{"id":7382,"date":"2011-10-08T14:29:45","date_gmt":"2011-10-08T18:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=7382"},"modified":"2011-10-08T14:29:45","modified_gmt":"2011-10-08T18:29:45","slug":"a-slightly-different-take-on-occupy-wall-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=7382","title":{"rendered":"A Slightly Different Take On Occupy Wall Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Corner at National Review OnLine<\/a>\u00a0posted an interesting commentary on the Wall Street protests. The article points out that although part of the crowd protesting is ‘old lefties and sundry off-their-meds street people,’ many of them are college graduates. The protesters have stated that they are mad because they cannot get jobs. The problem is not that they can’t get jobs–they can’t get the jobs they want where they want them.<\/p>\n

The article points out:<\/p>\n

Wages for entry-level and semi-skilled workers<\/span><\/a> have barely budged in ten years. I credit this to employer\u2019s wariness about hiring anyone at all. Hiring people (and all the litigation risks they present) is simply too risky unless that hire is obviously going to enhance the bottom line. Risks on the young and the untested are simply unacceptable in a tight economy tied down with regulation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In short, if an Occupy Wall Street kid is ever inclined to look for work, the job he finds is not likely to be the groovy one he and his beleaguered parents envisioned when that $200,000 was shelled out for a four-year degree in poli-sci or women\u2019s studies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The point of this article is that the revolution we may be seeing may eventually target the educational system in America.<\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

\n

We haven\u2019t had a bad enough economy to test this proposition in a while \u2014 an economy that forces employers to hire only the most essential workers \u2014 but what we are seeing these days is that a four-year liberal-arts degree is completely non-essential. The only twentysomethings I know who are gainfully employed and living like men, with their own apartments<\/span><\/a>, cars, and girlfriends, are in the building trades. My upstairs neighbor has more work than he can handle designing and installing sound systems in large places like auditoriums and shopping malls.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If there\u2019s going to be a revolution in this country, I would like one part of it to look like this: Vocational schools would be opened again (and celebrated, not marginalized) and parents would tell junior that a four-year degree is off the table unless he knows exactly how he can use it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am not opposed to sending children to college, although I will admit that when I sent my children to college it was much less expensive. All three of my daughters are gainfully employed in the fields that they studied to the degree that they choose to be employed. One daughter is a practicing lawyer, one is an electrical engineer, and one has an art degree. The lawyer and engineer work full time. The artist teaches part-time (which is her choice. She lives in California which has eliminated public school art teachers). I can, however, understand that a degree in women’s studies might not put you on the top of the resume pile.<\/p>\n

It is interesting to note that as government aid to students has increased, the cost of an education has also risen rapidly. There is a chart at a website called trends.collegeboards.org<\/a> which shows the rise of the cost of college since 1976. The question that some of the protesters need to ask is, “Is the government college loan program providing cover for colleges to raise their tuition fees beyond what those fees would normally be?”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Corner at National Review OnLine\u00a0posted an interesting commentary on the Wall Street protests. The article points out that although part of the crowd protesting is ‘old lefties and sundry off-their-meds street people,’ many of them are college graduates. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[764,763,742,737],"class_list":["post-7382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cost-of-college-tuition","tag-education","tag-occupy-wall-street","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7391,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7382\/revisions\/7391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}