Last week I posed a question to my wise and worldly readers asking about ways they’ve seen to take unique advantage of the opportunities that evening classes offer. Only a few responses have trickled in. Lines are still open! If you have a good idea, or have seen one, please contact me at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks.
Remember when computer science degrees were guaranteed tickets to good jobs? It wasn’t all that long ago.
Over the course of my career, I’ve seen multiple “sure things” come and go. When I started, anyone with a degree in telecom or CIS was golden; that lasted pretty much until 2000/2001, when the bubble popped. I’ve seen the market for new nursing grads be hot, then cold, then hot again. Computer science was hot for a long time, but the last few years have not been kind to it.
Skilled trades wax and wane depending on local circumstances. (Data center construction is powering a local boom, though I’m concerned about what happens once the construction phase is over.) When I started, the only K–12 teaching jobs a student could treat as sure things were in math, science or special education; now the “teacher shortage”—really, a crisis of low wages—covers the entire field.
And, of course, larger economic cycles can overpower any given field for a while. The recession of 2008 did a number on all sorts of fields, some of which recovered more slowly than others.
I’ve been reflecting on these trends recently for a few reasons. Recent world events are driving up the price of oil, which history suggests portends rough times. The advent of AI seems to be hitting entry-level jobs pretty hard, though it’s hard at this point to tell how much of that is actually AI and how much is using AI as an excuse for general downsizing. And most importantly, I’m the father of a soon-to-be graduate—TG graduates next month—who is struggling heroically to find a foothold in the economy. She’s hardworking, smart, sociable, experienced and credentialed, but none of those guarantees much in the face of large structural shifts.
It’s frustrating to see so much political discourse revolve around “partnering with employers,” as if we haven’t been doing that for decades, and as if “employers” are a monolith.
Markets change, sometimes abruptly. Sometimes they change more quickly than students can change course. Although many in the policy world like to look at performance-based funding as a model for public higher ed, I’ve never seen a convincing counterargument to the basic observation that colleges don’t drive the economy. The Great Recession didn’t happen because colleges suddenly forgot how to teach. Entire sectors sometimes rise and fall in the time it takes for a student to complete a program.
None of this is to deny the usefulness of vocational programs. I can’t even get through an explanation of the importance of nursing without becoming emotional. It’s to say instead that a bit more humility about the ability to predict the future is in order, both for colleges and, frankly, legislators.
I don’t know what the next big thing will be; if I did, I’d buy stock in it. But I know that a world full of people who can read people and books, who can write clearly and well, who can hold multiple ideas at a time, and who have enough historical sense to know how things don’t happen, is a world I want to live in. These people are likely to be workers, yes, but also voters, neighbors and parents. That’s true no matter what the next hot field is.
Sometimes employers change their minds. That matters, but it can’t be everything. Yes, we need to tend to changing economic seasons, but we can’t neglect the evergreens. They’re among the few areas in which we actually have control. And I haven’t seen the industry yet in which communication skills, pattern recognition and a sense of people are irrelevant. TG will find a place, as people do; when she does, that place will be lucky to have her. And when that place pivots, the next one will be lucky, too.
