Not only have the Chinese (as well as other Asian exporting nations) come to the ‘rescue’ of the foundering US dollar, but tonight’s offering provides us with a glimpse of what becomes of our rapidly expanding ‘surplus population’.
Sadly, this, er, solution isn’t ‘free’, which makes the ‘wisdom’ of such a tactic highly questionable.
There are a million ways to land your sorry ass in the pokey but leading among them is being broke…you may note the clever ‘diversionary tactic’ of linking this issue with failure to complete one’s basic education…like a HS diploma is going to save you!…like hell it will.
Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among Dropouts
By SAM DILLON
Published: October 8, 2009
On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging. [One in ten vs. one in thirty five isn’t exactly a marked improvement, is it? I’m thinking ‘demographics’ (where the study was conducted) is more likely responsible for these statistics than the level of education completed is. As you read along you will see that I am correct, this ‘study’ was conducted in the middle of the growing US ‘economic desert’…]
The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.
Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts.
“We’re trying to show what it means to be a dropout in the 21st century United States,” said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern, who headed a team of researchers that prepared the report. “It’s one of the country’s costliest problems. The unemployment, the incarceration rates — it’s scary.”
A coalition of civil rights and public education advocacy groups and a network of alternative schools in Chicago commissioned the report as part of a push for new educational opportunities for the nation’s 6.2 million high school dropouts.
“The dropout rate is driving the nation’s increasing prison population, and it’s a drag on America’s economic competitiveness,” said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, one of the groups in the coalition that commissioned the report. “This report makes it clear that every American pays a cost when a young person leaves school without a diploma.” [And this lying sack of crap has it backwards, doesn’t he? What’s the point in training for jobs that don’t exist? There isn’t one…this is where the nut needs to be cracked! With no place to go, higher education is merely an exercise in futility! But hey, at least it gives the ‘educators’ something to do…]
The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime. [Is Mr. Sum insinuating that HS grads don’t need food assistance or more comically, that they are ‘less likely’ to be incarcerated? Based on evidence extracted from an economic cesspool? This isn’t an ‘education problem’ by any stretch of the imagination (Of course, if you ask educators to solve it, that’s where you’ll end up) it’s simply a ‘time allotment’ issue, we really do have more workers than work! Problem solved, not that the greed head capitalists will ever see it that way…]
Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the study was consistent with other economic studies [conducted by educational institutions] of the dropout crisis, though he said the methodology of its cost-benefit analysis “lacked transparency.” [This last bit is a bizarre acknowledgement of the fact that there is no link between ‘level of education’ and the number of available job openings…So you can throw this study where it belongs, in the toilet!]
“The report’s strength is that it reveals in clear terms that there’s a real crisis with the high numbers of young, especially minority males, who drop out of school and wind up incarcerated,” Mr. Losen said. [When your only tool is a hammer…every problem starts to look like a nail. The ‘failure’ does not reside in the education system but within our system of commerce. A system that is incapable of providing ‘personal income streams’ for all that need them, thus do those people end up behind bars, educated or not!]
Previous studies have come up with estimates of the same order of magnitude on the social cost of low graduation rates. A 2007 study by Teachers College, Princeton and City University of New York researchers, for instance, estimated that society could save $209,000 in prison and other costs for every potential dropout who could be helped to complete high school. [Geez Louise, completing High School doesn’t, by default, mean a job automatically becomes available! No matter how much these otherwise clueless educators say so. Understand what you’re being told here, these fools are indeed saying a high school diploma is as good as a written guarantee of employment! I’m certain the ‘Captains of Industry’ would be mighty surprised to hear that…]
The new report, in its analysis of 2008 unemployment rates, found that 54 percent of dropouts ages 16 to 24 were jobless, compared with 32 percent for high school graduates of the same age, and 13 percent for those with a college degree. [Understand they are holding the figurative ‘telescope’ backwards, the ‘diminishing returns’ displayed here correspond more closely to the economic background of our society, where kids from poor families are far less likely to pursue higher education for financial reasons than their ‘better off’ peers…]
Again, the statistics were worse for young African-American dropouts, whose unemployment rate last year was 69 percent, compared with 54 percent for whites and 47 percent for Hispanics. The unemployment rate among young Hispanics was lower, the report said, because included in that category were many illegal immigrants, who compete successfully for jobs with native-born youths. [All factors being (relatively) equal, it always comes down to price. The one willing to do the most for the least will ‘win’ the deal…even if it isn’t an especially ‘good deal’ for them.]
The unemployment rates cited for all groups have climbed several points in 2009 because of the recession, Mr. Sum said. [Indeed, even the highly educated find themselves ‘vulnerable’ during economic downturns, only the ‘well capitalized’ are exempt from being ‘downsized’…]
Young female dropouts were nine times more likely to have become single mothers than young women who went on to earn college degrees, the report said, citing census data for 2006 and 2007. [If the young lady in question comes from a family with money and, er, ‘strong social connections’, they are ‘less likely’ to be ‘victimized’ or find themselves ‘trapped’ in undesirable circumstances, regardless of their level of ‘educational attainment’. Again, there is no ‘relationship’.]
The number of unmarried young women having children has increased sharply in some communities in part, Mr. Sum said, because large numbers of young men have dropped out of school and are jobless year round. As a result, young women do not view them as having the wherewithal to support a family. [In other words, the ‘loser’ is good enough to sleep with but not good enough to marry…which bizarrely doesn’t hurt any less when you switch the loafer with a high heel.]
“None of these guys can afford to own a home, they just don’t have any money,” he said. “And as a result, any time they father a child it’s out of wedlock. It wasn’t like this 30 years ago.” [He’s right, but he’s right for the wrong reason. Even these dipsticks know that education isn’t the ‘key’ to the future. If you want a secure future and you weren’t born the boss’s son, you best make damn sure you end up married to the boss’s daughter…or vice versa as would be appropriate for your particular gender…]
He cited his hometown, Gary, Ind., as an example. “Back in the 1970s, my friends in Gary would quit school in senior year and go to work at U.S. Steel and make a good living, and young guys in Michigan would go to work in an auto plant,” he said. “You just can’t do that anymore. Today, you have a lot of dropouts who are jobless year round.”
Okay good citizen, why should anyone ‘spring’ for an expensive education? While there are a certain number of jobs that require a, ‘more specialized’ education…at the end of the day that ‘well’ isn’t bottomless.
Except it has been sold to the general public that it indeed was bottomless, that acquiring a college degree in the field of your choice was ‘a guarantee of success’…all you had to do was cough up the tuition and ‘apply’ yourself.
Back when college degrees were relatively rare, the demand for graduates did exist…but these days, not so much. Worse, the explosion of college graduates sort of created a counter explosion of jobs that (suddenly) required college degrees rather than the other way around…
Today there is a ‘glut’ of MBA’s and legal degrees and um, not enough jobs…
Yes good citizen, the sad truth here is the ability to perform a function does not, by default, create a need for that function…but what will keep institutions of higher education going?
If they don’t continue to churn out graduates, er, they stop making money! Which brings us to a very sad place good citizen, it has academia literally ‘cheating’ their students out of their tuition dollars. It’s not that they aren’t providing the students with what they are paying for…they are neglecting to tell these students that the skills they are being taught/paying good money to obtain, aren’t marketable.
Many is the student these days who, after toiling mightily for 4 or 5 years, learns as graduation draws near and job offers are not forthcoming that they have ‘wasted their time’ pursuing a skill that nobody is willing to pay for.
Faced with this brutal reality…the student often chooses to ‘double down’, signing up for ‘graduate degrees’ in a desperate attempt to make themselves more marketable.
Hey, they’re already on the hook for five years of school, what’s a couple of more?
The damn debt isn’t going to pay itself off so it becomes a ‘do or die’ situation…and sometimes it literally comes to precisely that because the only way to ‘beat’ student debt is to die…
Oh well, nothing personal…it’s a business and education is the business of providing people with the degrees they want, whether that particular skill is ‘in demand’ or not.
Oh, and that little game of ‘fuck-fuck’ where it is up to you to make sure you’re not studying a ‘useless/unmarketable’ skill, that’s called ‘capitalism’.
It’s not particularly comforting to remind you that you belong to a society where you have to watch everyone and everything every moment of every day…and failure to do so instantly absolves anyone from harming you…
With that cheery thought, thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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