Some interesting research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston suggests that non-college-educated men leave the workforce when their incomes decline relative to those of their male counterparts. The research attempts to explain why the number of unemployed prime-age men is so high.
According to the research, about 11% of prime-age men do not participate in the workforce. Although the decline has been both noticed and studied for 40 years, no one has come up with a credible explanation.
Fed researcher Pinghui Wu (a Big Brother grad) postulates that men without college degrees tend to leave the workforce when their income declines relative to their college-educated male peers. Interestingly, researchers did not detect this effect when non-college-educated males’ incomes dropped relative to females.
I have read research attributing the decline to many different circumstances, including everything from drug abuse to obesity. The truth would probably reveal that the drop in labor participation is a combination of additive factors, whose current toll is 11% of all prime age males.
The truth is that earnings among community college graduates aren’t much better than those of their non-college-graduate counterparts. It’s not hard for a person who can’t get ahead by working to draw the conclusion that there’s no point in holding a job. If it were only the presence or absence of a degree, these men should be racing to the community college to earn the credential that unlocks their “fair share.” Instead, they choose to leave the workforce because a community college credential isn’t going to help much, either.
Workforce focus should be on the students
If anything, the decline is likely a repudiation of the community colleges’ strategy of prioritizing the employer’s needs at the expense of the student. Shuffling students into short, non-degree certificate programs is a good way to provide a sliver of the training a worker needs without allowing them to develop too many compensable skills. This leaves them with a bachelor’s degree as the only true option for increasing their incomes.
The focus of WCC’s occupational and technical education programs has to shift from meeting the needs of the beneficiaries (the employers) to meeting the needs of those who are paying for a service (the students). Having a degree has to result in a significant return on investment for both the students and the community that underwrites their studies.
The current approach of focusing on the employer has done nothing for the students except equip them to hold low-wage jobs. Short-sighted community college administrators have managed to create a system of corporate welfare that not only fails to improve the availability of skilled employees but also somehow manages to drive people of prime working age from the workforce altogether.
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