Let's honestly analyze this situation please. Tewnty-five to thirty years ago, those of us who went to college, were going there because we WERE QUALIFIED and could afford it (either through parents, scholarships, and/or loans which which you had to have some ability to prove you could pay back). The degreee itself mattered, but basically, the fact you had more "education" than half the people in the country, meant you had a leg up when it came to getting into a job/career. Sure, the name of the school meant something and the GPA meant something, but usually there was a job waiting for almost anyone with a college degree that wanted one.
Then came 1992...that's when things started to change. That was the first real downturn in a decade. There were still jobs, but that's when what the degree was started to matter.
Those of you who remember Clinton, remember his mantra about EVERYONE NEEDING to go to college? That's when the "needing college" explosion happened. Everyone was getting a degree mainly because high schools were grade inflating, and there were fewer restrictions placed on getting loans. Just so happened that by the end of the 90's, we had a "booming" false economy where anyone with half a brain and could understand a little bit about computers could get a fairly high paying job fairly easily.
Then came the burst of the IT bubble. The high paying jobs were not there for everybody; only engineering, computer science, and other tech majors were finding those jobs. The liberal arts degree was not treated the way it used to be. That led to the explosion in MBAs, JDs, PhDs, etc. Not to mention, a lot of these people weren't all that bright to begin with; just pushed along with high grades, and little to no knowledge of anything other than what was written in their textbook.
That part is on the individual and and on our pathetic public education system.
Now, government has had a big role too. Tax incentives for off-shoring and on-shoring does not help. It should not cost less (disregarding salary) to hire foreigners than Americans. I see it in IT.
Now where you an-caps, and libertarians who argue it's "our fault". At least in IT, I do not understand how we as Americans are supposed to compete with a completely different CULTURE (SE Asians, i.e. Indians). Even before we get into "cost", we are dealing with a people who WILLING ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BECOME WHAT AMOUNTS TO INDENTURED SERVANTS. What most of these on-shored "consultants" do, is go to a "company owned school" for about a year and get "trained" on American banking systems, basic mainframe programming, and a little bit of exposure to networking, internet, etc. It's much less exposure than in a CIS program at most American universities. However, in exchange for the "schooling", the Indian allows himself/herself to be put in an American job less than 48 hours of being told about it. They also allow themselves to be moved anywhere in the United States on 24 hour notice. For their work, they recieve no overtime pay, but are told to work about 75-80 hours a week (the "company" pockets the OT). They live 8-9 to an apartment, usually in some of the worst areas of the cities they are assigned to.
American companies LOVE these people, even though many are clueless as to what they are actually doing. The "company" sells them as highly trained and experienced. Most of them are lying about their ages and experience, saying they're 30, when if they are 25, it's a stretch.
And, these are their BEST people. Their lower-end "employees" are back in India in IT "sweatshops" writing code. It is the equivalent to "if 1000 monkeys sat at typewriters, they'd create the world's greatest novel."
All for $28/hr.
HOW IN THE WORLD IS A TRAINED AMERICAN IT WORKER (Programmer, DBA, Business Analyst, Data Analyst, Project Manager, Network Admin, etc.) WITH A MORTGAGE AND A FAMILY SUPPOSED TO COMPETE WITH THAT? An-caps, so is the answer to basically make yourself homeless or live in the hood, and leave your family to compete with this?
