| I'll just briefly hit the major points of what I think is "wrong with the system" since this is obviously a huge topic. First, public educations are a crap shoot. A high school diploma is a joke, it doesn't even guarantee basic literacy or numeracy. This is a big reason why white collar jobs have increasingly been forced to rely on other credentials. Despite vastly increasing per student spending over the years the quality of education hasn't improved at all and by some measures has gotten worse. Second, student loan debt is out of control. It's too easy for people to sign themselves up for huge amounts of debt regardless of their future job opportunities. This distorts the market and creates an education bubble. Third, society has turned its back on "dirty jobs". It's becoming less and less common for folks, especially middle and upper middle class young adults, to aspire toward jobs that involve manual labor. There's nothing wrong with construction, welding, automotive repair, culinary arts, etc. Trade schools are faster and cheaper than a 4 year college, and they typically leave a graduate with very solid prospects at gaining a fairly well paying job just out of school. If more people made that choice unemployment would be a lot lower. Fourth, "vanity degrees" are far too common these days, partly for the reasons listed above. If you need higher education to further your career then if you pursue a degree with very shaky career prospects and you go into massive debt to do so then quite frankly you made a very bad life choice, and all of the people who helped you do it (your family and friends, your counselors, your loan officers, etc.) are partly to blame as well. Yes there is value to studying history, or English literature, but you should never for even a single moment fool yourself into believing that you are doing anything other than digging your own financial grave when you are indulging in those majors. Unfortunately for a lot of middle and upper middle class 18-25 year olds there has come to be a great deal of pressure behind taking the same "acceptable" educational and career track. High school -> 4 year arts & science degree at a prestigious school -> white collar job. If you are in high school or college right now I urge you to challenge this. Look at your career prospects and finances seriously. Consider becoming a STEM major if possible. If that's not feasible consider switching to a trade school. And try to get yourself into the job market early even while you are in school to build up your resume and your skills. It's far, far easier to study history and English lit as a hobby in your free time than it is to build a well paying career on such things. |
Construction jobs, for example, are pretty much none to be had at the moment, and wages have been significantly falling in real terms for some decades. My grandfather made a middle-class wage as a carpenter working on house construction in the 1950s, but the crew that built my parents' recent-ish suburban home were all making minimum wage assembling factory-cut materials (and there's oversubscribed demand even for those jobs). Auto mechanic is not a particularly good job market at the moment, either. Skilled welding is indeed in demand, but it takes a substantial amount of time to build up the level of skill that's currently in demand (with the prevalence of machine welds, there's no longer a smooth on-the-job skills progression).
I'm not sure it's actually a better bet than getting an English BA and looking for an office job, though. Both have high unemployment rates currently, but blue-collar-worker unemployment rates are even higher than English-major unemployment rates.