Disinherited. Diana Furchtgott-Roth
teachers.
In their college years, young people are encouraged to attend a four-year university, even if doing so is not the right choice for them. The current system of federal student aid raises the cost of college tuition, so students are forced to take on debt that will burden them for many years after they graduate. We need to encourage innovation in the classroom at all levels of learning, whether through charter schools, voucher programs, or massive open online courses to reverse the trend of declining educational performance.
The betrayal of America’s young begins with America’s primary-education system. In Chapter 3: The Failure of Primary and Secondary Education, we show that states do not require children to pass content-based exams to progress to the next grade, so children are often shuffled from one grade to the next on the basis of attendance, even if they do not know the material.
Maybe states do not apply educational standards because many students would be hard-pressed to meet them. Once the envy of the world, America’s primary-education system has deteriorated. With the rest of the world catching up to or pulling ahead of the United States in educational achievement, failing to prepare students for an increasingly globalized economy is the height of unfairness.
Nowadays, many public schools are run for the benefit of their employees rather than their students. Compounding the lack of achievement are teachers’ unions that stubbornly resist commonsense educational improvements, such as charter schools and voucher programs. When it comes to delaying school openings from 7:15 a.m. to a time more suitable to teenagers’ well-known sleep schedules, school boards resist change in order to maintain a status quo that public-sector unions support. Unfortunately, many local governments choose to protect union interests over their students’ futures.
Some families can manage to send their children to private schools, and others can afford to move to better school districts. But many millennials are doomed by a failed public school system that cannot meet the demands of a 21st-century economy.
After students graduate from high school, the betrayal continues. In Chapter 4: Drowning in College Debt, we show that more than 7 in 10 college students take out loans to finance college, and the average amount of student loan debt is $29,400.13 But many students graduate with little hope of finding a job, left with nothing but a mountain of debt to repay. William Bennett, secretary of education from 1985 to 1988, has shown how “politically charged pseudo learning” has diminished the value of a college degree, while government financial-aid programs have pushed the cost of college tuition sky-high.
Even though the return from a two-year community-college education in a generally well-paid field, such as health-care services or computer programming, can be greater for the individual than the return from a four-year college degree, many high school guidance counselors do not recommend community college. College-trained with bachelor’s degrees themselves, they look down on community colleges or worry that they will be penalized for recommending two-year institutions to low-performing students. Instead, they shovel entire classes into four-year colleges, ignoring the looming high level of debt at the end of the process.
Connor Wolf, a young political reporter, sat down with us to talk about college debt and the state of higher education in America. “Most if not all decisions in life should be based on a cost-benefit analysis,” he said. “This is especially true for major financial decisions like college.” While this point might seem obvious, most people do not approach higher education with this mind-set.
What Connor told us next was surprising. Even though he said his college experience was superb, he has some reservations: “If I were to look at it now, I would say beyond a doubt that the benefits I received from going to college didn’t come close to the price of that experience, and, from what I understand, many students and recent graduates feel the same way.”
Connor also described the frustration and pressure he felt while trying to find a job after college graduation. “I imagine that trying to find a job is unnerving in any circumstance when a person is young and competing against people with much more experience, but with a bad economy and a lack of available jobs, it only becomes more frightening,” he said. “After graduation, I looked for any job, from an entry-level position where I could start building a career to a basic restaurant job so I would be slightly less broke. There was nothing available. Finally, after four months, I found a catering job that provided me with enough money to afford to start some internships related to my career interests. I didn’t get a college-level job until a year and a half after graduating, yet I consider myself lucky because many recent graduates are still struggling. It really is unacceptable.” As Connor’s comments make clear, America has failed, and is failing, to properly educate its young.
The next step in our betrayal of millennials is in the workplace. Part III: Regulations That Cripple the Young shows how Washington and state governments prevent young people from entering the job market. This is done in multiple ways. Occupational licensing requirements are meant to protect public safety, but they instead protect established businesses and workers at the expense of everyday consumers, entrepreneurs, and young workers; and they make many promising career paths prohibitively expensive or time-consuming to enter.
Minimum-wage laws, though well-intentioned, make it more difficult for the young and low-skilled to acquire valuable work experience. Unpaid internships, which teach the hard and soft skills necessary for future success, are limited. Again, the government is telling young people that they are not free to work. We need to roll back these destructive labor-market laws at every level of government so the first step on the career ladder can be within reach for all young people.
Washington should do as much as possible to ensure that young people—who have large debts to pay off, including outstanding college loans, and little to show in the way of education—can get a job and start earning income. But the reverse is true. In Chapter 5: Licensing Requirements Keep Out the Young, we describe how occupational licenses restrict millennials’ ability to start their own businesses. Occupational licensing is an often-overlooked but substantial barrier to the workforce, and it extends far beyond doctors and lawyers. Countless occupations—from manicurists to door-repair contractors to auctioneers—require a license from the government in order to work. Over the course of a career, 4 in 10 Americans will need to obtain the government’s permission to work.
Despite the claims of proponents, these occupational licenses do little to protect public safety. Rather, they protect those who are already established in their careers from the competition young workers would generate. Interior designers, though licensed in only three states and the District of Columbia, need an average of six years of training to work, but who has died from clashing drapes? In contrast, emergency medical technicians who hold lives in their hands need only 33 days of training.14
Occupational licensing has a disproportionately negative effect on young people looking to start their careers. Paths to entrepreneurship are cut off, not only for them but also for older workers looking to start small businesses. This further limits the creation of local jobs that open opportunities for young people. Today’s occupational licensing policies bring back memories of medieval regulations aimed at protecting established tradesmen at the expense of potential competitors. In the Middle Ages, tradesmen formed guilds to lock out newcomers. Today, all levels of government implement policies that protect established, politically connected workers. This keeps young people from fully participating in the workforce and following their career dreams.
Occupational licensing is not the only factor in preventing young people from working. Chapter 6: Banned from the Job Market describes the high minimum wages that keep younger millennials out of work. Similarly, once commonplace, unpaid internships in for-profit companies are now disallowed out of concern that companies might use them to exploit the interns.
University of California economist David Neumark has shown that young workers with low skills are harmed the most by the minimum wage. This is not surprising given that half of minimum-wage earners are between the ages of 16 and 24.15 If people cannot get their first job, how can they get their second or third? People who take minimum-wage jobs gain entry into the professional world. Once they are in, they can keep