CS Prof Decries America's 'Internal Brain Drain' 791
walterbyrd writes "Dr. Norman Matloff of the University of California-Davis computer science department argues that US citizens are avoiding 'Science Technology Engineering Math' (STEM) careers, because US citizens see those fields as being ruined by massive offshoring and inshoring. 'Despite widely publicized claims that foreign tech workers and scientists represent exceptional ability and are thus vital to American innovation, Matloff called that argument merely "a good sound byte for lobbyists" supporting industry proposals for higher visa caps. The data (PDF), on the other hand, indicate that those admitted are no more able, productive, or innovative than America's homegrown talent, he said.'"
Halle-freakin-lujah (Score:5, Insightful)
If it were all about talent, with 95% of the worlds population being from outside the US, we'd see more CEO's dumped for off shore replacements. Its about the money.
Sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it matter what reasoning lobbyists have? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sucks (Score:0, Insightful)
People who make money for a company get jobs. Period. It doesn't matter how easy their degree was, what matters is the bottom line.
Imported workers == negative wage pressure (Score:0, Insightful)
It's not about quality. Foreign workers are no better than Americans.
Corporations push for imported people, because it keeps overall US wages low. Else US engineers/scientists could demand $200,000 and get it. Having cheap imported workers keeps the salaries lower, and saves Microsoft, Lockheed, etc money.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm interested in Science and Technology. I'm fascinated and obsessed by it. But I left the programming field 6 years ago when I started losing projects to outsourcers charge 1/10th what I could charge.
Re:So much better.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Parasitic class overtaking STEM (Score:5, Insightful)
In any sane society this kind of imbalance would be corrected by the rulers. However in our current society the lawyers and the financial industry owns - oops I mean make "campaign contributions" and "lobbies" - the government, so they have all the power.
I can't really see anything good in the future for a society where a parasitic class, which produces nothing of value, is given such an overwhelming priority over the productive classes.
Re:So much better.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So much better.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, have fun working at McDonalds for the next 60 years.
Don't you think it rather depends on the person? Let's say I'm going to start a landscaping business. Do you think I should blow $50,000 and 4 years on a degree in something, or should I put together a business plan and buy some equipment?
Granted, courses like accounting 101 will help out any business owner - but those can be taken anywhere, even online.
I went to college and feel that the rest of the "college experience" was valuable to me. But while I was in college, one of my friends was making $60k/year managing a stockyard, and this is in the mid 90s. I came out of school with over $40k in debt - he had a house.
Sure, 15+ years on I now make more than he does, my debt is paid off, and he's still doing the same thing, and he is back to square one if the place ever closes. But he was never going to be an engineer, no matter how much schooling he had. He's doing pretty well, he got into the real estate market almost a decade before me, and his house is 1/3 paid off.
In short, different strokes for different folks...
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Total H1B's granted:
2000: 355,000
2001: 331,206
2002: 370,490
2003: 360,498
2004: 387,147 (cap dropped to 65,000 BUT exempt categories pumped up)
2005: 407,917
Result: many IT people completely driven out of the IT industry, while in 2002, for example, 9 out of 10 new IT jobs taken by H1B holders.
There is ongoing huge problem with H1B workers being farmed out to other companies illegally, and visa holders illegally staying on to work elsewhere.
US wants higher pay and less school (Score:5, Insightful)
Dr. Matloff's assertion is utter crap! US students aren't pursuing "STEM" careers because one needs to pay a fortune in college tuition to make a mediocre salary. Why bother? Also, nerdy "STEM" careers aren't cool/trendy/whatever.
US culture doesn't value "STEM" careers. Why should US citizens go against their own culture?
Here's what I don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical conservative POV:
1. American exceptionalism
2. American exceptionalism redux -- we're so freakin' awesome, God's chosen people etc
3. Strong on national defense
4. Self-reliance
5. Sloppy kisses for capitalism
6. Strong support for the average folk (working people who work for their money)
7. Everything that's wrong with this country starts and ends with liberals and they're the ones trying to tear it apart from the inside because the black filth of communism is pumping through their veins
Well, the reality is that America's not all that special. We're being torn apart from the inside in end-stage capitalism where we cease to exploit internal markets and are now cannibalizing ourselves to support the credit binge.
I would tend to think that a strong national defense begins with a strong national economy. We wouldn't need to be engaging in all these wars in the middle east if we didn't need their oil. Viable alternative power like solar and wind would do more to secure our nation than fleets of F-22's.
I understand why that sort of thing isn't happening. I just don't understand why these people are too blind to see it. Gay marriage is a threat to the American family? Fuck, no! Two parents having to work 60 hours a week to put food on the table is destroying the American family. Pay enough so that one job-holder can support a full-time parent who stays at home and you'll make one hell of a start towards saving the family. And how about some goddamn affordable health care? No, we can't have health care but we can ban abortion and that's being pro-life. Wait, what?
I just can't understand how myopic people are. It's like those seniors marching at the townhall meetings carrying signs saying "Government: hands off my medicare!"
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the real problem is, Americans aren't interested in Science and Technology careers that lead them to a lifetime of poverty for themselves and their families.
It's about the money. The rest is BS media hyped fantasy. When I can use my brain to become a doctor, lawyer, or financier or any high paying skill which can't be outsourced, why would I bother pursuing a career where my skills can, and inevitably will, be outsourced?
Anybody?
Re:Does it matter what reasoning lobbyists have? (Score:5, Insightful)
Same goes for marketers. No matter how awful your product is, they can find "some study, somewhere" that has something vaguely positive to say. For instance, I'm not sure if you caught it recently, but Lucky Charms was being touted as a health food.
It reminds me of those toothpaste commercials that say "9 out of 10 dentists recommend our brand X!" What they don't say is that maybe they interviewed hundreds of dentists in groups of ten until they finally found a group out of which nine preferred brand X. I have little respect for mainstream marketers because they spend so much time and effort and money exploring the myriad ways one can use deception without technically lying.
I've posted it here a few times and it's still relevant. This is a good quote about the subject:
Television lies. All television lies. It lies persistently, instinctively and by habit. Everyone involved lies. A culture of mendacity surrounds the
medium, and those who work there live it, breath it and prosper by it. I know of no area of public life -- no, not even politics -- more saturated by
a professional cynicism. If you want a word that takes you to the core of it, I would offer rigged.
telephoned, but only the fellow prepared to offer the requisite opinion was invited?
-- Matthew Parris
Many people are far too easily impressed by the official look and larger-than-life appearance of whatever is given a slick presentation, especially on TV. It distracts them from any serious thought about how and why the show was produced and who benefits from its message.
I'd say the other dimension of the problem is that knowing the right people is a much better way to advance than having the right skills. Because of that, what we have is far from a meritocracy. What we have is a collection of many small examples of cronyism. Having malleable principles and a willingness to wholeheartedly adopt the agenda of whoever your gatekeeper may be are the traits we most highly reward and encourage. That's part of why so many high-level managers are sociopaths, because such people feel no guilt about being completely phony and have no conflict about putting on a show solely to win the approval of others.
That and "globalism" and "free trade" always seems to mean "transfer wealth away from the US". It is not the mutual trade and prosperity that was sold to us when NAFTA and other proposals were getting off the ground.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Economics in a global age isn't about dividing up the current pie, it is about making new pies by farming out the baking to the country with the lowest labor costs.
FTFY.
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Our public education system does a terrible job at showing how math is relevant. I know I'm in the turned off crowd. Even having taken math all the way through AP Calculus in high school, I never had a teacher that could show me the relevance of trig or calculus. 9th grade geometry was about the most relevant thing I had as a teenager.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better, a lot H1Bs go back home after a few years. However, during their time in the US they paid into the social security fund, a benefit they will never be able to claim. Unfair to them, but great for US citizens.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is the problem. On some level, people replaced passion with monetary incentive. Now don't get me wrong -- I understand all too well the importance of incentives.
However, the greatest works in the arts and the sciences were the result of passionate people working on something because they felt a calling, not because they are worried about making a few grand more.
And I say this as someone who has been contemplating going back to school for a PhD because at the end of the day, I'm tired of the rat race. I had the chance to do it when I was younger, but I had my blinders on, and only cared about short term happiness (as measured by money, no less). Today, after having been through the grind, I just know that it's not worth it to give up your passions for short-term compromise because you will never be truly happy.
Re:So much better.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In a globalized society that we are moving towards (and esp. for countries that have practically open borders for highly qualified workers even today like Canada or USA or pretty much any western European country), you are not just competing with your local population, but with the best and brightest of the entire world.
And the lower end (i.e. competing for low end menial jobs) is already taken care of with outsourcing. So, unless you already have lots of money that you can invest or start a business of your own, really all you have is your education and knowledge. True, given the chance you probably can learn to do simpler tasks in software industry (think boring business programming) but if you are ambitious and want to work on interesting problems like operating systems, compilers, databases etc, you will quickly learn that you are missing huge theoretical foundation that you will never have the time and resources to learn on your own.
Besides, there are other benefits of higher education, the 5-10 years you get to spend on just bettering yourself beyond acquiring skills that are immediately useful for employment, like raising your intellectual ability in general, learning to learn and do research, doing mental gymnastics that allows you to learn faster later in life, actualizing yourself, it changes your outlook on life and the world around you etc.
Re:Sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that a scientist or engineer may take years to make money for the company, but by playing accounting shell games "Hey, if we lay of 50% of our product development staff, we can save millions, then next year we can just acquire a company for mere billions to make up for the fact that we have no product to sell", an MBA can provide instant results -- and that's all the stockholders care about. Day traders, high speed traders, all they care about is very short-term price fluctuations, they don't care if you gut your company and get rid of the people that made the company great in the first place as long as you're on track to meet next quarter's analyst estimates.
Re:try work with possibility of exceeding 40 hours (Score:5, Insightful)
Watching American Idol and the likes and being good at work are not mutually exclusive.
Also, only in America is working over 40 hours a badge of honor. The Germans seem to be doing pretty well with their 30 hour work weeks and their 2 months paid vacation every year. We Americans often confuse competence with numbers of hours worked.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is Americans are interested in money and fame. Being a coder isn't sexy. Being a business man selling technology, music, houses, etc. is.
Americans don't want to work to build something, they want to own it.
These problems are observable in the cultural values that are reflected in US media.
One of the problems I find (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there seems to be an unwillingness to do any type of employee development.
I've seen job ads that require umteen years of experience in X, Y and Z. It's the old chicken and egg problem - how do you get the real world experience if no one is willing to hire you? This is a problem many college graduates or people looking to move up/change the directions of their careers.
I know, I know, some of you are going to ask, "Why invest time and money to train people, they are just going to leave?" How about making a less hostile work environment and paying fair market rates (or going out and paying a little more than that)? This even applies to your more senior people - many of them will be willing to jump ship if their voice isn't heard or aren't being challenged, or not being paid enough. Also, this is a very naive approach as many jobs in a lot of places fall under at-will employment. Manangement expects 100% loyalty, but wants the flexibility to fire under-performers and lay people off when revenues/profits are down. Therefore, the "they'll just quit ayways" is just a cop out for bad behaviour.
Lastly. I've seen/interviewed for positions that want BS degrees, prefer MS degrees, but basically amount to help desk positions. Then the employer is hostile to your salary range, and your long term career goals (i.e. possibility of moving into progect management or development or systems/network admin). Of course, they then complain about not finding qualified people - Duh, most people with the qualifications you'd like are either not going to apply (why work a help desk?), going to treat it as a foot in the door or going to want to be paid comiserate with experience.
There are people out there who have the education/experience and are willing to learn. However, it makes my blood boil when people claim there is an IT/Engineer/Science/Math worker shortage.
Re:The USA has a culural bias against good educati (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed 100%. We live in a society where adjectives like "educated" and "intellectual" are used as epithets rather than compliments.
The long-term prognosis for such a society is grim, to say the least.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
We're told from a young age we can do whatever, just be happy.
The middle class thinks it's rich, so they take out home equity loans and send their children to liberal arts colleges to study.
They don't want to study science because it's a tough market, but I'm willing to bet there is a glut of journalism majors in this country.
You are completely wrong - about everything (Score:4, Insightful)
1) McDonalds is not the only choice for those without a college education - far from it.
2) A huge, and growing, percentage of college graduates are working at jobs that do not require a college degrees. A college degree is no guarantee of a worthwhile career - far from it.
3) Costco is paying $19 an hour. That is way more than a lot of college graduates earn, even if they do have a job that requires a college education.
4) People who are highly skilled in trades such as welding, plumbing, heavy equipment, and so on, very often have jobs that are secure and well paid. In California, over 15 years ago, Golden Gate bus drivers were earning $80K a year. Letter carriers also earn very high salaries, and have very secure careers.
5) Except for health care, and maybe a few other career fields; a foreign degree is just as good as a US degree. So I hope you enjoy training your H-1B replacement, or having your job offshored. Yeah, that degree was sure worth it.
Re:try work with possibility of exceeding 40 hours (Score:3, Insightful)
Then after a few years these who do their best to not cross forty bitch that they aren't getting anywhere or getting good money and think its unfair I do.
Have you ever heard of the "prisoners dilemma"? You are part of what I see is a growing problem in modern society, people willing to give up their time, rights and dignity for the sake of making fewer and fewer gains. Slowly over time, companies simply asked people to do more for less. Those "scared" of losing their job, or unwilling to grant themselves any dignity, begged to be worked as slaves until today. If everyone worked as you did, our society would be nothing more than servants to an upper echelon-- and America is more and more like that every day.
Shall we work more than think? Work more than play? Work more than speak?
I'm glad that you are doing well for yourself, but you are only valued so long as you continue to sell away your time and energy for less and less return. Just like in the prisoners dilemma you are hurting both yourself and others by devaluing your time in such a manner. The world would be a much more equitable place for everyone if your greed did not blind your sensibilities.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
H1Bs are a waste of time. I have three of them here in my department and none of them can think their way out of a wet paper sack with neon signs written in their own language pointing to the exit. Is there talent that the US should bring over...yes! Most, probably 95-98% should be shipped back to ratville and asked never to return. If the H1B is not a genius, goto 1:
Just my two cents on H1Bs.
Re:I disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Programming is a challange and a desirable skill but...
Programming is not directly a science and mathematical field. There is almost NO barriers to entry for becoming a good programmer. Anyone with the time and desire can do it. Many of the specific tools of the trade are free or very low cost, almost everyone has a computer and access to the those tools, there is no certification, trade group, pier review, qualification, internship, residency, or jouneyman time required. There is also very little importance in the physical location of the person either. It helps to be local but since there is no physical product being worked on, you can be anywhere in the world with internet access and a computer and do your work.
I fully agree that the US has the ability to fill these jobs but with the above stated, it is very easy to justify finding the cheapest source for your programming needs which often times is a worker living outside of the very expensive Silicon Valley area.
Back in the day, there was need to be cutting edge and to "invent" ways to do things with software. The demand for highly skilled programmers doing innovative things was high and the supply of those people were low. As time goes on, there is less and less invention required and more plugging and chugging and retooling existing methods. Those things do not bring in the big bucks.
Sorry to bust anyones bubble but this is the truth. you can ignore it and deny it but that's not going to change the trend of what is happening.
Most lawyers don't make that kind of money either (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure a few of them make that kind of money, and a few geeks become Accenture partners and CIOs and make that kind of money as well. But the average lawyer doesn't actually make that much.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Attorney_%2F_Lawyer/Salary/by_Practice_Area
And those numbers don't seem too far off from my personal experience either. I know a bunch of lawyers, and I make more than most of them. And I'm not even the highest paid geek I know either.
And I don't have a advanced degree either, so no MS or JD to pay for either, that counts as well.
Re:Lawyers and investors (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Admittedly, I'm in canada, but I suspect the perception here is about the same.
I'm my current grad programme in CS, we have about 120 grad students, (about 60 MSc about 60 PhD), of whom around 75% are foreign - non first world, so I'm not counting US, EU students as 'foreign' for this purpose, since we all face the same problem. The vast majority of our undergrads are domestic students, while the vast majority of grads are foreign. The undergrads can walk out of here and get jobs that easily run 40-50k and usually a lot more than that. Grad student: 20k.
The foreign grad students have significantly changed the bar for academic excellence. We take the best and brightest from other places, and that means to succeed in grad school you have to be at their level. When foreign students were 10, 15% of the class it wasn't an issue. But now 8/10 of the people in my classes are going to be from the top 5% of wherever they're from, which means to have marks competitive with theirs you pretty much have to be top 5% here. So yes, our grads are just as good, because by swamping ourselves with foreign students we've raised the bar of excellence. I'm not sure that's good or bad. So then why do we need foreign talent? Because foreign talent has raised the bar, and now can only be filled with foreigners.
There are of course a lot of other issues. If you can learn to do math in-spite of the education system, you can do fine in STEM classes, but you probably won't actually learn to do it properly from the education system. Which makes it both hard, and scary to risk STEM as a career. It's also a lot of work, with a lot of debt, that may not pay off.
Professor Matloff is specifically opposed to 'flooding the market' with foreign STEM workers. That's missing a few basic problems of economics. First and foremost, those people already exist. If they come here they may keep salaries flat or drive them down, but if they stay home in India or China they would cost substantially less, and in the end make outsourcing even more viable. Bringing them here keeps the global costs of STEM work up, and rewards the best and brightest from their home countries with a chance at much more financially productive life (a good incentive to get your people to work). A simple look at http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp will tell you pretty quickly that STEM pays well, possibly even too much (compare petroleum engineer mid career to well... anything else. IMO petroleum engineering is not substantially harder to do than chemical engineering, yet it pays 50% more). It's not like we have suddenly driven the price of STEM below that of Drama degrees, the difference between the starting salary of drama and civil eng is about 8k, but and engineering degree only costs about 2k more than a drama degree (around here anyway), so if anything there is room there for some salary depreciation and STEM would still be the best paying place to be.
IMO what we need is an education system that actually teaches people something about how all this technology stuff they want and use works in high school, so they can choose to pursue that in detail when they get to university. Right now we have first years who don't know what electricity, the internet, a CPU, HTML, or quantum mechanics are. If I have to explain the difference between a CPU and the whole computer to a comp sci student is, they're in serious trouble (and yet some of that crowd can write doubly linked lists when they get here). We have kids who's understanding of electricity is 'some magically thing that is carried over wires and comes out of the wall'. How do you seriously expect them to be interested in designing new batteries or helping to develop new energy technology and so on if they don't even know what electricity is when they start in engineering degrees? That ignorance of basic science, and ignorance of basic technology principles (what is cryptography?) should not be things we teach only to that select few (around here about 15% of our un
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the concept of capitalism!
Welcome to the concept of capitalism!
All the customer support is in India, now all the IT, research and programming is too. At some point all these highly qualified Indians are going to get together and realise they can cut the expensive USA out of the loop entirely and develop and sell products at a fraction of the cost.
Re:We should have got rid of all these.. right? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not shortsighted, what percentage of the total number that we've imported with the H-1B visas have gone on to such heights? And how many Americans have gone onto do significant things in the field? The point is that by drowning out the homegrown talent with such wage depressing strategies you end up with an equally short sighted situation where there's a disincentive to Americans to even bother to try, because it's not cost effective to get the degrees necessary to compete.
Plus, what about the other folks like Einstein and Werner von Braun who were already hot shots when they immigrated here? It must be possible to come up with a reasonable compromise where they have to come under the normal process unless they really are filling a position which would otherwise go unfilled.
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
The country with the currently-lower labor costs will buy more pies as their wages rise. It's a race to the top.
Americans are people, Indians are people, and there's no evil if a job goes to an Indian instead of an American. Of course, I'd like to see jobs stay in America, but that's my selfish greed talking, not any kind of moral high ground.
Re:We should have got rid of all these.. right? (Score:4, Insightful)
My problem isn't that Indians (or anyone else) are improving their lives. My problem is, our own government and our own fellow citizens (those who are wealthy enough to have employees) are robbing US so that THEY can get ahead.
I'll tell you where the shortsightedness is. While industry and government are driving wages down, they are also driving down the purchasing power and the tax paying ability of the American public. Both government and industry will one day regret the loss of the relatively "wealthy" American "consumer".
But, I don't know what I'm worried about. I'm still making about the same wages that I made in 1980. Which is a little less than I made in 1990 through 2000. I should be good for the rest of my life - except that I work for a well known international company that is working real hard to outsource MY job, right now. 4 more years, and my job will be gone. 4 more years, and the wife's job will be gone. I suppose we can sell our home and property to an Indian immigrant then, and get enough money to survive on for awhile.
Re:I disagree (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:We should have got rid of all these.. right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like your problem is more with outsourcing than immigration...
Give us a list of electronic items and consumer goods and furniture that you purchased and whether you have searched for one that was made in the US and would've bought that even if it was much more expensive.
When was the last time you bought a more expensive electronics, furniture or any other item that was made in the US instead of a cheaper one from China? Aren't consumers of literally all electronic goods and consumer robbing the US so that THEY can get ahead by cutting costs and purchasing more, according to your logic? The industry is doing exactly what consumers are doing, just at a bigger level.
Don't forget education itself (Score:4, Insightful)
Combine this with the education system in most states being a complete disaster and you the cycle is complete.
- California (as an example) refuses to expand the community college system to offer basic 4 year degrees. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the state college system had nominal fees barely above community college levels and so anyone could get a degree for a fairly low amount of money. Now, the prices have skyrocketed to where it's not worth getting a degree unless you are sure that there is a payoff. $5000+ a quarter at UC schools prices any college education out of the realm of the average worker or the under-employed who is looking for a second career to potentially train into. Also, they have limited acceptance to local residents(foreigners are still accepted from anywhere of course), which means you are stuck with one of 2 or 3 possible choices. Which are full for the next 2-3 years as I speak.
Fully half of the UC and Cal State system is clogged with idiots getting degrees in worthless stuff like political science, ethnic studies, and religion. People who want real degrees can't get in because of the sheer number of useless degrees still offered that only lead to either teaching the same if you are lucky enough, or a job answering phones since it's useless in the workplace now. If you look at India(as an example), there's virtually no wasted space. All of the schools offer a few basic degrees and little filler. Even if you could get in past the waiting list into one of your local schools, the programs are all full.
To add insult to injury, colleges in many other countries are affordable or are nearly free. For those stuck here in the U.S., even the cheapest options are impossible to afford while the rest of the world essentially floods in and displaces our workers with ones that paid almost nothing for their degrees.
Your only option then is private schools. But at $20K+ a year, that's impossible short of a scholarship. Re-training is impossible unless you have money already. Catch-22.
- The employers also feel that they can demand ever-increasing skills at ever-decreasing wages, pretty much because they can get away with it. Why not if all of these fortune 100 companies can do it? There's always some worker from overseas who can do the job for $30K a year. Or some starving ex-employee in their 50s who will work for intern wages. It's now affecting computer fields as well, where jobs have split into two fields - high end database and critical programmers and everyone else who is just a wage-slave in a cubicle or at a workbench. Jobs that used to pay 40-60K a year are now being offered for $12 an hour. With no benefits, 401K, or perks.
Fact: You can make more money and get better benefits working for In-and-Out Burger than from most jobs these days that require a BS degree. If you have a Masters, you're still in good shape, but that also is quickly eroding.
The only way to solve it it to slam the doors shut, kick out the temporary visa workers, and force companies to hire only U.S. workers(or those few with permanent visas of course). Note - most OTHER nations do this sort of thing already and help protect their industry.
Re:We should have got rid of all these.. right? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want cheap programmers do what everyone else does and move to Austin.
Re:Don't forget education itself (Score:5, Insightful)
When did college equal just job training to corporate specifications? If you think that is what college is then YOU are part of the problem.
Re:Here's what I don't understand (Score:2, Insightful)
dude, you just described germany :P
Re:Don't forget education itself (Score:3, Insightful)
When corporations started demanding a degree to their specifications before they would let you work at their job.
If you think the average prole is going to get a decent job without a BS, then YOU are part of the problem.