"Between 2001 and 2008, entry level wages declined 7 percent for college graduates and 4 percent for high school graduates. Entry into middle-level incomes is becoming more difficult."
"Previously it had been possible for a young man just out of high school to get a good-paying unskilled job in a unionized factory, buy a house in the suburbs, with a federally-insured mortgage, and send his kids to college with government-supported student loans. This was a common road to the success promised in the American Dream. Millions achieved that coveted upward mobility. Under the illusion they were no longer working-class, they thought of themselves as a new class in the middle, somewhere between the poor and the rich - a middle class. It is neoliberal globalization that has now blocked that road for more and more people. For the first time in generations, the next generation has a lower standard of living than their parents."
>Alternatively it is because all the Baby Boomers are sending all of their kids off to college, pushing it as
the only legitimate career path, reducing the relative
value of merely having a college degree, and ultimately
forcing kids to specialize something actually useful to
remain competitive.
It's this same complacency at hand - it worked for me, it will work for you.
>Improved standards of living (in this case, near universal
access to universities) is to blame, but who can really
fault an improved standard of living?
Sure, there are way more people going to college. In a reasonable situation, this would also mean that there needs to be way more professors.
It's the declining standard of living. It used to be that you could get by fine on a professor's salary, and so they hired professors. Now, they can't afford to pay a living wage, and so they don't, and they call them 'adjunct' professors.
"Previously it had been possible for a young man just out of high school to get a good-paying unskilled job in a unionized factory, buy a house in the suburbs, with a federally-insured mortgage, and send his kids to college with government-supported student loans. This was a common road to the success promised in the American Dream. Millions achieved that coveted upward mobility. Under the illusion they were no longer working-class, they thought of themselves as a new class in the middle, somewhere between the poor and the rich - a middle class. It is neoliberal globalization that has now blocked that road for more and more people. For the first time in generations, the next generation has a lower standard of living than their parents."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16291-the-american-dream-...
>Alternatively it is because all the Baby Boomers are sending all of their kids off to college, pushing it as the only legitimate career path, reducing the relative value of merely having a college degree, and ultimately forcing kids to specialize something actually useful to remain competitive.
It's this same complacency at hand - it worked for me, it will work for you.
>Improved standards of living (in this case, near universal access to universities) is to blame, but who can really fault an improved standard of living?
Sure, there are way more people going to college. In a reasonable situation, this would also mean that there needs to be way more professors.
It's the declining standard of living. It used to be that you could get by fine on a professor's salary, and so they hired professors. Now, they can't afford to pay a living wage, and so they don't, and they call them 'adjunct' professors.