If you understood me to claim that we've already “all but eliminated” these jobs then perhaps I didn't do a very good job of explaining myself. We have however reduced them as a proportion of the workforce, and I see no reason why that trend would stop on its own, nor why we'd want to intervene to stop it.
The lag from new policy on tertiary education to the end of someone's working life is about 50 years. People who left secondary school in the 1960s are retiring now. A policy for tertiary education today will affect workers available from 2015 to 2060 or so.
“your average graduate may be more highly educated but is not, outside of academia, any more "skilled" than your average school leaver.”
If it was even possible to assess some arbitrary "skilledness" measure I don't think it would be helpful to compare. We do know for sure that employers _don't_ teach the skills that universities teach, and that what they do instead is hire graduates. Maybe that could be changed, but it's quite a leap.
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zvi and
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Date: 2010-07-19 11:37 am (UTC)The lag from new policy on tertiary education to the end of someone's working life is about 50 years. People who left secondary school in the 1960s are retiring now. A policy for tertiary education today will affect workers available from 2015 to 2060 or so.
“your average graduate may be more highly educated but is not, outside of academia, any more "skilled" than your average school leaver.”
If it was even possible to assess some arbitrary "skilledness" measure I don't think it would be helpful to compare. We do know for sure that employers _don't_ teach the skills that universities teach, and that what they do instead is hire graduates. Maybe that could be changed, but it's quite a leap.