Skepticism on Apprenticeship "Boost"

A grant-writing firm regards President Trump's interest in "boosting" apprenticeships as "rare good political news," but is it? Compared to higher education, it may seem so, and many will find it tempting to hope so, based on what Jake Seliger notes:

For The Story's Story, I wrote about Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton's Paying for the Party. The book is too complex and interesting to summarize briefly, but one of its main points concerns the way colleges have evolved party tracks that require little studying -- but undergrads with successful outcomes on that track tend to be wealthy and socially connected. Many undergrads wander onto that track without their peers' financial and social resources, only to fail to graduate or to graduate with weak degrees that don't produce much income.

Given this situation, policy change is warranted. If college was once a panacea, growing college costs have eliminated that situation... [bold added]

Unfortunately, everything in bold above is a direct result of the government "boosting" higher education with easy money for decades, predictably causing all of the problems bolded in the above passage. (And we haven't even started talking about the regulatory strings attached that have, among other things, turned so many colleges into multiculturalist hothouses.) The government actively "boosting" any sector of the economy mis-allocates resources, both unjustly depriving the productive of what they have earned and enabling the waste of that money by others. (To be clear, I do applaud the proposed removal of regulations that keep companies from taking on apprentices if they desire, but that's not a "boost" so much as a getting-out-of-the-way. If that's what Trump meant, I'd be all for it.)

The government has already boosted higher education to hell. Let's hope it doesn't start doing the same with commercial training programs.

-- CAV

Updates

6-24-17: (1) Corrected spelling of author's surname. (2) Corrected blog title within block quote.