Government has grown while manufacturing has not.......

[HFWR]

An interesting thought from a book I read last year is that as the price of oil goes up, the potential profit from moving manufacturing to low-wage countries will eventually be outweighed by the transportation costs. It will no longer be less expensive to ship raw materials halfway around the world and then ship the finished products to the US than to manufacture the products here. So eventually, given high enough oil prices, manufacturing jobs will come back to the US—at least the ones that are left after the robots do their thing.

I remember a number of CEO-types on CNBC saying as much, during the last run-up in oil. Plus, it's a bit easier to hop a plane to the midwest or south than to China.

 

[Westernskies]

The Chinese have loaned us enough that they won't want to do anything that would adversely affect our ability to repay them.

Unlike most countries, our debt is in our own currency... and we can always start the printing presses...

 

[palomalou]

Independent, let me assure you that the higher-ed teaching jobs are predominantly part-time adjunct positions with no benefits, or temporary (1-3 years). The number of tenure-track positions has been falling since the 1970s. Administration, though--that's a growth industry.

 

[Independent]

Independent, let me assure you that the higher-ed teaching jobs are predominantly part-time adjunct positions with no benefits, or temporary (1-3 years). The number of tenure-track positions has been falling since the 1970s. Administration, though--that's a growth industry.

Interesting, my source didn't have that kind of detail. Do you have numbers?

My sister is an "emeritus" professor who teaches one course most semesters. That has been going on for a long time (IMO, a good reason to be a professor), but with the boomers retiring I'd expect those numbers to grow, too.

Plex was saying that the growth in education is much faster than than overall job growth. You might be saying those are part time jobs?

 

[MasterBlaster]

Why do you say specifically government health care? The fact that the category immediately before "health care" is "Private services except health care" suggests to me that this category refers to private employment in health care, and that "government health care", is included in the Local, State and Federal percentages. Either that, or the health care percentage includes both government and private employment.

In order to make the numbers consistent with the document presented in the original post, the health care numbers must be government health care numbers.

Either that or one of the two documents is missing something.

 

[M Paquette]

There's a reason we don't employ as many people as we used to in manufacturing. Most manufacturing tasks are rote repetition, and more consistent results can be obtained when inconsistent meatbags aren't in the loop...

China is now going through a drop in manufacturing employment, for the exact same reason. Yes, there are many more robots working on the iPod Touch and iPad production lines than there were on the original iPad.

The article is fundamentally sort of dumb.

Robots don't need much in the way of health care, government or private. Just keep 'em oiled up.

 

[plex]

Plex was saying that the growth in education is much faster than than overall job growth. You might be saying those are part time jobs?

Actually the growth I was referring to was increased general spending on college, as per tuition rates. The spending growth rates are similar to health cares (except the college spending increases have been going on an entire decade longer). That does not mean job growth though.

Colleges and the health care system went through a similar phenomena through the 70s and 80s, they became almost entirely for-profit. While this resulted in some job growth, much of the money went elsewhere, in such things as infrastructure, endowment funds, bonuses, massive advertising campaigns, etc.... Money to keep the machine growing and running smoothly. I have noticed an increasing trend to use cheap adjunct professors (more profit), which does not really reflect significant job growth, as they are not full time positions.

 

[palomalou]

from the NYT, discussed in Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Adjunct Issue Moving Forward - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education
quote: "“In 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or tenure-track professors; today only 27 percent are. The rest are graduate students or adjunct and contingent faculty — instructors employed on a per-course or yearly contract basis, usually without benefits and earning a third or less of what their tenured colleagues make. The recession means their numbers are growing.”

Well, perhaps the recession is raising the pace, but not by much. The temptation to cut costs by hiring three adjuncts instead of one tenure-track prof is too strong for adminsitrators to resist whether times are tough or times are good..."

I'll also mention that all of the non-teaching duties those missing TT or tenured profs did, is having to be absorbed by the few of us dinosaurs around--oh, but that has nothing to do with our compensation.

 

[Independent]

Interesting stuff. I picked up this from later in the article:

The article is important, however, because it means that the adjunct issue may be rising in visibility off campus. It is hitting the rankings fields, for instance, and that may play out with parents and prospective students ...

If non-tenure staff are considered inferior, then it seems parents and students would start noticing. I can see the stress, why pay three times as much if you can get nearly the quality at the lower price?

It appears parents can get stats for individual schools here: AFT - Higher Education Department

As a parent, I'd be interested. I would be more interested in quality (e.g. audited by a common standard) statistics on jobs after graduation.

 

[Westernskies]

As a parent, I'd be interested. I would be more interested in quality (e.g. audited by a common standard) statistics on jobs after graduation.

Careful there Independent, the topic of educational accountability has a bad history of threadkilling...

 

[HFWR]

Interesting stuff. I picked up this from later in the article:

If non-tenure staff are considered inferior, then it seems parents and students would start noticing. I can see the stress, why pay three times as much if you can get nearly the quality at the lower price?

It appears parents can get stats for individual schools here: AFT - Higher Education Department

As a parent, I'd be interested. I would be more interested in quality (e.g. audited by a common standard) statistics on jobs after graduation.

I think it depends on the subject matter and course level. I'm confident that many undergraduate courses can and are taught proficiently by adjuncts. I suspect, though, that graduate/doctorate programs demand full-time, tenure-rack professors. Would part-timers be able to establish the relationships required to fund research? Plus, continuity is important if your PhD student is to work on a project for 2-4 years. And, top students will look at that when choosing...

 

[GregLee]

I'm confident that many undergraduate courses can and are taught proficiently by adjuncts. I suspect, though, that graduate/doctorate programs demand full-time, tenure-rack professors.

I'm not sure, but I think it may be just the other way around. A grad student working on his doctoral research might be ideally suited to teach a grad course in his specialty, since it's quite possible he knows more about it and has more enthusiasm for the teaching of it than any on the senior faculty. But more elementary courses need the experience and breadth of vision that a seasoned professor can provide.

 

[palomalou]

Many adjuncts are competent teachers, and many tenured faculty may be stale (although that has not been my experience).
The situation is more complicated than that, though. Adjuncts are paid (poorly--most are either just clinging to the poverty level or married to someone who makes the money so they can do as they please) only for teaching, and that is all they do. But that is only 1/3 to conceivably 1/2 of what tenured/tenure track faculty are asked and evaluated on. The committee work, service expectations, and research demands cannot be shared by the adjuncts. The growth field, higher ed administration, has created additional mounds of paperwork for faculty to deal with. So we are in the peculiar position of doing the work we never had any interest in--often what could be better done by a competent secretary--while adjuncts are hired to do the work we went into the field to do, namely teaching.
The argument about grad students being more up in the field is totally bogus--they are all doing their research/writing their dissertations shepherded by people who have been doing research in the field for 10-40 years.

Therefore, I am eagerly looking forward to retirement as soon as possible, whereafter I'll be looking for work--as an adjunct! Provided, that is, that I don't do something else that pays better.