Anxiety and Transitions

For the past few weeks, there has been an undercurrent in the comment section that we are entering a period of transition in the economy and society. The economy is moving in a new direction. Professions that were long considered secured and respected may not exist much longer. This anxiety is playing out in many ways. Parents are more worried than ever that their children won't have the requisite skills to find work. They question the education that they're getting in high schools and colleges. Also, adults are struggling to redefine their professional lives.

I was struck by a statistic in a recent article about colleges and the humanities. It said that the University of Phoenix, the online college, has the largest enrollment of any American university: over 400,000 undergrads and 78,000 grad student. The author concluded with deep pessimism about the employment prospects of newly minted PhDs. I suspect the move to online education and the decline of traditional liberal arts colleges has larger implications. 

Tim Burke writes about that a new style of parenting is arising out of our insecurities.

Comments

[dave.s.]

If you are an anxious declinist, worried about your kids, here is a blog post to read: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/04/tyler_cowens_sp.html.
How to identify the buggy-whip factories of the new century? Don't know. Making something which has a high labor content and is small so could be made in China is probably a bad bet. 'There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?'...

[dave.s.]

(your favorite declinist here) It used to be clear that if you went to college and did tolerably you would make enough money to buy a house, it would rise in value some and you would have enough equity to finance your kids' college and maybe even your retirement. This was true even if you went to Directional State Normal School.
Now I see terrified posts at the Above The Law blog from law graduates who have student loans coming due and who have been no-offered by firms they summered with; folks with hundred-thousand dollar debts for lower payoff degrees are not finding anything.
This seems like we are past the thin edge of the wedge and the grain of middle class assumptions is being split apart.
One thing which might be helpful would be putting student loans back into the area which could be discharged in bankruptcy - this would make loan issuers more cautious ('young lady, you want to borrow $30000 to get a degree in Sociology at Directional State U. Our figures suggest that your chance of a job with that degree from that school is one in fifteen. Loan application denied. Come back and apply again if you have an acceptance from DSU School of Podiatric Medicine.')
In Lake Wobegone, all of the children are above average. Here in the United States, half are below average - but many kids for whom college is just an expensive way to spend a couple of years, and who are not realistically likely even to graduate, still less make a record which will impress employers, are encouraged to go deep into debt for it.

[Amy P]

"It used to be clear that if you went to college and did tolerably you would make enough money to buy a house, it would rise in value some and you would have enough equity to finance your kids' college and maybe even your retirement."

I don't know about that (unless you're talking about the bubble itself). If you look at the chart here

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/update-case-shiller-100-year-chart/

of home home prices over a hundred years, home appreciation is actually pretty flat (with temporary spikes in the 70s and 80s) from the 1950s to the end of the 20th century. The idea is that while home prices have obviously risen quite a bit, they have only kept pace with inflation. Owning a home is a protection against inflation (an excellent thing), but it doesn't actually create the sort of wealth that can be used to pay college tuition. If your home rises in value and you borrow against that value for tuition, you haven't made progress financially (although it's true that you probably got excellent terms for the loan). It's true that there was a good long run of real estate arbitrage where people from high cost areas (like Californians) were able to sell their homes and move to low cost areas (like Nevada, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, etc.), but even in those days, if you wanted to retire in the same area (which is where your family and friends probably are) having a home that had appreciated would not help, since you have to live somewhere, and even the bottom tier of homes got very expensive. Although I suppose that it would be very handy if you wanted to go to a nice, expensive nursing home.

"One thing which might be helpful would be putting student loans back into the area which could be discharged in bankruptcy - this would make loan issuers more cautious ('young lady, you want to borrow $30000 to get a degree in Sociology at Directional State U. Our figures suggest that your chance of a job with that degree from that school is one in fifteen. Loan application denied. Come back and apply again if you have an acceptance from DSU School of Podiatric Medicine.')"

I like that a lot. I'd like it even better if the college had to carry the loan. But of course, high tuition provides the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed. Although, now that I think of it, lower (or stagnant)college salaries would keep down home prices in our area.

[dave.s.]

Stolen from the Athens & Jerusalem blog:

An unemployed classicist, desperate, applies for a job at McDonald's. The manager, studying the classicist's application form, seems troubled and embarrassed.

"Look," says the classicist, I know I'm overqualified. But I really need a job and I promise I'll be an enthusiastic worker."

"It's not that," says the manager. "It's just that all our other Ph.D.s have teaching experience."

[dave.s.]

more declinism! http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2010.05.16/1143.html and, well written, too!