Thursday, October 05, 2006

Education the Downfall of Capitalism?

Here's a very provocative little item from Schumpeter:

One of the most important features of the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education.... The man who has gone through a college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work.... All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite.…They swell the host of intellectuals…whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment….righteous indignation about the wrongs of capitalism

Comments Grim's Hall:

I'm all for education, and even for intellectualism as long as it doesn't lead to the sort of man who can't make a living any other way...

The problem does not necessarily arise in precisely the way Schumpeter describes it; the problem is that many folks with a college education abhor working with their hands--thus, skilled trades and crafts are going begging for good people, while at the same time, college graduates (some of whom should NOT be college graduates) flood the market.

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