Reading the first few lines of the paywall makes it seem like the WSJ is trying to have its cake and eat it too. >New manufacturing jobs that require more adva

Reading the first few lines of the paywall makes it seem like the WSJ is trying to have its cake and eat it too. >New manufacturing jobs that require more advanced skills are driving up the education level of factory workers who in past generations could get by without higher education, an analysis of federal data by The Wall Street Journal found. Considering the 1.5 trillion dollar student loan crisis, it seems natural to tap unemployed grads for manufacturing work, however this isnt happening anytime soon. You dont take 50 years of denigrating trade jobs like ironwork, machining, and manufacturing and expect to hire a college kid whos been told tradework is the devils black hand. It also implies college begets manufacturing education when in most cases it does not. Statistical Process Control, C(pk) ratios, and center process math can be learned on the job just as easily as it can be learned in college. Trade schools teach this stuff, but for fifty years they too have received a scornful rebuke from boomers pushing collegiate success to every kid, come hell or high water. It means someone who might have been a damn good welder wound up with a philosophy degree and enough debt to sink a city council. And what of apprenticeships? Well if you have a good union (International Association of Machinists is amazing) you'll get on the job paid training and a rewarding career. On the other, more common hand, unscrupulous profiteers running auto body shops and HVAC will often tell you to "wait for a slot to open" for your apprenticeship. Until then you're mixing paint, buffing wheels, and basically never intended to advance beyond your hopes and dreams. This might be the tradesman in me, but perhaps its wishful thinking...perhaps this is just a generation of older managers and directors hoping against hope that they can create meaning and worthiness for the college education again if they just demand it in every single hire. That somehow the blunder of turning your higher education system into a profit center will smooth out if you just make sure no one questions the validity of an underwater crochet degree. Or perhaps this is an increasingly terrified old-guard. Boomers who see what theyve done, and are willing to sweep an entire class of workers out the door just to make sure their college graduate kids have something, anything left, before they shuffle off.