by Linda Sunkle-Pierucki

Created on: August 09, 2010

An Op-Ed column in the New York Times this week repeats once again the old refrain that America’s educational attainment is slipping badly, attempting to tie that to the loss of our economic superiority. Bob Herbert in Brains on Hold tries to connect the lack of a college degree to a lack of economic success (it IS the College Board he's quoting, by the way). We've been fed a steady diet of self-serving rhetoric by the academics whose financial well-being is directly connected to more and more college students and more and more tax dollars. However, recent news articles belie that argument: from today’s Business Insider:

"By education level, the less educated appear to be the big gainers, with a 1.8 percentage-point increase in EPOPs for those without a high school degree. Those with some college had a 0.8 percentage points decline in their EPOPs, and those with college degrees had a 1.1 percentage points drop to 72.7 percent, the lowest level of the downturn."

This is the second article I've seen in the last month relating that the jobs gains are coming in the less-than-high school demographic. Unfortunately for those who wish to 'plan' our economy, develop a 'new' economy and create the myth that every American can be the CEO and the workers can all be in the low-wage third world, the economic melt-down proves this cant happen. Wealth creation in a society comes from production of a value-added product, not strictly process: although developing processes can make the rare few wealthy, it does nothing for the majority of society. A rising tide may lift all boats-but only those who own a boat will benefit. The rest will drown-we’re facing that now.

A great many of these production jobs don’t require a college degree. What they require is a solid background in reading, basic math and problem-solving (logic). Those who insist one needs higher education to operate computerized equipment in a factory setting show a total lack of understanding of production: machine operators do NOT program systems . . they push the button-usually the STOP button - when something goes wrong!  The worker with the street smarts and the ability to reason may be able to fix minor problems-but he still doesn’t need any degree. What he needs is a basic understanding of the equipment and common logic. The guy with the higher education writes the programs, corrects errors and diagnoses the problem-and there is ONE of him, compared to many simple

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