, and your opinions are always illogical.

Opinions cannot be illogical.

[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1328229828' post='4908930']
, and your opinions are always illogical.

Opinions cannot be illogical.
[/quote]

My opinion is that 1+1 = 5.

My opinion is that 1+1 = 5.

Which might, for a certain assumed algebra, be perfectly fine. It would however be invalid result for usual definition of natural numbers and addition.

It could even be said it's incorrect. But it's not illogical.


Would it be possible that, given rules of our economy, psychology, sociology and policies, your solution wouldn't work? Because right now, looking at "socialist" education where cost is taken out of the equation, the perceived imbalances remain.

Supply and demand - there simply aren't enough people capable of filling certain roles, let alone ultra-specific job descriptions required by employers or the extended contexts of their jobs.

The thing is Antheus is right; IT is, for the most part, a bottom of the pile job in many many cases, the 90s rush to 'IT' pretty much solved the supply and demand problem... granted, it created the problem of 1000 monkeys to 1 person who is good at the job but for most IT positions a monkey who doesn't like the job but is happy to have one is good enough. Frankly IT is a very low entry level job these days, granted there are specialist parts of the industry which require more skills but, guess what, even if you made Software Engineering degrees free you would gain very few people who were in fact any good at it still. People would flock to it because it would be 'free money' for a few years with most of them probably failing out because they weren't suited to the course anyway and most of those who got through would end up in the 'unskilled monkey pool'.

Where as the medical profession is well regarded in many parts of the world yet has a much higher skill requirement to enter into it, as thats really one area you don't want to drop standards. So, again, even if you made becoming a doctor free you'd get pretty much no new doctors out of it because most people simply don't have the skills or the intrest to really do it and would fall into the 'free money' area again.
(Also, I suspect a lot of people get put off being a doctor due to the chance of being sued into the ground for a simple mistake... got knows I wouldn't want to enter into a profession where a simple mistake could basically bankrupt me and ruin everything I've worked for.)

Look at numbers again - Google alone gets 2 million resumes per year and they hire a few thousand. That is oversupply.

Suddenly I feel better that I got through 2 stages of phone interviews with them

(Also, I suspect a lot of people get put off being a doctor due to the chance of being sued into the ground for a simple mistake... got knows I wouldn't want to enter into a profession where a simple mistake could basically bankrupt me and ruin everything I've worked for.)

That is why 450k.

Salary is 250k. 100k is extra for your private insurance, 100k is what hospital puts extra aside for their protection.

[quote name='Antheus' timestamp='1328227137' post='4908914']

one seeking a degree in computer science or engineering

These are not in demand, nor are they profitable. MSc./PhD from elite school will earn ~100k + 30k bonus at a handful of companies (for tech/engineering work). Typical programmer entry-level salary is less or comparable to any other industry. Life-time programmer salary, on average, is probably under minimum wage, due to short length of career. A ObGyn salary starts at $400k. Anastesiology at $250k-550k. These are the fields in demand. Why? If one were to take all the med students today and put them into these jobs - there aren't enough. That is how bad the shortage is. If they go out looking for these people they cannot find them since there aren't. In IT? Throw a stone and you'll hit 50. Look at numbers again - Google alone gets 2 million resumes per year and they hire a few thousand. That is oversupply. [/quote] An Ob Gyn salary starts at 150k... Besides that your argument only serves to prove why the system I suggested would be a huge improvement over our current system. Some careers are in dire need of trained professionals but they simply don't appeal to many people. [/quote]
http://www1.salary.com/Anesthesiologist-salary.html
http://www1.salary.com/gynecologist-Salary.html

Seriously man, if you're going to call out people for "trolling" for giving you good stats when you're in here ranting with very few sources or sources that show how silly your argument is, at least put some effort in.

I think you're kind of thinking of scholarships, aren't you? Money given by normally private organizations for higher learning. At least that's what I thought of when reading your idea.

Umm... IT and programming jobs are over-saturated? I hardly think so. I've been trying to hire good programmers for the last three years in SoCal. The good ones are all already employed somewhere, and those that are left are... somewhat less than good. There are tons of companies in this area who simply cannot find enough technology workers, and that is true across this country. The unemployment rate for IT workers is under 4%. Hardly what I would consider over-saturated.

I think the greatest source of the problem we (in the US) are in is that schools have been terribly slow to get out of the mindset that produced a small number of college-bound grads, and then roughly equal proportions of those bound for the manufacturing and service industries. Back in the day, you were a creator or businessman (the college-bound), a maker (manufacturing), or a doer (Service) -- roughly a 20, 40, 40 split (so I've heard somewhere), which was fine then -- but now most of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas, and schools are still playing catch-up, less so but even today. Instead, a lot of lip-service is paid to building tomorrows high-tech and business-leaders, but mostly its BS, and the system tells us that College is the (one and only) answer. So we turned our focus, when we finally did (or at least pretended to), towards believing that everyone needs to go to college and this became a self-fulfilled prophecy. We no longer separate the more gifted and let them excel on their own, we burden them to wait on ignoramuses because, hey, everyone has to ready themselves for college.

It would be a nice (and welcome) if a high-school student at least had the option to graduate and be prepared for some kind of vocation if that was their chosen path -- but instead we play this shell game of pretending that stuffing more and more students into college will somehow create an economy that can absorb all those people. Universities were long ago stuffed to the brim, and our wonderful "free market" has allowed thousands of private institutions to spring up and do little more than fleece those who have no other options (not to mention the American tax payer, through grants/student aid) by selling them a worthless degree.

IIRC, our economy is now dominated by the service industry (in terms of jobs) -- other jobs that we never thought of as being tied to manufacturing have been flowing out of the US in recent years too. Take the example of Dell or Gateway -- They used to design and build much of their own hardware components (cases, power supplies, motherboards, etc), then some bean-counter came along with his MBA and said "Hey, we can build this stuff in Asia, lower costs, and raise profits! It's good for our stock." thinking they'd keep the rest of the business here, but now those hardware and industrial design jobs are going over too, portions of the business operations that support it as well. Better yet, the companies they used to contract to, after building up their business using those US dollars, thought to themselves "Hell, we do the design and manufacturing and then let these bozos mark up our products. Lets sell direct, and cut out the middle-man" -- why not, after all they can deliver the same goods themselves at lower prices and a higher margin for themselves. This is exactly how, IIRC, Asus came about.

Don't take this to mean that I'm some kind of bitter isolationist, I'm far more unhappy with short-sighted American MBAs about this than I am with foreigners seizing an opportunity. Its just very unfortunate (for the USA / the West) that standard MBA thinking and impotent politicians and regulatory bodies have led (encouraged, even) this to happen.

I tend to think that government is making the same mistake the schools did -- pretending that loosing those jobs doesn't matter and that our bright new future is *points* just over there, rather than solving, acknowledging, or perhaps even realizing that there is a problem bearing down on us.