I remembered one comment that I have always disagreed with when I last worked at Cal State Long Beach, when then chair of Mexican American Studies mentioned, "businesses feel we are not adquately preparing our students for the workforce".
I was repulsed with that position because higher education is not specifically about job training but about exploring, learning and seeking knowledge that can prepare someone for any future endeavor and not solely for some employer who wants to maximize its profit without any investment in doing so. Afterall, higher education is paid for through all taxpayers and not just businesses. At the individual level, the people pay more than corporations as labor is taxed more heavily with almost no credits unless one owns property. The renters credit was eliminated back in the 1990's when that famous recession was in place so those at the bottom even if employed pay more in taxes and contrary to popular belief, corporations are not people.
If businesses want a specific trained employee then they should pay for such investment but that is not education, just training for that job. Education in reality is overated, higher education prepares most for employment primarily funded by the state such as education, law (courts are publicly funded) and even medicine along with financing if one considers the Federal Reserve establishing the rules and giving out money at low rates so that banks can charge more interest and make profit from the population. Where is the private sector in this case? How do they invest in higher education because their taxes are grains of sand in a beach?
What businesses teach us is that they can import people from India or Mexico or not even import as is the case of Indian techs with English names in a Hindi accent nobody understands and train them to do the specific job they want. Labor from these countries means that they can be trained for the specific job US employers desire and they do the job with no formal education from the United States. This is evident in the people pushing for the Dream Act who have been able to reach college and qualify even as non citizens because their parents where employed in labor provided by businesses that value their work. The success is proven in the children attending college and paying for it in cash thus them being unemployed is not an issue as it would be more so with Mexican Americans. Taken from this angle, what higher education was needed, the employers trained them to do a specific job and both business and immigrant has created a mutually beneficial relationship where both profit.
Hence upon thinking about the comment at CSULB, I found it ironic that businesses were supposedly demanding when they did not even pay for it and if they were in such need they would hire an immigrant, train them and circumvent higher education which more and more seems to be an obselete institution from the employment sector of society unless you want to be employed by the university because those doctoral degrees really have no merit outside. If businesses want educated employees they will train them themselves and should but the public should not subsidize them.
Comments