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October 14, 1D73
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. . .and in conclusion, I would like to congratulate all
you graduates of the University of Nebulosity on this
commencement day. You have all worked long and hard
to earn your degrees, and I would Eke to wish you well as
you take your rightful place in that great iraosployiscnt
line of society . . .
-Chancellor Rhett Cutler, U. of N. Commencement,
April, 1977.
y ou spend your four years cramming your head with
facts, theories, opinions, sense and nonsenss;you waste
your health with sleepless nights and bad food;you spend
from $3 JOCK) to SSjQCX) or more a year in an investment of
mental growth potential; and at the end you receive a
piece of fake parchment that certifies you as a Sags, a
scholar, a paragon of knowledge.
In the past, the bachelor's degree would have made you
you a desirable person for recruitment by an almost un
limitsd field of employers offering high wages,
promotion, opportunities a shot at prestige and power and
assured upward sochl mobility. Times have changed. The
market for traditionally-educated persons has dried up
considerably, along with cutbacks in programs that
formerly hired the "best and the brfehtest".
The United States Department of Labor predicts 13
million persons wO graduate from college by 1935 (the
federal fpvsrnment csrefsliy avoMs any references to
1924) and thrt at bast a million will remain unemployed
or take jobs that da cot require a degs.
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. numbers. Those from top schools with graduate dsgress
wH have the eire.
sional or vocational schools for mere desirable positions.
The Deportment of Labor has predicted that in the next
ten years, the overwheif? majority of job openings will
be of the paraprofessional skO type. So it appears that
employers seeking the new graduate wfl take harder looks
at potential employes. The Golden Days are over.
O-Wite dwmdling opportunities for college educated
people to climb to the top of the heap, the picture is not
all bleak. A good, if sensational, historical perspective can
be had from such a source as Otto L. Eettmann's The
Good OMDsysThey Were Temhk! Life today seems
Utopia, paging through Eettmann's documented accounts
of American life from the Civil Var to the early 1900s.
History offers a yardstick by which to measure the
status of the American worker. Today he has dignity and
protection; less than a hundred years ago he was poor,
debased and unprotected Bettmaa writes.
Workers were viewed by industrialists as little more
than cogs in the machinery of production, to be utilized
until they were broken, then replaced with fresh workers.
Tales of entire families put to work for 16 hours at a tens,
children maimed and killed because of unsafe working
conditions and people Iitere2y kiUmg themselves to make
a living abound m the book. Children lost fcgers,kands,
arms, legs, eyes and were given a one4ime payment of SI
to $5 and sent home, often unemployable for the rest of
their lives. Wages often allowed for only a dismal rented
room and some bread to eat for a family. Strikes were
visdously attacked and a great number killed by police
and militiamen. The people making carloads of money by
exploiting the working class viewed the labor movement
as the "awful tile of socialism.'
In contrast, the great majority of the working class to
day can feed their families, have adequate shelter, send .
their children to schooL Unemployment insurance, social
security, and other programs provide at feast minimum
sustenance. Inequalities still exist, but they are fewer.
Back to the question. . .what made the college job
market dry up. One of the most noted authorities m this
area is Harvard economist Richard B. Freeman, author of
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