[tptacek]

Yes, but his point is that the society that marshaled those degree-holders only had a pool of 5% of graduates to draw on. There's no question that some jobs require college education; the question is whether there are enough of them to justify pushing the majority of 18-year-olds into 4-year colleges.

[watwut]

The mood landing is pretty bad example. It is useless except for propaganda and good feeling. It is organizational and technological achievement, but not particularly needed by society that produced it.

People don't go to college to moorland nor to facilitate next war. They go to college to get corporate jobs.

[pclmulqdq]

Looking at the moon landing and the Manhattan project, you hear about the very few PhDs on the program. They were outnumbered at least 100:1 by skilled tradespeople who manufactured components of those programs. None of those manufacturing jobs need a college degree, just time and focus, which a college degree detracts from by taking 4 more years of your life. You should look at the LHC for a modern example. Even these feats of science need a small minority of people employed in them to be trained scientists.

[watwut]

Manufacturing still don't require college.

But, qork in manufacture sux. Also very related, those job were either replaced by machines or moved abroad.

[inawarminister]

Sucks for who? The capital owners? Compare being employed in a regular shift in a production plant to irregular shifts in 2-3 different "sharing economy" apps.

Manufacturing moved abroad seems one explicit failure of Western post-war economic system for me. And here I'm from the third world myself.