Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Tearing the Veneer Off the Great Education Myth
by David Siorta - workingforchange.com/blog
I recently wrote about the political Establishment's Great Education Myth - you know, the line of reasoning we hear from elitist pundits and politicians that says the economic problem facing Americans is not our corporate-written trade policy that sells our country out, but the fact that workers aren't better educated. Now, it's true - we do need to improve our education system. No one doubts that. But the idea that better educating workers - but not fixing our trade policy - will solve America's problems is at best uninformed, and more likely a deliberately dishonest storyline designed to distract us from the very trade policies the pundits and politicians have rammed down our throats. And you don't have to trust me on that - just go read the LA Times today.
Times' reporter Peter Gosselin - one of the best in the business - notes that President Bush in India repeated the Great Education Myth when addressing job outsourcing. "Let's make sure people are educated so they can fill the jobs of the 21st century," he said.
But as Gosselin notes, "the president's assertion that the answer to foreign outsourcing is education, a mantra embraced by Democrats as well as Republicans, is being challenged by a growing body of research and analysis from economists and other scholars." That's right, education "is no longer quite the economic cure-all it once was, nor the guarantee of financial security Americans have come to expect from college and graduate degrees." There's more:
"'One could be educationally competitive and easily lose out in the global economic marketplace because of significantly lower wages being paid elsewhere,' said Sheldon E. Steinbach, general counsel of the American Council on Education, an umbrella group that represents most of the nation's major colleges and universities. Some analysts think that something like what Steinbach described is already underway...Most studies suggest that beyond the manufacturing sector, the 'offshoring' of jobs has been comparatively modest. But some analysts say the ground has been laid for a substantial pickup. In a recent paper, [Princeton Professor Alan] Blinder offered a rough estimate that suggested that as many as 42 million jobs, or nearly one-third of the nation's total, were susceptible to offshoring. These analysts warn that more education alone will do little to stop the flow of jobs to other countries."
Anthony P. Carnevale of the National Center on Education and the Economy states the obvious: "What's missing here from both parties is a global economic strategy and a worker adjustment strategy." Put more bluntly - both parties, bought off by Big Money interests, have passed trade policies that sell out America, and undermine the benefits of a good education.
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by David Siorta - workingforchange.com/blog
I recently wrote about the political Establishment's Great Education Myth - you know, the line of reasoning we hear from elitist pundits and politicians that says the economic problem facing Americans is not our corporate-written trade policy that sells our country out, but the fact that workers aren't better educated. Now, it's true - we do need to improve our education system. No one doubts that. But the idea that better educating workers - but not fixing our trade policy - will solve America's problems is at best uninformed, and more likely a deliberately dishonest storyline designed to distract us from the very trade policies the pundits and politicians have rammed down our throats. And you don't have to trust me on that - just go read the LA Times today.
Times' reporter Peter Gosselin - one of the best in the business - notes that President Bush in India repeated the Great Education Myth when addressing job outsourcing. "Let's make sure people are educated so they can fill the jobs of the 21st century," he said.
But as Gosselin notes, "the president's assertion that the answer to foreign outsourcing is education, a mantra embraced by Democrats as well as Republicans, is being challenged by a growing body of research and analysis from economists and other scholars." That's right, education "is no longer quite the economic cure-all it once was, nor the guarantee of financial security Americans have come to expect from college and graduate degrees." There's more:
"'One could be educationally competitive and easily lose out in the global economic marketplace because of significantly lower wages being paid elsewhere,' said Sheldon E. Steinbach, general counsel of the American Council on Education, an umbrella group that represents most of the nation's major colleges and universities. Some analysts think that something like what Steinbach described is already underway...Most studies suggest that beyond the manufacturing sector, the 'offshoring' of jobs has been comparatively modest. But some analysts say the ground has been laid for a substantial pickup. In a recent paper, [Princeton Professor Alan] Blinder offered a rough estimate that suggested that as many as 42 million jobs, or nearly one-third of the nation's total, were susceptible to offshoring. These analysts warn that more education alone will do little to stop the flow of jobs to other countries."
Anthony P. Carnevale of the National Center on Education and the Economy states the obvious: "What's missing here from both parties is a global economic strategy and a worker adjustment strategy." Put more bluntly - both parties, bought off by Big Money interests, have passed trade policies that sell out America, and undermine the benefits of a good education.
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