Why does our educational system glorify stem and 4 year degrees?

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Why does our educational system glorify stem and 4 year degrees?

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My little brothers high school has programs to get into welding, mechanic, banking, hospitality, and several partnerships with local businesses to hire graduates right out of school for those not interested/suited for the college route?

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We need to test these kids for aptitude at an early age and put them on a more logical path.

This might make a big difference with crime and with overall living standards and even just basic social harmony.

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Sounds like Brave New World. FDR also proposed this in his speech to Princeton.

Look, there's not a damn thing wrong with the trades, as here we are, nearly a year since my daughter graduated from OU. She managed to get a great job with really good pay right away, but several of her friends that she graduated with are working as waitresses because they can't get interviews for one reason or another. Of course, these girls (sorority types) would never be the type to work in a trade. It has to be depressing for them.

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A lot of white collar people are hopeless when it comes to spatial sense or working with their hands.

Can you imagine if these kids who are sitting in class learning nothing had other options?

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True! My youngest son has been addicted to computers since the first time he saw a video game. He has spent most of his adult life in front of monitor on a keyboard.
Has no interest nor ability in mechanical devices.
He called me because a pipe was leaking. I asked him the size of the pipe. I stopped at Lowes, picked up couple of fittings, and had it fixed in about twenty minutes. I tried to explain it to him. He said, Dad you know I have no interest in that.

We’re not glorifying STEM. What are you smoking?

We aren’t producing nearly enough STEM grads.

My bigger question is why do people let this bother them?

Let those with an aptitude for plumbing, carpentry, etc., find it.

Regarding STEM, the world continues to become more reliant on technology and those with specialized training in this field are needed to keep up.

These technological advances also mean more regulation and laws are needed, which means the need for professions like the lawyers will continue to rise.

Cap that off with the need for humanities in any civilized society and you have a reason to continue funding with liberal arts programs.

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Why does our educational system glorify stem and 4 year degrees?

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In many instances, society operates a bit like a metronome. It sees a shortcoming and rushes to a solution point. The momentum of the rush often carries it to an extreme end. From there society realizes that there is no a different (or opposite) problem, but momentum is a difficulty beast to turn so it only slowly turns back the other way before eventually picking up momentum in going on that direction. Eventually the issue comes to another extreme so society reverses (or changes direction) again and the same behavior repeats.

Prior to the Baby Boomers, college was (for the most part) the domain of the very wealthy and/or incredibly gifted. Back then, anyone who graduated from college was pretty much guaranteed to get a job which would provide them a lucrative salary. Also, back then there wasn't much in the way of degrees with practically no utility (gender studies, art appreciation, etc).

During this time, there were many more blue-collar than white-collar jobs. Someone without a degree could get a white-collar (read: higher paying and less physically demanding) job, but most were doing manual labor (to varying levels).

It was drilled into the heads of Boomers that they should go to college if they really wanted to get those white-collar jobs, and that's just what they did. This was, by far, the largest generation to enroll in higher learning and colleges and universities expanded to encompass that. Along with that, Boomers ended up influencing the atmosphere on college campuses where more of a push for more philosophical studies (as opposed to what we now consider "stem") came about.

This allowed for the increase in the different types of degrees available which enticed more students to go to college. Society was benefiting from a more educated population so the underlying belief became "if this much is good, then doing even more should be even better". This is also at a time where the growing number of college graduates meant that competition for jobs moved more and more toward a college degree being a mandatory requirement instead of just a big edge.

So the underlying philosophy shifted subtly from "you should get a degree because it helps tremendously" to "you MUST get a 4-year degree in order to just be considered for a specific job". In many instances we're even at a point where a graduate degree is required to move up beyond a certain job level.

What we've been seeing over the last decade or so is the momentum starting to move back as the focus on competing for white-collar jobs has caused there to be a bit of a vacuum in blue-collar jobs (AC repair, mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, etc) (this is also aided by an increasing amount of degrees no longer being able to pay what it cost to attain them).

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Why does our educational system glorify stem

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Does it? Seems like STEM is being forgotten in favor of social engineering and a big reason why we contouring fall behind other countries.