My father sent himself to college and law school at night by working in the post office during the day and receiving some help from my mother. It has probably been four decades since a mailman's salary could cover college tuition and board.
My friend, Bill went to boarding school with me, graduated from Columbia University, became a stock broker, was given a pick slip, but then used the high school math and courses he took at De Anza community college to transform himself into a super computer manager. He paid for this career change by working as a truck dispatcher at nights, earning about $13 an hour, for two years. He jokes, "Columbia did nothing for me, De Anza college made me who I am today."
Increasingly people are going to be more like Bill and less like my father. The best of plans will be torn asunder and it will be community colleges that often help people put the pieces back together.
For about the last seven years I predicted an economic collapse based purely on 19th century economic theory. I guess MBAs did not read the same books, probably they don't read books at all. Production was getting more and efficient but the consumers who were to absorb all this production were shrinking. When those two lines crossed, there would be a collapse. Simple, basic elementary school math. One obvious example was that China and India were destroying the very middle class in America and Europe they would need to buy all their products. I did not know a thing about sub prime mortgages, but I did predict that American buying power had decreased dramatically and this drop was being covered by cheap credit---even groceries and pizzas were bought on credit. This Ponzi scheme would have to collapse one day. When my tasteless father bought his 1976 Ford Pinto, he paid $3600 in cash for it. That was about one month's salary for my father who was just a government employee. Few can pay cash for a car today, much less just one month's salary.
As a result of our collapsing economy and the rapid commodification of even the highest skilled professionals, such as lawyers and doctors, I predicted we would all need at least three revenue streams to guarantee our survival. "One job" was just a bit to close to "no job."
As such, I recommend that everyone who can, should go to community college to deepen, broaden, and modernize their skills set. Community colleges, especially California community colleges, are a great way to get a good and affordable vocational or academic education. As an undergraduate student and as a graduate student, I always worked in some high paying trade such as house painting, carpentry, or even hard core landscaping. I always figured trying to be too purely middle class in my job choices was too geeky and overspecialized (and it did not pay well for students). When I wasn't landscaping, I was teaching myself jewelry fabrication and casting, blacksmithing, welding, and metal machining. I have found these diverse skills helped my analytical ability and they have given me the confidence to know that I could learn new things, even if I was awful at them in the beginning.
As our economy changes I believe many of the big name schools will provide knowledge that is both expensive and obsolete. Their legacy and prestige will make them reluctant to change at the very moment they need to change the most. Like RCA, they will not adopt the transistor because of their huge inventory of obsolete tubes, but a young upstart company like Sony will, to their great profit. I believe the new hot careers will be taught at small community colleges rather than at hallowed institutions like Harvard. De Anza had a star program in animation 20 years ago when animation was just becoming interesting. Stanford University, the school I attended, did not. Instead they had a communication program and a snooty documentary film program. Animation blew up, but snooty documentary films and a bloated TV industry did not.
Affordable and relevant education will be key, whether its is academic or vocational in nature. Attending a top California community college is probably your most straight forward of obtaining either-especially for academic education. No onerous high school requirements like super high grades or SAT tests. You get in automatically. If you do well in the courses you need to transfer, you are pretty much assured of transfer. No soul searching essays about your most formative experience. No need for all those contrived extra-curricular activities. Best of all, it is relatively inexpensive.
If you use community college as part of your university career, do take your normal college courses, but also take a few less mainstream courses in organic farming, or solar electrification, or small business accounting. Take these courses and take them seriously. They may end up saving you. As my professor used to say "relying on reason alone is the quickest way to disaster." Chaos enjoys playing with all your well laid plans. For more and more of us, the worse case scenario will be the real scenario. Widen your options and become as adaptable as possible. That is how hominids have coped for a couple of million years.
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