The Occupational College

A “mammoth analysis of jobs data being released today by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce” bears on the subject of David Goldman’s Americans Who’ll Never Work Again , though it deals with a different group of people facing long-term joblessness. In  A Jobs Mismatch , Inside Higher Ed reports that

The new report says that the United States is “on a collision course with the future” since far too few Americans complete college. Specifically, the report says that by 2018, the economy will have jobs for 22 million new workers with college degrees, but, based on current projections, there will be a shortage of 3 million workers who have some postsecondary degree (associate or higher) and of 4.7 million workers who have a postsecondary certificate.

“This shortfall will mean lost economic opportunity for millions of American workers,” the report says.

The report advocates, predictably, more funding for colleges, which will come out of our paychecks — and our great grandchildren’s — but with a new goal in mind. The Center’s director says that

The key psychological change that is needed . . . is to move away from “the old model, where you go to college and then go out and find a job” to one in which the college years are explicitly “preparing for an occupation.”

Undoubtedly true, but why should young people do this in college?