastly overrated in terms of its educational value. See his posts at Econlog. My daughter is bright but I don’t care if she goes to college as long as she is happy.
Keep plugging — and bagging — away.
– Lee Waaks
Dear Lee, Thanks so much for reaching out! I just checked out BC’s site and it looks like he’s working on some pretty cool stuff. Thanks for turning me on to his work!
And, for what my $0.02 is worth, I think you have just the right attitude re your daughter. Best of luck to her–and to you!
cheers,
P