A startlingly low percentage of U.S. college students—30% at four-year colleges and only about 25% at two-year colleges—finish their degrees. Some of that underachievement is money-related, but some of it is due to the fact that the U.S., unlike high-growth countries like Germany, doesn’t do much to connect educators with corporations doing the hiring.
Yesterday the NYT had an assiduously reported piece about job retraining programs which left a pretty bleak impression about how useful they are: Hundreds of thousands of Americans have enrolled in federally financed training programs in recent years, only to remain out of work. That has intensified skepticism about training as a cure for unemployment. [...]
