Why Dilbert is doomed
8th November 2009
Even a blind pig can find an acorn now and then, and Salon.com is no different.
The most numerous and stable jobs of tomorrow will be those that cannot be offshored, because they must be performed on U.S. soil, and also cannot be automated, either because they require a high degree of creativity or because they rely on the human touch in face-to-face interactions. The latter are sometimes called “proximity services” and they include the fastest-growing occupations, healthcare and education.
Absolutely true. The key is finding ways to automate healthcare and education, and overcoming the political resistance to doing so. It’s no coincidence that those two areas are the core of the most fractious political struggles of our time.
Another widespread myth holds that most Americans need to go to college in the future. In reality, most of the fastest-growing jobs, including those in healthcare, do not require a four-year bachelor’s degree. According to the Council of Economic Advisers: “The categories with some education required beyond high school are growing faster than those not requiring post-secondary schooling. The growth is not solely among occupations requiring bachelor’s degrees; occupations that require only an associate’s degree or a post-secondary vocational award are actually projected to grow slightly faster than occupations requiring a bachelor’s degree or more.” The appropriate public policy response is not necessarily to send more Americans to expensive four-year colleges, particularly if that means crippling burdens of personal debt in the form of student loans. We need to expand the vocational training provided by the community college system.
The main reason why a lot of jobs that don’t actually need a college degree list that as one of the requirements is that the educational system is so crappy these days that you need to require a college degree in order to maximize your chances of getting a candidate who has at least what used to be considered a high school education; and even that doesn’t always work.
I am a highly paid professional, and yet nothing I do in my daily work depends on anything I got in college – it’s mostly native analytical ability coupled with on-the-job technical training. College degrees are mostly a matter of social status these days, which is why everybody and his dog wants to go to college. This is a tremendous misallocation of resources that it will take a huge cultural shift in attitude to correct.
November 8th, 2009 at 11:55
First, I have not clicked through to the article in Salon, so if I write something foolish, please ignore it. Second, the idea of automating education troubles me. When I was in college I had only one flagrantly leftist professor. After the long march through the institutions I imagine the ratio is now reversed. But we do know there are still some sensible college instructors left, usually in the hard sciences. “Automating” education, on all levels, would eliminate any possibility that a student would ever encounter a teacher who broke the union’s mold.