Combine this with the education system in most states being a complete disaster and you the cycle is complete.
- California (as an example) refuses to expand the community college system to offer basic 4 year degrees. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the state college system had nominal fees barely above community college levels and so anyone could get a degree for a fairly low amount of money. Now, the prices have skyrocketed to where it's not worth getting a degree unless you are sure that there is a payoff. $5000+ a quarter at UC schools prices any college education out of the realm of the average worker or the under-employed who is looking for a second career to potentially train into. Also, they have limited acceptance to local residents(foreigners are still accepted from anywhere of course), which means you are stuck with one of 2 or 3 possible choices. Which are full for the next 2-3 years as I speak.
Fully half of the UC and Cal State system is clogged with idiots getting degrees in worthless stuff like political science, ethnic studies, and religion. People who want real degrees can't get in because of the sheer number of useless degrees still offered that only lead to either teaching the same if you are lucky enough, or a job answering phones since it's useless in the workplace now. If you look at India(as an example), there's virtually no wasted space. All of the schools offer a few basic degrees and little filler. Even if you could get in past the waiting list into one of your local schools, the programs are all full.
To add insult to injury, colleges in many other countries are affordable or are nearly free. For those stuck here in the U.S., even the cheapest options are impossible to afford while the rest of the world essentially floods in and displaces our workers with ones that paid almost nothing for their degrees.
Your only option then is private schools. But at $20K+ a year, that's impossible short of a scholarship. Re-training is impossible unless you have money already. Catch-22.
- The employers also feel that they can demand ever-increasing skills at ever-decreasing wages, pretty much because they can get away with it. Why not if all of these fortune 100 companies can do it? There's always some worker from overseas who can do the job for $30K a year. Or some starving ex-employee in their 50s who will work for intern wages. It's now affecting computer fields as well, where jobs have split into two fields - high end database and critical programmers and everyone else who is just a wage-slave in a cubicle or at a workbench. Jobs that used to pay 40-60K a year are now being offered for $12 an hour. With no benefits, 401K, or perks.
Fact: You can make more money and get better benefits working for In-and-Out Burger than from most jobs these days that require a BS degree. If you have a Masters, you're still in good shape, but that also is quickly eroding.
The only way to solve it it to slam the doors shut, kick out the temporary visa workers, and force companies to hire only U.S. workers(or those few with permanent visas of course). Note - most OTHER nations do this sort of thing already and help protect their industry.
They allow as many foreign students in as they can get because they can charge them significantly more. As a resident, the state is subsidizing a significant portion of your tuition, with most of the recent fee increases being decreases in the level of subsidy.
For example, when I was attending Cal State Northridge, my undergrad tuition was about $3000-4000 per year towards the end of my degree. It started out at under $1300 when I had started in 2000. My wife, who was then an international student, was paying over $17,000 a year the entire time.
