One key bit: "more education is not always better. What matters is matching the skills of the workforce to the skills that employers demand. In Iran, where the percentage of people aged 15 and over with postsecondary degrees has soared from 2.5 percent to 10.5 percent over the past 20 years, the education system has become 'a giant diploma mill,' says Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist at Virginia Tech."
The same is true here, as many of our chronically "overqualified" unemployed could attest. What's worse, some of what counts as "training" here is a set of dubious commercial vocational schools --- cosmetology schools, and the like --- which soak up student loans, and leave the trainees with large debts that are hard to dismiss, even in bankruptcy.
(And these are pretty big business. One of them, Kaplan, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Washington Post corporation that has over $2 billion in revenue, accounts for just about all of the parent corporation's profits. Not without controversy by the way; reports of abusive practices from Kaplan have led to allegations of fraud: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/education/10kaplan.html
The Washington Post, of course, has editorialized in favor of its baby.)
This would seem to be especially true of "for profit" colleges. There was a pretty depressing tv special (frontline?) on it...They sell hopes and dreams.
The same is true here, as many of our chronically "overqualified" unemployed could attest. What's worse, some of what counts as "training" here is a set of dubious commercial vocational schools --- cosmetology schools, and the like --- which soak up student loans, and leave the trainees with large debts that are hard to dismiss, even in bankruptcy.
(And these are pretty big business. One of them, Kaplan, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Washington Post corporation that has over $2 billion in revenue, accounts for just about all of the parent corporation's profits. Not without controversy by the way; reports of abusive practices from Kaplan have led to allegations of fraud: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/education/10kaplan.html The Washington Post, of course, has editorialized in favor of its baby.)