Essay About High School Graduates And College Education

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The microeconomic picture of the U.S. has changed immensely since 1973,
and the trends are proving to be consistently downward for the nations
high school graduates and high school drop-outs. “Of all the reasons
given for the wage squeeze – international competition, technology,
deregulation, the decline of unions and defense cuts – technology is
probably the most critical. It has favored the educated and the skilled,”
says M. B. Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report
(7/31/95). Since 1973, wages adjusted for inflation have declined by
about a quarter for high school dropouts, by a sixth for high school
graduates, and by about 7% for those with some college education. Only
the wages of college graduates are up.
Of the fastest growing technical jobs, software engineering tops the list.
Carnegie Mellon University reports, “recruitment of its software
engineering students is up this year by over 20%.” All engineering jobs
are paying well, proving that highly skilled labor is what employers want!
“There is clear evidence that the supply of workers in the [unskilled
labor] categories already exceeds the demand for their services,” says L.
Mishel, Research Director of Welfare Reform Network.
In view of these facts, I wonder if these trends are good or bad for
society. “The danger of the information age is that while in the short
run it may be cheaper to replace workers with technology, in the long run
it is potentially self-destructive because there will not be enough
purchasing power to grow the economy,” M. B. Zuckerman. My feeling is
that the trend from unskilled labor to highly technical, skilled labor is
a good one! But, political action must be taken to ensure that this
societal evolution is beneficial to all of us. “Back in 1970, a high
school diploma could still be a ticket to the middle income bracket, a
nice car in the driveway and a house in the suburbs. Today all it gets is
a clunker parked on the street, and a dingy apartment in a low rent
building,” says Time Magazine (Jan 30, 1995 issue).
However, in 1970, our government provided our children with a free
education, allowing the vast majority of our population to earn a high
school diploma. This means that anyone, regardless of family income,
could be educated to a level that would allow them a comfortable place in
the middle class. Even restrictions upon child labor hours kept children
in school, since they are not allowed to work full time while under the
age of 18. This government policy was conducive to our economic markets,
and allowed our country to prosper from 1950 through 1970. Now, our own
prosperity has moved us into a highly technical world, that requires
highly skilled labor. The natural answer to this problem, is that the
U.S. Governments education policy must keep pace with the demands of the
highly technical job market. If a middle class income of 1970 required a
high school diploma, and the middle class income of 1990 requires a
college diploma, then it should be as easy for the children of the 90s to
get a college diploma, as it was for the children of the 70s to get a
high school diploma. This brings me to the issue of our countrys
political process, in a technologically advanced world.
Voting & Poisoned Political Process in The U.S.
The advance of mass communication is natural in a technologically advanced
society. In our countrys short history, we have seen the development of
the printing press, the radio, the television, and now the Internet; all
of these, able to reach millions of people. Equally natural, is the
poisoning and corruption of these medias, to benefit a few.
From the 1950s until today, television has been the preferred media.
Because it captures the minds of most Americans, it is the preferred
method of persuasion by political figures, multinational corporate
advertising, and the upper 2% of the elite, who have an interest in
controlling public opinion. Newspapers and radio experienced this same
history, but are now somewhat obsolete in