Remember the Simpsons where Disco Stu shows Homer how Disco album sales are up 400% for the year ending 1976? "If these trends continue.... Ehy!" While I'm not sure how to spell that sound, I am sure that the idea of future-proof career is a dream. What careers seemed future-proof thirty years ago, and could anyone have picked the winners and losers? There's a hindsight fallacy there. Just like the stock market, if there was such a thing as a future-proof career then everyone would want it, driving the salary to zero and making it worthless.

As other worthies have probably pointed out elsewhere in the comments, the best idea is to learn critical thinking and remain flexible. STEM education is valuable whether you're working in your specialty or not. Unlike Underwater Basket-Weaving or other majors that seem like a great idea as a freshman, STEM educations generally push students to learn basics about how the world works that can be universal (including submarine crafting mechanics). I have this same issue with my kids and I think the answer is just to let them know that building a network and constantly learning is the highest-payoff strategy but no guarantee. Anyone giving a job guarantee is, to paraphrase, lying or selling something.

Also I'm planning to have my drugs delivered by Amazon Drones(tm), so that's not a future-proof occupation either.

Why can't we have a phone number whitelist just like I have for MAC addresses on my wireless router? Everything else dumps to VM.

The Diamond Age begins.

This is a myth.

Maybe the answer is that the company also can't hire anyone to do your old job for the same six months.

Oh well, we can always build more Kilobots

He's more machine than man now

I went to IKEA to outfit my liberry. Billy bookcases don't look bad and there are billions of them so odds are I will be able to find more if I need to expand.

Also go to work for the Federal government. They have loan forgiveness programs. How do I know? I am one.

This is only true if you assume that people have no choice but to borrow. Young people have a choice. They can decide not to borrow an insane amount of money at an unaffordable interest rate. Higher interest is the market's way of signaling: "Are you SURE you want to borrow?" In most cases, if you can't afford the loan, there's a reason. Going to any college that you want isn't a right.

None of this should be a surprise. Part of getting treated like an adult means making rational decisions. I'm frustrated by the high price of higher education, but until people start looking at the pricetag and saying "Jeez, no thanks!" then the demand will be there to drive 10% a year price increases. A lot of people have complained to me about their loans, but no one forced them to make that decision. They apparently thought that going to that expensive school was worth the cost. Instead of complaining about having to pay those debts, they should be thanking their stars that they were able to GO to college (many people don't) and have the opportunities that affords. If they spent 80K$ on an English degree, that implies they thought that they could pay it off with whatever job they could get with that degree. If they made a bad decision, why shouldn't they have to undergo the consequences? Sounds like college is teaching them a lesson even after they graduate.

I think they took it literally when NASA said they would "Go to bat" for the space program

This will obviously occur on Jan 19th, 2009 to round out the Bush administration.