Sunday, October 21, 2012

Don't expect to find "high wage, medium skill jobs"

There were other ideas to be extracted from this NYT editorial by Tom Friedman, but that was the one I liked, since it will help me with my perennial project of driving home to students how competitive the US job market is now and has been for several years.

You choose. Do you want to properly learn your college skills ("read, write, think, figure"), to the appropriate competitive level?

Or do you prefer a low wage, low skill job?

High wage: high skill?

Medium wage: medium skill?

Low wage: low skill?

The choice starts now, today, not tomorrow.

Competition for "high wage, high skill," and even for "medium wage, medium skill" started the first day of your first college class, and even back in high school.

Have you been competing? Are you taking advantage of every opportunity college offers to develop theses skills? Or are you just kind of drifting along, not really caring about what happens next?

If you don't like Mr. Friedman's message, don't complain to me. Or him. That's "shooting the messenger", something you would realize is fruitless, had you used the opportunities college offered you to learn to think critically.

I'm not in charge of the job market. I didn't make it this way.

Deal with it now. Or deal with it later. But you will have to deal with it.

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