March 28, 2008
The dumbing of America
For the first time in decades, and probably ever, workers retiring from the US labour force will be better-educated on average (according to one measure anyway) than their much younger counterparts. Some 12 per cent of 60-64 year olds have a master’s degree or better; less than 10 per cent of 30-34 year olds do. More generally, the decades-long rise in the educational quality of the labour force is coming to an end. This is important, because that rise has been one of the principal forces driving American economic growth.
These findings are from a new study by Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics: “The Accelerating Decline in America’s High-Skilled Workforce: Implications for Immigration Policy”. If you are interested in the prospects for American competitiveness and continued economic leadership, Jacob’s study is mandatory reading.
Consider this particularly striking chart (from chapter 1 of the study [pdf], page 12), which shows the proportion of the labour force with at least a college degree, by age group, for OECD countries.
Look first at the squares in the diagram, which represent 55-64 year olds. For this age group, the US lags only Russia (whose competitiveness, Jacob points out, was not a problem thanks to communism). But the US is exceptional in the diagram (Germany is the only other instance) in that its younger cohorts, on this measure, are no better educated. In most other countries, the proportion of 25-34 year olds with at least a college degree has soared. (More than half of South Koreans, Japanese and Canadians in this age group have a college degree or better.) As a result, in that cohort, the US is not 2nd, but 11th. At first sight, anyway, it is hard to see how US leadership in per capita incomes can be sustained in the face of this trend.
Jacob cites this and other data as urgent grounds for liberalising immigration of highly educated workers (a cause to which I would be very sympathetic, I admit, even if it were not for the good of the country, since I am one such immigrant). The point is, the US devotes a lot of effort to keeping such workers out, while other countries try just as hard to attract them. I’ll come back shortly in another post to what I think of Jacob’s specific recommendations, but for the moment I just wanted to draw your attention to the study–and to that disconcerting chart.
The hostility of the American public to admitting skilled, highly educated foreign professional workers, particularly as shown by the stubborn and irrational refusal of Congress to fix the inexcusable H-1B visa shortage, is the clearest possible sign of the dumbing of America.
Posted by: algasema | March 29th, 2008 at 12:20 am | Report this comment[…] of Clive Crook, here’s a fascinating chart on skills development across OECD countries. The graph shows the […]
Posted by: Club Troppo » The skills of the fathers | March 29th, 2008 at 3:03 am | Report this commentThe most remarkable thing about the chart is not the number of graduate degrees among young Americans but the unusually large number of advanced degrees held by older workers in the U.S. at present. I have to wonder what role Vietnam-era draft deferments played in producing the very large number of graduate degrees for people who were in their early 20s in the mid-1960s.
No argument on the value of attracting skilled workers from abroad, though.
Posted by: Weeg | March 29th, 2008 at 4:40 am | Report this commentShouldn’t there also be a drive to encourage young people to go to college and to get advanced degrees? Bringing in skille labor from outside will make companies happy, but it will not negate the dumbing of America.
Posted by: Michelle | March 29th, 2008 at 6:36 am | Report this commentWhile I’m a critical observer of the US and have expressed concerns about the quality of the US educational system in recent years, I’m not sure I’m prepared to concur with conclusions that are suggested in Mr Crook’s analysis of the data.
OECD data is reliable, but the parameters of these findings are too broad to impute conclusions as to how the US workforce–implicitly suggested here to be valued by its ‘white-collars’–is in decline.
Given a US population of 300 million, do we really want a ’soft’ workforce to be a continuously expanding subset? I would suggest that today’s economic crisis–a term that most educated Americans still seem to be denying with help from an educated Fed–results from just such expansion.
Somebody must do some work, and the US has attracted workers with a promise that work ould be a temporary phase in their lives. The US is known to every schoolboy on the planet as a consumer nation. Think on that a bit.
As for US education systems and underlying trends, I commend Derek Bok’s recent book on the first (sorry, but forget the title) and I suggest closer demographic analysis, including a look at some hedonic factors–such as 1) what do educated Americans contribute in their corporate offices and law firms, 2) what has been the impact of softening the educational system to support politically based and often imprudent advancement of underperformers from “disadvantaged” classes–would be worthwhile.
In any event, such macro findings as these in Mr Crook’s piece need to be evaluated against corresponding data on the workforce. US demographics are less often comparable to those of other OECD nations than they were 20 years ago. US capitalism has abandoned the European Liberal-style upport for a middle class since the 1980s, and these stats are of middle-class relevance.
As I am now closely observing a generation of European young men and women select their colleges and plan their dreams–with discussions that continue to confirm that there are inspired young people–I am struck by how little interest there is in US schools, except where it is considered that one must go there because the best infrastructure may still be plugged into Ivy walls. Students today are less “attracted” to US study. Our universities–even outside the Anglosphere–are struggling to cope with the high demand for placements from Asia, the ME and, yes, the US.
Posted by: WCM | March 29th, 2008 at 8:49 am | Report this commentWhere over 50% of an age cohort gets a degree, by definition you can get a degree with less-than-average intelligence unless there is a eugenics program in place in the country concerned.
That says a lot about the worth of the degree, and perhaps something about the other graduates in the cohort.
Set the bar to get a degree low enough… and the politicians look great!
Posted by: Dave Bath | March 29th, 2008 at 10:23 am | Report this commentMichelle, educated, hard working skilled English- speaking professional immigrants who want nothing more than a chance to contribute their knowledge and ability to our society, and who, despite false propoganda to the contrary, are generally well paid (often in six figures) are not here just to make “companies” happy. There are here to make all of us happy.
They pay taxes, buy houses, pay their mortgages, start their own businesses, educate their children, often teach our children, and, because of their knowledge of foreign languages, business conditions and cultures, enable America to compete in the global economy in a way that we could not possibly do of we followed the knee-jerk nativism of the anti-immigrant lobby and closed our society off to the rest of the world.
As an immigration lawyer, I can understand the concern that most Americans have about the influx of millions of uneducated, non-English speaking illegal immigrants who may be competing with less previleged Americans for menial jobs and, in many cases, using public services at taxpayer cost.
But why should this be a reason to keep out the best and the brightest from overseas, the people who work the hardest to comply with our laws and contribute to our society? And by all means, let more American students learn, science, math, engineering and business. Many of their best teachers will be highly educated immigrants, and many of their textbooks will be written by foreign scholars as well. This is not a zero-sum, either all game, as the nativists would have us believe. All of us, Americans and foreigners alike, benefit from immigration by skilled workers. To argue that a nation of 300 million people only has room for 65,000 professional level immigrants a year is absurd. Worse, it is self defeating.
Unfortunately, dislike and distrust of the most highly educated, the intellectuals who used to be known as “eggheads” back in the Adlai Stevenson years, is an entrenched feature of American society. So is distrust of foreigners, especially those who happen to be from places like India and China. Our unwillingless to admit more educated foreigners has nothing to do with wage levels or economics. It has everything to do with prejudice.
Posted by: algasema | March 30th, 2008 at 1:51 pm | Report this commentTwo mistakes above: The correct spellings are “propaganda” and “either-or”.
Posted by: algasema | March 30th, 2008 at 1:53 pm | Report this commentYes–it is rather remarkable about the dumbing down of America. It gives one pause when put into the context of the Hillary/Barack campaign, Barack derives his support from the “youth vote.” It’s the educated older folks who support Hillary.
Posted by: Ann H | March 30th, 2008 at 6:49 pm | Report this commentThis is a stupid reason for liberalizing immigration policy in the United States because the primary beneficiaries will be markets, corporate citizens, government, and real estate. None of these entities votes in US elections and represent a politically and economically influential lobby. US individuals lose in immigration because immigrants suck up resources at the universities. Why should US students save and pay tuition to educate Britons no matter what the advantages of Britons may be to the “global marketplace”. People are sick and tired of going to University and seeing their tuition payments and tax dollars at an exempt non-profit institution used to educate people from overseas. Forget it!
Posted by: George Washington | March 30th, 2008 at 8:31 pm | Report this commentClive,
If Americans are so dumb, why doesn’t the rest of the world develop some sort of ground breaking capitalist innovation along the lines of the telephone, television, internet, and airplane? Oh wait, their “advanced degrees” teach them to by automoton neo-feudalistic drones waiting for an American to tell them what to do and what to build.
The Wright Brothers, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison never received advanced degrees, but changed the world in ways an Oxford graduate would never dare imagine.
The American Dream knows no boundaries, something that old European journailists like Clive Crook will never understand but will forever fill their stagnant fantasies.
Posted by: Leonardo Uruguay | March 31st, 2008 at 4:47 am | Report this commentAs a follow-up to David Bath’s comment @ 10:23am, I would add that there probably is a diminishing marginal return to the individual for each additional year of education, and that for society as a whole there is a diminishing marginal return for each additional MA/MS/Phd. Many of the man-years wasted in academia probably could be put to better use in the world of work. Everything comes at a cost, and credential inflation is no exception.
Posted by: Sceptical | March 31st, 2008 at 6:50 am | Report this commentAs an american academic who has worked in the US, Asia, the Middle East and now Africa I find little to support the notion that European Universities are straining to accomodate foreign students. With the exception of the United Kingdom universities, the Federal institute and Zurich, and a few of the better MBA programs, Europe remains a distant second or even third choice for ambitious Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese graduate students. It sounds a lot like good old fashioned euro-pettiness to me.
Posted by: Mike Malabo | March 31st, 2008 at 7:08 am | Report this commentBeat Yale!
Algasema: the problem is that the huge influx of unskilled, barely literate (at least in English) illegal immigrants lowers the overall figure. So that is one explanation for the statistics. Just as the fact that the poverty rate doesn’t seem to budge reflects the insane ‘benign neglect’ of the southern border.
As to the subjective factors: as an American, I can tell you that most of us don’t have a problem with admitting a reasonable number of skilled, educated immigrants, and most of us never have. Naturally, we do not want an unlimited number because, like most people in most countries, we figure that those of us who grew up in the US and spent our lives (and parents’ tax dollars) on getting educated, should have first crack at the jobs. Most of us, like most people around the world, act first in self-interest.
There’s actually nothing wrong with that, even if it does cut into your business. After all, the legal profession protects itself through entry rules. There are lots of intelligent people out there, many of whom speak great English and live in India, who could probably pass the bar exams with self-study and then compete with you, but few states allow this anymore; a law degree is required, which imposes the requirement of being in the U.S. for several years at a substantial cost. Perhaps we should allow those Indians to get law licenses and reduce the cost of legal services to Americans, not to mention providing employment to deserving people. Hope you’ll support this idea.
Americans do for the most part admire education; the ‘eggheads’ they hate are condescending know-it-alls. What they’re reacting to is attitude, not education. HUGE difference. I am not annoyed that you personally have a law degree. It’s your attitude, i.e. “knee-jerk nativism.”
I have a BA and two post-graduate qualifications, one of which is an MS from Columbia, and in the 20-odd years since I got that MS, I have yet to encounter anyone in America with less education, of any age, who is hostile to me because of it. It’s not like I constantly walk around telling everyone about my degrees, but on those rare occasions when for some reason the topic of my education comes up, the reaction I get is either admiration for accomplishment; regret by others that they for whatever reason didn’t get more education, or plans to get more of it, often at advanced ages, to ‘keep my mind active’ to ‘better myself’ or start a new career. So I don’t know where this contempt for education is.
But more broadly speaking, as an American who has lived for much of my adult life overseas (as I do at the moment), I see that virtually everything I read and hear about the U.S., whether in foreign media or comments by people from other countries, is somehow negative — yet we have an unrelenting pressure for admission to America, by any means. We have about 20 million illegal immigrants and if we didn’t have an ocean on each side, that number would be several times higher.
The overall popular portrayal of America is as a quasi-nightmare of stupidity, prudery, stifling religious sentiment, bigotry and violence — yet we can’t keep people away, and not all of them are the stereotypical ’starving refugees’ for whom the American hell on Earth is still a step up. Just as one example we supposedly have 50,000 or so Irish living in the U.S. illegally — and yet Ireland is supposed to be one of the best economies in Europe with jobs going begging. These people could probably have their pick of jobs in Ireland or in the EU, and yet, they’d rather be in America illegally.
To read most of the foreign media, the U.S. is a nightmare and every negative thing in the world is in some way connected with America; anything they don’t like in their own countries becomes a reflection of that dread trend, Americanization!
And yet if we try to keep people out or send them home, we’re depriving them of the American dream. I’m regularly informed that, because my ancestors came to a totally different America in a totally different world, more than 100 years ago, it somehow follows that if any of the 6 billion other people alive today want to make the trip, they are entitled, as if it’s a universal human right to move to America.
Hardly anybody seems to ask why they don’t stay in place and make their own countries better, as it seems they could if they are so ambitious etc. Instead, it’s our fault that we don’t want every single one of them in our country. And yet the things that most come to America for, can be replicated anywhere, because they are intangible — rule of law, market orientation, etc. Yet when those processes occur in so many other countries, which would make them better places to live in so people didn’t have to leave, it’s yet another sign of that dreaded trend — Americanization! We’re destroying their culture and so on.
The U.S. in roughly half of my lifetime has gone from being about 90 percent white to being about 70 percent white, which I have read is one of the hugest peaceful demographic shifts on record and this is mostly because of immigration, and yet it’s all bigotry, all the time.
For those who will post telling me that this view of the U.S. is all down to Bush; I lived overseas during most of the Clinton administration, when the U.S. was supposedly so beloved by the world, and I don’t recall any less anti-Americanism. The immigrant population has soared during the Bush years, despite the supposed paranoia, xenophobia and oppressive U.S. security system, about which I hear no end of complaints. As one of those dumb Americans I endlessly hear about, I don’t get it: if the U.S. is so awful, why are so many coming?
As to my own experience working overseas, I have never presumed that I have any right to be in any country nor have I ever assumed that a work visa entitled me to stay forever and become a citizen. The jobs I did related to English language skill, which was in genuinely scarce supply in the non-native English-speaking countries where I worked, so I was not displacing or competing with anybody.
As to Clive Crook’s personal situation, about which he has written previously, we don’t have any shortage of U.S. citizens who can write commentaries on U.S. political and social issues. Therefore, however skilled and clever he may be, his skill is not in shortage in the U.S. That’s too bad for him but not our problem, and there are plenty of U.S. citizens who can point out our faults.
Sorry to wander so far off topic, but I am sick to death of pretentious commentators who totally fail or refuse to understand where Americans stand on immigration.
Posted by: Diane | March 31st, 2008 at 7:09 am | Report this commentI am 35yrs old, hold two masters degrees (MBA and MSEE), own my own home, and run my own business. My fiancee holds a BS in accountancy and is close to completing her CPA license. We enjoy investing, cooking, travel, and hold no debt. We both come from immigrant families that eventually got their US citizenship and pursued the American dream.
We grew up with the right guidance and a constant drive instilled by our immigrant cultures to get educated.
In the U.S. generations of parents are changing today and new stereotypes are needed. –Fill in your own, but here is one:
Today the typical child get their guidance from at least one step parent. Dad is into shooter video games and playing with the truck with the tripped out rims. Mom loves to chat on her cell about that cool tattoo she wants or that last reality show episode. They push their kids to good elementary schools, but complain when the teachers give too much homework because it will interfere with the kid’s extracurricular activities. They also tell others that they don’t believe to guide their kid what they could grow up to be. “Let them figure it out” is the viewpoint. They will sit down and help their kids with homework. –But push them? Give them some real repeated guidance on building a path to a career or following a dream? Do they help them write down goals, motivate them, and guide them what those steps are so the child can see this path more clearly? Of course not. By then, ambition for their kids once they reach high school is learning a trade or getting an associates degree. University is unnecessary in their parents mind since they point to the countless people who own a business and have none.(Source Friedman, World is Flat & the local mall)
Sadly, it is the teachers and the schools who get blamed for dumbing down the programs. “if we only had better schools” is the argument. Yet, we see so many foreign students (many from poorer backgrounds too) succeeding over our own.
Education is failing its grip in the U.S. because our culture hasn’t the guidance or drive that other nation’s parents hunger for. Some considerable blame also needs to rest on U.S. pop culture and its children who are now the parents.
In many other countries families value education more and the drive is there to try to get it. In many upper class wealthy families the same holds true; university links are deeply rooted.
Ultimately parents and pop culture are to blame.
Posted by: AJ | March 31st, 2008 at 7:29 am | Report this commentThe chart seems to argue that there is a limit to the number of graduates in most countries at about 40% of the population - and the US got there first with a large expansion of higher ed in the 50s and 60s. What target level do you have in mind?
Personally - doing business in developing Asia - I find it dismal that any smart young local manager with good English ups and moves to the US or Europe. Makes it tough to build skills needed.
Posted by: ctarget | March 31st, 2008 at 10:37 am | Report this commentDiane, someone who has an advanced education should be the last person to repeat the tired old mantras about how educated foreign professionals are only coming here to compete with Americans or give business to the lawyers. On that point, there are already quite a few immigration lawyers from India and other foreign countries who have passed the bar here and are helping many people navigate our irrational immigration system. As far as I am concerned, these lawyers are welcome. But no one is for “open borders” or admitting “five billion” people. The fact that highly educated Americans can repeat these canards so mindlessly is just another sign of the dumbing down of this country.
On a completely different point, would you not agree that the fact that so many Americans, even Democrats, think that Barack Obama is a Muslim is a sign that something is dreadfully wrong with our educational system? And I am not even mentioning the Iraq war, caused in large part by the fact that millions of people believed the lie that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.
Posted by: algasema | March 31st, 2008 at 4:43 pm | Report this comment[…] crookblog) addthis_url = […]
Posted by: 中国受高等教育的人口比例仍然远远落后于很多国家 | SilenceWolf | April 1st, 2008 at 5:03 am | Report this comment[…] El progresivo atontamiento de la población activa americanablogs.ft.com/crookblog/2008/03/the-dumbing-of-america/ por Juan hace 4 horas 45 minutos […]
Posted by: El progresivo atontamiento de la población activa americana | April 1st, 2008 at 6:18 pm | Report this commentLeonardo, for every genius, there need to be several thousand smart and educated people who help him or her implement and develop the ideas. Some people are so intelligent and insightful that they do not need advanced degrees to revolutionise the world. However, if you look at most college dropouts, they do not go on to become Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
On a side note, the great success of entrepreneurs in America is slightly due to culture (the risk-taking, self-belief and workaholism required to get one’s business off the ground, as well as the iconoclasm necessary to innovate, are viewed more positively here than in almost all other countries), but mostly due to a very developed financial system - the US has plenty of good ways for matching people with money with people with good ideas.
Diane, the US is the best place in the world to make money in, especially if one is particularly smart and/or particularly hardworking. Hands down, no contest. However, this fact bears little relevance to of pretty much every criticism I have ever heard leveled against the USA. So there is no incongruity between the criticism and the immigration.
As to the criticism on immigration, how valid it is depends on how short-term one’s outlook is. In the short term, it is clearly best to tilt the playing field in one’s favour whenever possible and to the greatest degree possible. In the long-term such tilting eventually forces all the other players to go find another game, leaving one alone, irrelevant and obsolete. Insularity and the complacency it breeds have been the downfall of every great society. Attracting the highest performers not only gives to society the benefits of their contributions, but also demonstrates how high the bar presently is. Take Mr Crook, for example - true, there are plenty of people who can comment on the politics they see, but how many are able to produce something as good as this blog?
Posted by: Andrei Timoshenko | April 1st, 2008 at 7:31 pm | Report this commentjust one thing about the dimwit who asserts that the Wright Brothers, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison among others of past generations neither had nor needed a uni degree - so what neither did Socrates or Aristotle - that does not mean we needn’t bother with either nursery or primary primary education in the 21st century or does it? Do some ‘Americans’ think or even believe so?
Posted by: Nicholas Xenakis | April 2nd, 2008 at 6:17 pm | Report this comment[…] that rise has been one of the principal forces driving American economic growth.” –Clive Crook, blogging in the Financial Times Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites […]
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