Message-Id: <199704291313.JAA15915@sable.cc.vt.edu>
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Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 09:13:16 +0600
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
From: Jeff Janosko <jjanosko@vt.edu>
Subject: Re: Teaching via the Internet
Jean, 
        I think your comments regarding the shortage of jobs for
highly-trained individuals are insightful...maybe the shortage will provide
a catalyst for a "kinder, gentler" way of life.  I have a disconcerting
hunch, however, that this sea change will increase anxiety and compel those
of us with advanced training to run the rat race at an even faster pace.
Call me cynical, but...
        Jeff

At 04:58 PM 4/28/97 +0200, you wrote:
>
>Sorry, but I had another thought: if this mass internet teaching did work,
>what we do with all these highly-trained people?  I mean that in the U.S.,
>the greatest growth sector for jobs is the low-level service industry, as
>in McJobs.  In Europe there are already millions of young people who have
>finished their training but have no jobs at the end of it.  My current
>roommate, for example, will be finished with her training to be a secondary
>school teacher in another year; she says then her name will be added to an
>already long waiting list of trained teachers waiting for a job.  And what
>about all us PhD's who already can't find jobs?
>
>If the learning is directed at creating wiser citizens (the liberal arts
>ideal), then none of this matters.  But I do worry about what's going to
>happen to an economy which already produces far more human capital than it
>knows how to use, even without internet universities.  I do not want to say
>the solution is to train less people, but I don't know where the new
>high-level jobs are going to come from.  Then again, less training might
>not have to mean less interesting jobs.  Perhaps we will all simply become
>small-scale farmers and artists, and have more leisure time.
>
>Jean
>
>
>